by Joan Smith
“Why am I being locked up?” I demanded.
“Better get used to it, Mrs. Knightsbridge,” Sir Ludwig replied in a sneering voice. “With luck, you’ll only get ten years in Bridewell and escape the gibbet.” Then he stalked from the room. I’m sure I don’t know where he could be going, in the middle of the night, but he went outside.
Peters, perhaps not relishing the job of climbing on a roof and indulging in carpentry in the middle of the night, locked me in the attic instead. He threw a blanket at me before closing the door, as though I were a dog. I half expected it to be followed by a bone. It is difficult to say what my sensations were during the next hours. They were too confused. I had been brought here not for safety then, but to be locked up, a prisoner as I half thought all along. Sir Ludwig knew I was Mrs. Knightsbridge, must have known all along, and apparently knew a great deal more as well. Knew I was ripe for prison, so must know I was behind Miss Grafton’s kidnapping. But why had I been treated so royally at Granhurst? Had he been working with Morley and the police all the while? Yes, I had been kept under pretty close surveillance there as well, when I considered it. If he knew me for a criminal, why had he let me stay on, with his cousin and vulnerable sister? The house had seemed familiar to me from the very beginning. I began to wonder if I had been going there when I got off the coach. This line was futile, however. I could make nothing of it. Nor could I make any sense of the way in which I had been treated—like a member of the family, and not the least-loved, either.
I was not so foolish as to try to sleep. I wrapped the blanket over my shoulders. Between it and my warm cloak I was not quite freezing, though my fingers and toes would have welcomed a fire, and my eyes would have appreciated some light. It was very dark in the attic in the dead of night, with only a faint glow from the clouded moon penetrating dusty, small windows. The windows were investigated for possibility of escape, but in vain. High up, with no access to the ground except by flight. At length I stopped pacing and sat on a hard trunk, bundled into my blanket. At least I knew who I was. I was Mrs. J. F. Knightsbridge, from Edinburgh. A wealthy lady who dabbled in the arts for a pastime. I wondered how hard the law would be on such a lady. Someone said the law was a cobweb that caught midges and let through hornets. I hoped Mrs. J. F. Knightsbridge was wealthy enough to be considered a hornet. Wondered too exactly what crime I would be standing trial for, now that I was caught. Not just the kidnapping—there was extortion as well to go along with it. Surely to God I had not ordered Lorraine Grafton murdered! No—no, this I could not believe of myself.
I didn’t sleep a wink the rest of the night. I saw the sun rise over the naked trees, a golden rose dawn it was, with purple shadows. I thought it would make a lovely painting, except that the true drama of nature was too contrived to look well in a picture. No one would believe it. No one would even tackle it, except possibly Fuseli. At seven, Mr. Peters came and led me downstairs to my room, which had been decorated with the wooden bars over my window. I shuddered inwardly. ‘Better get used to it, Mrs. Knightsbridge.’ I soon got used to it. By the time breakfast came, I was quite accustomed to peering between the slats, down the road, for signs of—what? Police I suppose, coming to take me to a different prison. I was not at all repentant, but only angry that I had been caught, and that I could not even remember what it was I had done.
It was infamous, unjust, and not to be borne. I considered my plight in what I thought was a logical manner, and came to the conclusion it could not well be worse than it was. I was to stand trial with no means of defending myself. Whatever motives had caused me to break the law, I could not put them forward. I observed that Mr. Peters lurked around the front of the house, not always in my sight, but often enough so that I knew he skulked there, to be sure I didn’t pry off my bars and leap again. As no sign or sound of Kessler had been observed since my return, I assumed that when he left the front door the night before he had left the area. It was only the Peterses guarding me. I was not likely to be so little guarded again. When luncheon came—at least they weren’t starving me—it would be brought by my jailers. I would hope for Mrs. Peters, tap her on the head, lock her in with her own key, and leave.
I sat patiently waiting for lunch. At noon on the dot I heard her ascend the stairs on her soft feet, set down the tray outside the door, move the key in the lock and peek her head in. She looked frightfully embarrassed, the one look I got at her before lowering a flower pot on her head, from my hiding place behind the door. A geranium it was, that had been turning yellow on the window ledge. She fell forward, not unconscious, but dazed enough for me to dart out and turn the key that was still in the lock. I was all ready, cloak on, plans made. Off down the stairs, out the back door to evade Mr. Peters watching my window from the front. It was miraculously simple, except that once out I had nowhere to go.
The afternoon coach was not due till three, and long before that they would be out looking for me. As soon as Mrs. Peters got the window raised and hollered to her husband. They would know where to look, too, thanks to my questions. I took off like the wind, running in a southerly direction, though I didn’t know it. Bay House was halfway down the western slit of that little inlet of the ocean that sticks like a knife into the belly of the south coast, with the Isle of Wight guarding the open end. I kept peering over my shoulder, wondering that I was not followed. I later learned that Mrs. Peters, a confirmed ninnyhammer, didn’t have the sense to raise the window and shout. She spent fifteen minutes picking the door lock open with a hairpin, only because her husband was not at that moment visible from the window. I believe he took his job of jailer rather negligently, sitting on the verandah half the time to escape the wind.
After running for about half a mile, gaining sharp stabbing pains in my chest and gasping for breath, I saw a small village rising before me in the distance. Not more than a dozen buildings, it offered poor concealment, but there was a largish boat just preparing to put off from the shore. I asked at once where it was heading, hoping for France and safety. The sailor told me to Hythe, a mile down the coast, thence to the Isle of Wight, to deliver nails and paint for the shipbuilding industry. Excellent! Who would be looking for me on the Isle of Wight? The police, as soon as they discovered my trick, but an island of over a hundred square miles with several thousands of population seemed at that hectic moment a safer refuge than the public roads. I begged to be allowed to go, claiming urgent business on Wight. I didn’t quibble over the fee, though it was of course somewhat higher than the customary one. The man was ready to leave on the instant, and I didn’t intend for the ship to get away without me. I regretted the stop at Hythe, but it was extremely brief indeed, only to drop off a few packages and pick up a passenger. A nondescript person, a businessman.
The gentleman introduced himself as soon as the ropes were cast off, and it was soon evident he meant to make a pest of himself. He was that obtrusive sort who insists on telling a stranger all his business, and clearly expects to hear one’s own in return. I soon learned Mr. Colroy had three drapery shops on the island, and was on his way back from a buying spree in London, where the woolens, he told me, had reached a shocking price. He blushed to ask the sum from his customers. Then his light blue eyes examined me with interest, waiting to hear my story. I became Miss Jones (rather tired of being Miss Smith), on my way to visit an aunt, also Miss Jones, at Cowes, as that was the port to which we were headed.
“I have a shop there,” Mr. Colroy told me at once. “The Colroy Drapery Shop, on the main street. I believe I know your aunt.”
“Oh!” I said in dismay, till I realized that outside of a Miss Smith, there was no inhabitant for any village more likely than a Miss Jones.
I was soon claiming kin to a host of Joneses, stretched from Cowes to Ventnor on the island’s south coast. Mr. Colroy and I were old friends by the time the ship docked. As I had no real friend in the place, I began wondering if I might not put Mr. Colroy to use. I began dropping hints that my aunt did not actually expect
me, and I was the most shatterbrained thing in nature not to have waited a reply to my letter before coming. I meant to surprise her for her birthday, I told him, smiling stupidly.
“You can always take the next boat back to the mainland if she’s not there,” he consoled me.
“Yes,” I was forced to agree aloud, but my mind was busy circumventing this sane and logical course. What I had decided to do was to find myself employment with Mr. Colroy at one or the other of his three shops, or his own house. Just what the eventual outcome of this was to be was unclear, but it would give me time and a little money. I could, in the breathing space, write to Mr. Soames from there and if I were not being sought by police, he would send money or even come and get me.
Just before we parted at the dock, I wangled a half-hearted invitation from Mr. Colroy. “Well, if your aunt isn’t home, you can be in touch with me at the inn, the Wight Arms, where I mean to eat before going on to Newport. That is where I live, outside of Newport. I can lend you a little something if you are short,” he offered. I had intimated a shortage of cash to get back to the mainland. He looked so respectable that it was impossible to suspect any ulterior motive in his offer. Indeed I had to all but burst into tears before he extended it.
I walked along the main street till I got to the Colroy Drapery Shop. It did exist, which lent my Mr. Colroy a very respectable coloring, for it was quite a fine shop. I let another quarter hour slip by, time to visit Auntie Jones and learn she was gone to the mainland to visit relatives, before going to the Wight Arms and asking for Mr. Colroy. He was in the dining room, lucky man. I was led to him and at once outlined my predicament. “Oh dear,” he said, shaking his head at such unwonted goings-on. “Well, I shall be happy to lend you a little something. I must get on to Newport at once myself, or I would see you safely onto the boat.” He was already reaching for his wallet.
Newport, right in the middle of the island I had learned, a good central location from which to run his three shops, sounded infinitely more safe and concealing than Cowes. I was always a bit of a fast talker, and with the urgency of getting away with him, leaving at once, I had soon invented an aunt, another Miss Jones, in Newport. She too must be away when I arrived, but by then I hoped to have him well around my finger, and get a temporary post with him while awaiting my aunt’s return. He appeared to be the most gullible of God’s creations. He swallowed this string of lies without a flicker of his blue eyes, and offered me a seat in his carriage. I rather hoped he would offer a bite of lunch as well, but he didn’t. He went on eating stolidly before my hungry eyes, chicken in a brown sauce, mashed potatoes, green peas. Lovely breads. He did not take dessert, but had a cup of coffee.
I believe towards the end of the meal it occurred to him I had not eaten. I didn’t try to conceal it, but gazed soulfully on his delicious looking chicken. He was in a great hurry, however, and by the time he asked, rather apologetically, whether I had lunched, and I quickly assured him I had not, he had nearly finished his coffee.
“I am most eager to get home,” he explained. “Would you care to have a sandwich wrapped to eat in the carriage?”
Indeed I would, along with a piece of the plum cake I saw going to other tables. A carafe of coffee was added as well, in a glass bottle of the sort used for preserving fruit. I was afraid Colroy would make some comment about my lack of luggage, but he seemed rather distracted, his mind probably on business. I ate hungrily once the carriage was rolling, for it was well into the afternoon by this time and I had had nothing since breakfast. Mr. Colroy’s chaise was not so elegant as Kessler’s. We had a somewhat mangy fur rug, but no hot bricks. The coffee was still warm, however, and quite delicious, a little sweeter than I liked. It made me think of Annie. I must not fall into the foolish habit of wishing I were back at Granhurst with my friendly jailers. Still, with the food and warm drink in my stomach, I found myself going back there, in my mind. I yawned luxuriously, and felt sleepy enough to have a nap. Hadn’t closed an eye all night, I remembered lazily. My troubles suddenly seemed faraway, trivial. Mr. Colroy aroused from his reverie and commented, “You look drowsy,” in a fatherly way. “Why don’t you finish up your coffee? It will waken you up.”
I didn’t particularly want to wake up, but I finished the coffee, as it was already poured into my cup.
That is the last thing I remember before coming to some hours later with a splitting headache, tied up on a bed in a perfectly black room, with a gag in my mouth, feeling utterly confused and frightened.
Chapter Fifteen
Someone is trying to kill me. That much I think is clear now. The attack outside the chapel and the drugged coffee—no accidents or misadventures, but attempts by the same hand to do away with me. Why? Surely of all the harmless people in this great big world, no one could be more harmless than a girl who doesn’t even know her own name.
What nonsense! Of course I know my own name. ‘Elizabeth Grant is in a rant!’ The children used to chant those words at me when I went to school. They made fun of me for something, mean little beasts. They were jealous because I lived in the best house in the village. Used to—
‘Elizabeth Grant is in a rant
Her mammy’s dead and she lives with her aunt.’
I felt a scalding tear start in my eye—Mammy was dead all over again, and I was thrown into that wretched dame school for the children to point and poke at me. Laugh at my fancy gowns, that became progressively less fancy as I outgrew them, and they were replaced by Aunt Jessica. God, how I hated those fustian gowns. ‘You don’t want to stand out from the others!’ Jessica informed me. But I did. I didn’t want to be Elizabeth Grant, in a rant, with Mammy dead. I wanted to go back home, up on the hill. I shivered—I didn’t want to remember any more.
How cold it was here. This must be an attic. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I distinguished one rectangle an infinitesimal fraction lighter than the rest of the blackness. A window, the glass divided into twelve small panes. Very like the windows in my own office. A fear gripped me. In all the chill, perspiration popped out on my forehead, my upper lip, deformed with this foul-smelling rag. I must be rid of it before anything else. Frenzied jaw motions and tongue pushings succeeded in loosening the gag. A shoulder proved useful in dislodging it till at last I could breathe properly. Great lung-filling gulps of the cold air were swallowed greedily.
I glanced again to the window, half expecting to see it had disappeared. It had become clearer. One pane of glass was broken. No wonder I froze here, with no covering but my cloak. My fur-lined cape should be warmer. My chin, brushing the coverlet, told me it was not my own—it had a rough texture. Ah, but of course, it would be the one I wore to fool Mr. Gwynne. Why was it I wanted to fool him? It was Kitty’s idea. It had something to do with the missing madonna. Oh, but my head ached! Everything, every memory dissolved with the pain of it.
I closed my eyes to rest and sleep. When I awakened, the rectangle of window was markedly lighter. It was navy blue, the rest of the room still black. My head cleared, and suddenly I knew exactly who I was. Elizabeth Knightsbridge, and still in a rant. Jumbled pictures from a past life darted into my head, each clear and sharp-edged like a trompe l’oeil painting, but with no coherence, in jumbled order. Elizabeth Grant, yelling and screaming at ten was followed immediately by some pale-cheeked woman standing at an altar in a chapel in Italy, with delightful frescoes all around her, being married to John, and grieving, grieving in her heart—is it for the marriage or for the death? I thought my mind deceived me still. Why was I marrying a man with silver hair? Kitty’s voice, authoritative, firm, pealed in my ear. “It was your father’s intention, and wish, Beth. Indeed I see no way out, of it. John has already given him a great deal of money as your settlement, to cover his more pressing obligations. And how are you to go on, alone in a foreign country?” I see Papa being bowled over by a passing coach, see his head hit the cobblestones, see the red blood . . . No, I won’t think of that. All right, Father died of an accident in Fl
orence and I was left alone, without funds.
How had I got to Florence? I had some dim, shadowy pictures, why were they growing dimmer? of a wretched scene at school, and later at home with Aunt Jessica. Yes, it was the McCurdle sisters—no! Not elderly spinsters at a dame school. Two sisters then not yet grown into gossiping spinsters, practicing up their craft on me, while I rose to every taunt. Blushed for my fustian gown, railed at being rooted out of my own fine home, and insisted my father did love me, and would take me out of this horrid place very soon and buy me a silken gown. Oh yes, my gowns and appearances meant a great deal to me. They meant security, and Mama and safety. They meant escaping that school and Aunt Jessica. Well, Papa did love me. When he sobered up from the monumental drunk following Mama’s death, he had taken me away, away forever from Aunt Jessica and that school.
I suspected the reason I couldn’t understand why we had lost our home when Mama died was that I never had been told. It had always been Mama’s family that bailed us out, and maybe they were not of a mind to go on bailing once Mama was gone. So we drifted, Papa and I, floated across seas and international boundaries like a pair of vagabonds, buying and selling paintings, painting a portrait ourselves upon occasion, but always with ‘the dice against us,’ as Papa said. The ‘Rembrandt’ bought for a song would be worth exactly what we paid for it, while the dark old religious painting that reminded one vaguely of Caravaggio but of course couldn’t possibly be his work, Papa would sell cheap, only to read in the papers next week that the Comte de Planat had come upon an unknown Caravaggio worth thousands.
So I married Mr. John Knightsbridge, because he was quite determined to have me, and because my father had borrowed money from him, a fellow Briton met by accident at an art auction in Florence. We always loved Florence, Papa and I, till we met the Knightsbridges, that is. Papa told me John wanted to marry me, told me one day we were driving about the countryside, and had stopped at an olive orchard—hot and dry and dusty—to try to sell the owner a set of candlesticks that we called Berninis. I married a man not much younger than my father, and as well as married his aunt, too. Kitty Empey, his mother’s youngest sister, formed an integral part of our household from the beginning. John and I might have dealt much better without her. I shouldn’t feel all this angry aversion, for John had been kind to me, treated me more generously than I had ever been treated since Mama’s death.