A Gentleman of Fortune (29 page)

Dido looked down and said nothing. Maria reached out a shaking hand and laid it upon her arm. ‘Please,’ she whispered. ‘I am quite at your mercy. I beg you will say nothing of this to Sir Joshua. He does not know the truth about that evening. He must never know. He would be so angry, so very, very angry if he knew that he had himself been exposed to discovery and embarrassment. You will not tell, will you?’

Dido looked from the clutching hand to the lovely, anxious face and hesitated. Should she make such a promise? Could it be right to conceal self-interest and shameless deception?

‘It was – if I might say so, My Lady – a very bold, indeed a desperate plan. A great many things might have gone wrong.’

‘But my dear Miss Kent, you must consider how much I had to gain from the scheme – how very much I had to lose by never seeing Sir Joshua again!’

‘I beg your pardon,’ said Dido quietly. ‘I had not realised that you were so excessively attached to your husband.’

Maria blushed and lowered her eyes.

‘Ah! I see that is was this that you feared to lose.’ Dido made a scornful gesture which encompassed not only the pleasant house in which they sat, but also the estate around it – and all Sir Joshua’s possessions beyond. ‘It was wealth and consequence that you were prepared to risk all for – not the man himself.’

‘No!’ Maria jumped up from her seat. ‘No, you are wrong, Miss Kent. It was for an establishment that I took that risk: for security and an end to poverty and friendlessness. You may think my actions reprehensible, but I have not yet grown so used to comfort and prosperity as to condemn my own behaviour. And, no matter what my past has been, no matter what I may have been guilty of in getting a husband, I would defy even you to discover any fault in my behaviour as a wife. Sir Joshua will never, never have any cause to regret his choice.’

Dido shook her head helplessly: moved in spite of herself. ‘Lady Carrisbrook,’ she said, ‘you do not know what you are asking when you wish me to be silent on this matter. For the truth is that the charade you enacted that night was the cause – the partial cause – of Mrs Lansdale’s death. And in just two days time her nephew must answer for that death before the court. What am I to do? Am I to stand by and see him hanged for a killing of which he is no more guilty than you and your friends?’

Maria turned pale. She sat down beside Dido again. ‘You are mistaken,’ she said earnestly. ‘Completely mistaken. We played no part in that lady’s death – I swear to you that we did not.’

‘Did you not?’ said Dido looking steadily into the beautiful hazel eyes. ‘Tell me, My Lady, how could you be certain that she would sleep through the whole of the evening?’

She looked away, traced out the shape of one of the little leaded panes of the window with her finger. ‘We gave her a little of the laudanum mixture she was in the habit of using,’ she said quietly. ‘It was put into her chocolate while it was in the kitchen. But I promise you – upon my life, I swear – that it was only a few drops. Enough to make her sleep a few hours: no more. It cannot, it certainly cannot have brought about her death.’

‘It was poor Mrs Lansdale’s misfortune,’ said Dido with a sigh, ‘to be very much in the way that evening. She seems to have been an inconvenience to everyone around her. Everyone wished her to sleep!’

‘I do not understand.’

‘Would it be brought more within your comprehension if I were to tell you that I have spoken to two other people who also put a sleeping draught into that very same jug of chocolate?’

Maria’s hand went to her lips and Dido watched dawn upon her face an understanding of shared guilt such as she had seen in Mr Lansdale and Miss Neville. For several minutes she was too aghast to speak. Then she said, in a trembling voice, ‘Do you mean to expose me?’

Dido would dearly have loved to protest against the question – to abdicate such a heavy responsibility. But it could not be done. She may have entered too lightly upon this business of investigation; but she recognised that it would not be so lightly got out of. For there is no unknowing truths once they are discovered.

To expose Maria: to publish all the events of that night; to destroy all her happiness – and Sir Joshua’s too – was more, a great deal more, than she felt herself capable of. And yet not to do so would leave Henry Lansdale in as much danger as ever…

‘I do not know,’ she said. ‘I do not know what I ought to do – except… Except that I cannot permit Mr Lansdale to bear all the blame for what happened that night. It would not be right or just.’

Tears gathered in Maria Carrisbrook’s eyes; but she did not attempt to argue against this. Dido took a long draught of the cool, thyme-scented air from the window. There was no escaping it…‘But…’ she said quietly, ‘there may be…I think, perhaps, there may be another way of saving Mr Lansdale.’

The hope was so frail – so fraught with difficulties – that she had hoped she need never try it. And she shrank from voicing it. But what other chance was there?

‘Yes?’ Maria’s voice was small and hopeful. ‘What is it?’

She leant back in the window embrasure and closed her eyes. With a great effort she drew together the thoughts and suspicions which had been on the very edges of her mind for the last hours.

‘There was a fourth dose,’ she said very slowly.

‘A fourth dose?’

‘Yes. If Mr Vane was correct in his description then there were four usual doses of opium. But – as yet – we know of only three. In short, there was yet one more person who wished Mrs Lansdale to sleep that night. If we could but find out that fourth person…’

Maria looked troubled. ‘And you would force that person to bear the guilt of all?’

‘No – not quite.’ Dido jumped up. Now that her mind was pressed into action her body could not remain still. ‘No,’ she said, pacing restlessly across the room. ‘I hope – that is if this last portion of blame falls where I believe it does – I hope that all those who played a part in Mrs Lansdale’s death might be…’ she hesitated, looking at Maria’s lovely, tearful face. ‘I will not say excused entirely, My Lady…but rather left to bear only that punishment which I am sure their own consciences will inflict.’

Maria Carrisbrook had the gift – rare even among beautiful women – of crying prettily. Tears were now pouring freely down her cheeks and her lip trembled a little; but there was no sobbing or snuffling, no blowing of the nose. Dido found the performance strangely disquieting and wondered inconsequentially whether Maria had been born with the talent or whether it was an accomplishment she had acquired. She very much wished that it would stop; but the tears flowed on as Maria applied a dainty handkerchief to her eyes and looked hopefully over the top of it.

‘Do you really think you could arrange things so very… satisfactorily, Miss Kent?’

‘I think it must be attempted.’

‘But what will you do? Will you challenge this person? Tell him what you suspect?’

‘Ah! There – as someone says in one of Shakespeare’s plays – is the rub. I cannot. It would not be right. You see, if my plan is to work, then the facts must be put rather… forcefully. A kind of threat will need to be made…’ She walked around the table; stirred up the rose-petals in their bowl and breathed in their sweet, dusty scent. ‘It is not something to which I feel I am equal – I do not think any woman of ordinary delicacy would feel equal to it. It would need a man. A gentleman would have to play the part for us.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Maria eagerly, tucking away her handkerchief, ‘perhaps Mr Lansdale…’

But Dido shook her head immediately. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That would not do at all. He must not be seen to interest himself in the business. If the magistrates were to hear of it, it would appear very bad indeed.’

‘Then who can we ask to act for us?’

Dido was silent for some moments – not from not knowing the answer to the question, but rather from being reluctant to speak it. However, there was no avoiding it…

‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Mr William Lomax would be the most proper person for the task. He knows a great deal about the business already, and understands the workings of the law.’

Maria looked a little sly. ‘I am sure he would be very willing to carry out any commission of yours.’

Dido only scowled at the compliment. ‘I am sure there is no man living who I would less like to ask,’ she said. ‘For, though I cannot think his humanity will allow him to refuse the errand; I know he will blame me for devising it. However, I shall go and consult with him now.’ She dusted fragments of rose petal from her hands and turned towards the door with determination. ‘It cannot be helped. It seems that there is no choice: either I must sink even lower in his esteem – or else Mr Lansdale must be hanged!’

Maria watched her, very puzzled; but, just as she reached the door, she called her back. ‘Miss Kent, I have not yet thanked you.’

Dido turned back reluctantly. The thought of the interview ahead of her was unpleasant, but it was not in her nature to delay a task on which she had determined and she was very eager to have everything settled.

‘There is nothing to thank me for, Lady Carrisbrook. I have only returned to you what was your own.’

‘But you are being so very kind in trying to save me from exposure and… And you have shown great… delicacy in the questions you have asked me. And, most particularly,’ she added with a nervous smile, ‘in those questions you have not asked me.’

Dido said nothing, but only stood holding the open door in her hand.

‘Forgive me, I cannot help but ask – are you not curious about my life before my marriage? The things you have discovered about my residence at Knaresborough House are such as might make the dullest of women curious. And you are certainly not the dullest of women.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And yet you ask no questions at all about me…or about my family.’

Dido gazed down upon the floor and looked exceedingly awkward. ‘A married woman,’ she said, ‘belongs to her husband’s family. She takes his name – his title. Who, or what, she was before ceases to be of any consequence. I see no reason to trouble you with impertinent questions, Lady Carrisbrook.’

And with that, she turned and walked away in search of Mr Lomax.

It was the supper hour when Dido returned into the hall. The glees were over and some of the guests were already gone into the dining room;  while some were still chattering in the drawing room; and others had escaped entirely from the excessive heat of the house to walk about on the candle-lit terrace.

And it was among this last group that she discovered Mr Lomax. He was standing a little apart, beside one of the great yew bushes that flanked the steps to the lawn. The light from a paper lantern showed his eyes downcast and his jaw thrust out in just such a way as, had he been but a child, everyone would have called a sulk. Dido smiled to herself, rather taken with the notion of sending him away to a corner of the nursery until he had ‘learnt how to conduct himself’. But, unluckily, dealing with a grown man in an ill temper could not be so simple.

He must, somehow, be persuaded into performing her errand: that was the point of first importance. That he might also be persuaded into approving her conduct was, she acknowledged, all but impossible. Yet her spirit rose at the prospect of his disapproval. She had done nothing wrong: her own conscience acquitted her entirely. And besides, it really was rather gratifying to discover that at five and thirty she could still arouse such strong emotion in a gentleman’s breast – even if the emotion was, as it had always tended to be, exasperation rather than any softer feeling.

She held up her head and stepped forward to meet him with a defiant smile. But his greeting was not propitious. He bowed and hoped, rather stiffly, that ‘her business was now settled to her satisfaction.’

‘It is very kind of you to ask, Mr Lomax,’ she said, continuing to smile graciously. ‘My business is…going on fairly promisingly.’

‘Do you mean that it is not yet finished?’ he demanded. ‘You are still engaged upon this dangerous course of investigation into Mrs Lansdale’s death?’ He began to search her face with a very satisfactory anxiety. It pleased her greatly to think that some part at least of his anger was born of concern for her welfare.

‘You need not trouble yourself,’ she said. ‘There is no danger at all. For I find that, after all, there was no murder. There was not even any house-breaking. So, you see, there cannot be any villain waiting in the dark to exact some terrible revenge upon me for my temerity in investigating his affairs.’

He frowned: he put his fingers together and rested his chin upon them – as was his habit whenever he was endeavouring to understand something. ‘Do I understand you correctly, Miss Kent? Are you saying that Mrs Lansdale’s death was entirely natural?’

‘No. I only said that she was not murdered.’ She smiled invitingly. ‘Would you like me to explain it all to you?’

He hesitated and she was amused to see that curiosity was now contending with annoyance upon his face. Behind them the voices of their fellow guests were beginning to fade as they made their way towards the supper table. In the quiet of the terrace a moth beat against a paper lantern.

It ended with him making no concession; he only held out his arm to her and suggested that they take a turn along the terrace. But, judging that this was all the invitation his pride would allow him to give, Dido launched into her account of Mrs Lansdale’s three doses of Black Drop. And he listened to it all without a protest.

As they walked, passing from shadows to pools of light along the terrace, she tried to study his profile which, though it was as handsome as ever, was inscrutable. The only change that she detected as she spoke was a little more jutting of the jaw – which certainly did not bode well. And the arm, upon which her hand rested, was held stiffly away from his body.

They walked slowly and reached the end of the terrace and the end of her narrative at about the same time.

‘And so you see,’ she finished, ‘I find I must now ask for your help.’

He stopped and stared down wonderingly at her. ‘You would ask me to help you?’ he said. ‘When you are aware of what my opinion has always been. You know that I consider you…mistaken in pursuing this matter.’