A Gentleman of Fortune (8 page)

For anyone at all addicted to overhearing conversation and gossip, there is nowhere quite like a fashionable circulating library, for, among its shelves, rumours circulate quite as freely as novels and poems – and a great deal more freely than serious histories.

And it was, in part, this consideration which took Dido to the library at Richmond, while Flora completed some errands at the linen draper’s shop. She wished most particularly to know whether Mrs Midgely’s poison was spreading among the general population and, also, if she could discover it, whether the apothecary had been persuaded into pursuing his accusations.

The library was situated in a spacious, light room, well furnished with shelves of books, drawers of trinkets, and loitering readers. Sunlight fell in through the large windows, to make great squares of brightness on the wooden floor and raise a pleasant smell of warm leather from the bindings of the books. A cluster of smart officers was gathered by the door, more intent upon looking at young ladies than novels. And most of the young ladies in the place had been drawn away from the novels, the rings and the brooches, to gather in tight knots, pretend indifference, and whisper about officers.

Meanwhile, those women who had attained an age at which it is possible to remain unmoved by a red coat were occupied with the more serious business of the place: books – and gossip.

Dido wandered in among this last group, provided herself with a volume of
Moss Cliff Abbey
and, while pretending to read, listened intently to the talk around her. In the course of ten minutes she learnt a great deal. She heard: that there was a new preacher from Northamptonshire visiting Saint Mary’s – who was expected to preach a very interesting sermon on Sunday, which would be ‘all about the French and their terrible way of carrying on’; that ‘Mr Vane, the apothecary, believes that Mr Lansdale killed his aunt’; that there was thieving carrying on in the shops of Richmond, with two bottles of eye tincture stolen from the apothecary and a whole ten yards of ‘good yellow ribbon’ from the haberdasher; that Sir Joshua Carrisbrook’s new wife was ‘Quite lovely! but just a bit of a girl, not half his age,’ and, finally, that ‘Mr Vane is gone to the magistrate today to tell him that Mr Lansdale poisoned his aunt…’

As this last piece of news burst upon her, Dido was just reaching the head of the room. There was a broad table here and a chair beside it, into which she sank as she watched the speaker – an elderly woman in a black gown – hurrying off to spread her tidings elsewhere.

It was just exactly what she had most dreaded hearing!

Her first thought was for Flora. She would be most dreadfully distressed. It was to be hoped that she had not heard it in the shops; that it could be kept from her for a little while at least. And her second thought was for justice. There was, when one looked into the case, so much to make Mr Lansdale appear guilty, that he was in grave danger of hanging even if – as she was more than half-inclined to believe – he was innocent. She must do everything in her power to prevent such a terrible mistake.

‘It is altogether too shocking for words, the things people are saying about poor Mrs Lansdale!’ said a voice from the other side of the table. ‘Do you not agree, Miss Kent?’

Dido looked up to see Miss Merryweather, the lady who presided over the library. She was a remarkably refined woman. Her features were so refined that they seemed incapable of smiling and were fixed in an expression of strong sensibility. Her tightly curled hair was so refined that it did not stir when she moved her head, but rather clung about her face as if pasted in place. And as for her voice…it was positively tortured with refinement.

‘I myself,’ she whispered confidingly as she took her seat beside the table, ‘I myself am
deeply
affected by the poor lady’s death!’

‘Oh!’ said Dido, in some surprise. ‘Were you acquainted with Mrs Lansdale, Miss Merryweather?’

‘Oh yes! Vastly well acquainted!’

‘Indeed! Then I suppose she visited the library rather often?’

‘Oh no! Not at all. What I mean to say is, I had not actually
met
her – for she was quite an invalid, I understand – but, aside from that, I knew her very well indeed.’

‘Did you?’ said Dido, becoming more interested. ‘I am not sure that I quite understand you.’

Miss Merryweather shook her head – without disturbing the clinging curls one iota. She pressed both hands to her breast. ‘I knew her
heart
,’ she declared in a refined whisper. ‘I knew her heart.’

Dido was exceedingly diverted, but more at a loss than ever. ‘And how,’ she asked, ‘did you gain such an intimate knowledge of the lady?’

‘Why! From books of course!’ cried Miss Merryweather, casting out her arms to indicate her shelves. ‘From the books which she read. There is no surer way of knowing a person. The books which we choose, Miss Kent, are a veritable window upon our souls! A window upon our souls!’

‘Are they?’ cried Dido – aghast at how her own soul might appear when viewed through such a window.

‘Oh yes!’ Miss Merryweather folded her hands demurely upon the table and sighed feelingly.

Dido pondered upon this idea for a moment or two. ‘And what do you know of Mrs Lansdale’s soul?’ she ventured to ask at last.

‘Ah! She was full of tender feelings. For all they say of her being ill-tempered and illiberal, I know otherwise, Miss Kent, I know otherwise.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes, I know that hers was a very sensitive soul. A large, sensitive soul. Love poems and romances! As soon as they were settled here, her nephew began to borrow books for her, and it was
always
love poems and romances. And the very last book which he took to her – not two days before the unfortunate lady died – was that greatest of all love stories:
Romeo and Juliet
.’

‘Indeed!’ Dido considered this. It was rather disturbing. In the weeks before she died, Mrs Lansdale had had romance on her mind. Had she been thinking only of fictional love…? Or did her view stretch further…? To Mr Henderson, perhaps…?

Meanwhile, Miss Merryweather was becoming confiding. She leant across her table. ‘I, myself, do not spread gossip, Miss Kent,’ she said, ‘but I cannot help saying this – Mrs Lansdale had a larger, more sensitive soul than some of those persons that are now circulating rumours about her death.’

‘Indeed?’ Dido hesitated a moment – but decided that this was no time for excessive delicacy. ‘You are referring perhaps to Mrs Midgely?’ she said.

Miss Merryweather nodded significantly.

Dido was delighted. She too leant a little across the table. ‘And what,’ she asked very quietly, ‘do you know about Mrs Midgely’s soul?’

Miss Merryweather glanced around her domain at the dozen or so ladies standing and sitting about. Satisfied that they were all busy either with books or gossip, or officers, she lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Midgely,’ she said, ‘no longer has a soul.’

‘Has she not? How very…unusual. And how do you deduce it?’

‘I deduce it from the fact, the palpable fact, that she no longer reads any books at all,’ whispered Miss Merryweather. ‘You see it used to be romances with her too. Not so many as Mrs Lansdale, but at least one a month. And then – after last November – nothing at all!’ Miss Merryweather threw her hands into the air and then brought them together in a decisive clap. ‘Nothing at all!’ she repeated.

‘That is very strange.’

‘I, myself, have never known anything like it, Miss Kent. Never! To give up books!’ She looked tenderly around her shelves, as if their occupants were innocent children, unaccountably spurned. ‘I
cannot
think well of a woman who could do such a thing.’

‘No,’ said Dido soothingly, ‘no, of course you cannot.’

For a moment or two poor Miss Merryweather was so overcome by her feelings she could say no more. She took a very large reticule from under the table, produced from it a very small handkerchief and applied it dramatically to her eyes. Meanwhile, Dido was considering her second motive for coming into the library – the torn book and the name of the library which she had found upon it.

‘I wonder,’ she ventured, when the handkerchief had been returned to the reticule and Miss Merryweather seemed to have recovered some measure of composure, ‘what you would say about the other two ladies who live in Mrs Midgely’s house: her ward, Miss Bevan – and her boarder, Miss Prentice?’

‘Ah now!’ cried Miss Merryweather with a softened expression. ‘Miss Bevan is a
nice
girl. Very clever I think. We have not many books in French, but she has read every one of them. Every one! Apart from that, she is what I would, myself, call…straightforward. A very matter-of-fact young lady. No novels. She reads no novels at all. All very serious books.’ She put her thumb and forefinger to her brow as she considered. ‘Doctor Johnson’s essays…books on household management…travellers’ accounts of the lake country. That sort of thing.’

‘I see! How very interesting! And what,’ asked Dido eagerly, ‘what of Miss Prentice? What books does she read?’

‘Ah yes! Miss Prentice…Dugdale’s
Baronage
…Debrett’s
Correct Peerage
… And…’ Miss Merryweather frowned and put her finger and thumb to her brow once more. ‘Something else which she took just the day before yesterday. I remember being a little surprised by it… Now, what was it?’

Dido waited, her mind full of those floating fragments with their long dull words. ‘Was it perhaps a book of essays?’ she prompted. ‘History?’

‘No, no. I do not think it was history. It was something that I do not remember any lady ever reading before. An old, thin book. A very
odd
thing. I do not know even how it came to be upon our shelves…’ She pinched at her brow, screwed up her eyes in a great effort of remembering. ‘I will have it in just a moment.’ She pinched harder, closed her eyes entirely, and at last produced the title. ‘
A
Treatise upon the Rights of Citizens
. That is it!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I can always recollect the name of a book if I only think a little while.’

‘Indeed! That seems a very strange choice for a lady.’

‘Very strange indeed, Miss Kent. And, for myself, I am convinced that poor Miss Prentice did not know what the book was. For, I thought when she came in that she was not looking quite herself – not at all well. And the book, you must understand, was not quite…’ She leant confidingly across the table again and sunk her voice. ‘I just looked into the thing myself… Just looked, you understand. I did not read far, for I saw straight away that it was not quite proper. It was written almost thirty years ago and was rather…’ she leant closer and her lips formed the dreadful word ‘
revolutionary
,’ almost in silence. ‘I think,’ she finished in a more natural tone, ‘that the dear lady was a little distracted – and in a hurry too perhaps, for it was rather late in the afternoon. I am sure, myself, that she picked up the book quite inadvertently.’

Aloud Dido admitted that that was entirely possible. But, in private, she could not countenance it at all. There had been nothing inadvertent about the tearing up and throwing away of the pieces!

‘And now, Miss Kent,’ said Miss Merryweather, ‘what kind of literature can we furnish you with today?’

‘Oh!’ Dido hesitated, remembered that window upon the soul, and quietly put aside
Moss
Cliff Abbey
. ‘I was wondering,’ she said, ‘whether you might have a volume of Doctor Fordyce’s sermons.’

A revolutionary book! Why should little Miss Prentice concern herself with a revolutionary book? What possible difference could it make to her whether the volume rested quietly upon Miss Merryweather’s shelves or sunk down into the mud of the Thames? This was so very great a puzzle that one could not possibly rest until an answer was found. It was entirely against human nature to be uncurious when so provoked! And, besides, Miss Prentice had taken the book late in the afternoon on the day before yesterday – when she was distracted and unwell – in short, immediately
after
she had heard of Mrs Midgely’s visit to Knaresborough House! And, since that must argue for the destruction of the book bearing some relation to poor Mr Lansdale’s extremely dangerous situation, it was a moral duty to solve the mystery, was it not?

All this ran so smoothly and rapidly through Dido’s head as she walked down the steps from the library, that, by the time she gained the street, curiosity and virtue were very comfortably reconciled.

She stepped aside to avoid a pony carriage whose approach she had not noticed in her distraction, and stood a moment on the edge of the road, with people jostling past her and dusty heat breathing up from the pavement.

Now that Mr Vane had reported his misgivings to the magistrate everything was changed, she thought. Now the damage was done, the processes of justice had been set in motion and it would not suffice only to silence Mrs Midgely. Now it was absolutely
essential
to find out the whole truth.

And first she
must
find out what it was that connected Mrs Midgely, Mr Lansdale, Miss Prentice – and an improper book.

‘Dido! I declare, there is the strangest look upon your face! Whatever are you thinking about?’

Flora was hurrying down from the linen draper’s shop looking very concerned indeed.

‘I am thinking about Miss Prentice.’

‘Indeed? But I am sure I do not understand why you should be so concerned about
her
you would walk under the wheels of a chariot!’

‘Do you not? Well, I shall tell you,’ said Dido, ‘but first of all I must call upon the bookseller.’

Dido took her cousin’s arm and guided her across the street to the dark little shop of
Lister and Son, Stationers and Booksellers
, and would not say another word upon the matter until she had placed, with a rather shocked Mr Lister, an order for a copy of
A Treatise upon the Rights of Citizens
.