Fortunately, perhaps, I’d no time to dwell on these worrisome thoughts. The moment Foley remounted his carriage and disappeared into the storm Mrs. Cummings took charge of me. She was touchingly hospitable; now she’d overcome the shock of seeing me, she was full of how pleased Connie would be when she knew of my return. She led me to the kitchens for a bit of supper, watching contentedly as I ate my fill of calf’s-head brawn and seed cake, and while I supped I took the opportunity to probe her on the subject of my master.
Alice’s account of the strange legend of Talos and Daedalus had convinced me the picture in Partridge’s tool chest must represent some form of mystical clue as to what had happened to him. I’d already decided that Chippendale’s strange manner at our last meeting might be construed as evidence of his guilty conscience, but I couldn’t fathom how he could possibly have carried out a murder at Horseheath when, as far as anyone knew, he was in London. Thus I prised information from Mrs. Cummings: had she recently seen Chippendale about these parts?
“Mr. Chippendale? I believe he came once or twice several months ago, but I’ve never seen him since,” she said, filling my cup with another ladle of hot ale.
“Could he have called on Lord Montfort unnoticed?”
She shook her head firmly. “I should doubt it. If I didn’t hear of him someone else would, and then I should have heard anyway.”
I was, I confess, a little disappointed in her reply, yet my conviction remained. The picture on the tool-chest lid could only be a sign. There was, I told myself, a fair chance that Chippendale had traveled here incognito. This was not so ludicrous a possibility as it might sound. If Chippendale were intent on murder, he would hardly go announcing himself wherever he went. But if he had followed Partridge to Cambridge, if he was responsible for his death, it would mean someone else entirely had murdered Montfort; the two deaths were not connected, and it was no more than a strange coincidence that they had occurred on the same night. But although I wanted to believe it, this theory sat uneasily with me. I was mindful of the connection I’d found between Montfort and Partridge, and couldn’t convince myself their deaths had nothing to do with each other.
With a good supper in my belly, my eyes began to droop and my limbs grew heavy, and probing Mrs. Cummings further on the matter seemed suddenly less pressing than a good night’s sleep. It was a relief therefore when she handed me a tallow light and bade me take my pick of the beds in the garret.
I mounted the stairs to the attic chamber, feeling a little strange to be all alone in a space more usually occupied by four or five servants. I paced around the trestle beds, testing each before at length choosing the one nearest the door. Here I thought I’d be best protected from the drafts of the tempest raging on outdoors.
Perhaps it was the richness of the food, or my underlying fears, or the fact I’d never before slept in such a lonely and uninhabited mansion, but I awoke after several hours to find myself gripped by a feeling of dread. The candle stub still flickered, and I strained my eyes in the half darkness, imagining unknown, indiscernible horrors all around me. It seemed to me the empty beds in the garret were spread out like corpses, that the shadows of branches outside reached out to grasp me. I struggled to suppress my terror, to divine what was real from what were figments of my fevered imagination. I squinted at the window, and the watery trails on the panes reminded me of the leeches I’d removed from Montfort’s body; then in my mind I was back at the frozen lake with poor Partridge’s mutilated body. An instant later, from the floor below, I imagined I could make out muffled, indeterminate sounds. I heard doors crashing and boards groaning, as if people paced around down there. Voices seemed to call shrilly to one another, though I couldn’t understand a word of what they said. Yet hadn’t Mrs. Cummings told me there was no one here but the two of us? I became more panicked with every passing minute. It seemed to me that these strange reverberating sounds of footsteps and shrieking voices were filled with menace; that they could only be the noises of the killer awaiting his opportunity to strike. Soon I was lying there bathed in perspiration, straining to separate each unfamiliar sound from the last, taut with horror that at any moment I would be pounced upon.
At length I could bear it no longer. Irritated by my own lack of courage, I resolved, despite my shivering jaw, to allay my terror by proving to myself how foolish I’d become. I would rise and patrol the corridor beneath me. Once I had satisfied myself there was no one there, I would surely sleep soundly.
I descended the back stairs in my nightshirt, holding my light in front of me, like some talisman of hope against the sinister darkness into which I plunged. As I descended the narrow stair, I paused every couple of steps to listen, telling myself I was an idiot to allow myself to fall prey to such feeble imaginings. I heard nothing. As cautiously as if I were about to cross a graveyard at midnight on Halloween, I rounded the corner where the stairs joined the landing. I paused again. Still nothing.
The corridor in which I now found myself was L-shaped, some thirty yards long, forming the backbone of the house, with windows overlooking parkland on the right side, and all the rooms opening to the left. The principal bedchambers lay at the far end of the landing, closest to the main staircase. Where I now stood were doorways leading to smaller bedchambers. At intervals along the walls were hung mounted trophies of the hunt. The heads of foxes, stags, bears, and wolves, their mouths torn back in frozen grimace, loomed over me. I began to edge my way towards the angle of the L, beyond which lay the main staircase. I trod slowly and cautiously, pressing my back to the wall, sheltering my wavering light with a trembling hand. Halfway along I heard a creaking sound. This was no figment of an overwrought imagination, but real enough. I blew out my light and shrank back into the shadow of a doorway.
At that moment a door further down the corridor from where I stood opened and closed again. Then a shuffle of approaching footsteps, a flicker of candlelight. The footsteps grew louder. A moment more and they would reach the corner. I had to escape or I’d certainly be discovered, but it was too far to risk retreating to the servants’ stairs. I took the only route I could. I turned the handle of the door nearest to me, and finding it unlocked I went in.
I was in a bedchamber. The curtains were closed; a small fire, recently lit, burned in the grate; a single night-light flickered on the side table. I could make out the bed, a vast tester in the grandest of styles, festooned with draperies and surmounted with a plume of ostrich feathers emerging like some strange plant from the apex. The counterpane was thrown back and the pillows and bolsters in tumbled disarray as if someone had recently left it. Against one wall stood a dressing chest, its surface strewn with a snuffbox, a pocket watch, hair powder, pomade, eau de cologne, combs and brushes, and a periwig on a stand.
I was still standing in the middle of the room when I heard the unmistakable shuffle again and then the click of the door handle. There was no time to think. Instinctively I moved across the room, searching frantically for some means of concealment. By the time the door began to open, I was rustling at the curtains. Mercifully, behind them was a wide ledge. I leaped in and drew the damask screen back in front of me.
My heart was thumping so wildly I was sure it must be audible. I desperately wanted to see who the mysterious occupant of the room might be, yet I dared not look. I heard the person enter, stand for a moment motionless, then approach the bed and, to judge from the rustling of covers and creaking stays, enter it. After a minute or two curiosity overwhelmed me. I screwed up courage enough to open the curtain an inch and put my eye to the crack. It was as I was doing so that the door opened a second time and another person entered. Like a tormented snail I shrank back into my retreat and switched the crack closed. I listened as the second person padded to the bed, with a heavier step than the first, and got in without a word spoken.
Not long after, noises began to emanate from the bed. At first they were no more than gentle rustlings and stirrings, as if the occupants were restless and tossing a
nd turning in an effort to make themselves comfortable. Then the sounds gathered pace. They were cries that became louder, more insistent, interspersed with grunts and moans, which grew increasingly rhythmic as they moved towards a crescendo. There was no doubt: these were the sounds of a coupling of a most violent nature.
In one way, however, I saw their engagement as a blessing. It offered me an opportunity to escape from the room while they were noisily distracted. I wriggled down low, slid off the window ledge, and silently wormed across the floor on my elbows and belly. At the foot of the tester, curiosity overcame me. I raised my head slightly to identify the mysterious couple. Amid a turbulent sea of bedclothes all I could see was a pair of moon-white buttocks heaving up and down between spread-eagled thighs. Impossible to identify to whom these portions of anatomy belonged. I continued hastily on my way, and by the time I was at the door the writhing bodies had begun to intersperse their grunting and groaning with speech.
“God’s teeth,” growled the man as he heaved into her, “you’re hotter than a posset cup. I don’t doubt that if my father hadn’t dropped dead I would have perished from desire.”
The woman gave a wail of ecstasy. “Dropped dead, what d’you mean?” she shrieked. “Did you not enjoy me often enough while he lived?”
It was an unmistakably shrill voice—the voice of Elizabeth Montfort. She was in the throes of passion with her stepson, Robert.
Without waiting to see what would happen next, I reached up for the handle and turned it. But the handle stayed fast. Alas, now I discovered that the last person to enter had locked the door and removed the key. I turned back to the bed. The key glinted on the nightstand. There was no means by which I could safely retrieve it unnoticed. I would have to return to my hideout on the window ledge and wait for morning to make my escape. With mounting trepidation, for I knew I did not have much time left before their union reached its climax, I turned back.
I had half crossed the room, squirming on my belly, when I turned my head and remarked a second door I hadn’t previously perceived. It was situated opposite the foot of the bed and doubtless connected to a drawing room or closet. I breathed a silent prayer of thanks. There was a fair chance that it might link back to the corridor from which I had come, or that there’d be a servants’ entrance leading directly to it. I altered my course, and with a fervent entreaty to the merciful Lord that the hinges would not squeak, raised my hand and turned the handle.
The door opened, fortunately silent. I snaked through the narrowest aperture I could manage and inch by inch closed it behind me, cutting off the groans and moans that were still emanating from the bed. At last I was able to stand up. I rubbed my sore elbows, fumbled for a tinderbox, and lit a candle.
So relieved was I to be safe, or relatively safe, that I was entirely unprepared for the grim spectacle that now confronted me. The flame flared; a halo of light invaded the blinding darkness to reveal my surroundings. I looked around me and immediately felt the blood drain from my face.
The room I was standing in was furnished neither as a drawing room nor as a dressing closet but as a laboratory. Along one wall was a shelf on which were laid out an assortment of glass bowls and jars and bottles filled with shadowy forms. In the center stood a table, and it was as my eye flickered over its surface that my belly began to heave most disconcertingly. Stretched upon it, clearly visible in the tremulous amber light, I could make out the corpse of a dog. From its lolling head I thought I recognized Montfort’s lurcher. What shocked me most was the present condition of the beast. It had been laid out on its back, legs stuck in the air with leather straps secured to each to hold them apart. An incision had been made from one end of the breastbone to the base of the abdomen, and the flesh was held open by pins to expose the entrails within. Some of these appeared to have been partially dissected and lay on the edge of the table.
Of course you will by now be familiar with my weakness when it comes to such gruesome spectacles. I’m an artisan without any scientific leanings. Blood and entrails of any description do not fill me with the same raptures of fascination as they do my enlightened counterparts, rather they sicken me and fill me with dread. One look at the open carcass and the bloody coiled mass beside it was enough. My head began to swim just as it had when I’d witnessed Robert Montfort’s surgery at Bradfield’s London residence. I knew I was in danger of falling in a dead faint to the ground. Yet even as the room began to whirl and I felt darkness closing over me like a murky ocean, I forced myself to climb back, to keep a grip on reality. I could not permit myself to lose consciousness here, for if I did there’d be every chance I’d be discovered, and this was a fear more terrifying even than the ghoulish specter on the table. Thus I cast wildly about for a means to escape, and my eye fell on a door leading out towards the corridor. Without a backwards glance I staggered towards it, clenching my teeth hard together to restrain my heaving belly. The door was locked but the key was in place. I threw it open with scarcely a thought for the couple who lay only a few yards away, and teetered back to the corridor.
Appalled and exhausted by my nocturnal adventures, I groped my way along the corridor and crept into my bed. And yet, as I pulled the covers about me, I found that while I’d been petrified throughout, a little of my terror had been dispelled. I now knew what had caused the sounds I’d heard. I swore never again would I give credence to phantoms or evil presences. How much more fearsome are vague, nameless threats than those we recognize. There is, I sleepily comprehended, some consolation in understanding the nature of our fears. A moment later and I fell into the welcome oblivion of sleep.
My sliver of newfound courage faded quickly next morning. I was overwhelmed by chilling thoughts of how close I’d come to being discovered, and the nauseating spectacle of the dog on the table had my stomach lurching and my heart thumping once more. I knew of Robert Montfort’s fascination with science, but I’d never contemplated that his interest might manifest itself in such a macabre manner. Had Robert killed the dog after his father’s death, I wondered, or had it died naturally? I remembered the dog coiled under Montfort’s desk on the night of his death. It hadn’t moved during all the commotion of discovering his body. Was it dead all along when I’d believed it to be sleeping? I cursed myself for my cowardice in not trying to rouse the beast. Perhaps Montfort’s killer had destroyed his dog first, fearing the dog would attack if its master were threatened. This didn’t rule out either a member of the family or an interloper.
I descended to the kitchens to be greeted by Connie, who had arrived early to assist Mrs. Cummings in making ready the house for the family’s return later that day. I confess I rejoiced to see her, for she offered welcome diversion from my apprehensions. Over breakfast I told Mrs. Cummings about the noises I’d heard in the night and how I’d come across the laboratory and found the dog.
“That’s Lord Robert’s private room,” said Mrs. Cummings. “Lord knows how you stumbled in there, for no one’s allowed in without his permission and he usually keeps the door from the corridor locked.”
I felt my face turn scarlet, but I didn’t trouble to explain that I’d got in through the door from Robert Montfort’s bedchamber. The thought struck me, however, that I’d left the door to the corridor unlocked. I’d no way of rectifying the matter now. Sooner or later Robert would surely discover his sanctum had been breached.
“The dog on the table. It resembled Montfort’s lurcher?”
“It was. Died the same day as its master. Miss Alleyn told the gardener to bury it, but Robert said he’d dispose of it himself. I guessed he wanted it for his experiments. His room’s filled with medical books, he’ll dissect whatever he can lay his hands on. He intended to study at university, only his father wouldn’t allow it. Said it wasn’t a fitting occupation for a gentleman. Doubtless that’ll change now.”
“How did the dog die?”
“Dead in its sleep the same night Lord M. died. Curious, was it not?”
I remembered how t
he dog had remained immobile throughout the disturbance. “Was it old?”
“Not more than two years.”
“Never mind the dog. The sounds you heard were doubtless caused by Lord Robert and Lady Elizabeth Montfort arriving earlier than expected,” interrupted Connie, “which is why Mrs. C. sent for me to come back early as well.”
As quickly as she said this, fear yielded to gallantry. “And delighted I am that you did,” said I. “But why did just the two of them come? Where’s Miss Alleyn?”
“Expected to return with Lord and Lady Bradfield and their son, George, later today. The Bradfields are to stay and assist Miss Alleyn in sorting through her brother’s affairs. Though I believe the truth of it is that Lord Bradfield hopes to get his hands on the hunter Lord Montfort won from him a few months back.”
“Is it not strange that Miss Alleyn didn’t travel with her nephew and sister-in-law?”
Mrs. Cummings shrugged her ample shoulders. “I’ve too much to do to waste time thinking about the strangeness of who comes with who,” she replied a trifle crossly.
“Perhaps Lord Robert and Lady Elizabeth were eager to have time alone together,” said Connie, giggling and winking at me.
I raised an innocent eyebrow. “Is there something between them?”
Connie shot me a knowing look. “I’d say so judging by the linen I’ve changed.”
“That’s enough, Connie,” snapped Mrs. Cummings.
But Connie had the bit between her teeth and refused to be daunted. “What she sees in him Lord only knows. She’s soft in the head for sure.”
The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Page 23