A Woman of Consequence (7 page)

The ring had raised so many speculations in her mind, she was ashamed to reveal half of them to her sister. Had there been a secret lover? Had he played a part in the woman’s death?

Of course Miss Fenn’s character and reputation argued against it. And it was entirely possible that the ring was a remembrance of a father or mother, a brother or a sister; but if that were so, why had she not acknowledged it?

The fact was that, in this case, investigation seemed to breed suspicion. And the visit to Miss Fenn’s bedchamber had aroused even more questions in Dido’s mind …

There had been no time to visit Miss Fenn’s chamber before tea, and when tea was over the card tables were placed immediately. So it was not until Mr Portinscale, Silas and Lucy had all gone home that Dido was able to go to the room with her hostess.

All was quiet within the house as they set off from the drawing room, candle in hand; but outside, the wind was rising, driving handfuls of rain hard against the windows with a sound like thrown gravel. Mr Harman-Foote had been for some time shut up in the library talking with Captain Laurence, but as the two women crossed to the stairs he came out of the library door, pipe in hand, looking rather displeased and breathing port wine and tobacco smoke. Dido could not quite escape the idea that he had been listening and waiting for their leaving the drawing room.

‘Well, my dear,’ he bellowed across the echoing hall, ‘what are you troubling poor Miss Kent with now?’

His wife coloured a little but named their errand calmly enough.

‘It is very late,’ he said, drawing out his watch. ‘Very late indeed. Do you not think I had better order the
carriage and have it take our guest home. I am sure she is very tired.’

‘We shall not be ten minutes,’ said his wife.

He looked as if he might protest again, but Dido declared that she was not at all fatigued and he knew his manners well enough not to hold out against her. ‘Well, well, have it your own way! Have it your own way! Ought to know better than to try to change a lady’s mind! But I shall ring for Thomas immediately and have the carriage at the door in ten minutes.’ There was another look at his watch. ‘There’s a storm coming on. You had better not delay any longer than that, Miss Kent.’

‘He thinks,’ said Mrs Harman-Foote as they climbed the stairs, ‘that I would be less distressed if I left matters alone. He thinks I should forget all about my poor friend. He means well, I don’t doubt, but he does not understand my feelings. So I shall tell him as little of our investigations as I can.’

At the top of the stairs they turned along a broad, carpeted passageway, into the east wing – where the best rooms were – and Mrs Harman-Foote threw open the door of a chamber close to the one which had been given over to Penelope. It was a fine, large room – a room such as a woman of consequence might be given on a visit – a room such as Dido had
never
been offered in any country house. There were mahogany wardrobes, a large mirror, tall sash windows, very pretty wallpaper and
bed-hangings
embroidered with fabulous Chinese birds.

The room had the musty smell of a place seldom entered; but there was also a faint scent from old lavender laid in the bed and closets … And there was something else too,
very faint, another sweet scent which was familiar, but so very out of place that it was a moment or two before Dido could identify it – as tobacco smoke …

‘It is a pretty room, is it not?’ said Anne as she set her candle down upon the toilette table.

‘Oh yes! Your father must have held Miss Fenn in high regard, to have placed her in such a room.’

‘He held her in the highest regard possible. She was quite part of our family.’

They were both conscious of the ordered carriage and began to look about them as quickly as they might. Dido could not help but feel the strangeness of entering the domain of a woman so long dead, and the few plain possessions – the wooden-backed hairbrush on the toilette table, the simple writing desk upon a window seat and the black bible and prayer book lying on a table beside the bed – all had the air of things but just laid aside, whose owner might return at any moment.

She walked about touching things here and there, keenly aware of the character which seemed still to inhabit the room – austere in the midst of luxury. Above the bed there was a text worked in faded cottons.
Thou God seest me
…

‘They are gone!’ cried Anne suddenly.

Dido turned to see her standing beside the open writing desk, staring in disbelief.

‘They are all gone!’ she repeated.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dido went to stand beside her and looked into the opened desk which held only two uncut pens and some blank sheets of paper turning brown at the edges. ‘What are gone?’

‘The letters. There were letters here, letters which she had received. They were here in the writing desk.’ She sat down upon the bed among the Chinese birds, staring at the desk in disbelief.

‘Are you quite sure they were in the desk? They were not somewhere else? In a drawer, perhaps?’

‘No! I know they were in the desk. They have always been there.’

‘Have they?’ Dido felt her interest quicken. She looked more closely at her friend’s face, pale with confusion and shock. ‘Anne, who were these letters from? What was written in them?’

Mrs Harman-Foote raised her eyes in a look of amazement. ‘I had not
read
them,’ she replied.

At first, Dido – judging from her own unmanageable curiosity – was scarcely able to believe this. Letters left for fifteen years unread! How remarkable!

But then, allowing for a difference in character – and the profound influence of the governess upon her pupil – it began to seem less strange. Looking about the room, which seemed still to bear the imprint of its mistress, she could, after all, comprehend that the respect in which Miss Fenn’s memory was held, might make Anne reluctant to come in here and violate all the rules of honour by reading what was not addressed to her.

‘When did you last see the letters?’ she asked.

‘Today. Just before dinner. After dressing, I came in here for a moment or two. And I looked into the desk, so I know the letters were there. I was wondering, you see, whether it might be right to look at them now. Whether the higher good might not be served. I meant to ask
your opinion whether reading the letters might help us discover the truth about her death.’

‘I see. So it would seem someone has taken them from the desk since then.’

‘And someone must return them,’ said Anne, regaining her usual assurance. ‘I cannot permit such a theft! But, Dido, I do not quite understand. Why would someone take them?’

‘I think we must assume that it was in order to prevent them being read.’ Dido smiled. ‘Anyone who knows
me
could guess that I would hesitate less over looking into them than you …’ She was forced to stop a while to consider all the implications of the letters’ disappearance. ‘Of course,’ she said very slowly, ‘anyone who was at the dinner table would have heard that you intended to bring me here. Any one of those present
could
have come to this room after dinner and removed the letters … And there is another point …’ She stopped.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Nothing … No, it is nothing of consequence.’ She had decided it would be better not to mention that little hint of tobacco smoke which she had discerned upon entering the room.

The strange disappearance of the letters haunted Dido’s dreams and occupied the many waking moments of the night. But she came to the breakfast table next morning with no clearer notion of what was carrying on – only a certainty that the nature of her mystery was changed entirely. For it would seem she faced not only the death of a woman fifteen years ago, but also a more immediate puzzle – the motives of someone who was acting
now.

Who had cared enough about those letters to risk drawing attention to themselves by removing them? Was there something written in them which would cast light upon the circumstances of Miss Fenn’s death? Might they point to the guilt of someone still living at Madderstone?

There was a great deal more to investigate than she had previously supposed. Somehow she
must
circumvent Margaret’s demands upon her time and get herself to the abbey again as soon as she might. She had, as yet, not even looked at the place in which Miss Fenn’s remains had been discovered. And there were a great many questions which might be put to the abbey servants …

‘I declare, Dido, you are very quiet and sullen this morning. Does dining at the great house not agree with
you?’ Margaret leant across the sunny table with the teapot in her hand. She looked irritably from her
sister-in-law
to the back of the newspaper which was engrossing her husband, in the expectation that one or other of her companions should supply her with a little conversation – and seemed to decide that Dido was the more promising subject of the two. ‘Well,’ she said, as she poured the tea, ‘you have not told me one word about who was in the party yesterday, or what you had to eat.’

Dido sighed and was on the point of giving as good an account of the evening as she could, when her brother saved her the exertion by making a sudden announcement from behind his newspaper.

‘I have had a letter from my friend Lomax,’ he said. ‘He is coming here again on Friday.’

Dido laid down her knife and stared across the bread and butter and the tea-things of the breakfast table, to the window sill where a tray of windfall plums had been laid to ripen in the sun; she noticed the deepening marks of bruises upon one, the small wasp holes in another … But, though she would not look at her, she knew that Margaret’s lips were thinning as she set down the teapot and swept a few invisible crumbs from the tablecloth.

‘And how long,’ said Margaret in her most gentle tones, ‘how long do you think Mr Lomax will remain with us, my love?’

Alerted by the extreme softness of her voice, Francis lowered his paper an inch or two; a bushy grey eyebrow and a very wary eye appeared. ‘About a week, perhaps?’ he hazarded, his voice rising into a question.

Margaret closed her eyes and sighed.

Francis retreated behind his newspaper. ‘He is on his way to somewhere else – perhaps he will only stay five days – or four. I daresay it will not be so very long.’

Margaret looked once more as if she were bound for the pagan arena, but, as wives all over the country discover every day, it is peculiarly difficult to argue with the back of a newspaper. And Dido was soon wishing that she could employ such a protection herself.

For the expectation of a visitor threw Margaret into a frenzy of activity. She was determined that curtains must be washed and beds aired – though the motive seemed to be rather less the comfort of her guest than the discomfort of her husband. And through it all she had a great deal to say about the inconvenience and expense of visitors and also her surprise that Francis should take such extraordinary pleasure in the company of a man who was, after all, not much more than the steward of his daughter’s husband.

It was a very great relief to escape at last for another walk to Madderstone.

By then it was so late that Margaret very much doubted there would be time to reach the abbey and return before dark, and she thought that if Dido was wanting air and exercise she had much better walk out into the kitchen garden and watch over Robert digging the potatoes, for the fellow was so lazy he had left half of them in the ground last time.

But Dido held out. She would walk fast, and not stay long, and the necessary business of ‘finding out how Penelope goes on’ provided a very convenient excuse for the visit.

By the time she left the vicarage, the sunshine of the early morning was all over, the clouds were gathering and there was a threat of rain in the breeze. But still she was determined to go. Madderstone and its mysteries intrigued her more and more, and besides, the two miles between Badleigh and the abbey provided a little peace, a break between one society and another in which she might indulge her own thoughts.

And she found that today, as she walked, even thoughts of ghosts and governesses must give a little ground to thoughts of Mr William Lomax …

His proposed visit must discompose, though it did not surprise, her. Unlike Margaret, she found it very easy to understand why her bookish brother should value the friendship of another clever, well-informed man. She had not forgotten to anticipate, when her living at the vicarage was first proposed, that the move must throw her more into Mr Lomax’s way.

But did she wish to meet him again, or not? It was a difficult point which two whole miles of brisk walking could not quite decide.

It was now nearly four months since Mr Lomax had made her an offer of marriage – and been refused. There had been, at that time, such a serious difference of opinion between them as had convinced her they could not be happy together – despite her considerable affection for him. He had objected to that part of her which was particularly dear to her – her curiosity. They had argued; but still he had made his offer. He had even been so foolhardy as to pin his hopes for their future happiness upon a change in her character. She might,
he had suggested, be so influenced by the advice of a husband as to adopt his opinions rather than arguing against them.

It was, she thought, a strong proof of his regard that such a sensible man should wilfully blind himself to the evidence around him: evidence which must cry out against finding happiness in marriage through so momentous a change. Was there a couple in the world who had ever succeeded in it? And even if it were possible, she doubted she would find it desirable. Her own opinions were very precious to her: she did not wish to give them up.

All in all, she had felt it incumbent upon her to save them both from his dangerous optimism. She had spoken her ‘No’ as firmly as she knew how. And if the matter had only rested there, there would be sufficient embarrassment in this recontre. But there was more.

She had given her answer and walked away – and he had followed her. He had, in point of fact,
run
after her and called upon her to stop.

This last memory brought a little flutter of pleasure. At nineteen she would have been affected by this evidence of passion; at six and thirty she was quite delighted to find that she had such power over a man.

She remembered him, there in the lime walk at Richmond, bareheaded in the sunlight that twinkled through the leaves, earnestly pleading his cause. For she had, of course, done as he requested and stopped – just before reaching the end of the avenue.

‘Miss Kent,’ he said breathlessly, ‘forgive me … I know that I am not acting the part of a gentleman … to force myself upon you in this way when your answer is
already given. Please, do not think I would be such a brute as to distress you by asking you to reconsider your decision now … But I cannot help … I must just beg one favour.’

‘I am sure …’ she began, but her voice was unsteady and she paused. Exertion was absolutely necessary. If this was to be their last interview, she would not wish him to remember her stammering. ‘I am sure I would do anything in my power to prove my friendship.’

‘Then may I be allowed to ask you again … Not now, but in the future …’ He too was forced to break off. ‘As you know – as I have explained,’ he began again more calmly, ‘the burden of debt which my son has laid upon me makes an immediate marriage impossible. In two, three years at the most, I shall be free. Do I have your permission to ask then – if, of course, you are still unmarried – to ask you again to be my wife?’

Dido remembered staring down at the trodden earth of the lime walk; she remembered very clearly how the interlacing roots of the trees had stood out like veins on the back of an aging hand. Her mind had been in turmoil, flattered, confused … and yet, suspecting him. ‘I do not think such an arrangement would be wise,’ she said quietly. ‘I would not wish you to feel bound to make an offer which – three years hence – you may no longer wish to make.’

He shook his head very seriously. ‘My dear Miss Kent, I
am
bound to you. It cannot be helped, though it is very kind of you to attempt to grant a liberty I do not even desire.’

She bent her head lower so that he could not see her
smile. ‘I cannot suppose,’ she insisted, ‘that time will change my reply.’

‘But we cannot any of us predict the future,’ he argued eagerly. ‘Three years … two, even one year may encompass any amount of change. I beg you: allow me to hope.’

The indecision had been dreadful: her heart had been all for giving way and consenting immediately, while her head … Her head had been calmly noting the inconstancy of his argument. The passage of time was to produce no change in him –
his
feelings were not to alter, and yet it was to be supposed that
hers
might undergo a very material change. He was no doubt thinking that she would soon regret her answer – and decide that she must give up her opinions, cease to argue with him, and become all that he required in a wife … In fact, his request was intolerable presumption …

But he was regarding her with such tenderness, and he had never looked so well as he did now, his usual dignity all put aside, his brow furrowed, his eyes so anxious.

Her heart had won the day. She had granted the favour. When the gaming debts of his dissolute son were at last paid – when he had a home to offer a wife – Mr Lomax was authorised to apply to her again.

Of course, she remained determined against accepting. She instinctively shrank from that image which her lively imagination readily supplied – of esteem and affection all sunk into marital discord and resentment …

However, there was another image of the future which had lately begun to haunt her: an image of a lonely old maid shivering perpetually in Margaret’s attic – and that was sufficient to touch even Dido’s cheerful mind with despair.