Supping With Panthers (46 page)

I nodded. Eliot had indeed mentioned this theory to me some weeks before, and his reasoning had struck me as perfectly exact.

‘Good,’ said Eliot. ‘Then it is clear also, I think, that the subterfuge practised by Lady Mowberley – or rather the woman who calls herself Lady Mowberley – is part of this same conspiracy. You will not have been aware of this, but Rosamund was engaged to George Mowberley whilst still a child. They were then separated for several years. George would scarcely have recognised his fiancée at the time when they married.’

‘But in fact,’ I exclaimed, ‘it was not the fiancée at a whom he married, but the woman we are now chasing who had taken her place! Is that what you suspect?’

‘Exactly so,’ nodded Eliot. ‘You are on excellent form tonight, Stoker. I congratulate you on your perspicacity.’

‘You believe, then,’ said the Professor slowly, ‘that she has fled to Whitby to cover her tracks? There is evidence there which may prove what she has done?’

‘It would seem probable,’ Eliot replied. ‘She visited there quite recently, less than four weeks ago. However …’

‘We must hurry to King’s Cross at once!’ I insisted, interrupting him, for it seemed to me that we had no time to lose. ‘We must book our tickets for the very next train!’

‘Yes,’ said Eliot. ‘That should certainly be done.
However
– as I was going to say – I do not think that all three of us should depart on the chase. The false Lady Mowberley is evidently a woman of the most remarkable intelligence and malignity. Her talent for deception is an extraordinary one.’ And as he said this it seemed to me that he spoke of his adversary almost with admiration, rather as a duellist might compliment his foe. But then Eliot’s frown deepened, and his face grew dark once again. ‘Who knows what web she may have spun around poor Lucy?’ he muttered. ‘She has fooled us once – she may do so again. Our journey to Whitby may prove nothing but the wildest of goose-chases. I would be reluctant to abandon Lucy to one man’s care alone.’

‘But Westcote has his own friends,’ I protested, ‘who will help him to watch over his wife. There is no reason why Lucy should be in any greater danger just because we are temporarily absent.’

The Professor nodded. ‘I am inclined to agree with Mr Stoker. The false Lady Mowberley, as you have said yourself, Jack, is a woman of quite diabolical powers. It will require all our combined skids and bravery, if we are to track her down and confront her successfully. We have all of us, in our different ways, been involved in this case from the start. I do not believe it would be wise to separate now.’

Eliot bowed his head. He looked unhappy. ‘If you are convinced of that,’ he said.

The Professor nodded his head. ‘The forces we are engaged against are not lightly to be approached. We will call on Westcote now and explain die situation to him. But we must hurry. Every minute that passes loses us the advantage.’

By now we had reached Piccadilly Circus, and even in the early hours of the morning that mighty hub of the metropolis was crowded with vehicles. We hired the first hansom we came across and ordered it to drive to Myddleton Street, where we found Westcote still sitting up by the side of his wife. Eliot warned him on no account to leave Lucy unattended, and in our absence to allow no one into the house except those whom he knew, and could absolutely trust. Eliot repeated this warning over and over again, in the grimmest of tones: no one! No one at all! Then at last he turned to Lucy and kissed her lightly on the cheek. We all of us, I think, felt upset to part from the fair object of our concerns; yet I for one was grateful for our brief visit to her sick-bed, for I knew that the image of her would now be constantly before my eyes, reminding me in the most vivid manner possible of how pressing and desperate our mission was. In such a mood, I thought as we left for King’s Cross, might a knight of old have departed Camelot.

We reached the station at shortly after five a.m. We had to wait almost an hour for the first train north but during that time we were able to ascertain that a woman answering to Lady Mowberley’s description had indeed been observed the evening before, boarding the last train for York. She had been seen, furthermore, with a baby in her arms, and both the guards who remembered her commented on the peculiarity – that a woman of her evident rank did not have a nursemaid for the child. I could see that this news disturbed Eliot, and when our own train finally departed he sat slumped for much of the journey in thought. ‘It seems too obvious,’ he muttered, ‘actually to be carrying the child in her arms. She must be very confident. Either that – or else…,’ His voice traded away and he slumped once again into pensive silence.

Fortunately, our train made excellent speed, and we arrived in good time to catch our scheduled connection. Despite Eliot’s evident forebodings I felt a good deal more cheery by now; and certainly, sitting on the Whitby train gazing out at the August sunshine, and surrounded by the cheery babble of holidaymakers bound, like us, for the Yorkshire coast, the fears of the previous night appeared quite banished from my mind, and I was confident our foe would soon be run to earth. I thought of all the hints which my companions had given me, that she was somehow more than human; how utterly ridiculous these appeared to me now! Not even our arrival at Whitby itself, which had been cast by my imaginings as a place of menace and fear, could dim this mood of optimism; for it was in reality a most lovely spot, built around a deep harbour, and rising so steeply on the eastern side that the houses of the old town seemed piled up one over the other, like the pictures we see of Nuremburg. Only the ruins of the Abbey, lowering over the town on the eastern cliff, immense and romantic, suggested that Whitby might indeed correspond to the place of my imaginings; but in the evening sunlight, even the Abbey seemed more picturesque than anything else.

A few inquiries soon established where George’s fiancée, Rosamund Harcourt, had lived. We drove a couple of miles along the coast to where Harcourt Had stood, an imposing pile almost on the edge of the cliffs. Having alighted by the entrance to the driveway, we advanced through gardens grown wild and tangled with as much circumspection as the fading light would allow. No one intruded on us, however, and by the time we had arrived at the house itself I was starting to doubt whether anyone lived there at all, for many of the windows had been boarded up and the general impression was one of emptiness, so that I began to fear our journey there had indeed been a fool’s errand. But then Eliot pointed to the gravel of the forecourt, and I saw the marks of a single line of footsteps; so it was evident that someone at least was around. ‘A woman,’ said Eliot, crouching by the indentations in the gravel, ‘judging by the smallness of the feet – but who?’ He glanced at me; I patted the bulge of the revolver in my coat. He nodded, then climbed the steps and hammered on the door.

An answer was a long time coming; but it came at last. An old woman, evidently an ancient servant of the Harcourts, finally opened the door; and at the sight of her lined and withered face, I watched Eliot’s own expression visibly lighten. She proved to be the housekeeper, appointed to maintain the house until such time as the Mowberleys should choose to return; she had been a servant to the family for over fifty years, and clearly mourned the house’s emptiness and state of disrepair. She was taciturn at first, as I believe is often the Yorkshire way; but once Eliot had hinted that her mistress might be in danger, she opened up remarkably and proved eager to assist us in any way she could. At first, however, this seemed likely to be not very much. No, she told us, she had not seen Lady Mowberley for more than two years – not since before her wedding, indeed. No, she had observed no strangers in the neighbourhood. No, there had been no mysterious or unexplained sicknesses. ‘Not since Her Ladyship herself were ill,’ the old woman added, ‘before her marriage to Sir George.’

‘Ill?’ Eliot inquired.

‘Pale, like – thin – awful weak. Queer, she grew. Like she were numb in the head. That’s when she arranged her wedding, you see, even though her own mother were only just dead. Carried on, she did, wouldn’t hear no. Two months later it were done. Married!’ The housekeeper shook her head. ‘Sad affair, it were, sad and strange.’

‘Strange?’ asked Eliot, clearly intrigued. ‘In what way? Apart from its hurried nature, that is?’

The old woman shook her head. ‘It were that private, it were wrong, all wrong.’

‘How do you mean, private?’

‘Just her and Sir George, and Sir George’s best man. Arthur, I think he were called. Gentleman from London, anyhow.’

‘No relatives?’

‘No, none to be had. Her Ladyship were the last – the last of the Harcourts. The only one left.’

‘And so there was just her and the two others in attendance at the church? You are absolutely sure of that? There was no one else at all?’

‘As I said, only the three.’

Eliot’s frown deepened. ‘And afterwards? Did you see your mistress then?’

Again the housekeeper shook her head. ‘No, she went right off. Her and her husband. I told you. We never saw them at all.’

‘So – let me be perfectly clear about this – Sir George and Lady Mowberley left on their honeymoon straight away? Is that correct? And before that, for her own wedding, your mistress had had no relatives about her, no friends –
no one she knew at all?’

‘Aye, but it were her own will. She were like that, solitary, since she went id with the sickness in her head. Wouldn’t have nowt to do with us servants – brought in new ones of her own. I weren’t allowed near her on her wedding day at ad, even though I’d been with her since she were a little babe. None of us were.’

Eliot glanced at the Professor. He nodded in reply, as though confirming some private suspicion of which they had both spoken before. Eliot turned back to the old woman. ‘You have been most helpful,’ he said, ‘but please – one thing more. On the night before the wedding, did any other strange event occur? Anything you remember? Anything at all?’

The housekeeper thought; then she shook her head. ‘No. Nowt – save for the general queerness of Her Ladyship’s mood.’ Then she paused, struck by a sudden remembrance. ‘There were the disturbance by Mrs Harcourt’s tomb…’

‘Mrs Harcourt?’ Eliot interrupted. ‘That would have been Lady Mowberley’s mother, of course?’

The old woman nodded. ‘Aye. Someone had forced open the entrance to her crypt. But that weren’t here; that were back in Whitby, in St Mary’s Church.’

Eliot had suddenly tensed, quite rigidly, and his nostrils had dilated as though literally with die scent of the chase. ‘Just let me repeat this,’ he said slowly. ‘On the night before Lady Mowberley’s wedding, there was an incident involving the Harcourt crypt? What? – someone trying to break into the coffin, perhaps?’

‘Aye.’ The housekeeper nodded. ‘Perhaps. Though why they’d want to do that, I couldn’t say.’

Eliot nodded as though in triumph. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. ‘Thank you very much.’ He pressed die old woman’s hands; then he turned and without a further word began to hurry down the drive.

The cab was waiting for us; Eliot ordered the driver to return us to Whitby, then sat in silence with his lips compressed and his eyebrows drawn, his eyes expressive of a puzzle solved. I myself, of course, remained as mystified as I had been before; but I remembered Eliot’s dislike of being questioned and judged it best to wait until he should speak of his own free will. When he entered a shop, however, and ordered a pick, a shovel and a heavy hammer, my curiosity could no longer be restrained.

‘Tell me your thoughts, Eliot,’ I demanded once we had left the store. ‘You are now certain, I presume, that Sir George did not marry his real fiancée?’

‘Of course,’ replied Eliot. ‘The solution is apparent, I would have thought’

‘But you are forgetting,’ said the Professor, ‘that Mr Stoker is not filly conversant with the background of the case.’

‘Background?’ I inquired. ‘What in particular?’

‘In particular?’ The Professor smiled, then stroked the bulge of his stomach as he thought. ‘Mind control, for instance.’ His smile faded. ‘There is a way – I have seen it myself, so I know it to be true – for the mortal brain to be seduced and utterly enslaved. The victim becomes nothing but another person’s tool. Such a fate may have been – no, surely was – Rosamund Har-court’s.’

‘Her “queerness”, you mean?’

‘Exactly so,’ said Eliot. ‘The wedding, the hiring of new servants, the demand for privacy – all would have been done at another’s behest, for her thoughts by then would not have been her own. And in following such commands, Miss Harcourt would have been preparing her death. Death, I say’ – he frowned – ‘or something even worse.’

‘Worse?’

Eliot glanced up at the eastern cliff where the Abbey stood framed against a bank of darkening cloud. ‘That is what we have to find out,’ he muttered. He shivered suddenly and concealed his shovel beneath the folds of his coat. He glanced up at the sky again. It was almost green; the air was heavy with a sultry heat and that prevailing intensity which, on the approach of thunder, affects persons of a sensitive nature. ‘There will be a storm tonight,’ he said. ‘That can only help us.’ He glanced at his watch; it was now just past nine. ‘Come,’ he said, ‘we should have something to eat. What we must do tonight should not be attempted on an empty stomach.’

What he meant, I already suspected – the shovel and pick had not been bought on a whim – but I had no wish as yet to have these dark thoughts confirmed. I ate as heartily as circumstances would allow; and it was not long off midnight before we finally left the inn. The heat, if anything, seemed even worse now than it had done at nine o’clock; and the closeness of the air was most oppressive. I was grateful to be walking along the harbour’s edge, for Eliot was leading us along the foot of the eastern cliff towards the headland on which the Abbey stood. Then suddenly, I heard a rumble of thunder; gazing out to sea, I saw a mass of fog in a ghostly white wall, rolling in through the harbour mouth. There was another rod of thunder; and without any further warning the tempest had broken. With a rapidity which seemed incredible, the whole aspect of nature at once became convulsed: die waves rose in growing fury, breaking over the piers and the harbour front; the wind roared as though in competition with the thunder; the sky overhead seemed trembling under the shock of the footsteps of the storm. For a second, the fog lifted and broke; gazing out at the sea again, I saw boiling mountains of water and foam, rising in an immeasurable grandeur and cast a brilliant silver by the lightning overhead; and then the view was swallowed by the fog and we too, on the harbour’s edge, were swallowed as wed, so that I could barely see the faces of my companions through the dankness of the mists.