The Angel in the Glass

by Alys Clare

  And now he had done another examination, this time no doubt taking the trouble to do as Theo had said and carry the body into the sunlight and have a proper look, and found irrefutable evidence that the vagrant had died from suffocation.

  Theo swore again, lengthily.

  Then, noticing that there was something else written in small letters beneath the main block of writing, he peered at it. Gabriel had added Sorry.

  Theo smiled. All at once he didn’t feel quite so cross.

  Throughout the remainder of the long morning, Theo spoke to the members of the household.

  First he sent a politely worded request to Avery Lond, asking if he could be spared from tending his wife to have a few words with the coroner. It was some time before there was a response, but eventually he heard the sound of swift, brisk footsteps outside and Avery Lond, after a perfunctory tap on the door, came in.

  Theo rose and indicated the second chair that he had set on the opposite side of the table. He said courteously, ‘Please, Master Lond, be seated. I am very sorry to have to intrude on the grief of the family and the household but, as I am sure you appreciate, it is my duty.’

  He watched very closely as Lond sat down.

  Theo had done this so often. He had learned, over the years, that much could be discerned from the reaction of men in Avery Lond’s position. Theo had deliberately taken the position of power in the room: he sat in the grander chair; he faced out into the room while Lond’s chair was back to the door; it was he who had issued the invitation to sit down. Sometimes a man – or, indeed, a woman – would have the strength of mind to resist. They would do what they could to grasp back the reins, as if thinking, This may be the king’s coroner but it’s my house, I refuse to tap at my own doors to beg entry and I’ll sit where I like.

  Avery Lond crouched in his seat across from Theo as if he was a naughty schoolboy awaiting punishment.

  Theo studied him in silence for a few moments. He no longer smelt of vomit and, indeed, his smooth cheeks indicated that he must have washed and shaved. His attire was entirely black, with barely an inch of white underlinen showing at the neck and cuffs of his tunic. He was a short, lightly built man, and his long neck seemed to flow into his narrow shoulders like the smooth lines of the top of a bottle. He was still very pale – perhaps it was his usual colour, Theo thought, for he had the look of an indoor sort of man – and his face was twisted in a mixture of anxiety and disapproval. His eyes, sunken deep beneath hooded lids, were small, and it was impossible to determine their colour. Mud, was the nearest Theo could get.

  He decided to begin on a solicitous note.

  ‘How is Mistress Lond?’ he asked, making his smile sympathetic and concerned.

  ‘Oh, my wife,’ Lond breathed. He shook his head. ‘She is abed and her maid has made her a succession of calming draughts, yet still she weeps and will not be comforted.’

  ‘It is a dreadful thing to lose a mother,’ Theo observed sententiously. ‘And by such means!’ he added, dropping his voice confidingly.

  Avery Lond nodded. ‘I can’t get the images out of my head,’ he admitted. ‘I thank the good, merciful Lord that it was I and not Agnes who heard Denyse screaming and went to investigate.’

  ‘The woman who cares for her …’ Theo paused and gave Lond a questioning look, although he knew the name full well.

  ‘Mary,’ Lond supplied.

  ‘Thank you. Mary did not notice when Denyse got out of bed and went downstairs?’

  ‘Apparently not,’ Lond said curtly.

  Theo let the silence extend. Avery Lond began to fidget, then to wriggle in his chair, then to shoot a series of glances at Theo from under his lowering eyelids. Finally he said peevishly, ‘I don’t know what I can tell you! I heard nothing until Denyse’s muffled screams awoke me, I saw nothing until I looked past her and saw – saw the body.’ He gulped. ‘And regarding that earlier business about the person who was rumoured to have been lurking around the house, all I can do is repeat yet again that whoever told you that must be mistaken!’ He paused, panting. ‘We – Lady Clemence, God rest her soul, Agnes and I – know nothing of any intruder. Nothing!’

  The final word was hurled at Theo like a weapon.

  Theo sat calmly watching him. ‘Interesting that you mention the intruder,’ he murmured. ‘You link the two events, then? The intruder’s presence and your mother-in-law’s death?’

  Avery Lond opened his mouth a few times but no sound came out. His chalk-white face flushed, a pulse beat in his throat and he appeared to be choking. Finally he stood up in a sudden upthrust of energy, leaned towards Theo and spat out, ‘There was no intruder!’

  Then he turned and ran out of the room.

  Gazing after him, Theo decided it wasn’t the moment to ask if his wife was up to a brief conversation.

  He spoke to Mary next. She sat perfectly still in the chair opposite to him, hands folded in her lap, her face calm, her voice low-pitched and pleasant. She was a comely woman, with a good figure and a pleasant, if not beautiful, face, and Theo wondered idly if she was married, widowed or single. But it wasn’t his business to enquire, so instead he asked her to tell him what she recollected of the previous night. She related with swift economy how she had put Denyse to bed, later retired herself, then slept soundly until roused by the commotion from downstairs.

  ‘The days are long and they are not easy, Master Davey,’ she said, ‘and when I get to my bed at night, I fall asleep quickly and sleep deeply.’ Her eyes held his. ‘Lady Clemence, Mistress Lond and her husband appear to believe I am capable of remaining vigilant and on guard for the slightest sound or movement from my charge during all the hours of the day and night, but that is impossible.’

  He nodded. ‘They are demanding employers.’

  She didn’t answer save for a slight raising of her eyebrows.

  ‘How is Mistress Denyse? Will she recover from the shock?’

  Mary shrugged. ‘The screaming has stopped, although that, I imagine, is more likely attributable to Doctor Taverner’s potion than any diminution in the girl’s fear and horror. At present, we are all so relieved to have the silence that we’re not really thinking further ahead than the next few hours.’

  He thanked her and dismissed her.

  He spoke to the other indoor servants, finally summoning Tatty. The little wall-eyed girl was so terrified at being told to enter the late master’s study, however, that Theo took pity on her and suggested instead that they take a walk outside.

  He chatted to her about the weather, saying how good it was to see the sun again after the rain, and about how the moisture and the warmth brought out the scent of the roses. He spoke to her as gently as if she was his own small daughter, and soon she lost her fear and began to reply. Theo steered them right round the back of the house so that they ended up in the yard, close to the wall that concealed the privy.

  ‘You saw a wolf out here, didn’t you?’ he asked, in the same chatty tone in which he’d been making her giggle when he told her how, as a boy, he used to put frogs in his sister’s shoes. ‘That must have been frightening. I’d have been frightened, anyway.’

  She nodded, eyes wide, one focused firmly on him and the other turning in towards her nose. ‘Oh, yes! It was! I ran inside and told all them in there’ – she pointed at the open door into the servants’ quarters – ‘and they all come out and looked and said it wasn’t there and there weren’t no wolves no more and was I sure I hadn’t made it up and I said no, I did see it, I really did, and it was all big and dark and lying crouched along the foot of that wall’ – she pointed again – ‘but I don’t think they believed me, even when I said I’d heard it moaning.’

  ‘Moaning.’ He hadn’t heard that detail before.

  ‘Yes, yes! It weren’t a howl, which I know is what wolves are said to do, it was sort of soft, and sad, and I reckoned maybe it had hurt its paw and it was in pain, and maybe it had come here to where there were people because it wanted help.’r />
  Theo didn’t think it sounded like typical wolf behaviour. He wondered if Tatty had been listening in to some bedtime story of Mary’s, as she tried to settle her charge; he was sure he recalled some tale of a wild animal having a thorn taken out of its foot and rewarding the man who helped it by refraining from eating him.

  ‘… made me a calming drink and said I should go to bed,’ Tatty was saying, ‘so it was good, in the end, that I said I’d seen the wolf, even if it was very scary, because I got out of washing the kitchen floor and got given a sweet cake and all!’ Her childish delight at these small treats was touching.

  He smiled down at her. ‘Thank you, Tatty, you can go now,’ he said. Her face fell, and he added kindly, ‘You’ve been very helpful.’

  He watched her trot away.

  Back in Sir Thomas’s study, Theo gathered up his papers, quills and ink. He knew he should go home, for he could think of nothing else he could usefully do here. Whilst the thought of leaving was heartening – Wrenbeare was a strange household and all the time he was under its roof he felt uneasy, as if there was something chilly and unpleasant crawling over his skin – he felt it held secrets he hadn’t even begun to uncover.

  ‘Well, the people here are not going to reveal them to me simply because I ask,’ he muttered to himself. He fastened the buckles of his bag and, hoping that Jarman Hodge had had more luck with his enquiries, strode away.

  He had not been back in his office long when Jarman Hodge arrived. Theo prompted him with a jerk of the head, and Jarman gave a grunt of acknowledgement. He pulled up a stool and began to speak.

  ‘First off,’ he said without preamble, ‘nobody in the neighbouring dwellings saw or heard any sign of the vagrant. No break-ins, no thefts, no strangers lurking in the shadows by night or spotted loitering by day. If we’re still set on believing that there was someone at Wrenbeare, and that it was the man now lying dead in the cellar of the house up the road, we’ve only got Christopher Hammer’s and Cory’s word for it.’

  ‘I believe them,’ Theo said.

  Jarman nodded. ‘Reckon I do too, since I can’t for the life of me fathom out what it would benefit them to lie about it.’

  ‘First off,’ Theo prompted. ‘You said that was the first thing. What else?’

  Jarman paused as if gathering his thoughts. Then he said, ‘People were diplomatic, and a few times I had the impression they were holding back what they really thought out of respect for the recent tragedy.’ He paused again. ‘But there’s something very odd there. The family at Wrenbeare – it’s as if people are deeply wary of them. I don’t think they’re popular. They clearly keep themselves to themselves, and it took them months of searching before they managed to engage that woman who looks after the younger sister.’ He met Theo’s eyes. ‘Nobody likes to go near. It’s like they’re scared.’

  ‘But these are all just impressions,’ Theo said in frustration. ‘Have you no firm facts?’

  ‘Rumours, old gossip, prejudice, maybe, about a family with the misfortune to have a mad woman in their number.’

  ‘So what does the old gossip say?’ Theo pressed.

  ‘Oh, tales of Sir Thomas,’ Jarman said dismissively. ‘Nothing we haven’t heard before.’

  ‘Really?’

  Jarman grinned. ‘No, unless you’ll credit the tale told to me by a toothless and batty old gammer who lives on a farm a mile or so from Wrenbeare. According to her, Sir Thomas fell in love with an angel and lost his mind as well as his heart when the angel spread its great white wings and flew away.’

  ‘Unlikely, I agree,’ Theo said.

  He listened as Jarman briefly gave an account of the remainder of his findings – they were indeed slim – and then Jarman got up to go. In the doorway, he paused and turned. ‘Still no sign of the weapons?’

  ‘No, not when I left, nor of the heart.’

  Even Jarman’s habitual expressionless face twitched slightly at that. ‘To break someone open and tear out their heart,’ he muttered. ‘What was that for? Hatred? Loathing?’ He shook his head, clearly not expecting an answer. ‘What must Lady Clemence have done, to have earned such a terrible retribution?’

  With a nod of farewell, he took himself off.

  Theo, thoughtful suddenly, sat on at his desk, quite still, thinking, for a long time.

  And at last the interminable day crawled to its end.

  FOURTEEN

  I woke early, struggling up out of a dream whose details vanished with sleep, leaving me with nothing more than a confused and slightly frightening sense that I was hunting for something and would endanger myself and others if I didn’t find it.

  I lay for a short time watching the growing daylight. There were no sounds other than the birds outside and I surmised that my household still slept.

  My mind wandered.

  Then out of nowhere I remembered an element of my dream – an infant, a soft blanket, a smile of love – and suddenly I thought, Agnes Lond has no children.

  She was no new, young bride. She was past thirty – someone had told me that but I didn’t pause to recall who it had been – and she and her husband lived under the roof of her familial home. It might be threadbare and a little dilapidated, but it was a far better dwelling than that of anyone else for miles around.

  So, adequately housed, with food in the larder and her family and servants around, why did she and her husband have no children?

  I remembered Josiah Thorn speaking about the young Clemence when she had been selected as Thomas Fairlight’s bride. She was ungainly and unattractive, poor girl, and nobody had asked for her hand before. And, a little later: Matters might have improved had she turned out to be good breeding stock and given birth to a succession of big, healthy babies but she couldn’t even achieve that.

  I thought about that. As I did so, I was forced to recognize the breadth of my ignorance concerning women’s reproductive systems. If a woman had difficulties conceiving and carrying babies to term, was that a tendency that her daughters would inherit? Fecundity seemed to pass down from mother to daughter – I could think of several local farming families where the generations seemed to pile up with evident ease, so that grandparents and great-aunts lived with their sons and daughters and a tribe of grandchildren, babies arriving to couples with the regularity of the harvest. So it seemed quite possible that the opposite might also apply.

  I knew who I needed to speak to.

  Telling myself that I had no choice since I really needed her advice, and trying to ignore the lift of the heart and the spirits that the idea of being with her in the near future was giving me, I got up, washed, shaved, found a clean shirt, brushed the worst of the mud and the stains off my leather jerkin and quietly went downstairs.

  I cleared the kitchen without alerting Sallie, although I could hear her singing in her room and knew she’d be emerging quite soon and beginning the bustle that was breakfast in my house. The yard, too, seemed empty, and I was just introducing the bit into Hal’s mouth and bucking the bridle when I heard movement behind me and turned to see Tock.

  He stepped forward as if to take over the task, shaking his head in consternation and muttering something incoherent. Tock is simple, and he likes his routines. For his master to saddle his own horse is not what usually happens, and Tock’s disquiet was evident. Although I knew full well it would take him twice as long, it was easier simply to stand back and let him get on with it.

  ‘Thank you, Tock,’ I said gravely when at last he had finished and was leading Hal out into the low sunshine and the long early morning shadows. I mounted and then leaning down to him, said slowly and carefully, ‘I am going visiting and shall be some time. Tell Samuel to inform Sallie, please.’

  He repeated the instructions under his breath, forehead furrowed in concentration. Reflecting that Samuel would see for himself that I’d gone out since Hal was no longer in his stall, and that it didn’t really matter what garbled version of what I’d said reached Samuel’s ears, I nodde
d to Tock, put my heels to Hal’s sides and clattered off.

  Once I was safely away from Rosewyke and heading towards the river, it occurred to me to wonder if it wasn’t far too early to make calls. Then I told myself that she was a busy woman, used to urgent knocks on her door at all hours. I rode on.

  It was a beautiful morning. The recent storms seemed to have abated for the moment, and the dome of the sky was clear as far as the eye could see. The sweet, nutty smell of gorse flowers under soft sunshine reached up to me from the hedgerows, and in some way it recalled the scent of some of the tropical islands I’d visited during my years at sea. It reminded me of coconut oil, I realized.

  Too soon, for I hadn’t managed to convince myself that it was a decent hour for visiting, I was riding along the track that led to Judyth’s little house.

  The ironic glance she gave me as she opened the door a short time later suggested she shared my misgivings. ‘You’ll not have breakfasted,’ she said as she turned and walked off down the narrow corridor, no doubt assuming I was following, ‘so why not come out into the sunshine and have some of mine?’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Her courtyard was exquisite. The dew sparkled on the herbs and the flowers, the birds sang, the sun was warm on my back, the mingled scents were as potent as good wine. And I sat on a comfortable chair across a sturdy little oak table from a very beautiful woman who was setting out bread, butter, honey and fresh-picked raspberries on a platter for me as if she did it every day of her life.

  ‘Now,’ she said once we had taken the edge off our hunger, ‘pleasant as it is to share breakfast with you, Doctor Gabriel, I am quite sure it’s not why you’re here.’ She reached out and topped up my mug from the jug of small beer. ‘So, what can I do for you?’ She smiled faintly. ‘After more mandragora, are you?’