Place of Confinement (10 page)

Her informants – two elderly women selling fish from a stone bench in the village square – laughed heartily at her mistake.

‘You’re not from these parts, then?’ said one of the women boldly as she chewed on a nasty-looking black pipe.

‘No,’ confessed Dido rather distractedly, ‘I am visiting Mr Fenstanton.’ She was not pleased to discover that she must continue her journey. All her thoughts still centred upon the manor house where Mr Brodie might be arriving at this very moment.

She looked back – beyond the busy little square with its low grey buildings, ancient mounting block, marketing women and gleaming silver fish open-mouthed on the wet stone – to the inland road which wound through the village over a single arch of stone bridge. She was sorely tempted to turn back along that road immediately and report her mission a failure. Then she would be able to witness Mr Brodie’s arrival, discover which of her fellow guests he claimed as an acquaintance – and hear his news of Miss Verney …

She became aware that the women were laughing again. ‘Staying at the manor, are you?’ said the pipe smoker and she turned to her friend – a smaller woman in a vast and ancient leghorn bonnet. ‘Well, well, she’d better take care, hadn’t she?’

The lady in the leghorn screeched delightedly at this exquisite piece of wit. ‘Aye,’ she said shrilly, wiping blood and fish scales from her hands onto a grimy apron. ‘That’s not a safe place for young ladies, is it, Sarah? Why, she’ll be carried off to Gretna Green before she knows it!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ cried Dido, dismayed to find that rumours were spreading despite Mr Lancelot’s caution. ‘I do not quite understand you.’ She looked all innocent bewilderment.

The two women laughed louder. Sarah took her pipe from her mouth. ‘You ask Mr Sutherland about it!’ she said, pointing the short black stem at Dido. ‘Aye, you ask him,’ she said again before turning away to serve the next customer.

Dido stepped away from the jostling crowd around the bench, glad to escape from both the shrill wit and the stink of fish, and wondering very much why she should be referred to the doctor for information.

She turned reluctantly in the direction of the new town and her eye followed the dusty white road which she could see leading out of the cluster of cottages, and zigzagging on up an open slope of grass and gorse, towards such a wide, bright expanse of sky as always signals the presence of the sea. And she wished again that she might return directly to the house.

She had already lost a great deal of time, for Mrs Manners had found other errands for her to perform which ‘would be no trouble at all since she would be in the village anyway’. And she had been obliged to seek out a laundress suitably versed in the science of washing good lace, as well as delivering several letters to the post office and helping the young postmaster to distinguish the directions in her aunt’s careless, old-fashioned hand, deciphering for him the tangled letters of Worcestershire on one cover and convincing him – with some difficulty – that another was directed to Bristol, not ‘Beef-tea’ as he had averred.

Now she was almost overwhelmed by impatience.

And, in point of fact, brown medicine was not even wanted today; her aunt’s symptoms were no longer of the ‘enervating’ sort. This morning there were ‘sharp palpitations’ and a ‘frantic throbbing’ of the temples – the illness, it would seem, had turned ‘hectic’. And only red medicine was of use against hectic symptoms – unless there was an outbreak of ‘fluttering biliousness’ – in which case the white variety would be required. But Dido had not quite courage enough to return empty-handed, lest the very absence of the antidote precipitate an enervating attack.

So she started up the road towards New Charcombe. The sun grew stronger, warming the gorse bushes until they smelt of freshly baked cake, and making the white dust of the road dazzling. As she walked Dido puzzled over many things. She puzzled over why someone at the manor might wish to deny being Mr Brodie’s friend – and how the lie might be sustained after the gentleman’s arrival; she puzzled over the fishwives’ cryptic information; she puzzled over Miss Gibbs’ lack of rest and Mr Fenstanton’s fondness for horrid tales …

But she arrived at the top of the hill and the beginning of the new town with glowing cheeks, a dusty petticoat – and no answers to any of the puzzles in her head.

Before her, a street or two of good white stone had been laid down across the turf of the cliff top and there were a few dozen completed houses. There were some people of quality determinedly taking the air, but a great many more workmen building houses to accommodate the visitors and invalids who were yet to find their way here. Wherever Dido looked there were scaffolds and barrows; grimy young lads mixing mortar, and solemn masons in their caps and aprons dressing stone.

She smiled at the memory of Mr George Fenstanton’s panegyric on the place. But, as she started along the broad mall which topped the low cliff, she felt the power of the seaside in a lifting of her spirits. A pleasant breeze was ruffling the tops of the waves and setting the bright awnings of the bathing machines a-flapping down on the beach. Gulls wheeled overhead. The sun sparkled on the water, and also upon the clean white stones of the new buildings, making them appear as bright and fresh as the waves themselves.

About halfway along the mall there was a space for benches laid out. A heap of stone and several lengths of wood declared that the masons and carpenters had not yet completed their work; but there were two or three seats already built and these were occupied by some retired military men and dowagers such as frequent watering places in the unfashionable times of the year.

And then, as she approached the spot, Dido discerned another figure – young and long in the leg – a figure which had an unpleasantly familiar look …

Her pace slowed. There was no mistaking the gentleman sitting there with his legs sprawled across the pavement, one hand resting upon the silver head of a cane as he thoughtfully perused a letter. It was none other than the man who had lately caused such a stir at Charcombe Manor – Mr Tom Lomax himself.

She faltered, half determined upon hurrying away; but at that very moment he turned his head and saw her. He jumped immediately to his feet, sweeping off his hat, putting up the letter and making a hurried bow.

‘Miss Kent! Why, of all the birds of the air, you are the very one I have been hoping to fall in with!’

Dido made her curtsey and approached him warily. His thick, pale hair shone in the sunlight; his features were certainly well-looking, though rather marred by scrubby sidewhiskers and a small, wet, sulking mouth. And the stare he was presently turning upon her was unpleasant – sly and uneasy. It was a year and a half since their last encounter, and they had not parted on the best of terms, for Dido had then taken it upon herself to save two other young ladies from his heartless scheming.

His impudent, familiar manner irritated her exceedingly, yet she could not help but wonder why he wished to talk to her – and what he might have to say about Miss Verney.

‘I suppose,’ he said abruptly, returning his hat to his wind-ruffled head, ‘that the Fenstantons and Mother Bailey have been all making me out to be a scoundrel.’

Dido made no reply, but cast down her eyes. One of the dowagers – seeing all and hearing nothing – smiled indulgently upon them as if she suspected a romantic encounter.

‘Ah!’ cried Tom. ‘I see that they have.’ He shrugged up his shoulders in a pretence of ease and indifference. ‘Well, I am sure I don’t give a damn what they think of me at Charcombe Manor. They can go to hell for all I care! But,’ he added anxiously, ‘I would wish
you
to know that I am innocent.’

She looked up in surprise.

‘I know no more about what’s become of Miss Verney than you do,’ he said with a kind of impatient pleading. ‘I returned the girl safely to the manor. I
saw
her walk in through the house door. You must believe me, Miss Kent.’

‘Why, Mr Lomax, I am surprised to find that you should wish for
my
belief.’

‘But I do,’ he said, leaning upon the back of the bench. Dido recalled that he was a young man who always avoided the exertion of the perpendicular if he could. ‘At least,’ he added after a moment’s pause, ‘I wish for your assistance.’

‘You wish me to help you…’

‘… find Miss Verney.’ He smiled and tapped his stick against the leg of the bench. ‘Well, there is nobody quite like you for poking about. That is, Miss Kent,’ with an elaborate bow, ‘there is no one quite like you for solving puzzles.’

She coloured – a circumstance which did not go unnoticed by the watchful dowager, who now touched her companion upon the arm and pointed out the couple with a very meaning turn of the eyes.

‘I thank you for the compliment, sir,’ said Dido. ‘But, I fear I must decline the commission.’ She would not, for the world, have him think that any trouble she took in the business was undertaken for his convenience.

‘Damn it!’ he cried fretfully. ‘I need someone to help me. I am
persona non grata
at Charcombe Manor now. I cannot even set foot over the threshold. I can do nothing to prove my own innocence.’

‘Hmm.’

‘You do not believe me!’ he cried resentfully. ‘You think I am lying about taking Letitia back to Charcombe Manor.’

Dido looked out over the cliff’s edge, beyond the sands and the bathing machines to the sea and a distant ship with its gleaming white sails and circling retinue of gulls. ‘In point of fact,’ she admitted, ‘I am rather inclined to believe your account of the young lady’s return. Or rather, I think that
you
believe it to be true – I do not think that you are deliberately lying.’

‘Why, I am glad to find I have your good opinion!’

She kept her eyes upon the ship. ‘I certainly have a very good opinion of your prudence.’

‘By which, you mean to say that you think me selfish and scheming.’

‘I have certainly had the pleasure of your acquaintance long enough to know that you are no fool. And I am quite sure that if you
had
persuaded Miss Verney into an elopement you would have found a better method of concealment.’ She met his eyes. ‘Something safer than this extraordinary story of her returning to the house – a story which seems to cry you out a liar to the whole world.’

‘Now that,’ he said, ‘is a point well made.’ And, just for a moment – for no more than the space of a heartbeat – he brought the tips of his fingers together in a considering gesture; a gesture which was so very suggestive of his father that Dido drew back, confused and uncomfortable. ‘So, you will help me prove my innocence?’ he urged.

‘Ah! Pardon me, sir, but I did not quite say that I believe in your
innocence.
’

‘But if you do not think—’

‘I do not think you are lying. But – if I may be frank upon this matter—’

‘Oh, I beg that you will!’ he cried. ‘There should be no secrets between you and me.’

‘Very well, then. I confess that I remain uneasy about your behaviour towards Miss Verney. In the past, Mr Lomax, I have found myself unable to approve some aspects of your conduct. I have had reason to suppose you mercenary in your search for a bride.’

Tom threw back his head and laughed.

‘Do you deny it?’ she asked. ‘Do you deny that you are trying for a match with Miss Verney, for the sake of her fortune?’

Tom prodded thoughtfully at a broken fragment of stone with the tip of his cane. ‘I deny that I have abducted Miss Verney.’

‘But you do not deny that you are pursuing her fortune?’

‘No, I don’t deny it.’

‘Well, then, you will certainly get no help from me in your scheme. But I may attempt to seek out the facts surrounding Miss Verney’s odd disappearance – in order that she may be found and restored to her friends.’

He smiled at that.

Dido did not like his seeming so happy. Mr Tom’s happiness was too often secured through the suffering of someone else. ‘But,’ she added firmly, ‘I shall do nothing at all to promote your marriage to Miss Verney.’

He sneered and rattled his cane against a leg of the bench. ‘That might be a little ill-advised, Miss Kent.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘I only mean to say,’ he continued, watching her closely, ‘that in promoting
my
marriage, you would be furthering the cause of your own.’

Heat flooded Dido’s cheeks. She could neither speak, nor look at him; she turned her eyes away to watch a herring gull gliding up the breeze above the stark ribs of a new roof.

‘It will not do to be so very disapproving,’ he laughed. ‘For you and I both know that it is my little difficulties with my creditors which keep my father from marrying again. He thinks himself too poor to take a wife. But let me get an heiress to settle my debts and
you
could be a married woman by Michaelmas!’

‘I do not understand your meaning, sir,’ she said, exerting herself to speak calmly.

He only laughed.

Shocked and shaking, she could trust herself to remain no longer. She turned and began to make her way blindly along the mall. But he raised his cane, pointed it at her retreating back and called, ‘You understand me, Miss Kent. And you know that you and I are natural confederates in this business.’

She fled against the salt breeze, her hands shaking as she clutched her pelisse about her. She wanted only to escape, to get beyond the cruel gaze of his eyes.

All at once the open mall which had, minutes ago, seemed all cheerfulness and refreshment was become a place of torture. It was too straight, too wide. There was no avoiding that terrible stare; she seemed to feel it as an ache upon the back of her head.

She was now passing the broad steps which fronted the town’s newly built public rooms, and she saw that a large wagon was drawn up on the road. Like a hunted fox seeking cover, she hurried forward and escaped to stand on the steps, where the sides of the wagon hid her from Tom’s view.

She stood quite still in the deep shade, trembling with relief as the pain upon her neck eased. She pressed a gloved hand to her mouth.