With the death of John-the-dig still fresh in my mind, the vision of Miss Winter’s face, bereft, still dominating my memory, I barely noticed the letter that was waiting for me in my room.
I didn’t open it until I had finished my transcription, and when I did there wasn’t much to it.
Dear Miss Lea,
After all the assistance your father has given me over the years, may I say how glad I am to be able in some small way to return the favour to his daughter.
My initial researches in the United Kingdom have revealed no indication of the whereabouts of Miss Hester Barrow after her period of employment at Angelfield. I have found a certain number of documents relating to her life before that period, and I am compiling a report which you should have within a few weeks.
My researches are by no means at an end. I have not yet exhausted my investigation of the Italian connection, and it is more than likely that some detail arising from the early years will throw up a new line of enquiry.
Do not despair! If your governess can be found, I will find her.
Yours sincerely,
Emmanuel Drake
I put the letter away in a drawer, then pulled on my coat and gloves.
‘Come on then,’ I said to Shadow.
He followed me downstairs and outdoors, and we took the path along the side of the house. Here and there a shrub grown against the wall caused the path to drift; imperceptibly it led away from the wall, away from the house, to the maze-like enticements of the garden. I resisted its easy curve and continued straight on. Keeping the house wall always on my left meant squeezing behind an ever-widening thicket of densely grown, mature shrubs. Their gnarled stems caught my ankles; I had to wrap my scarf around my face to avoid being scratched. The cat accompanied me so far, then stopped, overwhelmed by the thickness of the undergrowth.
I kept going. And I found what I was looking for. A window, almost overgrown with ivy, and with such a denseness of evergreen leaf between it and the garden that the glimmer of light escaping from it would never be noticed.
Directly inside the window, Miss Winter’s sister sat at a table. Opposite her was Judith. She was spooning mouthfuls of soup between the invalid’s raw, patched lips. Suddenly, midway between bowl and mouth, Judith paused and looked directly towards me. She couldn’t see me; there was too much ivy. She must have felt the touch of my gaze. After a moment’s pause, she turned back to her task and carried on. But not before I had noticed something strange about the spoon. It was a silver spoon with an elongated A in the form of a stylized angel ornamenting the handle.
I had seen a spoon like that before. A. Angel. Angelfield. Emmeline had a spoon like that and so did Aurelius.
Keeping flat to the wall, and with the branches tangling in my hair, I wriggled back out of the shrubbery. The cat watched me as I brushed the bits of broken twig and dead leaves from my sleeves and shoulders.
‘Inside?’ I suggested, and he was more than happy to concur.
Mr Drake hadn’t been able to trace Hester for me. On the other hand I had found Emmeline.
The Eternal Twilight
In my study I transcribed; in the garden I wandered; in my bedroom I stroked the cat and held off my nightmares by staying awake. The moonlit night when I had seen Emmeline appear in the garden seemed like a dream to me now, for the sky had closed in again, and we were immersed once more in the endless twilight. With the deaths of the Missus and now John-the-dig an additional chill crept into Miss Winter’s story. Was it Emmeline – that alarming figure in the garden – who had tampered with the ladder? I could only wait and let the story reveal itself. Meanwhile, with December waxing, the shadow hovering at my window grew always more intense. Her closeness repelled me; her distance broke my heart; every sight of her evoked in me the familiar combination of fear and longing.
I got to the library in advance of Miss Winter – morning or afternoon or evening, I don’t know, they were all the same by now – and stood by the window to wait. My pale sister pressed her fingers to mine, trapped me in her imploring gaze, misted the glass with her cool breath. I only had to break the glass, and I could join her.
‘Whatever are you looking at?’ came Miss Winter’s voice behind me.
Slowly I turned.
‘Sit down,’ she barked at me. Then, ‘Judith, put another log on the fire would you, and then bring this girl something to eat.’
I sat down.
Judith brought cocoa and toast.
Miss Winter continued her story while I sipped at the hot cocoa.
‘I’ll help you,’ he said. But what could he do? He was just a boy.
I got him out of the way. I sent him to fetch Doctor Maudsley and while he was gone I made strong, sweet tea and drank a potful. I thought hard thoughts and I thought them quickly. By the time I was at the dregs, the prick of tears had quite retreated from my eyes. It was time for action.
By the time the boy returned with the doctor, I was ready. The moment I heard their steps approaching the house I turned the corner to meet them.
‘Emmeline, poor child!’ the doctor exclaimed as he came near, hand outstretched in a sympathetic gesture, as though to embrace me.
I took a step back, and he halted. ‘Emmeline?’ In his eyes uncertainty flared. Adeline? It was not possible. It could not be. The name died on his lips. ‘Forgive me,’ he stammered. But still he did not know.
I did not help him out of his confusion. Instead I cried.
Not real tears. My real tears – and I had plenty of them, believe me – were all stored up. Sometime, tonight or tomorrow or sometime soon, I did not exactly know when, I would be alone and I would cry for hours. For John. For me. I would cry out loud, shrieking my tears, the way I used to cry as a little girl when only John could soothe me, stroking my hair with his hands that smelled of tobacco and the garden. Hot, ugly tears they would be, and when the end came, if it came, my eyes would be so puffed up I would only have red-rimmed slits to see out of.
But those were private tears, and not for this man. The tears I gratified him with were fake ones. Ones to set off my green eyes the way diamonds set off emeralds. And it worked. If you dazzle a man with green eyes, he will be so hypnotized that he won’t notice there is someone inside the eyes spying on him.
‘I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for Mr Digence,’ he said, rising from beside the body.
It was odd to hear John’s real name.
‘However did it happen?’ He looked up at the balustrade where John had been working, then bent over the ladder. ‘Did the safety catch fail?’
I could look at the corpse without emotion, almost. ‘Might he have slipped?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Did he grab at the ladder as he fell and bring it down after him?’
‘No one saw him fall?’
‘Our rooms are at the other side of the house, and the boy was in the vegetable garden.’ The boy stood slightly apart from us, looking away from the body.
‘Hmm. There is no family, I seem to remember.’
‘He always lived quite alone.’
‘I see. And where is your uncle? Why is he not here to meet me?’
I had no idea what John had told the boy about our situation. I had to play it by ear.
With a sob to my voice, I told the doctor that my uncle had gone away.
‘Away!’ The doctor frowned.
The boy did not react. Nothing to surprise him so far, then. He stood looking at his feet so as not to look at the corpse and I had time to think him a sissy before going on to say, ‘My uncle won’t be back for a few days.’
‘How many days?’
‘Oh! Now when was it exactly he went away…?’ I frowned and made a little pretence of counting back the days. Then, allowing my eyes to rest on the corpse, I let my knees quiver.
The doctor and the boy both leapt to my side, taking an elbow each.
‘All right. Later my dear, later.’
I permitted them to lead me around the house towards the kitchen
door.
‘I don’t know exactly what to do!’ I said as we rounded the corner.
‘About what exactly?’
‘The funeral.’
‘You don’t need to do anything. I will arrange the undertakers, and the vicar will take care of the rest.’
‘But what about the money?’
‘Your uncle will settle that when he returns. Where is he, by the way?’
‘But what if he should be delayed?’
‘You think it likely he will be delayed?’
‘He’s an…unpredictable man.’
‘Indeed.’ The boy opened the kitchen door and the doctor guided me in and pulled out a chair. I collapsed into it.
‘The solicitor will sort out anything that needs doing, if it comes to it. Now, where is your sister? Does she know what’s happened?’
I didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘She is sleeping.’
‘Just as well. Let her sleep, perhaps, eh?’
I nodded.
‘Now, who can look after you, while you’re on your own here, then?’
‘Look after us?’
‘You can hardly stay here on your own…Not after this. It was rash of your uncle to leave you in the first place so soon after losing your housekeeper and without finding a replacement. Someone must come.’
‘Is it really necessary?’ I was all tears and green eyes; Emmeline wasn’t the only one who knew how to be womanly.
‘Well, surely you—’
‘It’s just that the last time someone came to take care of us—You do remember our governess, don’t you?’ And I flashed him a look so mean and so quick he could hardly believe he’d seen it. He had the grace to blush and looked away. When he looked back I was nothing but emeralds and diamonds again.
The boy cleared his throat. ‘My grandmother could come and look in, sir. Not to stay like, but she could come every day, just for a bit.’
Doctor Maudsley, disconcerted, considered. It was a way out, and he was looking for a way out.
‘Well, Ambrose, I think that would be the ideal arrangement. In the short term, at least. And no doubt your uncle will be back in a very few days, in which case there will be no need, as you say, to…er…to—’
‘Indeed.’ I rose smoothly from my chair. ‘So if you will see to the undertakers, I will see the vicar.’ I held out my hand. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’
The man had lost his footing entirely. He rose to his feet at my prompt, and I felt the brief touch of his fingers in mine. They were sweaty.
Once again he searched in my face for my name. Adeline or Emmeline? Emmeline or Adeline? He took the only way out. ‘I’m sorry about Mr Digence. Truly I am, Miss March.’
‘Thank you, Doctor.’ And I hid my smile behind a veil of tears.
Doctor Maudsley nodded at the boy on his way out, and closed the door behind him.
Now for the boy himself.
I waited for the doctor to get away, then opened the door and invited the boy to go through it. ‘By the way,’ I said, as he reached the threshold, in a voice that showed I was mistress of the house, ‘there’s no need for your grandmother to come in.’
He gave me a curious look. Here was one who saw the green eyes and the girl inside them.
‘Just as well,’ he said with a casual touch to the brim of his cap, ‘since I haven’t got a grandmother.’
‘I’ll help you,’ he had said, but he was only a boy. He did know how to drive the trap, though.
The next day he drove us to the solicitor in Banbury, I beside him and Emmeline behind. After a quarter of an hour waiting under the eye of a receptionist, we were finally asked into Mr Lomax’s office. He looked at Emmeline and he looked at me and he said, ‘No need to ask who you two are.’
‘We’re in something of a quandary,’ I explained. ‘My uncle is absent, and our gardener has died. It was an accident. A tragic accident. Since he has no family and has worked for us for ever, I do feel the family should pay for the funeral, only we are a little short…’
His eyes veered from me to Emmeline and back again.
‘Please excuse my sister. She is not quite well.’ Emmeline did indeed look odd. I had let her dress in her outmoded finery, and her eyes were too full of beauty to leave room for anything so mundane as intelligence.
‘Yes,’ said Mr Lomax, and he lowered his voice a sympathetic half-tone. ‘I had heard something to that effect.’
Responding to his kindness, I leant over the desk and confided, ‘And of course, with my uncle…well, you’ve had dealings with him, so you’ll know, won’t you? Things are not always terribly easy there, either.’ I offered him my most transparent stare. ‘In fact, it’s a real treat to talk to someone sensible for a change!’
He turned the rumours he had heard over in his mind. One of the twins was not quite right, they said. Well, he concluded, clearly no flies on the other one.
‘The pleasure is entirely mutual, Miss er—Forgive me, but what was your father’s name again?’
‘The name you are after is March. But we have become used to being known by our mother’s name. The Angelfield twins, they call us in the village. No one remembers Mr March, especially us. We never had the chance to meet him, you see. And we have no dealings at all with his family. I have often thought it would be better to change our names formally.’
‘Can be done. Why not? Simple matter, really.’
‘But that’s for another day. Today’s business…’
‘Of course. Now let me put your mind at rest about this funeral. You don’t know when your uncle will be back, I take it?’
‘It may be quite some time,’ I said, which was not exactly a lie.
‘It doesn’t matter. Either he will be back in time to settle the expenses himself, or if he is not, then I will settle it on his behalf and sort things out when he comes home.’
I turned my face into the picture of relief he was looking for, and while he was still warm with the pleasure of having been able to take the load off my mind, I plied him with a dozen questions about what would happen if a girl like me, having the responsibility of a sister like mine, should have the misfortune of mislaying her guardian for good. In a few words he explained the whole situation to me, and I saw clearly the steps I would have to take and how soon I would need to take them. ‘Not that any of this applies to you, in your position!’ he concluded, as if he had quite run away with himself in painting this alarming scenario, and wished he could take back three-quarters of what he had said. ‘After all, your uncle will be back with you in a few short days.’
‘God willing!’ I beamed at him.
We were at the door when Mr Lomax remembered the essential thing.
‘Incidentally, I don’t suppose he left an address?’
‘You know my uncle!’
‘I thought as much. You do know approximately where he is, though?’
I liked Mr Lomax, but it didn’t stop me lying to him when I had to. Lying was second nature to a girl like me.
‘Yes…that is, no.’
He gave me a serious look. ‘Because if you don’t know where he is…’ His mind returned to all the legalities he had just enumerated for me.
‘Well, I can tell you where he said he was going.’
Mr Lomax looked at me, eyebrows raised.
‘He said he was going to Peru.’
Mr Lomax’s rounded eyes bulged, and his mouth dropped open.
‘But of course, we both know that’s ridiculous, don’t we?’ I finished. ‘He can’t possibly be in Peru, can he?’
And with my most reassured, most pluckily capable smile, I closed the door behind me, leaving Mr Lomax to worry on my behalf.
The day of the funeral came and still I hadn’t had a chance to cry. Every day there had been something. First the vicar, then villagers arriving warily at the door, wanting to know about wreaths and flowers; even Mrs Maudsley came, polite but cold, as though I were somehow tainted with Hester’s crime. ‘Mrs Proctor, the boy’s
grandmother, has been a marvel,’ I told her. ‘Do thank your husband for suggesting it.’
Through it all I suspected that the Proctor boy was keeping an eye on me, though I could never quite catch him at it.
John’s funeral wasn’t the place to cry, either. It was the very last place. For I was Miss Angelfield, and who was he? Only the gardener.
At the end of the service, while the vicar was speaking kindly, uselessly to Emmeline – would she like to attend church more frequently? God’s love was a blessing to all his creatures – I listened to Mr Lomax and Doctor Maudsley who thought themselves out of earshot behind my back.
‘A competent girl,’ the solicitor said to the doctor. ‘I don’t think she quite realizes the gravity of the situation; you realize no one knows where the uncle is? But when she does, I’ve no doubt she’ll cope. I’ve put things in train to sort out the money side of things. She was worried about paying for the gardener’s funeral, of all things. A kind heart to go with the wise head on her shoulders.’
‘Yes,’ said the doctor weakly.
‘I was always under the impression – don’t know where it came from, mind you – that the two of them were…not quite right. But now I’ve met them it’s plain as day that it’s only the one of them afflicted. A mercy. Of course, you’ll have known how it was all along, being their doctor.’
The doctor murmured something I did not hear.
‘What’s that?’ the solicitor asked. ‘Mist, did you say?’
There was no answer, then the solicitor asked another question. ‘Which one is which, though? I never did find out when they came to see me. What is the name of the one who is sensible?’
I turned just enough to be able to see them out of the corner of my eye. The doctor was looking at me with the same expression he had had in his eyes during the whole service. Where was the dull-minded child he had kept in his house for several months? The girl who could not lift a spoon to her lips or speak a word of English, let alone give instructions for a funeral and ask intelligent questions of a solicitor. I understood the source of his bafflement.
The Thirteenth Tale Page 26