The Glass of Time

by Michael Cox

  Never, never believe, dear girl, that yr father was a common murderer, or that he acted out of either vulgar envy or blind vengeance. True, Daunt was the sole agent of his being sent away from Eton, after he was falsely accused of stealing a most valuable book from the Library there; it is true also that this charge, false though it was, prevented him from following the path he desired above all others – of obtaining a University Fellowship, and leading the life of a scholar. The memory of this wholly malicious injustice remained with yr father for many years, during which he harboured an unquenchable desire for Daunt to suffer the bitterness of dashed ambition, as he had done. But he did not wish him to die for it; he began to contemplate such an extremity only when faced with a betrayal and loss so great that no other course seemed open to him.

  By the time the deed was finally done, yr father had been temporarily deprived of reason, stripped of every moral sense, driven to the very brink of despair. His former self-possession, & all those higher qualities of which Mr Heatherington wrote, in his reply to the prejudiced eulogy of Mr Vyse, had been shocked into temporary abeyance. All that remained was his formidable will.

  Thus he descended into a brief madness, in which nothing mattered but the destruction of his enemy – not for being the cause of his expulsion from school; nor because he had been named as Ld Tansor’s heir, for that, yr father was confident, could have been successfully challenged in Law, by means of evidence he had gathered that proved his real identity.

  Phoebus Daunt died because he was the instigator, with the woman yr father loved above all others, of a most wicked conspiracy against him. Through the cruellest of deceptions, Daunt & this woman obtained the documents that yr father had laboured so long to discover, proving him to be Ld Tansor’s legitimate heir. They then destroyed them, so depriving yr father for ever of the means to reclaim his birthright.

  And the name of this deceiving, conscienceless woman, who encouraged him to believe that his love was returned; who then shattered every precious hope he had of future happiness and prosperity, by telling him to his face that she had never loved anyone but Phoebus Daunt, that she intended to marry him, and that the proofs of yr father’s true identity, which he had delivered, in the innocence of devoted love, into her very hands for safe-keeping, had been passed to his enemy for certain destruction?

  Who else could this perfidious creature be, but the present Lady Tansor – the former Miss Emily Carteret, the woman whose hair you have dressed, whose gowns you have brushed and mended, whose companion you have become, and who now calls herself your friend.

  Now do you see, dear child, why Lady Tansor is yr enemy, as she was yr father’s, & why she will always be so? She has stolen your birthright, and your children’s, as she conspired to steal his.

  Yet honesty compels me to admit that yr father loved her, & that he continued to do so, even after she had betrayed him. This you must also understand: somewhere – in the deep places of her black heart – I believe that she felt some affection for him also, weak and ineffectual though it was compared to her consuming passion for Phoebus Daunt.

  For a time, yr father refused to blame Miss Carteret for the catastrophe that she had helped bring upon him, finding that he could not condemn her for what she had done in the name of Love, when he, too, would have done anything, committed any crime, for her sake.

  Gradually, however, in his lonely Atlantic exile, living on Lanzarote under the name of Edwin Gorst, sundered from everything that had made life sweet for him, and from the country and the city he loved, he began to see things in a different light, viewing his own misfortune against a greater wrong. For in denying yr father what was his by right of birth and blood (and so compounding the actions of his own mother), Miss Carteret and Phoebus Daunt had also denied his descendants what was rightfully theirs. Yr father now resolved that this crime against future generations must be remedied. But what could be done?

  At last Fate – as he believed – placed the means in his hands. He was delivered from his exile, as you are now aware, through the agency of Mr John Lazarus. Recuperated & revivified, he began to conceive a plan – desperate, reckless, and with slender chance of success, but which might, perhaps, bring about a restitution, not of his own position, for that had been irrevocably forfeited by the crime that he had committed, but of the right of his lawfully begotten heirs to succeed, in his place, to the Tansor Barony.

  His design was simple, although fraught with uncertainty, & perhaps danger; but the responsibility that he felt towards his ancient bloodline negated all practical objections.

  Soon after his arrival in Madeira, as you will recall from Mr Lazarus’s recollections, yr father had learned – by sheer chance – that Miss Carteret had married Colonel Zaluski, and that a son had been born to their union. This, combined with the further intelligence that Miss Carteret was now Ld Tansor’s legal heir, & that consequently her son would succeed to both the title & property after her death, compelled him to action. The first pre-requisite was to marry, as soon as a suitable wife, whom he could cherish with genuine affection, could be found. Once again, he believed that Fate intervened when, having been on Madeira for only a short while, he was introduced to yr mother, the former Miss Marguerite Blantyre.

  As you now know, yr father & Miss Blantyre eloped, were duly married, &, in the course of time, a child was born. That child – you, my angel – became the instrument by which what had been lost could – if Fate allowed – be regained.

  For you, too, were born a Duport, legitimately conceived, as he was. Both you and he were thereby subject to a higher duty: to the long, unbroken line of yr ancestors, & to yr future descendants. He had been prevented, by treachery & malice, from fulfilling this duty; but through you, his adored daughter, this great wrong could be set right at last.

  Here, then, I come to what yr father wished to accomplish through you.

  Before he left for the East, after yr mother’s death, I made a solemn vow to him: to bring you up as my own child, and, in the course of time, to set in motion the scheme he had devised: to place you close to the woman who had dispossessed both him & you.

  In order to reclaim what had been lost, and so bring the Tansor succession back to the blood of the direct line, yr father laid this great and, to him, binding obligation upon you, his only and dearest child: to secure the lasting affection – the love, if possible – of the present Duport heir.

  This, then, is what he calls upon you to do, by all you hold most sacred, from beyond the Portals of Death.

  You must marry Perseus Duport.

  END OF ACT THREE

  ACT FOUR

  DUTY AND DESIRE

  Our sins, like to our shadowes, when our day is in its glorie scarce appear: towards our evening how great and monstrous they are!

  SIR JOHN SUCKLING, Aglaura (1638)

  23

  At North Lodge

  I

  Resolution Renewed

  AFTER READING Madame’s letter, I descended into a kind of hell, from which I thought I would never find release. The foundations of my former life had crumbled quite away, leaving me in a state of the deepest despondency and mental disarray, as if I had suddenly been cast upon some barren and featureless desert shore, with no hope of rescue. I returned over and over again to my guardian’s words until they were seared into my memory – now pacing wildly about the room, weeping uncontrollably, now lying on my bed in a stupor, gazing blankly at the maze of interlocking patterns on the plasterwork ceiling above me.

  I struggled vainly to comprehend what Madame had told me – that I was Esperanza Duport, the rightful heir, through my dispossessed father, of the late Lord Tansor; that my birthright had been stolen from me by the present Lady Tansor and her former lover; and that the hoped-for end of the Great Task – the restoration of that birthright, for my own sake and for the sake of those who would come after me – was to be achieved by bringing Lady Tansor to justice at last and marrying her eldest son.

  These things were hard enough for m
e to absorb and understand; but to learn also that my father had been responsible for the death of Phoebus Daunt was almost more than I could bear.

  Was it really true? My dear imagined father, the infamous murderer, Edward Glyver! At first, although the opposing instinct to defend my parent strove to overcome its urgings, my conscience refused to accept Madame’s vindication of his crime. She claimed that he had been briefly driven to the brink of insanity after his betrayal by the woman he loved; but was there any justification – even temporary derangement – for such an atrocious act? I pitied my father, I wept for him; but I could not condone what he had done. Everything that I had wanted him to be seemed negated by his crime, the shadow of which now lay over me, his innocent daughter: my perpetual legacy of sin.

  Yet slowly, painfully, filial loyalty began to reassert itself. Whatever he had done, whatever name he had gone by – whether Glyver or Gorst, or some other – he was still the father I longed so much to have known, the extraordinary man of whom I had read in the pages of Mr Lazarus’s book, and in my mother’s journal, and of whose powerful character I had formed such a vivid impression through the accounts of these first-hand witnesses. He had done a terrible, unforgivable thing; but if he had walked into my room at that moment, would I have turned from him in moral revulsion, or thrown myself into his arms?

  At length, after many such agonized reflections, and many accompanying tears, I come to a fragile accommodation with my conscience, and my thoughts begin to turn back to the present.

  I now knew what I must do to restore my father’s stolen patrimony. A great task, indeed, and surely an impossible one. Mr Perseus would never regard me as a suitable wife in my present condition. He had not thought me good enough for his brother. How, then, would he consider me good enough to become the wife of the next Lord Tansor? We were cousins, as it now appeared; but I had no proof, as yet, of my true identity, and such proof might never be found. To Mr Perseus, I would still be Esperanza Gorst, his mother’s former maid.

  Yet, impossible though the task seems, it does not dismay me. Indeed, as I reflect on Madame’s words, I find myself exhilarated by the challenge that I have been given. There is so much that I dislike – even despise – about Mr Perseus; but there is so much more that attracts me to him. I have sometimes caught glimpses – fleeting, but tantalizing – of another Perseus Duport, which has made me believe that he constantly seeks to suppress his true self. He seems to me like some great frozen ocean – cold and featureless on the surface, but teeming with hidden life beneath. It seems that he cannot allow himself to be seen as anything other than the proud, inviolable Duport heir, who must fulfil everything that is expected of him to the utmost, and who must one day apply himself – in emulation of his mother’s formidable relation, the 25th Baron – to maintaining the Duports’ long-held reputation as one of the first families in the land. It is a mighty responsibility, and it is clear that he feels it to be so. For the first time, I begin to discern a kind of virtue in his pride and self-centredness, and in his stern dedication to something greater than himself. As for my own feelings, I shall say only that the prospect of marrying Mr Perseus was very far – very far indeed – from being an uncongenial one, if by some miracle it could be accomplished.

  At length, I fall on to my bed, and into a deep and immediate sleep. When I awake, an hour later, I am strangely calm in both mind and spirit, and filled with new resolve.

  I will do my duty to my father, to Madame, to the ancient family I must now call my own, and to those of my blood who will come after me; and I will do it with a glad heart, for the prize is great indeed. I rise from my bed, exhausted but mentally revived, and make a vow to myself, on the innocent soul of Amélie Verron, the dearest and most loyal friend I have ever known.

  There will be no turning back. I shall go forward, although with little hope of success, until I can go no further. For I have heard my father calling from beyond the grave. Murderer though he was, I shall not fail him.

  II

  The Triumvirate

  ’WE STAND,’ SAID Mr Montagu Wraxall solemnly, ‘like the prophet, in a valley of dry bones. * It is our duty to clothe these once-vital relics in the sinews and flesh of truth, and breathe life into them once more, so that justice may be done at last.’

  We were seated together, knees almost touching – Mr Wraxall, myself, and a young man, of singular appearance – in the cramped, paper-strewn parlour of North Lodge, taking our tea.

  The young man had been introduced to me as Inspector Alfred T. Gully, of the Detective Department in London – the person referred to by Mr Vyse, in the conversation with Lady Tansor that I had lately overheard and, as I had read in The Times, the officer in charge of the investigation into the murder of Mrs Barbarina Kraus. Little wonder, I reflected, that my Lady had been alarmed by his presence.

  A fourth person completed the company. This was Mrs Gully, a small, neatly turned-out young woman, of a reserved but open and intelligent demeanour, who sat a little way off by the fire, reading a volume of essays by Mr Matthew Arnold, and occasionally raising her head to look affectionately at her husband.

  The latter was, as I have remarked, most singular, in both appearance and character. The description of him that I later composed for my Book of Secrets is as follows:

  MR ALFRED T. GULLY

  Age: about five-and-twenty. Born in Easton, the son of a local police inspector.

  Appearance: boyish. Apple-cheeked, with a wide, full mouth, and a most curious up-tilted nose, giving the strong impression that his nostrils are being perpetually pulled upon by the hook of some invisible fishing-line. Dressed in a dark-blue frock-coat (sadly frayed at the cuffs) and plaid trousers (noticeably shiny at the knee); his hat, being a little too small for his large head, has left a dull red ring across his brow.

  Impressions: his voice has a somewhat grating quality to it, frequently displaying the unmistakable inflexions of what I now recognize as a Northamptonshire accent; and yet he speaks with the fluency and confidence of an educated and well-read person, although not one whose education has been gained by attending the usual institutions of public school and University.

  Conclusion: a wholly memorable individual who, I am willing to believe, fully deserves the reputation he enjoys as a detective of no common ability. Amiable, but also formidable in an unassuming way – somewhat like Mr Wraxall in this respect.

  After some introductory pleasantries, we had settled ourselves as best we could on three rather unsteady wheel-backed chairs in front of a little bow window that looked westwards towards the Odstock Road. Mr Wraxall rang a small brass bell, and almost immediately Mrs Wapshott, the woman who attended him as cook and housekeeper, brought in a tray of tea, welcomingly accompanied by a large and freshly baked spice-cake.

  ‘And how are you going on, Miss Gorst?’ asked my host, passing me a slice of cake.

  ‘Very well, sir,’ I replied. ‘I am very happy in my new position.’

  ‘Miss Gorst has undergone a promotion. She is now her Ladyship’s companion,’ said Mr Wraxall to the detective, who merely inclined his head slightly, in a manner that persuaded me that he was already aware of the fact.

  ‘The duties of a lady’s companion are very different, I think, to those of a maid,’ Mr Wraxall remarked, after a judicious pause, ‘and afford many opportunities for observing the character and habits of her employer. Human nature is an endlessly fascinating object of study – don’t you agree, Miss Gorst?’

  ‘Ah, human nature!’ cried Mr Gully, before I could reply. ‘That boundless field in which you and I, Mr W, constantly toil!’

  He took out a large, rather grubby pocket-handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud rasp; then he shook his head, and sighed in the most doleful manner.

  ‘You may not know, Miss Gorst,’ resumed Mr Wraxall, ‘that my young friend here is already a leading man in the Detective Department in London, although he was born in Easton – his father, in fact, was for many years an inspector in the local force. It was my good fortune to have ben
efited from my young friend’s exceptional talents on my final capital case. We’ve since become – if I may so put it – brothers-in-arms.’

  ‘Most kind, Mr W, most kind,’ said the detective, evidently touched by the great man’s compliments.

  ‘Mr Gully is presently engaged on a particularly intriguing case,’ Mr Wraxall went on, ‘in which I am also taking a keen interest – as an amateur observer, you understand. Perhaps you may have read about it in the newspapers? The especially shocking murder – not, alas, an uncommon occurrence in those dangerous parts of the capital with which Mr Gully and I have become professionally familiar – of a woman by the name of Mrs Barbarina Kraus. The business is interesting in several respects.’

  ‘Interesting, Mr W?’ echoed the inspector. ‘You may say so. And suggestive.’

  ‘Suggestive, certainly,’ Mr Wraxall agreed, and then fell silent. ‘Enough of this!’ he suddenly exclaimed, stamping his foot, and laying down his tea-cup with a clatter. ‘I insult you, Miss Gorst, by beating about the bush in this ridiculous fashion. I apologize, most sincerely. I knew you for a friend and ally as soon as I saw you, and I flatter myself that you saw me in the same light – and you were right to do so. So, allow me to make amends and presume to treat you as such.

  ‘I invited you here, Miss Gorst, because you appeared to express some sympathy with the views I hold concerning the death of my uncle’s old friend, Mr Paul Carteret. Was I correct?’

  I expressed regret that I knew little enough about the matter, ‘although it seems to me,’ I went on to admit, ‘from what I have heard from others, and from what you yourself have told me, that the official verdict might be – open to question.’