A Gentleman of Fortune (20 page)

The lady readers of Richmond were not, it seemed, particularly fond of William Shakespeare: there were very few of his plays to be found upon the library shelves. However, among those few was
Romeo and Juliet
: unhappy lovers no doubt appealing more to the literary tastes of the neighbourhood than murdered kings or Roman history.

Having secured the volume, Dido was reluctant to return home. This morning Maria Carrisbrook had come very early to the house and she and Flora were now deep in discussions over a musical party which was soon to be given at Brooke and, if Dido returned, she would, no doubt, be obliged to give her opinion upon the arranging of the dining table and the hiring of violin players.

So she walked on past the inn and the chestnut trees and came to a favourite place of hers where there was a walk deeply shaded by lime trees and a few green benches set against the wall of the royal park. Here, she had found, she could sit in tolerable retirement and yet watch over one of the busiest parts of Richmond.

She read rapidly and with mounting interest, distracted only by the sight of Mr Vane riding past importantly on his grey horse and once by three little boys whose ball had rolled under her seat. Warmed by the sun, beguiled by Shakespeare and very deep in her own thoughts, she became insensible of the scene around her and read on until she had almost finished the play…

‘Here’s to my love,’ cried Romeo as he drank poison in Juliet’s tomb. ‘Oh true apothecary: thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.’

It was at this point – and when she had a tear in her eye – that the little boys came running again to retrieve their ball and, upon consulting her watch, she discovered that it was eleven o’clock and time to make her visit. She put the book into her reticule and set off for Mrs Neville’s house, very deep in thought. For the lines that had appeared in her letter were certainly there in Shakespeare’s story, but they were included in such a way as to give them quite a different meaning from the one she had expected.

It was all very strange indeed…

Mrs Neville was delighted at the prospect of walking out with Miss Kent and, though Jenny White might fold her thick red arms and say, ‘I reckon you’d better not go, madam. Your daughter’d not like it at all,’ she could not positively forbid the airing.

‘Would you like me to come with you, miss?’ she asked while her mistress was putting on her things. ‘In case there’s trouble.’

‘No, no of course not. What trouble could there possibly be?’

Jenny’s face became as red as her arms. ‘Well, miss you never know with old folk, do you? I think I’d better come.’

But Dido was resolute in refusing her company.

‘Your maid is very careful of your safety,’ she remarked gaily as they left the house and strolled out into the street. ‘She guards you quite fiercely.’

‘Oh yes. She is very careful indeed.’ Mrs Neville clasped her gloved hands together on her capacious knitted reticule and looked happily about her like a child on a treat. ‘Why I declare, how warm the sun is! I am sure it must be above a month since I took a walk.’

‘Is it indeed? That is a very long time.’

‘Well, Miss Kent, last time I took a walk it ended with me talking to the constable you know – and Clara was so angry about that!’

‘Was she?’ said Dido with great interest. ‘And what was it that you talked about with the constable?’

‘Oh!’ Mrs Neville seemed to recollect herself and became more sober. She looked back at the shabby little house. From the parlour window a round red face was watching them. ‘It is a secret. I have given my word to Clara that I will not tell it to anyone.’ She turned and regarded Dido anxiously. ‘I am sure you are too kind to press me.’

‘Yes,’ Dido consented reluctantly. ‘Of course I shall not press you to tell anything you should not.’

They walked on together – Dido’s mind very busy about how she might come at this secret without seeming to do so – and soon left the narrow, dirty streets behind, for broader, tree-lined thoroughfares. Mrs Neville was glad to take Dido’s arm, but altogether she walked very briskly and steadily for a lady of her years.

They came to the inn and the lime-walk and sat down to rest a while upon the bench by the park wall. They had not been settled there long, and Dido had not yet hit upon an innocent seeming question which might discover more about Mrs Neville’s last airing, when they spied Mrs Midgely and Miss Prentice hurrying away from the little row of fashionable shops which fronted the green. As they approached, Dido wished them both good morning and Mrs Midgely returned the greeting with a very contented smile. But there was only a nod from Miss Prentice as she hurried past.

Mrs Neville shook her head as she looked after the retreating backs: one broad and bright in puce-coloured muslin, the other narrow and grey and slightly bent. ‘Dear, dear,’ she said. ‘Poor Miss Prentice does not look at all well, does she?’

‘No,’ Dido agreed, ‘no, she does not.’ But to herself she acknowledged that there had been more of distress than sickness in the lady’s looks. Her face had been pale and there had, almost certainly, been tears sparkling on her lashes.

‘What could have happened in the shops to discompose her so much?’

‘Miss Kent,’ said Mrs Neville tentatively when they had sat for a little while watching the passers-by, ‘would you be so very kind as to accompany me into Mrs Clark’s shop? I am in sore need of new gloves and I am so rarely able to make any purchases.’

Dido readily agreed and they crossed the green to the row of pretty bowed shop windows which were bright with bonnets, trinkets, handkerchiefs and parasols.

Mrs Neville was soon happily engrossed with looking at gloves on Mrs Clark’s high counter and she proved to be very dilatory over her business. Dido walked off a little way along the counter and eventually found herself a seat beside two ladies who were gossiping ferociously beneath the nodding feathers of their bonnets.

‘…Mr Lansdale certainly looks guilty now…’ The hoarsely whispered words caught her ear as she sat down – and immediately her attention was chained.

One lady seemed to be retailing to her friend some particularly interesting information which she had just heard. ‘For of course, you see, he had to keep it secret. For his aunt would never have approved. And Mrs Clark says…’

The lady’s voice dropped to a particularly intriguing undertone and Dido held her breath to listen. But, unfortunately, Mrs Neville had now discovered that there were no gloves in the shop to suit her and she was forced to quit the interesting seat.

‘You look distressed, my dear,’ said Mrs Neville as they walked slowly into the street.

‘It is nothing. Just a little…news that I have heard. But I hardly know what it was about.’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Neville gave her a long, considering look. ‘Perhaps,’ she suggested, ‘if we were to visit some more shops, you might hear more.’

‘Would you not find it too fatiguing?’

‘No, no,’ said Mrs Neville brightly. ‘Not at all. I could just look at things you know – I am always happy to look at pretty things: it would be a great treat for me – and you could find out more about this news while you wait for me.’

As she spoke she hurried on to the next shop, and, there amid its trinkets and toys, all Dido’s worst fears were confirmed.

Two solemn, clerical-looking gentlemen were standing in the shop, waiting for their daughters and wives – and looking very long and black and incongruous among the bright merchandise. They were passing the time very pleasantly by exclaiming upon the ills of the modern world. ‘There is such an independence of spirit abroad among the young,’ declared one. ‘Such wilfulness of temper and selfishness.’

‘There is indeed,’ agreed his companion happily. ‘And here is an example of it with young Mr Lansdale. Have you heard? He formed a secret engagement with a young woman he met at a common watering place. Without any reference to the consent of the aunt who raised him!’

‘Shocking!’

‘Shocking indeed. It is just as I have always said, sir, young people nowadays do not like to be crossed or checked in anything. I am not at all surprised that it should end in the most dreadful of crimes…’

Dido’s heart sank as she listened. And it was the same in every shop they entered. Mr Lansdale’s engagement to Miss Bevan was, all of a sudden, upon everybody’s lips. It seemed the news was but just got out – and was spreading very fast indeed.

And there did not seem to be one person in Richmond who could not think him guilty of murder.

‘For,’ as one egregious widow was declaring to the whole company in the linen-drapers, ‘there is no denying that it has a very strange look. Here is Mr Lansdale engaged to a penniless girl and likely to lose all his great fortune. And the next thing anyone knows, there is poor Mrs Lansdale dead and he has got everything and is free to do exactly as he likes! It is all so very convenient for him, is it not?’

By the time they entered the haberdasher’s establishment, Dido had almost ceased to wonder at how the news was got out, in her very great anxiety to discover that not everyone in Richmond was condemning Mr Lansdale. In this, the last shop in the row, Mrs Neville soon became engrossed in lace – asking to see a great many samples of it – much to the disgust of the shopkeeper who clearly judged her an unlikely customer for such an article.

Leaving her by the counter, Dido made her way to the front of the shop, where the sun was shining in. Several ladies had gathered here to admire a perfect rainbow of new sewing cotton – and to chat. At first she could catch nothing of interest; but after a few moments, she discerned the name of, ‘Mr Lansdale’.

She turned towards the sound.

Three smartly-dressed young women had taken seats close by the open door, from which they could watch any passing gentlemen. They seemed to have just come from the circulating library for they all held books in their hands.

‘Oh yes! Poor Mr Lansdale!’ was repeated several times.

Dido listened as hard as she might. And the talk had a more promising sound than her other over-hearings. Of course it was all so very shocking. But he was such a very handsome man, was he not? And charming. And he drove  a very fine barouche. And to be engaged secretly! So very romantic!

Dido smiled gratefully. It was refreshing to discover that Henry Lansdale had, at least, the good opinion of some of Richmond’s inhabitants. But then…

‘But Julia,’ murmured one of the young ladies in a lowered voice, ‘do you suppose… Is it possible that he did murder his aunt?’

The three heads pressed closer together. Dido listened hard. ‘Well, my dears, I hardly know. But… But you know how it is when a young man’s passions are inflamed.’ Julia cast a meaning look at the neat leather and gilt volume in her hand. ‘I do believe, you know, there is nothing a truly passionate man would not do to gain his ends.’

‘Oh!’ The girls all shivered happily in the sunshine that poured through the haberdasher’s window.

‘It is their mothers that are at fault,’ said Dido severely as she and Mrs Neville left the shop. ‘They should not allow them to read Mrs Radcliffe’s works.’

‘Oh?’ said Mrs Neville, looking a little bewildered by this outburst. ‘Do you not like Mrs Radcliffe’s books, my dear?’

‘Well,’ said Dido, fairly caught, ‘I would not say I did not enjoy them myself…but for young women…at least, for thoughtless young women…’ She gave up and turned the subject. ‘Have you had enough of shops for today, ma’am?’

‘Yes, yes I think that I have. I did not like that woman at all.’ She looked back over her shoulder at the beady-eyed haberdasher. ‘I did not like the way she watched me.’

They crossed the road and strolled over the green, Dido lost in thoughts and fears of what would happen now that the engagement was known.

And how had it got out?

However, there was one question answered by her
overhearing
. At least she knew now why Miss Prentice had looked so very unhappy as she left the shop.

They walked on rather briskly, for Mrs Neville seemed, all at once, anxious to be at home. As they walked, Dido worried at the old problem – should she continue to look for another explanation of Mrs Lansdale’s death? Perhaps the nephew was guilty after all. Unlike Flora, she was able to see beyond the handsome face and charming manner to the possibility of evil… But always she came back to those mysteries which his guilt left unexplained…

And there was this to consider too: murder would have been an extremely foolish act for a man in his situation. The suspicions of his neighbours could surely have been predicted. And, no matter what else he might be, Mr Lansdale was certainly no fool…

‘I beg your pardon, madam. May I speak with you a moment?’

Dido stopped. The haberdasher was hurrying across the green towards them – and her words had a particularly grating, ungracious sound. Her narrow cheeks were tinged with red; her even narrower lips were folded into a hard line.

‘If you please, madam, I would be obliged if you would both just step back into the shop with me.’

Dido looked at her in amazement. ‘Thank you, Mrs Pickthorne,’ she said, ‘but we have completed our errands for today.’

The woman’s cheeks became redder. She looked from Dido to Mrs Neville. ‘No madam,’ she said boldly. ‘I don’t think you have.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Mrs Neville said nothing, but her hold on Dido’s arm tightened. By now several passers-by had stopped to eye the three women curiously.

‘I think it would be better if you came back inside with me, madam,’ insisted Mrs Pickthorne. ‘Then we could talk things over more in private.’

‘We have nothing to talk about.’

‘But I think we have madam. There is the matter of what this lady,’ with a nod at Mrs Neville, ‘has in her bag.’

Dido opened her mouth to protest at the woman’s incivility, but Mrs Neville shook her head. ‘We had better go, my dear,’ she said in a very small voice.

So they turned back to the shop. Mrs Pickthorne took them to the dark counter at the back and asked that Mrs Neville open her reticule. ‘Or else,’ she said, her face becoming redder by the minute. ‘Or else I shall have to send for the constable.’