Lucia Triumphant

by Tom Holt

  Elizabeth gave little or no thought to appearances as she drove the vehicle down the Military Road in the gathering darkness, for her thoughts were divided between two subjects, one deeply troublesome, one so inviting as to be scarcely fit to be considered for fear of tempting providence.

  The cause of concern was the fifteen pounds which she had been compelled to pay to secure the three rather unattractive objects that filled her little car to overflowing. The bidding had started at four pounds ten shillings and Elizabeth had indicated that she thought this a reasonable price by waving her glove. The hall had been silent, except for the passionate eloquence of young Mr. Pipstow. The lot had been offered—once, twice—and then a little man in an old overcoat, who kept a small second-hand furniture shop in the town, had offered five pounds. Elizabeth had responded at once by offering another ten shillings, but the little man had met her bid and surpassed it, and, before she knew where she was, Elizabeth had found herself promising twelve pounds for the lot. That had silenced her rival, but an elderly lady with a lorgnette, who had up till then been asleep, had ventured twelve pounds ten shillings and had refused to let go, like the bulldog she so much resembled, until the price had risen to fourteen pounds. Just as the sale seemed as good as made, a young man with a pencil moustache had, probably just to be awkward broken in with fourteen pounds ten shillings and Elizabeth was forced once again to wave her glove.

  Yet the thought that in the silver tray Elizabeth had secured evidence of the survival of the family de Map, whose florid crest surely occupied the surface area of the tray, made even fifteen pounds seem irrelevant. Furthermore, the tray had come from no less a place than Breakspear Hall, and unless the occupants of that magnificent dwelling were in the habit of purchasing their silver second-hand, it could only mean that between herself and the Perowne family (now all sadly deceased, hence the sale) there must be ties of blood.

  The likeliest explanation was that a Miss Mapp of some preceeding generation had married a Mr. Perowne. Thus the silver tray was all that remained of an apparently lavish dowry. What had become of the rest of it was not her business and the thought that she might conceivably stand to inherit at least part of the considerable wealth of the Perownes only fleetingly crossed her mind. What mattered most was that she had found the vital piece of evidence that she had known must exist somewhere. What could all Lucia’s Latin manuscripts avail her now?

  The motor was parked, the trophies were transferred to the dining-room of Grebe, Major Benjy had been cast forth. With a little silver polish and a soft, clean cloth, Elizabeth sat down and began to work. Under her fingers details began to emerge of the coat of arms. It was, to say the least, distinctive. A shield on which crossed keys were quartered with what looked like dolphins was supported by two fishermen in quaint but unmistakable apparel. The piscatorial theme was confirmed by a large crowned lobster that surmounted the shield and she deduced that the dolphins were in all probability cod, and that the crossed keys signified St. Peter as patron saint of fisher-folk. This maritime symbolism seemed faintly out of place in the arms of a family as distinguished as the de Maps, and it was with mounting curiosity that she clarified the motto. Her recently sharpened Latin enabled her to translate it, but she could not quite comprehend why her family should have chosen the well-known text ‘I shall make you fishers of men’.

  She had cleaned the coat of arms first simply in order to delay the moment of truth when she must investigate the name at the bottom. It still read Mapp, just as clearly as it had under the unique chandeliers of Breakspear Hall. She polished round it, the letters did not change. With tentative fingers she picked off the gummed label that showed the lot number ....

  Major Benjy, taking a surreptitious gulp of sherry from the decanter in the dining-room (he had drunk straight from the decanter to eliminate the necessity of washing out a glass in secret), heard a sound like a gong, struck hard, and what could well have been a cry of rage and despair. His first thought was of the French sea-captain, whose ghost might possibly be haunting the house. But if the oath had been an oath (and the Major had been a soldier long enough to recognise an oath when he heard one), why should a Frenchman, no matter how long he had been haunting an English house, swear in anything other than his native tongue?

  Elizabeth may have lost her self-control for a fraction of a second—who would not have done so in her position?—but she had regained it almost at once. It was unfortunate, to say the very least, that the inscription, once the gummed label had been removed, had proved not to read simply Mapp but Mappin and Webb; nevertheless, she was an Englishwoman and could disguise her feelings. She picked up the tray from the floor and tried to comfort herself with the reflection that she had picked up the Mapp-Flint Challenge Shield (by a very good silversmith, too) for a mere five pounds, that being one-third of the total price she had paid for all three items. Then her eye fell upon the hideous porcelain urn and the disreputable-looking oil-painting and comfort eluded her. For if she had paid a mere five pounds for the tray, she had paid an exorbitant five pounds apiece for the other two monstrosities. With the presence of mind that remained to her even in this shipwreck of her hopes, she replaced the gummed label over the superfluous letters in the silversmith’s name and set the offending article down in an inconspicuous corner. On top of it she placed a dried-flower arrangement and a small china figurine of an owl that she had been given many years ago and had never liked, and tried to dismiss the whole business from her mind.

  Try as she might, she could not. The tray, to be sure, was as good as forgotten. But the urn and the painting were far too visible to be so lightly disposed of. The urn especially seemed to follow her about the room, so that wherever she turned her eyes she saw it. She inspected it for any slight sign of merit, but this search proved entirely fruitless, and so she turned her attention to the painting in the hope that it might serve as some sort of counter-irritant.

  Despite the recent tendency to over-value any work of art painted in the late eighteenth century, it was all too obvious that five pounds was far too much to pay for such a hideous daub. The subject was a stout woman in early middle-age, with a startlingly pink face and a deformed-looking dog on her lap, so wretched-looking that Elizabeth thought it cruel to have kept it alive and not have had it put out of its misery. Through the ill-proportioned window in front of which the subject sat, or more properly was positioned (for no human being could sit in that particular attitude without breaking a leg) was visible a blank green expanse and in the distance a travestied depiction of the town of Tilling, which resembled a pile of children’s bricks knocked over by a violent blow. The piece was covered in a thick layer of grime and discolouration which served to obscure the ferocity of the colours; Time, who makes the grass grow again even on the bloodiest battlefield, had begun the work of salvage.

  The painting told its own story; a portrait had been commissioned, had not pleased, and had been put away, most probably in the bedroom of the humblest kitchen-maid, there to await the Day of Judgement. Elizabeth sat quietly and reconstructed this tale of human guilt and suffering, and as she gazed she noticed first the signature (Antonio Pedretti), and then the name of the grossly misrepresented subject, Miss Lydia .... Elizabeth blinked and rubbed her eyes. So turbulent was her soul within her that she could not distinguish what was real with what seemed to be. Yet, by the dim light of the standard-lamp, she thought that the name of the woman in the picture, as written below, was Miss Lydia Mapp.

  To be first elated, then cast down, then suddenly swept back up to the very pinnacle of hope, all in the space of a single day, is exhausting work. For a moment, therefore, Elizabeth was stunned; nor was it the thought that the hideous creature depicted on the dingy canvas was a relation that deprived her of speech. Indeed, under the fouling that over-laid the entire surface, she could just detect, despite Signor Pedretti’s best efforts, the Mapp chin, the Mapp ears. The eyes, as far as she could judge, were as brown as her own; the hair was her colour. Un
der the exaggerated signature, she could clearly read the date: 1768. Fully five generations separated her from this Lydia Mapp, and indeed she stood almost exactly half-way between the death of Perkin Map and Elizabeth’s own nativity. Here, then, was proof positive that the family had survived, and survived not in the Northumbrian wastes but here in Sussex—for what else could the depiction of Tilling signify, if not that? The setting of the portrait exuded wealth and position; the curtains around the window were deep, red velvet, the chair was richly carved. Once again she could not help but remember whence the painting had come. Even if the Perownes had bought their silver second-hand, no one in the world would willingly buy this terrible icon unless some family connection compelled it. For all its aesthetic shortcomings, the portrait was better proof than the tray could ever have been that the line of Hugo de Map had not ended with Perkin dancing on the gallows-tree.

  She propped the portrait against the urn and stood back to take a longer view. From a distance it looked far better. From a distance .... the name, which had taken her so much by surprise, was flanked by a deep patch of fouling. She knew, before her moistened handkerchief had cleared it away, what lay beneath the grime. Fate had stabbed once again, and she bore the blow not with fury or anger but as the ox bows to the slaughter. It had long been considered a remarkable coincidence that a small neighbourhood should contain two families with such similar names; the Mapps, who lived in the town, and the Mapperleys, who lived in the big house on the coast. Miss Lydia Mapperley was the name that emerged, just as Elizabeth had expected.

  She shook her head sadly and turned away. All the fight had gone out of her; and into that vacuum an evil spirit, sent from who can say what malign power, slipped in and took possession of the shrine. It whispered something very quietly, and her better nature, so weary after the onslaught of disappointment, could not drown the terrible words.

  As she stood and was silent an idea came to her. She did not care whether she was descended from Hugo and Robert and Lambert or not. Rank was of no importance to her and, besides, there was no title to which she might lay claim. She knew that she was descended from the noblest of all ancestors, namely Adam and Eve. That was irrelevant. What concerned her was the fact that Lucia needed to be taught a lesson, and if Fortune could not supply the means of chastisement, she must manufacture her own. She had spent fifteen pounds on the instruments of correction, and she was determined to get value for her money. If she had not been able, at first glance, to decipher the true name on the portrait, who else could? Particularly if she took the watercolours she knew so well how to mix and made a slight—ever so slight—alteration? Miss Lydia Mapperley could scarcely mind if this libel was removed from her name. As for Signor Pedretti, what concern could it be of his? This pitiful work would, at last, find some useful purpose. Most of all, the thought of the public service that she was about to perform for Tilling, namely the destruction of Lucia’s reputation for infallibility, steeled her to what amounted to an act of deliberate forgery. Finally, she recollected that she had bought and paid for this painting; it was her property and she could do with it what she chose. As for fear of detection, the painting itself would remove any suspicions, for who would claim for herself such an unsightly ancestress?

  With black she mixed a little slate grey; to this she added burnt umber and painted away the superfluous letters. When this was dry, she took a little lard, mixed it with dust, which she found on a shelf of the book-case (Withers would hear of that) and a tiny quantity of poster white, and smeared the compound very lightly over her delicate work. As a final test, she dabbed at it with a corner of her handkerchief. The forgery was undetectable and permanent. She packed up her paintbox, returned the lard to the kitchen and admired her work. Then she called Major Benjy.

  ‘Just look,’ she cried, with girlish excitement, ‘what I’ve found.’

  The Mallards ghost, and all the other disembodied spirits of Tilling, were maintaining an infuriating silence. An observer from the Psychical Research Society in London had been approached and had declared he would be only too willing to come down and inspect whatever manifestations the townsfolk cared to show him as long as they could vouch for punctual appearance. But he was not prepared to ‘turn out on the off-chance’, as he put it; he was a busy man, the Society’s resources were overstretched at the best of times, and especially at this time of the year. There was also a brief flutter of correspondence concerning who was to pay his expenses, should a reliable spectre be located.

  This slight discouragement had only a minimal effect on the high degree of interest that the subject had aroused in the town. Lucia had received a representative of a firm of specialist photographic suppliers, who retailed a camera that was activated by sudden falls in temperature or unusual electrical discharges. The apparatus was set up in the drawing-room for a trial period of a week, at the end of which time it was found to have taken seven exposures. Lucia had the film developed at once, only to find seven rather blurred photographs of Foljambe opening the windows each morning to air the room. Since the apparatus was priced at well over forty pounds, Lucia sent it back.

  ‘It’s most frustrating,’ she exclaimed to Georgie, as they strolled back to Mallards after tea at the Vicarage. ‘But I suppose these things cannot be rushed. The spectre will reappear in its own good time.’

  ‘I hope not,’ said Georgie, who had not had a good night’s sleep since the apparition’s visit. ‘I hope that tar’some camera thing has scared it away.’

  ‘There is that possibility,’ Lucia conceded. ‘But I seem to feel its presence all the time; there is a sort of chill in the air ....’

  ‘That reminds me,’ said Georgie, ‘we ought to order some more coal.’

  ‘And besides the physical effects, I sense a kind of numinous aura, like the god in the woods in Vergil’s Aeneid. A feeling that we are not alone. Almost a brooding vigilance.’

  ‘You mean it’s hiding somewhere all the time?’ cried Georgie. ‘And watching us, without our being able to see it?’ He blushed deeply. ‘But that’s unspeakable. We must get the Padre to exorcise it at once!’

  As he spoke, Lucia seemed to sense something else; not so much a numinous aura as a feeling that she had made a very foolish mistake. She could not, however, isolate the reason for this sensation until they arrived at the front-door. It was quite dark by then and under the lamplight she noticed with a rather sickening feeling of recognition that Georgie was wearing his black cape. There was something all too familiar about his appearance as he stood silhouetted against the wall. A flash of intuition passed through her active and perceptive mind and, when they were sitting in front of the drawing-room fire, she asked him as casually as she could whether he had been out in the garden on the night of the haunting.

  ‘Yes,’ he replied, rather startled. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘My dear, I cannot say,’ she answered, fixing him with her bright, bird-like eye, and he writhed like a whelk on a pin. ‘It suddenly entered my mind that you might have been. Quite clairvoyant of me, don’t you think? I cannot imagine why I thought of it, I just did. What were you doing out there?’

  Georgie, had he not been guarding a guilty secret, would have resented this questioning, more suited to a police inspector than a wife; as it was, he was saved from embarrassing revelations by a sudden flash of inspiration.

  ‘After my headache got better, I washed my hair and towelling it dry sometimes makes me feel dizzy, so I went out into the garden to let the fresh air dry it,’ he said triumphantly. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Lucia buried her head in her book to hide her shame and disappointment. The spectre’s dark cape and Spanish beard had first roused her suspicions this evening; its luminous hair confirmed them. At least she had been right about one thing: she had indeed been conscious of the spectre’s constant presence in the house, for here he was now, sitting by the fire embroidering a small woollen purse. How foolish she had been!

  ‘I’ve been thinking, caro,’
she said, when she had recovered her composure. ‘You’re quite right about having the ghost exorcised. We should not allow ourselves to become victims of the dangerous fascination of the occult. Who knows what perils we might be incurring, sharing our house with a dead person! In fact I shall telephone the Padre at once. I’m not sure how long it takes to arrange a ceremony of exorcism, and I do want to be rid of the thing as quickly as possible.’

  Georgie was overjoyed. ‘I can’t wait,’ he said. ‘It’s been preying on my mind ever since you saw it. I believe it’s a rather fascinating ceremony, almost unchanged since the Middle Ages. I don’t know when it was last performed in Tilling. The Padre’s been looking forward to it, he says. I wonder if he wears special robes or just the ordinary ones? And do you think the local papers might want to send a few photographers along?’

  That night as Georgie disrobed and got into bed, he felt as if some terrible load had been lifted from his shoulders. He could put away the ornate Venetian paper-knife which he had placed by his bed for use as a last resort, and perhaps he could get some sleep for a change. As he turned out the light, however, and drifted into that curious state, half waking and half sleeping, during which unexpected insights occasionally manifest themselves and apparently insoluble problems suddenly melt away, he made the connection between the decision to do away with the Black Spaniard and Lucia’s burning desire to know his movements on that particular evening. He sat up with a jolt.

  ‘It was me all the time,’ he said angrily. ‘Oh, how could she think that!’

  Then he went to sleep.