I knew he was goading me, but like a chained bear I couldn’t restrain myself from lashing back. “Have you never considered, Lord Foley, that plain speaking is a luxury someone of your standing affords more easily than I? Chippendale is my employer; I have no other means of earning my livelihood.”
“You could seek employ elsewhere. There are other cabinetmakers in London, I believe,” he said softly.
“If I am so wanting in forthrightness, why have you insisted on my help?” I was fairly snarling at him now, but he seemed not in the least put out. On the contrary, he broke out laughing, then seeing by my scowl he was only making matters worse, patted my shoulder and fell into silence.
I turned my back to him to stare at the muddy plains of Cambridge flashing by the window. I had no heart to pursue the matter, neither could I escape the shaming truth in what he said. I had acted weakly and foolishly. I’d known it in my heart for some time, but it was only Foley’s question that forced me to admit it. There was just one way I could see to make atonement for my lapses. I had to bring the murderer to justice; I had to save Alice.
The next thing I knew was a heavy weight pressing upon me and small grunts and snorts coming from my side. I turned to see Foley asleep, his head lolling on my shoulder, his hot, moist breath wafting on my neck. The remainder of the journey I spent fretting over Alice, leaning back uncomfortably with an arm around him to stop him falling when the carriage jolted over ruts. In my heart I suppose I knew my doubts regarding Foley were spurious. I knew he was innocent of any crime, and even though his presence irked me, I didn’t push him away.
“What are you doing here?” shrieked Mrs. Cummings, setting aside the scalded pig she was shredding for brawn to accost me as I burst like a firecracker through the kitchen door. “Are you foolhardy or demented? Have you forgotten his lordship declared you are never to set foot anywhere in this house? If he finds you here there’s no knowing what he’ll do…. More than a sound beating, I shouldn’t wonder.”
“I’ve no time to spare for that,” I said brusquely. “Tell me quickly where Miss Goodchild is.”
Connie was working at the table, scrubbing flatirons with a mixture of beeswax, salt, and powdered brick. She looked me hard in the face. “Still sweet on her, are you?”
“This is no time for jest. Just tell me where she is,” I fairly shouted at her.
“Calm yourself, Nathaniel. Don’t worry yourself over your precious Miss Goodchild, rest assured she’s stayed safe. I’ll tell you the same as I told Lady Foley two hours since. I saw her go out this morning early in her walking clothes.”
“And where’s Robert Montfort?”
“It’s him not her that should be your worry,” said Mrs. Cummings, nodding sagely. “His lordship’s temper’s no better than his father’s. He meant it when he told you never to set foot here.”
“Where is he?”
“He has passed the morning quietly in the library, at his papers. I took coffee in to him not half an hour ago,” interrupted Connie. “But Mrs. C. has reason, you’d be foolish not to take heed…”
I waved away her worries impatiently. “Don’t trouble yourself on that account. I’ve come with Lord Foley, and he’s gone to smooth things with him. In any case I believe Robert was responsible for his father’s and Partridge’s deaths, and that he suspects Alice knows as much and will kill her for it.”
“Oh my good lord, pray tell me it isn’t true,” said Mrs. Cummings, growing pinker by the minute.
“I wish I could assure you, ma’am, but I cannot. I fear he is capable of perpetrating the most vicious evil.”
“And how exactly does Lord Foley propose to smooth things for you?” said Mrs. Cummings.
“He will say I am here to ask some questions of Connie concerning Lord Montfort’s death.”
Mrs. Cummings was now caught up in the urgency of my quest. “And you think that will keep him quiet, do you?” She shook her head as if astonished at my stupidity. “In that case, for heaven’s sake, man, ask the questions you came to ask. You haven’t time to sit about and chatter.”
I nodded and turned to Connie. “The pistol in Montfort’s hand—it was his own, I believe?”
“If it was I’d never set eyes on it before. He kept a pair in a drawer, in case of robbers and vagabonds, but this was a different weapon,” she replied.
Her reply surprised me. I was certain that on the night of Montfort’s death Miss Alleyn had identified the gun as her brother’s. “Are you sure? Whose was it then?”
“I just told you I don’t know. If you’re not going to believe what I tell you, why bother asking?” she said.
“Never mind the pistol then. What do you know of leeches?”
She gave me a pert wink. “More than you, I’d be bound. I’ve applied the creatures to all parts.”
“There’s enough sauce already in the jug, Connie,” said Mrs. Cummings. “Any more and it’ll be spilling on the table.”
Connie scowled back and scrubbed harder.
“Did you tend to Montfort’s leeches?”
“Tend to them? No more than I tend to you.”
“I mean did you look after them? Answer me plain, Connie. This is important.”
Her eyes rested on my face. “I did more often than not. Though Miss Alleyn or Elizabeth more usually applied them.”
“Where were they kept?”
“In a stone jar in his closet. The jar was filled with water. When he called for them, we’d fish them out half an hour early, to make them bite better. Then we’d take them to him in a glass with a dish of milk.”
“And then?”
“Usually Miss Alleyn or Elizabeth would wipe the part the leeches were to bite—neck or head in the main—and smear that part with milk to encourage them. Then the leeches, two or three of them, were put in a glass and turned over on the spot. Afterwards we’d return them to the jar or, if he wanted, put them on a dish of salt so he could see the blood they’d taken.”
During this exchange Mrs. Cummings was still busy with her brawn, listening with half an ear to all we said. Knowing this made it difficult for me to ask Connie what it was she’d tried to tell me when I was staying in Hindlesham, and again in London when she wrote to arrange a meeting. I sensed she’d say nothing in front of Mrs. Cummings. Just then, however, the cook finished pressing the meat into muslin cloths and bustled towards the larder, muttering something about bay leaves, mace, and vinegar. Connie was still engrossed in her description of the habits of leeches, but seeing Mrs. Cummings would not be gone long, I dared interrupt her.
“Connie, tell me quick. What was the article of news you had for me when you came to the inn, and when you wrote to me?”
“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “I thought you’d taken no notice, for you never came to meet me.”
“I couldn’t come to Covent Garden when I was with Foley at Whitely. Course I took notice, I’ve come here quick as I could, haven’t I?”
She tossed her head as if my lack of interest didn’t bother her. “It was the valet that remarked it first. And afterwards when I thought on it I wanted you to know.”
“Know what?”
But Connie said no more except that she’d rather show me, so I could decide for myself, than tell me and put thoughts in my head. She turned her gaze in the direction of the larder, where Mrs. Cummings was still conveniently occupied. Abandoning her half-finished work, Connie placed a finger to her lips and beckoned me to follow. She led me up the narrow back stairs, through the first-floor servants’ passage to Henry Montfort’s bedchamber.
It was a vast, splendidly furnished room of pea green walls and heavy damask curtains. Two walls were adorned with extravagantly framed family portraits, the largest of which was a full-length likeness of Henry Montfort in hunting dress with an array of dead game spread at his feet. Another wall sported a dozen or more swords, pistols, and lances mounted to form an intricate design. Opposite, a large bay window overlooked the park, through which streamed m
otes of winter sun. Despite the light, the room seemed somehow dulled by the heavy pictures and draperies. Looking around, I felt this was a room in which one would never be warm or comfortable. I fancied I could still see the indentation of Montfort’s heavy body on the counterpane where they’d laid him out. I felt myself observed by his portrait. I could hear his rasping voice, smell his tobacco and sour brandy breath.
I gazed disconsolately out of the window. Clumps of woodland led to the reed-fringed lake and the island with its tower folly set like an accusing finger against the sky. I wondered where Alice had chosen to take her stroll, then feeling irritable and impatient for her return, turned back to the room and Connie. She was standing on the far side of the window, where a gentleman’s embroidered jacket, waistcoat, and breeches were hanging on a coat stand before a cheval mirror, as if waiting to be donned. Ranged beneath was a pair of colored slippers.
I recognized the costume as the one Montfort had worn the night he’d died. The rusty bloodstains were still visible on the collar and sleeve of the coat. Connie came directly to the point. “Do you remember remarking anything about Lord Montfort’s feet on the night he died?”
“His feet? I remember that his shoes had no blood on them, and from that deducing it could not have been he who made the footprints.”
“Anything else? Did you observe his feet earlier that same evening?” she persisted.
I thought back to that night. Dimly I recalled crawling on the ground among the seated diners to retrieve the oranges I’d spilled. I’d seen the diamond buckles on Foley’s and Robert Montfort’s shoes from beneath the table. But that was after Lord Montfort had left.
“No. The last thing I remember of Lord Montfort alive is hearing his footsteps retreating. Where’s the significance in that?” I said.
Ignoring my question, she stooped to pick up the slippers by the mirror and handed them to me. They were made from soft blue morocco with a small heel and a black riband, such as fashionable gentlemen often wear indoors.
“Are these the same shoes that were on his feet in the library?”
“I believe so, yes.”
“You are correct. I assisted the valet Forbes to lay him out. You may be quite sure there is no mistake; they are the same pair.”
I put the slippers down gently where she’d found them. I was on the point of saying “What of them?” when suddenly I stopped and picked them up again. I flexed the shoes in my palm, feeling the softness of the soles. Such soft leather as I had never worn, such softness as would make it impossible, were I wearing them, to make my footsteps audible. And yet I’d heard Montfort’s angry footsteps retreating down the hall.
Connie saw my dark expression and must have suspected the line of my thoughts. “Forbes too was most perplexed when he saw them. He swore Lord Montfort wasn’t wearing these shoes when he dressed. He’d have said nothing of it, only the shoes he was wearing that night were new, and Robert Montfort asked for them, and now they’ve disappeared. Forbes says something else has gone missing too. A flask from Lord Montfort’s closet. It contained a sleeping draft prescribed by the apothecary.”
I turned back to gaze from the window, still muddled by this information. During some part of the evening Montfort had been wearing different shoes. Why would he change them? Because there was something about them he disliked; they were uncomfortable perhaps? It seemed unlikely that a man with Montfort’s preoccupations would worry about his feet, and it didn’t explain why the first pair had vanished. Had someone else changed them? The murderer perhaps? I remembered the bloody footprints in the library—the fashionable square toe of a gentleman’s shoe. Were Montfort’s shoes responsible for those prints? Was that why his shoes had been changed? Then I considered the medicine bottle. Why would that go missing? Had Montfort taken a sleeping draft that night after all? In which case, why employ the leeches as well? I looked back at the garments hanging on the stand, and at the rusty stains of blood spattering both sleeves. It was the blood on both sleeves that had made me sure Montfort had been murdered. But I hadn’t comprehended then, nor did I comprehend now, the reason for the leeches.
I returned to the matter of the gun. Connie said it wasn’t Henry Montfort’s. Guns raised another disturbing thought in my mind. Alice had said she had discussed pastimes with Robert Montfort and he had declared himself a keen shot. Was this the reason for the invitation to Horseheath? Had he inadvertently let slip to her that the murder weapon belonged to him, then realizing his error decided to plan her death? In this confused state I cast about the room to see if anything else here might afford any prospect of a clue. I looked at the weapons on the wall to see if any of the pistols were missing. None was. The arrangement was perfectly symmetrical. Connie waited attentively by the bed, observing my face for signs of my thoughts. My gaze swept past and came to rest in the alcove behind her. In it stood a plain mahogany writing bureau. I had never considered that such a piece of furniture might be in Lord Montfort’s bedchamber, assuming that since he possessed such a finely appointed library, all his private correspondence would be contained within it. But of course this was a foolish assumption; the library was only recently completed. While I was installing it Montfort must have kept his private correspondence here.
I strode towards the alcove, even as I opened my mouth to speak. “What you say is all most interesting, Connie, and I believe it to be mightily significant. And now, since you have brought me here, it occurs to me there may be more to find in this room, perhaps inside this bureau.”
Without waiting for her reply, I turned the key and tried the flap. Lying inside was a slender monogrammed leather-bound volume. It contained sheets of paper, several of which protruded from the binding. Clearly this was Montfort’s letter book. I had searched for it in the library, wondering who might have removed it, never drawing the obvious conclusion that he might have kept it elsewhere.
The first page was a note scrawled in a hand I identified as Montfort’s.
What reason have I to continue? Foley, you may bear this much upon your conscience for the remainder of your days. I pray to God it may send you more demented than I. Thanks entirely to your actions I am deprived of a great portion of my estate. You have pitched me into a melancholy from which I can discover no release, you have transformed my days to perpetual night…. I cannot continue in the knowledge that you have triumphed over me.
Montfort
The second was written in the elegant, careful hand that I recognized as Partridge’s.
Dec. 31
Cambridge
Madam,
How can I thank you for your kind offer to intervene with his lordship on my behalf? I would urge you to explain to him that while I have been told he is my father I have no proof of this, and even if I did I wouldn’t wish to make any claim upon his estate or his finances. Despite being raised as a foundling, I have been provided with a trade and a talent, and thus, I always believed, the wherewithal to support myself in the future. Only in recent weeks have a chain of unhappy events altered my circumstances and cast my future into doubt.
Thus to my petition. I humbly request that his lordship will grant me a modest loan with which to start my own enterprise, on the solemn understanding that the money will be repaid as soon as I am able. The security for the sum will be my stock. I send herewith a box as a sample of my skills together with several drawings. If the box and its contents make no impression on him, I pray it will nonetheless prove to him that I am no adventurer or fortune hunter but an honest craftsman.
I will, as you suggest, arrive at Horseheath this evening after dark and wait until he is willing to speak to me. I’ll come to the library window as soon as I see your signal.
Until that moment I am, madam, your most grateful servant,
John Partridge
I lowered myself heavily onto the bed and dropped my head in my hands. For some time I sat there, dazed by my discovery, dazzled by the startling thoughts it provoked. All that I had groped so long t
o comprehend was now becoming clear. Understanding emerged from confusion like a landscape becoming slowly visible as dawn breaks. I saw now how my logic had taken a wrong turn, how I’d run upon false premises. I understood how my consuming preoccupations had deceived me. I felt as though I were on the deck of a ship that has come into port after a long voyage, watching antlike figures moving on the quayside. I knew the people were familiar to me, I knew that they were preparing themselves for my arrival, yet for the time being I could not make out who was who, and I had absolutely no connection with them. Connie seemed to sense my distance and to know she couldn’t reach the place where I had gone. She looked on wordlessly, waiting for me to speak.
I walked over to the window, still holding the letters in my hand, wondering how to begin, how to frame a coherent explanation of the path my thoughts now traced. I had yet to open my mouth when my attention was abruptly diverted.
In the parkland below, some short distance from the house, two ladies emerged from a copse of trees and began to traverse the grassland in the direction of a Palladian bridge leading to the island. They walked leisurely, cloaks billowing softly as occasional gusts of wind caught them. Even from this distance, by the way she raised her hands to speak, inclining her head towards the other, I could see that one of them was Alice.
The Grenadillo Box: A Novel Page 37