The Seance (7 page)

‘I see,’ he said, and was silent for a while.

‘Constance – if I may—’ he said at last, ‘I am a bachelor – and I know myself well enough to say that I am a selfish man. I like my quiet, and
my comforts, and the certainty that I can go to my studio after breakfast and not be disturbed for the next ten hours. I have a cook and a maid, both excellent women, but they will sometimes bother me with questions. Now if I had someone to keep house for me; someone who would study my likes and dislikes and see that everything ran smoothly – a quiet, reserved young woman, let us say – and especially if her father were disposed to make her an allowance, for I am frankly not well off ... It wouldn’t be an onerous task, and the house is large enough for you to have your own quarters.’

A week later I was installed in my uncle’s house in Elsworthy Walk. I was so relieved not to be going to Cambridge that I should have been glad of a bed in the cellar; to find myself in a room on the top floor, looking eastward up the grassy slope of Primrose Hill, seemed altogether miraculous. The dining-table was always strewn with books and papers; my uncle’s idea of comfort was being able to leave things exactly where he wanted, and he was happy for us both to read at meals: sometimes a whole day would pass without our exchanging more than good morning and good-night. At first I could not leave the house without fearing that I would run into someone from Mrs Veasey’s or Miss Carver’s circles, but I never did, and my uncle never referred to the séances again. Instead of the Foundling Hospital I had Primrose Hill, and often that autumn I would sit by my window and watch the children at play, finding an obscure comfort in the sight.

But even in this tranquil setting it was many months before the burden of guilt and self-reproach began to lighten, only to be displaced by an increasing restlessness of spirit. My housekeeping duties were indeed far from onerous, leaving me with a great deal of time on my hands. My uncle, I soon realised, shrank from any display of emotion; not, I think, from any essential coldness but because he feared its effect upon him. From certain things he let fall, I came to suspect that his conscience sometimes troubled him about his neglect of his family, especially my mother,
whom he could have traced easily enough, and that taking me in had been his way of making amends. He seemed to like having me in the house; it gave him someone to talk to when he wished to talk, and left him to his own thoughts when he did not, and if he sensed my trouble, he gave no sign of it.

I could not, in any case, have told him what my trouble was. I was accustomed to solitude, and did not miss – or did not think I missed – the society of people my own age; I had no particular talent or ambition, and certainly no desire to marry. And yet there was
something
I craved, a nameless, faceless yearning that could only be assuaged by walking for hours at a time in all kinds of weather, until I knew every street in the district, all the way to the edge of Hampstead where the houses gave way to lanes and fields. But I never went back to Holborn.

In the end I found a situation as day-governess to the children of a Captain Tremenheere, who was serving with the Royal Horse Artillery at the barracks on Ordnance Hill. My uncle was a little put out by this, but as I reminded him, my allowance from my father would end soon enough, and I could not live upon his charity. I was happier for the occupation, and grew very fond of my three pupils, and yet the restlessness remained; I could not shake off the feeling that I was sleepwalking through my days, waiting for my real life – whatever that might be – to begin.

In the spring of 1888, my father died suddenly of a stroke. I had the news in a letter from my aunt, who wrote that he had left everything to her, with instructions to continue my allowance until I came of age the following January. She did not invite me to attend the funeral, nor did I wish to go; I knew that I had meant nothing to him, and grieved, I think, for my own lack of feeling, rather than for the man I had scarcely known.

The ensuing summer was so cold and wet that it scarcely merited the name, and the autumn was overshadowed by the continuing news of the atrocities in Whitechapel. My solitary walks were curtailed; I no longer felt at ease beyond the boundaries of St John’s Wood; and then in December Captain Tremenheere was posted to Aldershot, taking his family with him.
My twenty-first birthday had passed without my finding another situation, until one morning after breakfast, while I was idly browsing through the personal column in
The Times
, I came upon the following advertisement:

If Constance Mary Langton, daughter of the late Hester Jane Langton (née Price), formerly of Bartram’s Court, Holborn, will contact Montague and Venning, Commissioners for Oaths, at their offices in Wentworth Road, Aldeburgh, she may learn something to her advantage.

I had imagined that all would be revealed in Mr Montague’s reply, but his letter merely requested ‘such proofs as may readily be furnished’ that I was indeed the Constance Mary Langton in question. My uncle joked, as he drafted a statement to this effect, that for all he knew I might simply have wandered into the house in Bartram’s Court on the day he happened to call – a remark which troubled me more than he realised. I was also required to give the date and place of my birth – for the latter I could only put ‘in the country near Cambridge’ – and to say whether I had any sisters ‘or other close female relatives’ living, to which I replied that to the best of my knowledge I had none. In response to this, I received a note from Mr Montague saying that he would be coming up to London in a few days’ time, and would like to call upon me, whenever might be convenient, ‘regarding a bequest’. My uncle thought from the wording of the advertisement that the legacy must have come from someone on my mother’s side, but could shed no further light; he had never taken much interest in their history. Most likely, he warned me, it would be a small sum of money, or a few decrepit pieces of furniture, willed to my mother by some forgotten aunt or cousin. But the prospect had reawakened my childhood fancy that there might be some mystery about my birth. I had never mentioned this to my uncle, and was secretly relieved when he declined to attend the
interview, saying that it was my own business, now that I was of age; he could always be fetched from his studio if he were needed.

Mr Montague came to see me on a freezing January morning; I was standing by the window when Dora showed him into the drawing-room, and he paused as the door closed behind him, seemingly struck by something in my appearance. He was tall and spare, and slightly stooped, with grey hair receding markedly at the temples. His face was lined as if by suffering or illness; his skin had a greyish tinge, and there were dark shadows like bruises beneath his eyes. He might have been anywhere between fifty and seventy, and yet there was an air of diffidence, even of apprehension about him as I extended my hand – his own was icy cold – and invited him to take a seat by the fire.

‘I wonder, Miss Langton,’ he began, ‘whether the name Wraxford means anything to you.’ His voice was low and cultivated, with a faint burr to it.

‘Nothing at all, sir.’

‘I see.’

He regarded me in silence for a moment, and then nodded as if confirming something to himself.

‘Very well. I am here, Miss Langton, because a client of mine, a Miss Augusta Wraxford, died some months ago, leaving the bulk of her estate to “my nearest surviving female relation”. And assuming – forgive me – that you are indeed Constance Mary Langton, and the granddaughter, on your late mother’s side, of Maria Lovell and William Lloyd Price, then you are the principal beneficiary of Augusta Wraxford’s will, and sole heir to Wraxford Hall.’

He sounded as if he were preparing me for news of some grave misfortune.

‘The estate consists of a derelict manor house – very large, but quite uninhabitable – on several hundred acres of woodland near the Suffolk coast. The property is heavily encumbered, and will yield, at best, two thousand pounds after the creditors have been satisfied—’

‘Two thousand pounds!’ I exclaimed.

‘I must warn you,’ he said, in the same troubled tone, ‘that it will not be easy to find a buyer. Wraxford Hall has a very dark history ... but before we come to that, I am obliged to ask you certain questions – though I confess, Miss Langton, that I have only to look at you ... the resemblance is quite remarkable—’

He broke off suddenly, as if shocked by what he had just said.

‘The resemblance ...?’ I prompted.

‘Forgive me, it is only ... may I ask, Miss Langton, whether you take after your mother? In appearance, I mean?’

‘No, sir. My mother was barely five feet tall, and – I do not think I favour her at all. May I ask in turn, sir, how you came to know of my existence?’

‘From the notice of your mother’s death in
The Times
. Miss Wraxford had instructed me to trace the female line, which proved a long and difficult task; I had got as far as the notice of your parents’ marriage, but after that, the trail went cold until my clerk – who goes through all the papers every morning – brought in that death notice. But I was not at liberty to approach you then. Miss Wraxford felt that expectations were bad for the character; and of course, so long as she was alive, there was always the possibility that she might change her will. And by the time she did die, your former house had changed hands several times – hence our advertisement.’

He was silent for a moment, gazing into the fire.

‘You said in your letter,’ he resumed, ‘that you were born somewhere near Cambridge, but you do not know exactly where?’

‘No, sir.’

‘And you have no record of your birth?’

‘I am afraid not, sir; it may be amongst my father’s papers, with my aunt in Cambridge.’

‘It is possible that none exists; there is no entry in the register at Somerset House – but it was not then mandatory,’ he added, seeing the change in my expression, ‘to notify the Registrar, so you need not be alarmed on that score.’

Once again he paused, studying me without seeming to be aware that he was doing so. Despite – or perhaps because of – his talk of a resemblance, I was becoming more apprehensive with every question. Did he suspect – or even possess some evidence – that I was not my parents’ child? Should I reveal my own suspicions? I might lose a fortune by speaking out, but to remain silent would surely be wrong, perhaps even criminal. My thought was interrupted by Dora tapping at the door with the tea-tray, and for the next several minutes I was obliged to make uneasy small talk, while trying to decide what I should do.

‘Sir, before you continue,’ I said as soon as the door had closed behind her, ‘I think I ought to tell you ... I have sometimes wondered whether I might have been a foster child – a foundling. My parents never said, but it would explain ... certain things about my childhood – and if I am not their child by blood, then—’

I broke off, alarmed by Mr Montague’s reaction. What little colour he possessed had drained from his features; his cup rattled against his saucer and he was obliged to set it down.

‘Forgive me, Miss Langton – a momentary indisposition. Are you willing to tell me how you came to this conclusion – to consider the possibility, I mean?’

And so I launched into the story of Alma’s death, and my mother’s collapse, my walks with Annie by the Foundling Hospital and my father’s utter indifference, but leaving out the séances, wondering all the time what had so shaken Mr Montague. Though the fire was scarcely keeping the cold at bay, I noticed a faint sheen of perspiration on his forehead, and every so often, though he did his best to conceal it, he would wince as if in pain. He asked various questions, most of which I was quite unable to answer, about my parents’ lives before they had married – I did not even know where or how they had met – the sources of my father’s income, and whether I had any memories at all of the time before we moved to London.

‘None, sir; none that I am sure of.’

‘I see ... Let me say at once, Miss Langton, that even if your suspicions
were proven, the bequest would stand. You are your mother’s legitimate daughter according to law, and that is all that the law requires. And besides ...’

‘Mr Montague,’ I ventured, when he did not immediately continue, ‘you have spoken of a resemblance, and intimated – at least my heart divines – that you know something which touches upon my suspicions about my birth. Will you not tell me what it is?’

Still he kept silent, as if caught up in some inner debate, glancing from me to the glow of the fire and back again. Pale grey light slanted through the window; the glass was streaked with tears of condensation.