Hidden in the Heart

by Beth Andrews

  ‘What could we possibly have said which provided the clue?’ Lydia wondered aloud.

  ‘You were speaking of your sister’s probable betrothal,’ he reminded her. ‘You mentioned that a man of sixty was a far cry from a lover of twenty - or words to that effect.’

  Lydia remembered now. It had all been a jest, something quite trivial, but in that moment John had realized that a man of more than ninety was very different also from one of fifty. Suddenly the words of poor Kate made perfect sense.

  ‘ “It wasn’t his hands,”’ Lydia repeated slowly.

  ‘Precisely.’ John cleared his throat once more. ‘When you prodded her memory, the maid recalled that the hand which reached across to snuff out the candle that day was far too youthful to be the withered hand of Sir Hector. Unfortunately, she blurted out the truth in the presence of the valet - which sealed her fate, I’m afraid.’

  All eyes turned toward Mr Tweedy, who was standing pale and round-eyed.

  ‘I never laid a hand on Kate Eccles!’ he cried defensively.

  ‘No,’ John agreed. ‘But you could not resist relating what you had heard to someone else: someone who had no hesitation in killing an innocent young girl in order to further their own ends.’

  The assembled company was mesmerized. They were like sailors, reeling in a storm-tossed sea, pitched from one side of the vessel to another. First their attention had been all on Mr Cole; then they were directed toward Mr Tweedy. Now there seemed to be a third party, hitherto unsuspected, and they knew not which way to look.

  ‘What foolishness is this?’ John’s father demanded. ‘How many murderers do we have here?’

  Everyone’s gaze returned to John, who leaned nonchalantly against the mantel, as cool and unruffled as ever. However, he did not answer his father’s question directly.

  ‘I think,’ he said calmly, ‘that we must go back to the beginning.’

  * * * *

  The beginning, it seemed, was Sir Hector’s treasure. However, when John mentioned this, he was met with almost universal derision.

  ‘That old wives’ fable!’ his father scoffed.

  ‘Some may consider it so,’ John said, accepting the scepticism of his elders. ‘But it was Lydia who suggested that we should, perhaps, take the tale seriously.’

  ‘Forgive me, my boy,’ Mr Savidge snorted, ‘but I’m damned if I’ll pay attention to the wild imaginings of a chit of a girl - even if she is to marry my son!’

  ‘Forgive me, sir,’ John said with a frown, ‘but if Lydia could imagine the tale to be true, why should not someone else do the same? And what,’ he continued, ‘if that someone decided to act upon his belief - mistaken though it might be?’

  ‘Still sounds like nonsense to me,’ the older man muttered, unconvinced.

  ‘It was the treasure you were after, was it not, Mrs Chalfont?’ John challenged the woman, who stood silently listening.

  ‘Nobody ever believed that old story,’ she said now, in perfect command of her emotions.

  ‘Come, come,’ John chided gently. ‘It is useless to dissemble at this juncture, you know. If I had any real wit, I would have wondered why, if Sir Hector was so ill, you never summoned Dr Humblebly to him. But perhaps you can explain why you placed Mr Cole here in Sir Hector’s bed and passed him off as your master all these weeks?’

  ‘Tell him, Martha,’ Mr Tweedy interjected unexpectedly. ‘Tell him the truth.’

  ‘Be quiet, you fool!’ the housekeeper hissed at him.

  ‘What did she tell you, Tweedy?’ the elder Savidge turned on the valet.

  Mr Tweedy, forced into further speech, was temporarily rendered speechless. Perhaps he was afraid of what he might reveal. Whatever the cause, he caught his lips between his teeth before continuing.

  ‘She told me that Sir Hector had passed away one night,’ he began.

  ‘You don’t have to tell these men anything, Silbert!’ Mrs Chalfont cried, attempting to stop his tongue.

  ‘The hell he doesn’t!’ Mr Savidge roared at her. He then turned back to the valet. ‘You’d better speak willingly now, sir, or by God I’ll squeeze the truth out of your lying throat with my own hands.’

  Mr Tweedy cowered before his wrath, but John addressed him with more sense and less passion.

  ‘My father will not harm you, Mr Tweedy,’ he said. ‘We do not need another murder in Diddlington.’

  ‘She said she had this man here - Mr Cole - pretend to be Sir Hector for a few weeks, to try to arrange things before the new heir sold the estate from under us and we were all turned out without a reference!’

  All of this tumbled from his lips in an almost incoherent rush of words, then stopped abruptly.

  ‘And you believed that Banbury story!’ Mr Savidge was almost more angry at this than at anything else he had heard so far that day.

  ‘Why would she lie to me?’ Mr Tweedy asked almost piteously. ‘I - we - I thought she cared for me.’

  ‘Paperskull,’ Mr Savidge said with a snort of supreme contempt.

  ‘But she did lie to you, sir.’ John shook his head. ‘It is a particularly bad habit of hers, I believe. In this instance, it was not a very good lie, but I am sure she knew how much you cared for her, and that you would be disinclined to doubt anything she said.’

  ‘But this still does not explain how Mr Cole became involved,’ Aunt Camilla complained, very sensibly.

  ‘I do not know the precise connection between Mr Cole and Mrs Chalfont—’ John said.

  ‘I do!’ Lydia broke in upon his speech, creating her own minor sensation.

  ‘You do?’ John was more curious than surprised.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I only just remembered it. When we were on the stage that day, I overheard Mr Cole telling the gentleman beside him that his sister had been an actress. He was about to speak her name when the guard blew the yard of tin. I caught only the beginning. He said she was “Mrs Cha—”’

  ‘Very careless of him,’ d’Almain commented.

  ‘No doubt he never thought that a girl would be any threat to him,’ Lydia said without rancor. ‘He did not even know that I was travelling to Diddlington, after all, and probably never imagined that I was paying any attention to what he said.’

  The man on the sofa muttered something which sounded suspiciously like ‘Hellborn witch.’ However, nobody paid any heed to him, and John once more took up his own version of the tale. He surmised that Mrs Chalfont, after working at Bellefleur for some years, had written to her brother of Sir Hector’s treasure. Mr Cole had seized upon the story as a possible means to easy wealth and had come down to Diddlington to see how it might be acquired.

  ‘Why they killed the one person who could tell them where the treasure might be, I do not know,’ he admitted.

  ‘We never killed him, I tell you,’ Mr Cole said with another loud groan. ‘He just ... died.’

  ‘Harold!’ his sister sought vainly to stifle what came perilously near to a confession.

  ‘If you will assist us, sir,’ John told the man on the sofa, ‘I will do all that I can to see that you are transported, rather than hanged. I cannot promise the same clemency to your confederate.’

  This seemed to be encouragement enough for the injured man. He probably felt that his sister was perfectly able to take care of herself. If not, and one of them had to be hanged, he certainly would prefer that it not be himself.

  ‘We never meant him harm,’ Mr Cole managed to state with considerable fortitude, considering his pain-wracked condition. ‘We got him alone in his bedchamber, as planned, and tried to bully him into telling us where his treasure was hid.’

  ‘A masterful plan,’ John commented ironically.

  ‘A waste of time,’ Mr Cole confessed. ‘We never got nothing out of him but Bible verses about laying up treasure in Heaven, and hiding the Word in your heart.’

  ‘Of course!’

  To everyone’s consternation, this rather loud outburst escaped from the lips of Camilla Denton
.

  ‘What is it, Aunt?’ Lydia asked her.

  ‘I have just remembered ... something,’ Camilla said, somewhat breathlessly.

  ‘Whatever it is,’ Thomas Savidge snapped irritably, I’m sure it can wait until we hear more from Mr Cole here.’

  ‘O-of course,’ Camilla stammered, reddening.

  ‘Well, we had been at it for near an hour,’ the malefactor resumed his narration, ‘when the old man suddenly clutched at his arm, keeled over in a faint and died on us.’

  ‘Heart couldn’t take it, I suppose.’ Mr Savidge shook his head sadly. ‘At his age....’

  ‘Just so,’ his son cut in on his speculation, then turned to Mr Cole. ‘And you decided to do what you could to hide the fact that he was dead. You disfigured the body....’

  ‘Martha said it would look like it was connected with that other murder in the woods a couple of years ago,’ Mr Cole supplied helpfully. ‘Said it would direct suspicion away from Bellefleur and lead them all on a wild-goose chase.’

  ‘And so it was.’ John bowed slightly toward Mrs Chalfont. You are a clever woman, ma’am. Unfortunately, you did not count on there being another clever woman in Diddlington: namely Miss Lydia Bramwell.’

  ‘I cannot take the credit for this,’ Lydia protested.

  ‘But for your persistence,’ John reminded her, refusing to accept her modesty, ‘I might not have found out about the smugglers, and realized that the two deaths were not necessarily connected. It might have ended with no more than Monsieur d’Almain being suspected, but nothing resolved.’

  ‘But somebody would eventually have discovered that Sir Hector was not at Bellefleur,’ Lydia pointed out.

  ‘Oh,’ John waved a hand, dismissing this objection, ‘I have no doubt that eventually Mrs Chalfont would simply have disappeared, along with “Sir Hector”. It would have been a great mystery, of course, but few would have suspected the truth.’

  ‘But what of the treasure?’ Lydia demanded.

  ‘It may well be that there is no treasure.’ John shrugged. ‘Certainly these two have not discovered it.’

  ‘How can you be sure of that?’

  ‘Because if they had done so they would not still be here.’

  ‘But there is a treasure!’ Aunt Camilla stepped forward boldly. ‘I am sure of it. And, what’s more, I believe it to be in this very room!’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  HIDDEN IN THE HEART

  There was no doubt that Camilla Denton had caught the attention of everyone present with this startling declaration. Had an artist been able to capture the scene on canvas, it would have been a dramatic moment indeed, with Camilla at the centre of a ring effaces wearing almost every possible variation of shock, surprise and disbelief.

  ‘My dear aunt,’ Lydia was the first to voice the question on everyone’s mind, ‘what can you mean?’

  ‘I told you I had remembered something,’ the older woman said, with a sideways glance of reproof at John’s father. ‘It was when Mr Cole was recounting Sir Hector’s words to him. I recalled where I had heard the expression before: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.”’

  ‘It sounds like something from the Old Testament,’ John said slowly. ‘But I do not see what it has to do with Sir Hector’s treasure.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Aunt Camilla admitted, which did not raise the confidence of her listeners regarding her intellectual abilities. ‘But I think it is curious that the vicar recently preached a sermon in connection with that very verse, and I am certain that it is the eleventh verse of the hundred-and-nineteenth Psalm!’

  This pronouncement was made with an air of triumph which was lost on the assembly. They seemed quite unaware of any significance in the fact, until Lydia let out a cry and dashed over to the fireplace where John still stood looking around at the others.

  ‘Look!’ she cried, pointing to the carved heart which had attracted her attention on their previous visit. With her finger, she traced the carved letters and numbers beneath

  ‘ “Thy word have I hid in mine heart ...”’ John began. ‘Hid in mine heart ... Great God!’

  Catching his breath, John reached up above the mantel and ran his fingers over the elaborate carving, feeling carefully along the edges. The others looked on in wonder, not knowing what to expect. John raised both hands, moving them feverishly across the stone.

  ‘Aha!’ he shouted suddenly and, to their amazement, lifted the great heart quite off the wall above the mantel. Immediately everyone perceived a hole in the wall behind the carving.

  ‘The treasure!’ Mr Cole almost wailed in anguish as someone else discovered that for which he had searched so long.

  John laid the stone heart on the floor beside him and reached up into the opening. Very carefully he pulled out an object which the others craned their necks in order to see. However, when he turned about to face them, all that they saw was a plain brass box. The outside was certainly unimpressive, with no carving nor any valuable inlay to proclaim its worth. Perhaps what was inside was more worth looking at, they surmised.

  There did not appear to be any lock to prevent someone from reaching the prize within, so John merely lifted the lid. Standing at his shoulder, Lydia looked down at the contents, but was more mystified than ever.

  ‘It looks like a roll of linen,’ she said.

  ‘It is a scroll of some kind,’ John elucidated, slowly raising the object up in his hands.

  ‘A map!’ Mr Cole cried out. ‘A treasure map.’

  ‘No.’ John shook his head, squashing that particular fantasy. ‘Come here and have a look, d’Almain,’ he added, motioning to the Frenchman.

  Monsieur d’Almain readily obliged, squatting beside John and examining the object before him. Between them, they partially unrolled it. Lydia eyed it minutely as well.

  ‘It is Greek to me,’ she said at last, repeating Shakespeare’s immortal lines.

  ‘Quite right,’ d’Almain replied, smiling. ‘It is some dialect of the Greek tongue - though not Classical Greek, I’ll wager.’

  Meanwhile, John stood and faced them all.

  ‘Behold Sir Hector’s treasure!’ he said.

  ‘Treasure?’ his father repeated with a combination of disgust and disbelief which almost exactly matched the feelings of the others. ‘An old piece of parchment with some ancient Greek laundry list?’

  ‘Oh no,’ his son hastened to correct his misapprehension. ‘I would wager a fairly large sum that what we hold here is a very ancient document - probably a portion of the New Testament from before the time of the Emperor Constantine.’

  ‘That is the treasure!’ Mr Cole subsided onto the sofa and closed his eyes as though about to breathe his last.

  ‘That is what two people have died for so that you might possess it,’ John said. ‘I wonder if you think it worth the cost now?’

  ‘I never killed anybody,’ Cole muttered hopelessly.

  ‘No.’ John looked down thoughtfully at him. ‘Sir Hector’s death was an accident, perhaps, and I have little doubt that your sister here is responsible for Kate’s murder.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that it was Mrs Chalfont here who strangled the maid with her own hands?’ his father demanded, with a glance of almost superstitious dread at the housekeeper, who still stood like a pillar of salt.

  ‘It did not require great strength.’ John shrugged. ‘A woman would be quite capable of it.’

  ‘Oh God!’ Mr Tweedy’s voice shook as he beheld Mrs Chalfont as though for the first time. ‘Is it true, Martha? Did you... ?’

  ‘Calm yourself, sir,’ John told the man.

  ‘It is my fault, then, that Kate is dead,’ the poor valet said, wringing his hands, his eyes glistening with unshed tears as the enormity of it all threatened to overpower him. ‘I was the one who told her - Mrs Chalfont - what I overheard the girl saying to Miss Bramwell.’

  ‘But you did not know what she would do.’ Lydia was moved to compassion b
y his obvious distress. ‘I can scarcely conceive of it myself.’

  ‘I always thought that Kate knew the person who killed her,’ John resumed his interrupted explanation. ‘The brief time span disturbed me, and there was no sign of a struggle. The housekeeper was probably on the watch for her when she left the house that morning and followed her into the garden, away from the house where they would not be seen. She probably called out to her, and Kate would not have been likely to be suspicious. When the girl turned her back, Mrs Chalfont had only to slip the cord about her neck....’

  ‘How monstrous!’ Lydia exclaimed involuntarily.

  ‘A cold-blooded crime,’ d’Almain said.

  ‘Committed by a cold-hearted woman,’ Lydia continued his thought. ‘And all the time, Sir Hector had told them not only where his treasure was, but also what it was. Yet they never understood, and probably still do not.’

  ‘I told you that Sir Hector was a pious man. To him, this ancient manuscript was priceless.’

  ‘I do not suppose that he ever expected to die for it,’ Aunt Camilla said with a slight shudder. ‘And poor Kate, too.’

  ‘Do not forget,’ John said, returning the scroll to its coffin and shutting it, ‘that there was very nearly a third victim.’

  ‘A third?’ Lydia repeated.

  John crossed his arms and glanced once more at the housekeeper, who turned away and looked out of the window.

  ‘Mrs Chalfont did all she could to implicate Monsieur d’Almain in Kate’s death.’

  ‘True!’ Aunt Camilla breathed and reached out for the hand of her beloved.

  ‘She did it very well, too,’ John admitted. ‘She never said that she recognized the French gentleman, but only that she had seen someone who might well have been him. And yet,’ he concluded flatly, ‘only one of the servants had seen any strange men about - and that was several nights before, and was almost certainly Mr Cole digging in the garden for the treasure.’