Death Is the Cure

by Slade, Nicola

  ‘Like a flea on a blanket,’ Charlotte supplied as Elaine searched for a simile. ‘It’s what an old woman in Melbourne used to say to me,’ she explained, as Elaine stared then went off into a peal of giggles at the expression. ‘Ma used to employ her sometimes – Bessie was her name. She used to come and look after me now and then. It means what you said, buzzing and bustling around.’ She opened her mouth to speak but a knock at the door silenced her.

  ‘That will be my good and reliable chair-man,’ Elaine announced firmly. ‘Even Kit could not quibble about the service he provides.’ She reached out and squeezed Charlotte’s hand. ‘Don’t fret, Char. I’ve made up my mind in any case and have a letter here for Kit, already written. I shall post it on the way to my incarceration in Mr Radnor’s baths and bowls and basins. I’ve told Kit that the treatment is progressing well, that my medical Faradist is pleased with my progress and that we have taken happily to city life and are enjoying a life of pleasure and dissipation.’

  She tied the ribbons on her bonnet and suffered her maid and the chair-man to help her out to the pavement. ‘I mean it, Char,’ she spoke over her shoulder as she left. ‘I’ve told Kit he is not to come to Bath and I do not propose to discuss it any further, either with him, or with you. Now, be off with you on another of your explorations of Bath, you cannot have exhausted its delights yet – and take that worried frown off your face this instant.’

  Charlotte spent a restless day. Elaine departed for her morning session with Mr Radnor her face alight with smiling courage and her head held high, but Charlotte was filled with foreboding. Was Elaine just a little too bright and cheerful? Did she brush aside Charlotte’s concerns a little too abruptly? There was no question but that she looked better, and it was unquestionable too that she seemed to have more power of movement of her limbs, though she had so far refrained from walking more than a few steps in public, but Charlotte was not convinced that the improvement would prove lasting. Elaine herself had cautioned against undue optimism, and Charlotte sighed with no confidence in the existence of medical miracles.

  The little Marianne was engaged with her father and grandfather to go on a river trip and had left early, or Charlotte thought she might have joined them. Balked of their company she walked briskly towards the Downs in search of a breeze and some relief from the relentless heat of the city. Charlotte recalled Will Glover’s deathbed in India. The fever that took him had struck with no warning and had raged for two days until, less than a week after their arrival in the sub-continent, there had been a short period of lucidity.

  ‘Damn and blast it, Char,’ Will had panted, scandalizing the Presbyterian minister who was their prop and mainstay in this dire need. ‘If I’m going to die, I’ll die with a loved one’s hand in mine, a brandy in my belly and a laugh on my lips.’ Brushing aside the clergyman’s protests Charlotte, dry-eyed and at that moment shocked beyond emotion, had held a large dose of cognac to the lips of the man who had been husband to her mother and – in spite of his erratic behaviour – never less than a loving and adored stepfather to her, and helped him to sip at the drink.

  ‘Dearest Char,’ he had murmured, apparently refreshed. ‘Don’t forget, spare the lies and remember to try the truth now and then …’ And with those words of advice on his lips he had died. If he had not quite managed the laugh he had aspired to it was none the less so typical of Will that the tears had begun to flow at once as she lovingly laid down his hand. The upright non-conformist minister had given her some very searching glances in the days that followed, and which preceded her hasty marriage of convenience to Frampton Richmond, but Char had known what Will meant. Lies, he used to say, were all very well, but were apt to trip you up. The truth, on the other hand, or at least, as close an approximation to the truth as might be deemed expedient, could only enhance your story.

  Elaine, who had never known Will and would never, under any circumstances, have been allowed by her careful parents to meet a man like him, was even now employing his principles, such as they were. No pretence. Such a subterfuge would be foreign to her, but an edited version of the truth, that was what Elaine Knightley was offering to her anxious husband who, far away in Hampshire, could not give her the lie. And I am colluding with her, sighed Charlotte, pausing to gaze down at Bath, spread out below her. But what could I tell him? That I believe she is dying? She shook her head sadly. Kit knows that; Elaine knows that; and I know it too, that something is eating away at her and killing her, but we are all locked in this pretence because Elaine cannot bear Kit to give up hope.

  During the light luncheon back at Waterloo House, Mrs Montgomery looked subdued but determined as she greeted her guests at the dining room door. She pressed each hand and murmured a word in each ear, and the result seemed to exacerbate the atmosphere of unease, rather than to relieve it. Charlotte received no word, merely a curt nod of greeting, which came as a relief, rather than otherwise.

  Captain Penbury frowned heavily at his hostess’s murmured words and granted her a barely courteous nod in return as he barged into the seat next to Melicent Dunwoody. Mr Chettle purpled with what looked like suppressed rage as he stalked into the room but he restrained himself and placed himself beside Dora Benson who cast an anxious glance at him and made haste to distract him by talking about the memorial tablets in the Abbey. Charlotte had strained her ears to hear what Mrs Montgomery had said but all she heard was some murmur about Egyptian relics, surely nothing to enrage her neighbour.

  Sitting opposite Dora, Charlotte encouraged her in her discussion with Mr Chettle because a brief conclave with Elaine Knightley earlier that morning had made her think again about her distaste for this union.

  ‘No, listen to me, Char.’ Elaine had held up an urgent hand to forestall her friend’s complaint. ‘You have not fully considered this circumstance. Yes, I understand you feel that to have Dora Benson living a mere half mile away from you at Finchbourne would be insupportable, but have you not considered that whoever marries Mr Chettle will be required to spend large parts of every year abroad, on a quest for funereal artefacts?’

  Encouraged by Charlotte’s suddenly arrested expression, Elaine had pressed home her case. ‘You see? If, as I suspect you have been hoping, Mr Chettle should fix his attentions upon Miss Dunwoody, you should remember that she is frail and disabled, as well as a wet blanket and would be a hindrance to his explorations and to his sociable activities, with the result that they would reside the year round in Hampshire, confining their attentions to a limited circle, that of their neighbours in the village. Only steer Mr Chettle’s thoughts in the direction of, say, Egypt or Pompeii, and he will trot off happily with Miss Dora Benson in tow, always on the alert for ways and means to improve the shining hour.’

  The common sense of this argument had struck home and Charlotte was no longer disposed to promote the other match, which had at first seemed so much more desirable. Besides, she sighed, casting a covert glance at the two couples in question, they have proved to be such fast workers. Mr Chettle is clearly besotted with Dora and as for Captain Penbury, he seems to have found his heart’s desire in that mangy, droopy, irritating little scrat in her everlasting old black dress with its unaccountable greenish tinge. Charlotte had, she reflected, often been in such dire financial straits that one black dress made up the whole of her wardrobe but she had never, she was proud to recollect, allowed that solitary garment to become moth eaten, or positively mouldy, in appearance. No, hissed the voice of conscience, that was because you stole another one to replace it.

  Besides, a further recollection cheered her considerably: Captain Penbury lived miles away from Finchbourne and depend upon it, Melicent would not allow him to travel far from home once she had netted him. Charlotte addressed Dora Benson with a smile of approval that had that lady looking startled and Mr Chettle bridling with pleasure. I must remember, Charlotte told herself with an inward grin at the irony, that the Richmonds are the great family in Finchbourne and that a nod from the manor house
will always give satisfaction; how that will grate upon dear Dora.

  ‘I have always dreamed of visiting Italy, have you not, Miss Dora?’ she smiled with deliberate and unfeigned interest. ‘What a wonderful opportunity it would surely be to make a pilgrimage to Pompeii, to those haunted ruins in the company of an expert such as Mr Chettle whose learned discourse would bring so much to the experience. I believe that many thousands perished in the volcanic disaster and how sad it is to recall their tragic deaths, is it not?’

  Dora picked up this hint at once and set about asking Mr Chettle if he had visited the ruins so, satisfied that Dora’s immediate accession of interest had sparked her Hampshire neighbour’s curiosity and inflamed his passion – as evinced by the high colour and the increased activity of his single heavy eyebrow which waggled furiously with excitement – Charlotte, complacent at the accomplishment of a satisfactory piece of work, sat back in her chair and took a surreptitious look around the table at the rest of the guests.

  She remained baffled. Mrs Montgomery, who might, or might not, prove to be her own maternal grandmother, sat brooding at the head of the table. To her left sat Mrs Attwell, squat and brooding and looking to be suffering from a well-deserved headache. The Reverend Decimus Attwell brooded also, with an abstracted air, alternately shot darkling looks at his errant parent, and angrily disappointed glances in her own direction. Thank the Lord, she breathed a silent sigh; he has not renewed his tentative advances and at least his interest in me seems to have died a natural death. He has manifestly realized that I am not a suitable wife to a bishop.

  The two French counts, refreshed by their morning on the river, both worked their way silently through the cold mutton upon their plates, but Charlotte was a little anxious when she observed that M. Armel de Kersac had nearly drained a second glass of claret, a most unusual indulgence at this time of day; he was usually the most abstemious of drinkers. His father maintained his customary air of being somewhere in another place, but none the less Charlotte noticed that the old man shot frequent anxious glances at his son.

  The only person at the table apparently quite at her ease was Lady Buckwell and she tucked in heartily to her cold meat and bread and butter while casting bright-eyed, curious glances around the table. As Charlotte was looking at her the old lady raised her own green eyes and stared openly at Charlotte, her customary cynicism for once in abeyance so that only curiosity remained. Realizing that she was under observation Lady Buckwell merely raised her eyebrows, cast a glance around the table, and gave an infinitesimal nod to Charlotte before returning to her plate.

  Charlotte puzzled over what Lady Buckwell’s quizzical nod might have suggested but dismissed it and instead she allowed her thoughts to roil round and round in her head as she strode down Milsom Street in the early afternoon.

  The atmosphere at Waterloo House was still poisoned by fear; there was no doubt of that. She could sense it the moment she walked into the building and to a young woman who had lived her entire life in the shadow of discovery and disgrace, the smell of fear was a palpable thing. No, they were almost all afraid. But what did they fear? Or should that be whom did they fear?

  She wandered blindly up and down the elegant shopping thoroughfares of the city and saw nothing until, realizing her feet were painful and the heat becoming unbearable, she fetched up outside an old curio shop in a side street somewhere near the Pump Room.

  ‘Gran,’ she exclaimed aloud. ‘I ought to find her a little memento of my visit. I wonder if there is anything suitable in here?’

  The interior of the shop was cool and shadowy and much cleaner than she had expected. She nodded to the proprietor who evidently saw no cause for alarm in the person of a respectable young matron and so retreated to continue reading his week-old copy of The Times.

  Charlotte’s eye lit upon a piece of ancient glass that glowed in the shaft of sunlight breaking through the window into the gloom. She coveted its sensuous curves but smiled regretfully when the shop’s owner, observing her interest, informed her that it was a Roman piece and very expensive. She also liked the look of a small rosewood writing desk inlaid with mother of pearl, which was quite cheap, although the shop proprietor told her it was French and dated to the turn of the century, because there was a large splay-shaped blot of ink disfiguring the inner drawer. Charlotte hesitated but Lady Frampton had no need of such a thing so she bought the old lady a string of beads in carved and polished jet instead.

  At the door she had a sudden recollection and made her way back to the counter.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she addressed the proprietor as she opened her bag. ‘But I wonder if I might trouble you for some advice?’ She took out the small velvet bundle that had been in Mr Tibbins’s possession and opened out the locket to display the two miniatures. ‘I am … I am making enquiries about these paintings,’ she told him, with a frank smile. ‘And I wondered if you might be so kind as to tell me about them?’

  He nodded kindly and picked it up, reaching for a magnifying glass. ‘This is very fine work, very fine work indeed,’ he remarked, looking up at her in surprise. ‘And these are diamonds of the first water.’ He pointed to the glittering stones on the inner edge of the gold cover. Charlotte gasped; she had assumed that they were paste. The shopkeeper eyed her with interest then turned to the picture of a woman. ‘Do you have particular interest in the turbulent history of our Gallic cousins across the water, my dear lady?’ He gave a hearty guffaw and nodded sagely at his own passing wit.

  Charlotte shot him a quick glance and looked again at the little portrait of a woman in old-fashioned dress. ‘They are French then, sir?’

  ‘This portrait here is that of the late unfortunate Queen of France, Marie Antoinette. Poor lady.’ He gave a philosophical sigh. ‘A sad end and a violent one, but it is good to recall that a wax death mask was taken of her severed head, so we know that her portraits did indeed show a true resemblance of the living queen.’ He turned the locket over and stared again at the delicate tracery engraved on the cover. ‘These are initials, but I cannot make them out,’ he said thoughtfully but shook his head. ‘I wonder who owned it originally. It is a particularly fine specimen.’

  He turned his attention to the other portrait. ‘And this? Ah, but of course.’ There was a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he looked down at the painted face of a little boy. ‘Such a sad and romantic history,’ he said, displaying an unexpected streak of sentiment. ‘This is the Lost Dauphin, of course, the son and heir of King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette of France who were, as of course you must know, cruelly murdered on the guillotine. This little boy was the second son, the elder boy died, but this child’s inheritance was a hollow throne along with death and disgrace. He was otherwise known as King Louis the XVII; poor little princeling, his reign was negligible, unacknowledged except by fanatical royalist supporters. He had a sad, tragic life, so cruelly incarcerated and then to die unloved in the Temple prison and to end his short, unhappy life in an unknown pauper’s grave.’ He shook his head at the wicked ways of the past and returned the locket to her, his eyes gleaming with a sudden thought. ‘Do you think of selling it, by any chance? I would certainly give you a very fair price and such trifles are popular in France these days, particularly of this quality.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, stowing the miniatures safely back into her bag. ‘I am most obliged to you for your kind assistance, but they are not mine to sell.’

  As she entered her bedroom at Waterloo House later on, she was startled to see a small white envelope lying on the floor where it had obviously been pushed under the door.

  She turned it in her hand. No postmark and no address, merely her name, so it had not arrived in the post. She had been happily delayed in the gardens opposite Waterloo House by little Marianne de Kersac who was bubbling with excitement about her boat trip and a subsequent visit to a toyshop, so Charlotte laid the note on her side table while she changed for dinner into her favourite dark green silk
gown. Once her hair was tidily arranged and topped by a tiny black lace confection which represented a widow’s cap, she reached idly for the letter.

  The handwriting was unknown to her and indeed it looked very odd, as though, she later realized, the writer had written it with his or her unpractised left hand. That deduction came later though, after the sharply inhaled breath with which she greeted the contents of the letter. It was brief enough:

  Ask no more questions or it will be the worse for you.

  Her hand flew to her mouth and she froze in her seat, transfixed by the threat – a threat made directly to me, she whispered aloud, and that means that someone in this house is feeling afraid; afraid of me and what I might do. But what on earth does anyone think I can do to them? Exposure, of course, but I don’t know anything anyway and besides, it is unlikely that I, of all the people currently residing in this house, would expose another. Not after the upbringing I have had.

  A tap at her door roused her from her momentary introspection and she opened it to find the little housemaid looking apologetic.

  ‘If you please, ma’am, Mrs Knightley said to tell you she has gone to the drawing room and she sent me to remind you that it’s almost time for dinner. Oh yes, and here’s the evening post for you.’

  Smiling her thanks, Charlotte picked up her shawl, dropped the letters on to a small occasional table in the bay window, and hid the anonymous note in her pocket as she followed the maid down the hall.

  ‘I do apologize, Mrs Montgomery,’ she said to her hostess as she hastened into the drawing room and realized she was almost the last of the diners to arrive. ‘I was reading and quite forgot the time.’