Place of Confinement (8 page)

But I cannot help but agree that Mr Lancelot’s not pursuing Letitia is very strange indeed. Of course (despite our aunt’s assertions) an anvil marriage is not possible while Mr Tom is in Charcombe – but Mr Lancelot did not
know
that the young man had remained here until he was informed of it yesterday. So why did he not ride after Miss Verney immediately? For, besides the interest he might have as a suitor himself, there is the responsibility laid upon him by the guardian.

I cannot make it out. And I cannot even guess at the information which Mr Brodie will bring tomorrow …

*   *   *

It was a noise which had stilled Dido’s pen; not a loud noise, but an oddly disquieting one. She held her breath, listening hard.

The candle flame swayed on its wick, throwing light around Mrs Manners’ chamber, lighting, in turn, the high bulk of the great bed, the grey ashes on the hearth, the crewel work curtains drawn close across the window. There was nothing to be heard now beyond the faint creak of a settling floorboard and the snores of the sleeping woman.

And then it came again – a small desolate wail which struck directly at the heart. Surely it was the crying of a baby? And yet Dido had not heard of there being an infant in the house. She rose cautiously, went on her toes to the window, and lifted an edge of the heavy curtain.

Outside, the light of the moon lay across the old-fashioned garden of low clipped box hedges, and trim beds of flowers and herbs.

Charcombe Manor had been built during the reign of Elizabeth and, like many houses of its time, its front had been fashioned in the form of a giant E in compliment to that monarch. From this window in the west wing – at the extreme end of the bottom leg of the E – Dido had a view of the entire house front, looking beyond the shorter central leg, which contained the great hall, to the looming outline and blank, dead windows of the deserted east wing.

At first all seemed still down in the garden – but then there was a movement almost directly below Dido’s window. A stooping figure in a deeply hooded cloak resolved itself out of the shadows and made its way along the path, walking rapidly, but stooping forward slightly – for all the world as if it held something cradled in its arms and concealed within the folds of the cloak.

The figure disappeared in the shadow of the creeper which grew in the angle where the east wing joined the main part of the house. Dido watched until her eyes grew weary, but it did not reappear.

Chapter Nine

The next morning found Dido awake early and walking on the terrace before the house – once more stealing time in which to pursue her investigations.

The memory of the cloaked figure had disturbed her dreams and she had woken with a strange notion: perhaps the figure was Miss Verney returning for some reason in secret to the house. She had laughed at herself for the fancy – and yet it had been strong enough to bring her here to the place where the figure had appeared.

She followed a path of sandstone slabs worn smooth by centuries of rain and passing feet, until she was beneath the window of Mrs Manners’ room. Here she stopped and looked about. This was the point at which she had first seen the figure. From whence had it come?

The paved path ended here, but the carriage drive swept away around the end of the west wing. She followed it, even the tread of her feet in the gravel sounding loud in the stillness of the morning.

She passed through a screen of laurels, under which a noisy blackbird was scuffling for worms. Beyond was the back door of the house, standing open upon a cavernous kitchen. Within, a housemaid was pouring hot water from a great black kettle into jugs for the bedchambers, and behind her a cook was turning chops on the griddle. The housekeeper, Mrs Matthews – a tall woman in black with a look of perpetual bereavement about her – was standing close beside the door with a small bowl in her hands.

‘Can I help you, miss?’ she called and stepped out into the sunshine. It was the kind of ‘can I help you?’ which is a thinly veiled ‘what are you doing here?’

‘Oh! No, thank you. I am just looking about me.’ Dido hurried on towards the stables, but felt the woman’s eyes upon her all the way.

The stable yard was tidy, its cobbles newly washed and gleaming in the slanting sunlight. Beyond the yard Dido could see a large kitchen garden and one end of a stew pond, backed by a rising slope of grass and wild flowers, topped by a little round summer house with a brightly tiled roof and a weathercock shaped like a fish. To her left, stalls and haylofts enclosed two sides of the yard. A white-faced clock set high up in the walls announced that it was almost eight o’clock; a stable door stood open and, within the building, two grooms were working and arguing.

‘They can’t be gone,’ cried one impatiently. ‘Take another look.’

Dido crept quietly to the doorway and peered cautiously into the warm, horse- and hay-scented gloom.

A broad-shouldered lad with a red neckerchief and shirtsleeves rolled above the elbow was standing with his back to her, examining the foreleg of a little grey mare. His companion – a younger boy with cropped hair and pimples – was standing beside the partition of a neighbouring stall and shaking his head vigorously. ‘I’ve
looked,
Charlie. They ain’t there!’

‘Look again!’

The younger boy disappeared around the partition. Charlie lifted the mare’s hoof, gently probed the fetlock and cursed under his breath. The horse shifted restlessly and he patted her. ‘Poor old girl,’ he soothed. ‘Some great lump’s been riding you, hasn’t he? And now we’ll have you laid up for weeks.’ As he set down the hoof, his companion reappeared.

‘S’no good, Charlie. They’re gone for sure.’

‘Damn! What am I to do? Mr Lancelot will string me up when he finds out.’

The younger lad looked sly. ‘Then don’t tell him,’ he said.

‘What if he asks?’

‘Just tell him you’ve done what he told you. He’ll never know the difference.’

‘Aye, maybe you’re right,’ said Charlie. He picked up his coat which was hanging over the stall’s partition and turned towards the door.

Dido retreated hastily to the front of the house, coming to a standstill on the path beneath the window of her aunt’s room.

She stood for a moment regaining her breath and wondering what was missing from the stables. But, unable to find any satisfactory answer, she turned her mind back to the figure she had seen in the night.

Slowly, looking about as she walked, she followed the course that the figure had taken to the angle where the east wing joined the main body of the building. This part of the house was thickly hung with clematis, the leaves upon it lush and green, the flowers as yet but tight buds. The path before it was cool and shadowy and thickly fringed with moss.

She looked about for the cause of the figure’s disappearance; and there, half hidden among the brown tangle of the creeper’s stems, she found a little ‘Gothic’ door, shaped to fit a pointed arch of stone. The door was old, its planks dry, cracked and bleached; its latch was rusted and the growth of the clematis across its upper half declared it to be seldom used. However, it had been lately opened, the stems about it were broken; a handful of fresh leaves lay upon the moss-covered path.

So, she thought with satisfaction, it was through this door that the figure had disappeared. But where did this door lead?

She stepped forward to try the latch and trod on something soft which squashed unpleasantly beneath her thin shoe. She started back and saw a sticky, flattened slug among three others which were still whole and fat and shining as blackly as well-polished boots. They were, she noticed, all gathered about a round depression in the moss which was about a hand’s span in diameter. But there was nothing to show what might have created the mark.

Taking care to avoid the slugs she lifted the latch of the door – and found it locked.

There was a moment or two of very respectable hesitation, a little looking about to be sure she was not watched; then – curious and vexed with herself in about equal measure – she stooped down and put her eye to the large old-fashioned keyhole below the latch.

Gradually her squinting eye made out orderly rows of leather-bound books and a table upon which was spread the morning’s newspaper … In short, she was looking upon nothing more remarkable than Mr Lancelot’s excellent library …

*   *   *

Disappointed – though she would not have admitted it – that the door did not lead to some secret passageway or hidden chamber, Dido retired to continue her deliberations in the breakfast parlour. Here she found sun streaming through the mullioned windows, lighting up oak-panelled walls and a vast old dresser laden with silver dishes. A burnished breastplate and two crossed broadswords hung above the chimney piece of carved stone.

The two Mr Fenstantons – uncle and nephew – were alone at the long table and deep in the discussion of business.

‘The cost is damnably high,’ Mr Lancelot was protesting as she entered.

‘But worth it, my boy, well worth it!’ said Mr George. ‘For nowadays, the sea is the very thing for making people healthy. Before the season is even begun we will have more folk wanting our cottages and boarding houses than we can accommodate.’

‘It is all very well for you,’ murmured Mr Lancelot discontentedly. ‘You seem to have found a way of holding off your creditors. But as for me—’

He stopped abruptly as he saw Dido at the door and, replacing his frown with a smile, began upon an explanation. ‘We are discussing our new town, Miss Kent. George and I, and Parry and a few others are building a new town here at Charcombe…’

But his uncle immediately took the interesting topic out of his hands. As Dido settled to coffee and French bread, Mr George – who had not previously troubled to speak three words to her since her arrival at the house – informed her that the air about Charcombe was so remarkably fine that the place seemed ‘meant by Providence, don’t you know, to be a place of Great Resort. There’s not such another place on the whole coast from Cromer to Dawlish. And soon it will be all the fashion to come here.’

Mr George Fenstanton, it seemed, had great faith in the curative powers of the sea. He was a thorough enthusiast who drank his pint of seawater and milk every morning and who – no matter what the weather – took his ‘dip’ promptly at three o’clock every afternoon. Whistling importantly through his teeth, he continued his little discourse by explaining to Dido that no one could be very unwell within a mile of the sea, nor completely healthy without spending at least six weeks of every year breathing its air and bathing in its waters. And, finally, contrived to suggest that the very pinnacle of health was only to be achieved by renting one of his own new-built houses …

His concern for the health of his fellow men and the health of his own purse seemed to be about equal. But, as he talked, Dido’s attention was drawn away from his pink-faced enthusiasm to Mr Lancelot, who was gazing silently upon the chops on his plate. She was wanting to know
his
opinion.

‘Well,’ she cried politely as soon as she had an opportunity, ‘this new town seems a delightful scheme and I wish it luck with all my heart.’ She took care to include both gentlemen in her smile.

‘Ha!’ cried Mr Lancelot. ‘It will be very delightful indeed, if only it pays us for our trouble. I confess, Miss Kent, that I would never have entered into it myself. But my father had begun upon it before he died not much more than a twelve-month ago. And—’

‘And it would be a damned discredit to his memory if you should give it up!’ said Mr George, his head positively glowing through his thin white hair.

He would no doubt have said a great deal more, but they were interrupted by the arrival of Martha Gibbs and Emma Fenstanton.

Miss Gibbs entered the room yawning and continued to yawn over her toast. ‘Lord!’ she said, ‘I ain’t slept a wink! There has been such a noise of crying all night. I did not know you had got a baby in the house, Mr Fenstanton.’

All eyes turned upon her immediately.

‘Did you not hear it?’ she asked in surprise, her knife suspended above the butter dish.

The gentlemen shook their heads.

‘I heard nothing at all,’ said Emma daintily lifting a chop from its heated dish. ‘I slept like a log – as they say. Though personally I have never supposed logs to be very sleepy sorts of things. Have you, Miss Gibbs?’

‘Oh Lord! Yes indeed. I wish I had slept like a log.’

‘I believe I heard something,’ said Dido. ‘Just once – a very faint little cry. But perhaps it was no more than the wind, or something of that sort.’

‘Ha! It was not the wind,’ said Mr Lancelot, smiling broadly, though he did not raise his eyes from his plate. ‘There is indeed a baby in the house! And I apologise to you if he kept you from sleeping, Miss Kent … and to you also, Miss Gibbs.’

‘The poor child sounded very distressed,’ said Dido.

‘I don’t doubt he was. He has been distressed for more than a century now.’

‘A century?’ repeated Martha; the knife with which she had been spreading butter clattered out of her hand.

But Dido caught the meaning of his smile. ‘Are you telling us that there is a ghost in the house, Mr Fenstanton?’

‘Oh no!’ cried Emma, yawning prettily. ‘You are going to tell one of your ghost stories, are you not, Cousin Lance?’

The gentleman made a great show of ignoring her and turned courteously to Dido. ‘But of course there is a ghost, Miss Kent. We Fenstantons could not hold up our heads in the neighbourhood if we had not a ghost in the house. And, of course,’ he added, smiling at Miss Gibbs, ‘it is Her Ladyship’s chamber – the haunted room – that
you
are lying in.’

‘Oh Lord!’

Emma laid a friendly little hand on Martha’s arm. ‘Do not mind him, Miss Gibbs. He is only teasing you.’ She threw a little grimace in her cousin’s direction. ‘Lance can be very cruel sometimes.’

Mr Lancelot caught her eye and made a mocking little bow. ‘Thank you for that kind reflection! But,’ turning back to Miss Gibbs with a smile which Dido could not entirely excuse of teasing, ‘I fancied you already knew that your chamber was haunted. For when you arrived, Letitia asked that you and she might share the haunted room. It has been a whim of hers to sleep there ever since she was a little girl.’