Fallen Splendour

by Jackson Marsh

  His words were inconsequential. The telegram was from Archer.

  Dated that morning, it read: Leaving Watford 3pm today. Expected Culver tonight. Send news there. A

  James glanced at the clock. Archer would already be on the move, but assuming the trains were running normally, he wouldn’t receive the message about Long Light until that evening. He considered sending another telegram to call Archer back, but even though Creswell wanted him, there was no point. If Silas wasn’t going to talk, Archer couldn’t save him; he may as well try and save his sisters.

  ‘’Course, it could come down again and stuff everything up…’

  ‘Wait, stop.’ James leapt to his feet and approached the boy. Andrew cowered. ‘What do you know about the railways?’

  ‘Railways? Bloody great things, all dirty and…’

  ‘No, not that. The weather?’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Sir. Only what I hear in the locker room, that the north’s badly hit and there’s nothing going, west ain’t so good neither, but no-one’s getting out of the city tonight, probably. Not far out anyhow, depends where they want to…’

  ‘Okay, thank you.’ James ushered him to his feet. ‘There’s no reply… What’s your name?’

  ‘Andrew, Sir.’ The boy touched the peak of his cap.

  ‘Right, Andrew. Here’s a piece of advice. Stay away from the locker room when the older boys are in there, and if anyone says anything to you about an initiation, you go straight to Frank. The man on the front desk. Yes?’

  ‘As you wish, Sir.’ The boy handed back the cloak. ‘Thanks for that. Reckon I can do another mile now.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be working in this,’ James said as he showed him out into the bitter and fading afternoon. ‘Remember. Talk to Frank, he’s a good man. Mr Grey too. They’re not all like Lovemount.’

  He closed the door on the boy’s quizzical face and having rehung and straightened the cloak, hurried to the study.

  It smelt of stale dinner and wood smoke, and the first thing he did was return the tray to the kitchen and bring up the ash bucket. Having reset and lit the fire, he arranged the book of poetry and his notes, the atlas and other maps on the table, and set about double-checking his theory that Long Light was the place the girls were being held. He had to find a reference to it being a prison — as if he hadn’t had enough of them — and some reason for the use of the word ‘gold’ in the first verse. They were the missing clues, the barbs that caught in an otherwise smooth understanding of Quill’s mysterious game.

  ‘He who meddled with our gold,’ he read from the letter. ‘Quill’s golden boy, Simon Harrington?’ That seemed the most likely answer, but it still didn’t sit well. ‘Our gold. More than one.’ Why would Quill write “our” and then go on to talk about “my” and “I”?

  He read the third line, and the word gaol screamed at him. It brought the image of Silas beaten and hopeless, the stench of the sewers, the shadows and dead rats.

  ‘We’re living in modern times, for heaven’s sake.’ He kicked the table leg. ‘Those conditions were like something out of the middle ages.’

  Middle ages.

  He slapped his hand against his forehead and pushed back his chair, nearly tipping it. Over at the bookcase, he scanned the spines for anything concerning history but found nothing. He searched the next case and the one to the side of Archer’s desk, but still nothing. The books in the study amounted to the viscount’s entire personal collection, and they were mainly new. They were also only concerned with the navy, the arts, music, travel, modern inventions and, for a reason he would have to investigate another time, spiritualism. There was hardly anything academic, and the only history books were about ancient Egypt.

  James was working on the theory that Tennyson might have known the history of Long Light. There was no evidence to suggest it, and what he was trying to do was find facts that fitted his theory that the lighthouse was once a medieval gaol. The only way he might discover that without asking the Poet Laureate himself, or without visiting the lighthouse, was to find a reference. The only place he could think of was a history book.

  Taking his notebook and a pen, he put a guard over the fire and collected the cloak from the stand in the hall. Anyone would have supposed he was a young businessman about to leave the house for a late meeting had he not turned, crossed the hall and entered the library. Once the gas was lit, it illuminated the hundreds of books in the ancestral collection.

  ‘Fuck,’ he said, his breath clouding before his face.

  He returned to the study for a decanter of whisky. It was going to be a long night.

  Thomas had left Larkspur the previous evening. Having explained to Mrs Baker that he was called away on urgent business, and was unsure if His Lordship and his party would be arriving at the Hall as planned because of the weather, he packed a bag and sent a hall boy to fetch Williams, the groom. He had no intention of riding across the moor in the wintery conditions, but had been told that the roads beyond Larkspur’s grounds were passible with care. He asked Williams if he would, in the absence of the coachman, be kind enough to drive him to Larkspur railway station some three miles distant.

  Once there, and discovering there were no trains, he made enquiries at the coaching inn and spent an uncomfortable night trundling through the bitter cold on the Exeter road. The coach skirted Dartmoor during the night, but he was unable to see anything but the faintest glow of drifts lit by the carriage lamps. There was nothing to hear but the sound of wheels and the snoring of two fellow passengers, both of whom reeked of alcohol.

  Although he tried to sleep, his mind turned over the meaning behind His Lordship’s telegram. The message was easy to understand, but the viscount’s intentions were not.

  Tom. DBQ arisen. Investigate Haverton Hawley. Hall will cope. CH when done. BFA.

  DBQ stood for Doctor Benjamin Quill, and the word ‘arisen’ left no doubt that Archer had reason to think or fear the man hadn’t died in the train wreck and was still at large. Thomas’ first thought was, how did Archer know? That was followed by, what had happened to make him contact Tom so soon after arriving at the country house and send him out to track down the man who had twice tried to kill his master? The third thought was more comforting. BFA stood, rather childishly, for Best Friend Archie.

  The carriage slowed as it took rises in the landscape, the wheels slipping and the horses complaining against the whip. At one point, Tom thought he would have to wake the drunkards to push the coach to the crest of a hill, but the horses were a powerful team. They needed to be, the slipping and sliding of the wheels as it descended were as much a threat as the vehicle rolling backwards out of control. He tried not to think of how cold his legs were as he concentrated on the rest of the message.

  He was to travel to Haverton, a small village outside Exeter. It was one he had never visited before, but it was the home of one of Archer’s ex-naval comrades, another man who was discharged honourably after being injured in the scuffles near Odessa two years previously. If he remembered correctly, the man, Hawley, was either related to, or very close to, Dr Quill. In fact, as his mind prevented him from sleeping, he recalled that Archer had once said that Quill and Hawley were as thick as thieves when it came to the pleasures of alcohol. Like the two men snoring opposite whose breath only added foul-smelling moisture to the limited air, they were fond of drinking to excess no matter the time of day.

  What, he wondered, did Quill’s old drinking partner and Archer’s old comrade have to do with the urgency of the message?

  ‘Hall will cope’, meant that Larkspur Hall would manage without him, a statement that Thomas doubted, but one that made it plain he was to down tools and head to Haverton immediately. The last part of the message was not so clear.

  Why should he rush to Clearwater House ‘when done’ and not just telegraph? When what was d
one? What was he meant to do other than discover if Quill was, indeed, alive? If he was, what then?

  There were too many questions, and Thomas struggled with them as much as he struggled to sleep. He was thankful they prevented him from imagining what would happen if he arrived at Hawley’s house and the door was opened by Dr Quill.

  The night was frigid and disturbed, and when he woke at Crediton, his back pained him, and his head was numb from the cold. He was finally able to stretch and warm himself with movement when the coach stopped at Haverton. His bag was thrown down by the surly driver, and he clutched it to his chest as the carriage pulled away. The main road, a one-lane street that ran through a collection of cottages and shops, had been cleared, but snow was banked up against buildings, and the side streets were barely passable. The sun was up, though impossible to see, and people were going about their morning business, walking in the road to avoid the worst of the drifts, and waiting for shopkeepers to clear their paths before using them.

  Left at the inn with the mail, he made enquiries as to the whereabouts of Mr Hawley. Haverton was a small village, and because the landlord knew everyone, it wasn’t long before he learned the location of the cottage.

  It took him a lot longer to find it, and by the time he arrived through a waist-high drift, his cloak and trousers were soaked and heavy, his chest pained him, and he couldn’t feel his fingers.

  The house stood at the top of a rise, and its path had not been cleared. Thomas’ was the first trail made through the pristine whiteness, and there was no sign of life from within.

  He expected nothing when he knocked, but after a while when he was about to knock again, he heard a door slam inside the house and a second later, the rattle of the lock.

  The entrance was low beneath a porch, and Thomas bent his knees to stand at eye-level with the half a face that peered suspiciously through the gap. It belonged to a woman, but that was all he could tell.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, as pleasantly as his chattering teeth would allow. ‘I am here to see Mr Hawley.’

  ‘You be a doctor?’ she asked, turning her head so that both eyes were in view and she could look him up and down. ‘As you be too late if you are.’

  ‘No,’ Thomas replied. ‘Is Mr Hawley at home?’

  ‘Who be?’

  Her accent was west-country, thick and not dissimilar to Thomas’ own deep-Kentish. Perhaps, he thought, now would be a good time to drop his city voice and his butler’s pretence.

  ‘Be Mist’r Payne, me-love. Come a-see Mist’r ’awley if ’e be ’ome. Private business, see.’

  Her head returned to its horizontal position, offering him the one, sagging eye and half a dubious mouth. The rest of her features were swathed in a white cap tied beneath a tiny chin.

  ‘Sorry, Sir,’ she said. ‘But me master got taken over Exeter afore two night. Unwell he was. Be in the hospital now.’

  ‘I see.’ Thomas didn’t see anything except a long walk back to the village and a longer wait for the Exeter coach. He was about to thank her and leave when it occurred to him to ask something else. ‘Afore I go, me-love,’ he said, smiling affably. ‘Can you tell me if any other gent’s been passing ’ere and askin’’?

  The woman’s face widened in a look of horror. ‘Oh, Sir. Don’t go after ’im,’ she said. ‘It were a terrible fight between me master and that…’ She had been about to give away a secret. She shook her head, and her expression hardened. ‘No, Sir,’ she said, seemingly affronted. ‘There’s been no-one other at the cottage these past six weeks.’

  Obviously, there had, and she had been warned not to say otherwise.

  Thomas proceeded with caution.

  ‘And what was wrong with Mr Hawley?’

  ‘If you ain’t a doctor, then there be no need a tell ye, and you be letting in the cold. Good day.’

  ‘Is Mr Hawley very unwell?’ Thomas blocked the door with his foot.

  She hesitated too long before saying, ‘Aye,’ and trying to force the door closed.

  ‘And he left here two days back?’

  ‘Aye.’ She banged the door against Thomas’ boot, but he ignored the pain.

  ‘And the other man who was with him?’

  ‘Aye, ’im too.’

  The attack on his foot was called off as her hand flew to her mouth. She realised her mistake, but instead of pushing Thomas back, as he expected, she opened the door a fraction more, and a shawl-draped arm clutched his cloak.

  ‘Sir, it was such an ’orrible, twisted thing. Don’t you go near it. Go back a-where you be needed, you ain’t needed ’ere. Stay away.’

  With that, she shoved him unexpectedly, and he stumbled. The door was slammed, and that was the end of the conversation.

  Pondering the information, Thomas returned to the village to discover there was no transport to Exeter until the following day.

  While James, nearly two-hundred miles away, searched books for the history of a lighthouse, his lover took supper at the inn trying to make sense of the woman’s words and Archer’s telegram.

  It wasn’t until he boarded the coach the following morning and made use of a fellow traveller’s newspaper, did the pieces start to fall horrifically into place.

  Fourteen

  For Archer, the third night on the road had passed in pleasant surroundings but not in pleasant thoughts. As Thomas bedded down in a cot too small for him at The Haverton Arms, and James spent another restless night pacing Clearwater House, Archer sat at the desk in Culver’s guest bedroom lit by electric light, warmed by the gas fire, and examining a map.

  The room’s patterned and flouncy furnishings showed that Mrs Culver was the one in charge of home decoration. There was nothing that didn’t sit on a doily, no table legs went uncovered, and the curios and stuffed birds under glass gave the impression of a museum rather than a bedroom.

  It wasn’t the décor that kept Archer from sleep, but questions raised by James’ telegram.

  The map lay unfolded to one side, the threat letter to the other, and Archer had been comparing the Tennyson verse to the topography.

  The poem from which the verse came, ‘The Princess’, had been published ten years before Archer was born, and by the time he was being educated, a mystery surrounding the insert, ‘The Splendour Falls’, was already circulating.

  Where was this place? Many had asked. Where was this imaginary Elfland in real life?

  Some had suggested Scotland because of the ‘purple glens’ of verse two where the chorus was subtly different. Some had suggested Ireland because of the scenery the first verse depicted, but none, as far as he knew, had considered the North Wales coast.

  Now and then an article appeared in The City Arts Review as the discussion continued, but even letters to the poet begging for clarification had produced no results. It was rumoured that one man had approached Tennyson following a reading claiming to know the location. The Poet Laureate invited him to give it and explain why he wanted to know. The man answered incorrectly, and the public derided him. In artistic and literary circles, it became something of a game to identify where the splendour fell, a game that had, of late, slipped out of fashion.

  To Archer, Long Light lighthouse seemed too simple an answer. Anyone with a map could imagine the inland hills, the distant mountains of Snowdonia, the many waterfalls and the lakes, so why had no-one done so before?

  Perhaps, he thought, it was because Long Light had fallen into disuse since it was damaged in the great storm of 1850, not long after the poem’s first publication.

  If Long Light was the place, the route from Westerpool was not an easy one.

  The kidnappers would have had two choices, by sea or land, and by sea would have been the easiest, assuming they were decent sailors and had access to a sturdy boat to navigate the offshore curre
nts at the mouths of the River Mersey and River Dee. Not impossible though, and shorter than the land route. That would have taken them inland to the Dee river crossing and then north and west again, but the road then didn’t follow the coast. They would have to travel across country or along the shoreline. A carriage wouldn’t make the journey, and by foot or horse were the only options.

  It all felt wrong to Archer, too complicated, but then if Quill had hired men prepared to murder a woman and steal two young girls, who knew what else they were capable of?

  Reaching Long Light one way or the other was not impossible. If James was correct, the location fitted with the poem, and the verse linked Archer to Quill, because it had been Quill who gave him the book. Having learnt from one of Culver’s local tourist guides that Long Light had once been a small but important fortress, the use of the word ‘gaol’ in the first part of the threat letter made sense. I set a trial and a trail for him to follow to the gaol. It was a trying journey that led over a difficult trail to reach a fortification that once had a dungeon. Long Light had been a castle by any other name, and its beacon light would have reached the lakes, there was a waterfall…

  It made sense, and yet Archer was still not convinced.

  Just after midnight, he left the problem alone and went to bed, falling quickly asleep beneath gaudy covers that Mrs Baker would never have allowed in his house.

  The morning brought the cold light of a day struggling to free itself from cloud and, as the sun broke through in patches, it warmed the world enough to melt more snow. The house not being large enough to require a footman, Archer took his breakfast in Culver’s dining room attended by the silent but attentive butler. Culver joined him, rushing into the room and tripping on a rug.