Place of Confinement (19 page)

Dido arrived in the hall rather breathless and found it deserted. But bright light and voices spilt through the half-open door of the drawing room. The door of the library was also ajar and, when she entered, she found one candle burning on a table by the window, with a little Tunbridge-ware workbox beside it.

She took up the candle and began to search the serried rows of books. The gilt lettering of each volume glimmered into prominence as her light passed.
Culpeper’s Complete Herbal,
volumes of Shakespeare and Edmund Spenser’s
Faerie Queen.
There was nothing very new. Mr Lancelot did not seem to be a great collector of books; there was nothing here which would please her aunt, no sermons or histories.

And Dido’s mind was soon wandering from sermons to slippers. She sat down upon the set of steps which gave access to the higher shelves, and thought …

On the evening that she had seen the light in the east wing she had made a serious error in her calculations. She had reasoned that the only person who was absent from the hall was Lancelot Fenstanton. But that had been a foolish mistake.
Mrs Manners
had not been in the hall. And, now that she gave the matter some thought, she remembered that her aunt had been particularly restless that evening – that she had, in fact, been still awake when the dancing ended.

But why should Mrs Manners exert herself to walk so far as the east wing? What could be there to interest her?

Dido was suddenly shaken from her reverie by the entrance of Benson – sent by Mrs Manners to enquire why the choosing of a book was taking such a very long time. She jumped up, raised her candle high and looked about desperately for something suitable. The light fell at last upon a chair beside the window on which had been laid aside Miss Fenstanton’s new volume of
Blair’s Sermons.

This would serve the present purpose very well – and Dido hoped that Miss Fenstanton would not object to her borrowing it.

She picked it up and ran up to her aunt’s chamber, still puzzling over what there could be in the east wing to draw Mrs Manners from the comfort of her bed.

*   *   *

In the bedchamber Dido drew a chair close to her aunt’s sofa and began to read. Mrs Manners clasped her hands in her lap, closed her eyes and lifted up her face with that expression of virtuous expectation which is proper to sermon-listening.

Dido started upon a rather dull-looking chapter entitled ‘The Rights and Duties of Mankind’.

Grandmama Kent had had a similar taste for having improving books read aloud, and Dido had very early acquired the trick of mechanically producing sounds from a page without the engagement of any part of her brain. Her mouth, once set in motion, could continue well enough. Expression was not possible, but expression was not required. One aimed rather for that soothing monotony which most swiftly produces sleep.

And the long sentences and ponderous tone of this book were well suited to use as a soporific. ‘In the present state of society,’ she read, ‘it seems necessary to go back to first principles in search of the most simple truths…’

She yawned and thought how very refreshing it would be to read for once a moralist in charity with his own age. Then, as she continued to pronounce the words insensibly, her mind wandered back to the east wing …

It would seem that the apartments at the end of the wing were those of Miss Francine – Mrs Manners’ dead sister. Was it sentiment which now took the lady to that ruined chamber? It must be a powerful emotion which could draw such a fastidious woman into that place of dirt and decay; and an uneasy emotion which must be satisfied in secret …

Dido turned a page of the book.

‘Men…’ she found herself reading, ‘appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood.’

She stopped reading as a slight familiarity in the words broke upon her consciousness.

Her first thought was that Emma Fenstanton had used remarkably similar words in their talk upon the drive. And her second thought was that Mr Blair would not express such an idea.

There was a small snore from the sofa. Mrs Manners was contriving somehow to sleep soundly with an expression of righteous attention still upon her face. She seemed to have detected nothing amiss in the sermon.

Dido turned the book over. Its cover certainly declared it to be ‘
Sermons
by Hugh Blair DD FRS (Edinburgh) One of the Ministers of the High Church’. Everything about the cover was severe and respectable; from the old-fashioned lettering with its long, straight
S
’s, to the plainest of plain black board bindings.

And yet …

She glanced back at some of the passages she had insensibly read:

‘Men complain, and with reason, of the follies and caprices of our sex … Behold I should answer the natural effect of ignorance!’

These were not quite the sentiments Dido had expected of Doctor Blair. And besides, whatever could be meant by ‘our sex’? As far as she knew, the Scotch Church did not admit
women
to the ranks of its ministers …

She turned back again and this time referred to the title page – which told a very different story from the cover. It read: ‘
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects,
by Mary Wollstonecraft.’

It would seem that Dido had in her hands – that she had for the last half-hour been reading aloud – the opinions of one of the most scandalous women of the age! This was, in fact, one of those shocking and revolutionary books which Doctor Prowdlee had so thoroughly condemned!

It was very interesting that Miss Fenstanton should have such a book in her possession.

The silence seemed to have penetrated Mrs Manners’ half-sleeping brain. She stirred upon the sofa. ‘Yes, yes,’ she murmured, ‘it is all very right and true,’ and fell back into a comfortable doze, without any notion of what she was approving.

Dido laughed quietly to herself as she began to understand the strange construction of the volume – and Miss Fenstanton’s ingenious arrangement with the bookbinder, which would allow her to read whatever she wished without raising any protest from her father. It was a clever stratagem.

And, from these thoughts, she soon fell into her own considerations of ‘moral subjects’. She turned the book over, studied again it’s very unexceptionable cover and reflected upon how, in other ways, appearances might be deceiving. The outward show, the identity presented to the world, might be as effectively disguised in a person as in a book …

Mrs Manners was sleeping soundly now, and Dido could not resist temptation. She seized the opportunity of exploring further the book which would never have been allowed in Badleigh Parsonage. It was a chance which might never fall in her way again …

Chapter Twenty

… I confess myself rather surprised by the book’s content, Eliza. I have always understood – from everything I had heard of it – that it is revolutionary and improper. But there is a great deal of sense in it; unexceptionable sense which any intelligent woman – or man –
must
approve. Miss Wollstonecraft’s style is awkward and, at times, indelicate; but one cannot disagree with her when she argues for a more rational education of girls. There is weight to her argument that they should learn more than those accomplishments suitable to marriage, for, as she observes, marriage is neither universal, nor eternal; spinsters and widows are frequently called upon to make their own way in the world – and all too often find that their education has left them ill-equipped to do so. A woman may find herself a burden upon her family and obliged almost to beg her bread from her more fortunate relations, because she has no respectable means by which to provide for herself …

*   *   *

Dido compelled herself to stop writing. The argument had begun to heat her cheeks and send the ink spattering from her pen. There was much more she would have liked to say upon this subject, but she doubted Eliza would wish to read it and, besides, she had sat down to write about something quite different.

She struggled a moment for composure, then turned resolutely to a new subject.

*   *   *

The dust upon my aunt’s shoes argues for her being more closely involved in the secrets of this house than I had previously supposed possible. It is a rather disconcerting discovery for I have always supposed that lady to be mundanely inconvenient; a source of common irritation rather than intriguing mystery.

But I cannot help but wonder whether her visit to the prison room is connected with the giving away of valuable jewels to her brother.

For I must tell you, Eliza, that there are more jewels gone. This morning brother and sister were closeted together for two hours in earnest conversation. And now there is but one ring left upon my aunt’s fingers (a poor plain little thing of scarcely any value) – and again I am told that I must make no mention of the matter.

Perhaps Aunt Manners has some secret to hide and pays her brother to hold his tongue. Maybe that secret centres upon the east wing and its barred and bolted chamber – and maybe it has to do with Mr Brodie.

For I think I have been a little remiss in my suspicions there too. I have considered the possibility of everyone in this house lying about their knowledge of the man –
except my aunt
. Blinded by my prejudice that the inconvenient and irritating can not also be mysterious, I have failed to take into account some very salient facts. Firstly, that Aunt M has been particularly troubled with hectic headaches since she learnt of the murder; and second, that she was thrown almost into a fit when the looking upon Mr Brodie’s body was first broached by Mr Parry.

Is an acquaintance with Mr Brodie the cause of her brother’s power over her? And if it is, might Mr George Fenstanton have committed murder in order to safeguard a secret which is peculiarly profitable to him?

I have no very high opinion of Mr George’s character. He is resentful even of that universal and lawful injustice which has bestowed his father’s estate upon his nephew; and he has a high opinion of himself which does not appear to be shared by anyone around him. His nephew, his sister, and even his daughter are contemptuous of the authority he feels entitled to impose upon them.

It may be he has turned to devious methods to achieve his selfish aims and is demanding money from his sister with a threat of revealing her friendship with the dead man …

But am I even justified in thinking our aunt was acquainted with Mr Brodie? I should dearly love to ask. But the question would certainly produce a great many words on the subject of impertinence and duty – and no information at all. Perhaps I should do better to ask at a time when the brown medicine has power over her!

I confess that it is rather a comfort to have
any
new possibility to consider; for I have lately been obliged to give up another, rather satisfactory, theory – that of Mr Sutherland having murdered Mr Brodie.

Mr Parry called again this morning and – as I was for two hours excused from attendance upon my aunt – I was able to take the opportunity of talking a little with him about his own investigations into the murder. And I find that he has been by no means dilatory. Though perhaps not quite so
inquisitive
nor as
universally suspicious
as he ought to be, he has exerted himself so far as to enquire into Mr Sutherland’s movements on the fateful night.

And it appears that that gentleman must be blameless. For he was called away from the inn at eleven o’clock to attend upon a dying woman at a farmhouse five miles distant from Charcombe. And, since poor Mrs Wardle did not take her leave of this life until six in the morning, he remained there in the house. Mr Wardle and his daughter were both watching by the deathbed all night, and are willing to swear that the physician did not stir from the house until half after six.

This is a heavy blow. It would have been a great deal more agreeable
not
to harbour suspicions against my acquaintances here within Charcombe Manor. But then, you know,
that
cannot be entirely avoided, for they will persist in behaving so
very
suspicious.

And, in point of fact, I am, at this very moment, engaged in laying a trap for Miss Emma Fenstanton. I am in the library with the intention of ambushing her.

You see, I now have a much more
decided
opinion of Miss Fenstanton’s character. The nature of her reading, and her arrangement with the bookbinder, point to an intelligence and guile which I had only half suspected before. I am now quite
certain
that her attempt to clear Mr Tom of the charge of abduction was more than a flight of fancy. She is not, by nature, a silly or a trivial creature. She has a reason for promoting his innocence. I am sure that she has.

And I cannot help but wonder whether that reason is connected with her other strange behaviour. On my very first day in this house, I observed Miss Fenstanton escaping from the rest of the company and creeping away into the library. It is a trick which I have since seen repeated …

I must know what she is about! It may of course be something entirely unrelated to the murder, but I must be sure. I must understand
everything
which is carrying on in this house.

And that is why I am here now. My aunt is sleeping and everyone else is out of doors. I am in hopes that Miss Emma will again attempt to return here unobserved …

*   *   *

Dido laid down her pen and looked about her, wondering very much why this room tempted the young lady. No one else cared for the place; this was not in general a reading family.

All the books upon the shelves were old and large, magnificent in leather and gilt. They provided an air of solemnity and learning; but it was a gloomy, old-fashioned room. The few expanses of wall not clothed in bookcases were panelled in fine polished oak, the colour of which almost exactly matched the dark bindings of the books. The wide fireplace was adorned with a vast and ancient overmantel of carved oak, complete with coats of arms and the large head of a rather ugly ram – in compliment to the flocks which had long ago made the fortune of the Fenstantons. The air was filled with the scent of dust and leather and aged paper.