The next time Hannah awoke, Dr Pentecost was at her bedside with a teaspoon in one hand and a small brown bottle in the other.
“Here you go,” he said. “Take this.”
She didn’t want to drink the brown liquid in the spoon. It smelled pungent, both spicy and vinegary, very much like the aftertaste she had detected in the Colheita. Dr Pentecost insisted it would make her feel better, however, and she did desperately want to feel better, more like herself again. She coughed down three spoonfuls of the stuff. She assumed it was medicine.
She slept again.
And slept some more.
Dawn, then midmorning, then afternoon, then evening. An entire day stuttered past. Outside the window, beyond the closed curtains, the sun progressed along its usual arc in flickering stages, like images on a zoetrope. Dr Pentecost was ever-present in the room, always on hand to supply her with another dose of the medicine.
At one point she caught a glimpse of the label on the bottle. “Kendal Black Drop,” it said. The name was known to her, but she couldn’t immediately recall where or when she had last heard it.
Night fell.
“It is time,” said Dr Pentecost. He was standing over Hannah, beckoning her to rise. “We have places to be.”
“Where?”
“You will see.”
Lamp in hand, he led her through dark, silent corridors and hallways to the door with the symbol. He produced a key to unlock it. He ushered her down the steps, into the antechamber. Hannah went, unresisting. Her thoughts were a complete fuddle, a tangled ball of string, impossible to unpick. Something inside her was crying out in protest, a tiny voice insisting that she should not be going along with Dr Pentecost so meekly. She kept thinking, for some reason, of the goat at the Delphic Ceremony. In the end it seemed easier not to think at all, just let her mind continue to hover and bob, balloon-like, within the haze that engulfed it.
Later, there was a muffled conversation nearby. Hannah opened her eyes to see Dr Pentecost and Malachi Hart leaning together, talking softly.
Dr Pentecost and Malachi Hart?
Her name was mentioned. Hart was receiving instructions from Dr Pentecost. He was to look after her. Check on her at regular intervals.
“She will be coming out of her stupor soon,” Dr Pentecost said. “Lucidity will be returning. Make sure she does not kick up a fuss.”
“As you wish, Doctor,” said Hart. The scar that zigzagged down one side of his face shone palely in the lamplight, like the ghost of a lightning bolt. “And when this is all over, my obligation to you is discharged. Do I have that right? We are done, you and me.”
“After this favour, you will owe me nothing and I will ask nothing more of you.”
“Good,” said Hart gruffly. “I have no wish to be beholden to you ever again.”
“You shall not be. You have my word on that.”
Later still, Dr Pentecost was back in the antechamber. He was squatting beside Hannah, patting her face none-too-gently.
“Miss Holbrook?” he said. “Miss Holbrook?”
Hannah blinked up at him.
“There you are,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“Wretched.”
“But clearer-headed? It has been a while since your last dose. The fog should be lifting.”
It was. Hannah’s brain had slowly begun to stir back into life. There was still an undertow of grogginess, but her thoughts were sharpening, coming into focus.
“You have been drugging me,” she said. “First you spiked the port with Black Drop. Then you just gave me the preparation neat.”
“I am afraid so. It was the prudent course of action, but also the only one. I needed you… co-operative for twenty-four hours.”
“Paralysed, you mean. Under your thumb.”
“Precisely. To explain your absence I have been telling everyone that you suffered an attack of brain-fever. The onset occurred while you were in my study and I have been nursing you there since then.”
“Brain-fever?”
“Brought on by delayed shock from seeing the goat slaughtered at the ceremony. Sir Philip asked to see you, to check on your condition, but I dissuaded him. I told him that your recuperation would be swifter if you were left alone.”
“While you continued to feed me your soporific draught, to keep me sedated.”
“Black Drop’s opiate content has another effect, useful in this case. It makes the person who takes it extremely malleable. Even someone as strong-willed as you.”
“Which was how you were able to make me write that letter.”
“You remember that?”
“To Mr Holmes. You want him to stay away. So that you can carry on doing what you are doing unimpeded.”
“That is one way of looking at it.”
“And what you are doing,” Hannah said, “is blackmail.”
Dr Pentecost’s eyebrows rose, and a small, wry smile insinuated itself across his face. “However did you work that out, my dear?”
“Polly’s earrings,” she said. “I see it now. It is the only explanation that makes sense. Why would she have left them in your study? She was wearing them during the Delphic Ceremony. Hence she would have been wearing them when she went to see you in your study. She must have removed them while she was there, with you. Why would she have done that? I could not fathom a reason. Now I can. They are payment.”
“Generous payment,” said Dr Pentecost.
“And the ‘monster’ she referred to as she left? It was not Edwin Fairbrother at all. Rather, it was you.”
“That story about Fairbrother spurning her was something I fabricated on the spot, once you mentioned his name. It sounded plausible. You certainly fell for it.”
“What do you have over her?” Hannah asked.
“Polly, in an unguarded moment, told me about her father. He is not faithful to his wife, a hopeless philanderer. Polly found out about this only recently. That was, indeed, the impetus which drove her to leave home and find succour in the bosom of Elysianism.”
“And when she was unwise enough to admit it to you…”
“I was ruthless enough to threaten to share the fact with the newspapers unless she made it worth my while not to. Can you imagine how the Speedwell millinery chain might suffer if such a scandal came to light publicly? Can you imagine the ignominy? In return for preserving her father’s business and reputation, those earrings were a small price to pay.”
“She is not the first, is she? You have blackmailed other Elysians.”
Dr Pentecost shook his head ruefully, in such a way that he seemed both to be admitting to the accusation and at the same time denying responsibility.
“It was not something I set out to do when I accepted Sir Philip’s offer of employment. It just… evolved. You know as well as anyone that I am an approachable fellow, to women especially. To young women even more so, who see me as a father figure. I am old enough to pose no threat. I am sympathetic. I engage people’s trust. Then all it takes is a careless aside, an injudicious comment, and I am privy to that which I would not normally be and perhaps should not be.”
“Many of us end up in that position. Not all of us decide to use such snippets of information for personal gain. Most of us give a promise of discretion to the other and abide by it.”
“The first couple of times it happened, I felt the same way,” said Dr Pentecost. “Soon, however, it became a repeated pattern and I began to see that it might be turned to my advantage. Elysians are, as a rule, a biddable lot. They come here looking for purpose, looking for something more in their lives. There is something missing in them, some absence needing to be filled. Many of them lack self-esteem. Sir Philip knows this and believes he gives it to them. He believes that people are elevated by exposure to the regime at Charfrome, freed by his philosophy from the mental chains that hold them back. Perhaps they are, after a while. Until then, they remain lost sheep.”
“Sheep whom you may fleece.”
; “They have money, most of them, or some precious knick-knack. I never ask for much, certainly for nothing the person cannot afford to do without. I supplement my income and augment my pension. It is, I would say, a fairly harmless occupation.”
“Was Sophia one of your victims?”
“Why do you ask that?”
“I am wondering why you have gone to all this trouble to drug me, take me captive and have me write that letter to Mr Holmes,” Hannah said. “Why would you do that if you were not concerned by my efforts to unearth the truth about Sophia? That leads me to deduce that you have some connection with her disappearance.”
“‘Deduce’,” Dr Pentecost echoed. “Isn’t Mr Holmes rather fond of that word? His influence is rubbing off on you.”
“I am right, though, am I not? Where is she? What have you done to her?” Hannah found she was dreading the answers to these questions.
The classicist heaved a deep sigh. “You realise, my dear girl, that if I am to tell you everything, I shall have to dispose of you.”
“As you did Sophia?”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”
“I feel you have already made up your mind to dispose of me anyway. Hence hauling me off to this place, wherever it is. There is no point pretending I am going to come out of this unscathed.” It was a struggle for Hannah to control her voice, which trembled with emotion. “You may as well make a clean breast of it, Doctor. Confession is good for the soul, they say.”
The classicist laughed mirthlessly. “And you are the priest who is going to grant me absolution for my sins?”
“No,” said Hannah, “I am the woman who is going to make you pay for them, if they are as terrible as I fear they are.”
“An empty threat.” Dr Pentecost deliberated, then said, “Perhaps you have a right to know the truth. And now is as good a time as any to give it to you. ‘Veritas odit moras’, as Seneca the Younger once said. ‘Truth hates delay.’”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SOPHIA’S FIRST MISFORTUNE
“Sophia Tompkins was a victim of misfortune twice over,” Dr Pentecost said to Hannah. “The first misfortune was to fall under the spell of Edwin Fairbrother. She is not alone in that, of course. Who can say how many females have melted before that young man’s incandescent charms? Even he has probably lost count of the full tally. But where Sophia went wrong was thinking he was sincere about her, as sincere as she was about him. She got into her head the notion that he loved her.”
“Edwin Fairbrother does not love anybody but himself,” Hannah said. “One would be a fool not to see that.”
“Sophia was that fool. She would have given the boy everything – everything she owned, everything she was – in order to keep his favour. I watched it all unfurl over the course of several weeks, from her initial exploratory forays here to her decision to give up her position as a governess and commit full-time to being an Elysian. I say ‘decision’, but she didn’t even think twice. Fairbrother wished it, so she wished it. Sir Philip got another new recruit while Fairbrother had a fresh conquest. It has happened before, over the years. Fairbrother installs a girl at Charfrome, and there she is, pinned in position like a mounted butterfly, his to dust off and pore over whenever the fancy takes him.”
“While he, between times, entertains other women elsewhere.”
“No doubt about it. For Fairbrother, a girl at Charfrome is there in case of need, an understudy he can reliably call up if there is no one else available to fill the starring role.”
“How sordid.”
“It was this situation, by the way, that I drew upon when spinning my yarn about Polly Speedwell and Fairbrother. A lie is more convincing when it is rooted in reality. I have seen Polly making cow eyes at him but she has not, to my knowledge, been one of his paramours. Too plain. When it comes to the opposite sex Fairbrother is, if nothing else, consistent. He likes a shapely, good-looking girl. At any rate, it took Sophia some time to grasp that she was not the epicentre of Fairbrother’s life as she supposed. She tried her best to be a good Elysian, in the hope that this would somehow endear her to him, but he did not care one whit whether she danced well or improved her conversational Greek or memorised the entire genealogy of the Hellenic pantheon. His sole concern was her being available to him at his convenience, as and when required. Gradually it dawned on her that Fairbrother was not going to sweep her off her feet and bear her away to a happily-ever-after. The realisation crushed her, poor lamb.”
“You could at least try to sound sympathetic.”
“Do not get me wrong. I felt sorry for Sophia. But the trials and tribulations of young people in love do provide a certain amusement for old stagers like me who are long past that sort of brouhaha. I became Sophia’s confidant during her period of growing disenchantment with Fairbrother. She and I struck up a companionable relationship when I chanced upon her by the lake one afternoon. She was all alone, sobbing her heart out. A few gentle entreaties from me, and soon I had the whole story. Not that I didn’t know most of it already. It was ‘Edwin this’ and ‘Edwin that’. She was angry, ashamed, rueful, resentful, self-recriminating, self-pitying, dejected, a dozen things at once. Not to mention suicidal.”
“No!”
“Oh, the girl was seriously contemplating throwing herself into the lake. ‘I would rather end it all, Dr Pentecost,’ she said, ‘than live with this agony.’”
“But Sophia is terrified of water,” said Hannah. “I am astonished that she was anywhere near the lakeside. She has long had the fear – irrational but unshakable – that she is destined to die by drowning. It has plagued her ever since the deaths of her parents, who were on the SS Princess Alice when it collided with the collier Bywell Castle on the Thames near Gravesend. Six hundred and fifty ‘Moonlight Trippers’ aboard that paddle steamer perished in the disaster, Sophia’s mother and father among them. Now she can hardly bear to look at a body of water, let alone approach one.”
“So she told me. She also told me that she cannot swim. She never learned the skill as a child, and the tragedy of her parents, rather than persuading her of its necessity, somehow only convinced her of its inutility. All in all, it would seem she went to the lake intending to fulfil that destiny she so dreaded.”
“A mark of how truly disordered her state of mind was,” said Hannah. “One presumes you talked her out of it. One hopes so, at least.”
“I did. The main plank of my argument was that the lake, being manmade and purely ornamental, is not conducive to drowning. Nowhere is the water any deeper than three feet. ‘With determination,’ I told Sophia, ‘you might be able to accomplish the deed, but more likely you will just wind up cold and wet and looking rather asinine.’ She laughed at that, through her bitter tears. ‘Come,’ I said, offering her the crook of my elbow. ‘Wouldn’t you prefer to take a stroll with me? I will be your audience, and you may curse and rail against feckless Edwin Fairbrother and call him all manner of dreadful names, and with luck exorcise him from your soul.’ Thus did Sophia and I form a bond.”
Hannah eyed him coolly. “You affected not to know her that well. When we first discussed her in Tartarus, you had trouble recalling her surname. Deceit, it seems, is second nature to you.”
“Miss Holbrook, of course I was not going to admit to you that I had been well-acquainted with Sophia. Given the dark and tragic turn that acquaintanceship would take, the very mention of her name by you put me on my mettle. I knew I must proceed with caution. Hence the dissembling.”
“I believed you.”
“I am very believable. But in this respect I am being honest: I grew fond of Sophia and would not have wished any harm to befall her. Not at first. That would change.”
“How? Why?”
“I am coming to that. It is necessary to relate events in order. It is easier to keep track of them that way. For perhaps a fortnight I provided Sophia with succour and comfort. I was a vessel into which she poured out her troubles. Increasingly her distress drained awa
y, and what remained was bitterness. When Fairbrother next put in an appearance at Charfrome, Sophia was no longer the submissive little dormouse he knew. She had become vengeful, a proper Fury. She arranged with him that he should come to her room at midnight, as was their custom during his visits. He duly turned up at the appointed hour for the tryst, full of his usual inflated self-opinion.”
Dr Pentecost shook his head, chuckling at the reminiscence.
“Imagine his surprise,” he said, “upon entering the bedchamber to find the occupant not Sophia but a plump, unprepossessing middle-aged lady, a Mrs Philomena Caversham, whom Sophia had prevailed upon to swap rooms with her. There was a tremendous hue and cry. The doughty Mrs Caversham gave vent to all the indignation one would expect from a respectable married woman who discovers a strange man in her boudoir in the middle of the night. By all accounts she was like a man-o’-war in full sail, belabouring Fairbrother with slaps and kicks as he stumbled out into the corridor. He in turn did his best to fend her off, flustered and flummoxed and mumbling apology.”
In spite of the situation, Hannah felt a small smile form upon her face. “Serves him right,” she said. “A solid humiliation. Good for you, Sophia.”
“Sophia capitalised on it the next morning, snubbing Fairbrother at breakfast and airily going about her business as though nothing was amiss. Philomena Caversham, by contrast, was in a state of high dudgeon. Sir Philip tried to smooth things over, but nevertheless she packed her bags and quit Charfrome that same day. For the other Elysians it was a humorous interlude, a break from routine. Fairbrother had had one of those unfortunate mishaps that come to all rakes at some time or other during their progress. Men like him tend to get forgiven for all but their most egregious transgressions. All the same, he knew he had been made to look an ass. Sophia had turned the tables on him, and she had done it in a manner expressly designed to puncture his masculine pride.”
“I would wager he seethed about it.”
“Very much so. Sophia continued to ignore him, compounding her victory, and Fairbrother grew more and more aggravated. Not only had she weaned herself off him, now she was rubbing his nose in it. As far as he was concerned, that could not stand.”
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