The Shrouded Walls (20 page)

Nothing happened.

I stepped back a pace and stared at the door in frustration. Then I took the candle, and holding it at an advantageous angle I peered into the eye of the lock. It was difficult to be certain, but I thought the key was on the other side and that Axel had not troubled to remove it altogether.

Going back to the desk I took two sheets of notepaper from the drawer and inserted them under the door side by side with one another. Then I took the fork and poked it into the keyhole.

The key fell to the ground without much trouble. Holding my breath I stooped and carefully pulled the sheets of paper back through the gap between the floor and the bottom of the door, and soon I saw that the key had fortunately not bounced off the paper on falling to the floor; it came gently towards me on the notepaper, and a second later I was turning the lock to set myself free.

As I opened the door it occurred to me that the footsteps overhead had stopped some minutes before, but I did not pause to question why this had happened. I tip-toed very quietly down the passage, my hand on the wall to guide me, the candle snuffed and abandoned in the room I had just left so that I was in darkness.

The house seemed still enough, but as I neared the landing I could see the light shining from the hall and heard the soft murmur of voices from the drawing room nearby. I hesitated, fearful that someone should come out of the drawing room as I was passing the door, but I knew no other way to the back stairs, so at last I took a deep breath and tip-toed quickly across the landing to another passage at the far end.

Nobody saw me. I paused, heart beating fast, and listened. Everywhere was quiet. Moving into the shadows once more I found the back stairs to the attics and cautiously began to mount them one by one.

I was convinced that the footsteps I had overheard above Rodric’s room had been Alexander’s, and had immediately suspected Axel of imprisoning him in the attics for some reason. Who else would be pacing up and down there as if he were a caged animal? And into my memory flashed the picture of the diamond-cut inscription of Rodric’s on the attic windowpane, the reference to his own imprisonment there as a boy. That room at least had been used as a prison before, and if my guess of the house was correct, tonight it was being used as a prison again.

I reached the top of the stairs, and paused to get my bearings. Nervousness and excitement made me clumsy. With my next step forward my ankle turned and I stumbled against the wall with a loud thud. I waited, my heart in my mouth, my ears straining to hear the slightest sound, and once I did think that I heard a door opening and closing far away, but nothing further happened and in the end I judged the noise to be my imagination.

It was pitch dark. I wished desperately that I had brought my candle, for I wasn’t even sure of the way to Rodric’s attic. At last, moving very quietly, I felt my way down the passage until I reached the point where the passage turned at right angles to run into another wing. I was just beginning to be unnerved by the total blackness when I turned a
corner
and saw a thin strip of light below the door at the far end of the corridor. I edged towards it, the palms of my hands slipping against the cool walls, my breathing shaky and uneven.

The silence was immense. The prisoner had evidently not resumed his pacing up and down. Some quality in the silence unnerved me. Would Alexander ever have submitted so silently to imprisonment? I visualised him breaking down the door in his rage or shouting to be released, not merely sitting and waiting in passive resignation.

I started to remember ghost stories. My scalp prickled. Panic edged stealthily down my spine, but I pulled myself together and stepped out firmly towards the light which was now not more than a few paces away. It would never do to let my nerve weaken now.

I was just stretching out my arm to guide me alongside the wall when my fingers encountered a human hand.

I tried to scream. My lungs shrieked for air, the terror clutched at my throat, but no sound came. And then a hand was pressed against my mouth and a voice whispered in my ear: “Not a sound, whoever you are” and the next moment the door nearby was pushed open and I was bundled into the dim candlelight beyond.

The door closed. I swung around, trembling from head to toe, and then gaped in disbelief.

My captor gaped too but presently managed to say weakly: “Mrs. Brandson! Why, I do beg your pardon—”

It was young Mr. Charles Sherman, the bachelor brother of James Sherman, the lawyer of Rye.

“Good heavens!” I said still staring at him, and sat down abruptly on a disused stool nearby.

“Good heavens indeed,” said Mr. Charles, smiling at me uncertainly as we recovered from our mutual shock. “I wonder if you are more surprised than I or if I am more surprised than you?”

“You could not possibly be more surprised than I,” I retorted. “Forgive me if I sound inhospitable, but may I ask what on earth you’re doing hiding in the attic of Haraldsdyke at the dead of night, sir?”

“Dear me,” said Mr. Charles, to
rn
between his obvious desire to explain his presence and his equally obvious air of conspiratorial secrecy. “Dear me.” He scratched his head anxiously and looked puzzled.

This was not very informative. “I suppose it’s some sort of plot,” I said, since it clearly took a plot to explain Mr. Charles’ encampment in the attic. “Did my husband bring you here? What are you waiting for? How long do you intend to remain?”

Mr. Charles cleared his throat, took out a handsome watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it hopefully. “Your husband should be here in a few minutes, Mrs. Brandson. If you would be so obliging as to wait until he arrives, I’m sure he will be able to explain the entire situation very easily.”

I was quite sure Axel would do nothing of the kind. He would be too angry that I had escaped from Rodric’s room to indulge me with long explanations of his mysterious activities.

“Mr. Sherman,” I said persuasively, “could you not at least give me a little hint about why you should be pacing the floor of this attic tonight and waiting for my husband? Please! I know a woman’s curiosity is her worst and most disagreeable feature, but—”

“Ah, come, come, Mrs. Brandson!”

“There! I can tell how you despise me for it, but—”

“Not in the least, I—”

“—but I’m so worried about my husband, and if you could just help to put my mind at rest—oh, Mr. Sherman, I would be so grateful to you—”

I had fluttered my eyelashes enough. Mr. Charles’ natural kind-heartedness and fondness for flaunted femininity had made him decide to capitulate.

“Let me explain from the beginning, Mrs. Brandson,” he said graciously, and sat down on the edge of a table opposite me for all the world as if we were pausing in some drawing room to pass the time of day. “I am, as you so rightly assumed, here at your husband’s bidding in an attempt to prove once and for all beyond all reasonable doubt who killed Robert Brandson last Christmas Eve. Your husband has known from the beginning that Rodric could not have killed his father, but for reasons of his own he was reluctant to speak out at the time. For various reasons of delicacy I cannot elaborate further on this except to say that your husband saw Robert Brandson alive and well
after
Rodric had quarreled with his father and ridden off over the Marsh. Therefore he knew Rodric could not have been responsible for Robert Brandson’s subsequent murder
...”

Esther, I was thinking, Esther. Robert Brandson must have caught Axel with her in her rooms. After the quarrel with Rodric he must have gone upstairs to talk to his wife and found Axel with her—in her bedroom
...

“...
let me explain what happened: according to your husband, on the day of the murder,” Charles Sherman was saying, “your husband took Rodric out shooting on the Marsh since Rodric and Vere had come to blows and George thought it would be best to separate them for a while. When they came back Robert Brandson called to Rodric from the library and summoned him inside to see him.”

“Because he suspected Rodric of being involved in smuggling and in league with Delancey.”

“Precisely. Rodric told your husband afterwards—”

“But they didn’t see each other afterwards!”

“Oh yes, they did, Mrs. Brandson! Patience, and I shall explain it all to you. Rodric told your husband afterwards that this accusation was untrue but that when he had tried to deny it to his father and cast the blame on Vere, the conversation had abruptly degenerated into a quarrel. Rodric walked out and rode off on to the Marsh and Robert Brandson, in a great rage no doubt, stormed upstairs to discuss the matter with—”

Esther, I thought.

“—your husband George—”

Esther, I thought again, and Axel was there. Robert Brandson wanted to ask his wife if she knew which of their two sons was guilty of smuggling and conspiring with Delancey.

“—but George could not help him. However, shortly afterwards he decided to go down to the library to discuss the matter further with his father—” To talk his way out of a compromising situation, I thought, and to beg his father’s forgiveness.

“—and it was then,” said Charles Sherman gravely, “that he found Robert Brandson dead. His immediate reaction—after the natural grief and shock, that is—was one of horror in case he himself, or indeed someone else whom he knew to be innocent—”

Esther.

“—was suspected of the crime. He hesitated for some minutes, trying to decide what to do, and then Esther—pardon my informality, I mean Mrs. Brandson—arrived on the scene—”

Liar, I thought. She was with Axel all along, conferring with him, trying to decide what to do.

“—and her screams roused the servants and the other occupants of the house. Rodric was naturally suspected, but Esther refused to believe it, since Rodric was her favorite son, and to pacify her George rode off after Rodric with the idea of warning him and sending him into hiding until there was proof of the murderer’s true identity. As I’ve already said, George himself thought Rodric must be innocent but was prevented from saying why for reasons of delicacy.”

“Quite,” I said.

Mr. Charles looked at me uneasily and then quickly looked away. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat again, “your husband did in fact catch up with Rodric and tell him that someone had killed Robert Brandson and that all the evidence pointed to the fact that Rodric had murdered him. Rodric was all for returning to Haraldsdyke and confronting the person he suspected of murder, but George begged him to be more prudent and eventually Rodric appeared to acquiesce and agree to go into hiding. George suggested they should make a faked death for Rodric for two reasons. First because Rodric would find it easier to flee the country if everyone thought him beneath the Marsh, and second because his mother wouldn’t have the same compulsion to clear his name—and thus perhaps jeopardize her own safety—as she would if he were alive and in exile. George said he knew it was a cruel thing to do, but he reasoned he was doing it as much for her own good as for Rodric’s; Mrs. Brandson had long been estranged from her husband, you know, and this would have given her a motive of sorts for his murder; if suspicion were diverted from Rodric it might well have fallen upon her.

“George told Rodric to travel to Vienna and go to his house there for food and lodging. George said he would return to Vienna and meet him there as soon as the inquest was over, and in fact he did leave Haraldsdyke as soon as decency permitted and hurried overseas once more, even though Haraldsdyke was now officially his, subject to the one contingency he later fulfilled by marrying you. Robert Brandson, suspecting Rodric of being in league with Delancey and Vere of being incompetent in handling money, had evidently decided to entrust his wealth to your husband.

“Now when George returned to Vienna, Rodric wasn’t there. He searched high and low for him, had inquiries made and so on, but he couldn’t gather together any evidence that Rodric had even left England. Naturally this made George very suspicious—especially when he remembered how Mary Moore, poor child, had come to him before he had left England with a wild story of seeing Rodric at Haraldsdyke after Rodric’s official
death
in the Marsh. George had dismissed the story at the time, but now he began to wonder. Supposing Rodric had changed his mind after they had parted, walked back to Haraldsdyke leaving his horse and hat by the mere as evidence of his death, slipped into the house by the back stairs and gone to the rooms of the person he suspected of murder in order to confront that person with the truth. And supposing that person had managed to kill him, hide the body and later bury it in secret so as not to disturb the convenient story of Rodric’s accidental death in the Marsh as he was guiltily fleeing from the scene of the crime—”

“But Mr. Sherman,” I said, interrupting, “who is this person whom Rodric—and now my husband—suspect of Robert Brandson’s murder?” He looked at me as if surprised I had not already guessed, and made a gesture with his hands. “Who else but your brother-in-law Vere?”

The candle flickered in the dark as a draft breathed from the casement frame, but the silence was absolute. I stared at Charles Sherman.

“George suspected Vere from the beginning,” he was saying. “As soon as he returned to England he began to search for evidence and two days ago he found it and rode that same night to Rye to ask for my help. We agreed Vere must be guilty, and worked on a plan to trap him once and for all. We reasoned that Vere had cause enough to kill his father—since his father was threatening to go to the Watch at Rye, Vere’s whole future and livelihood were at stake. It was vital to him that his father should be silenced. Also Vere had the means and the opportunity to poison Mary, he knows about poisons which kill weeds in the soil and improve the agricultural qualities of the land, he probably has a stock of such poison somewhere on the estate. He could have tampered with the tea Mary drank—George tells me it was Vere who carried the tray upstairs from the hall.”

“True ... So you and my husband are planning
...”

“What we hope will be a successful trap. We arranged that I should ride over here at dusk today and Axel would meet me at the gate and smuggle me up the back stairs to this attic where he would show me the evidence he had uncovered. We realized we would have to wait till after the funeral before putting our plan into action, as everyone would be too busy on the day of the funeral itself, but then at last when the funeral was over, who should arrive at Haraldsdyke but your brother Alexander! It at once seemed as if everything was doomed to failure, for George knew that if Alexander were once to speak to you alone, you would tell him every detail of the suspicions you had outlined in your long ill-fated letter which was never posted. Then Alexander would be sure to create havoc by making some unpleasant scene. George knew that he himself only needed another twenty
-
four hours grace, and he was quite determined that no one should interfere with his plans at that late stage. It was easy enough to keep you apart till morning, but when morning came George knew he had to act. In desperation he took some of Mrs. Brandson’s laudanum, went down to the kitchens and ordered tea. When it was ready he took the cup from the kitchens, put in the laudanum and gave it to the footman to take to your brother’s room.”

“And then I panicked,” I said dryly, “And not without cause.”

“No indeed,” Mr. Charles agreed. “Not without cause
...
But before George followed you to Rye he left that same ill-fated letter of yours to your brother in the library where he knew that Vere would be sure to find it; apparently Vere usually goes to the library to write any correspondence connected with the estate or else to read the newspaper in the hour before dinner. When George brought you home, he told me he was careful to tell Vere to inform Alice that you would be sleeping alone in your apartments tonight. Then after putting you for your own safety in Rodric’s old room, he returned to the library—and found the letter had been moved slightly and the hair he had placed on it had fallen to the floor. So it was plain Vere had seen it. We were almost sure that on reading the letter Vere would decide that you knew too much for his peace of mind; in particular you knew about Vere’s past involvement with Delancey, and this you remember, was
not
common knowledge. It was supposed that Rodric, not Vere, was the smuggler and the traitor. We thought Vere would try and kill you and put the blame on your husband. According to George himself, one of the servants saw you ride off with young Ned to Rye this morning—it would soon be common knowledge within minutes, and everyone knows Ned’s reputation. Later they would think your husband had killed you in a rage.”

My eyes widened. “You mean—”

“But of course,” said Mr. Charles, “You’re not sleeping alone in your room, as Vere supposes. You’re safe here in the attic with me, even though your husband intended that you should be safely behind the door of Rodric’s room.”

But I was not listening. There were footsteps in the corridor, light muffled footsteps, and the next moment the door was opening and Axel himself was entering the room.

I stood up, covered with confusion, and sought feverishly in my mind for an explanation. Axel saw me, turned pale with shock and then white with rage, but before he could speak Charles Sherman intervened on my behalf.

“George, I regret to say I’m to blame for this for your wife heard me and came upstairs to investigate. I thought it best to tell her a little about the situation so that she could assist us by being as discreet and silent as possible. I feared that if I kept her in ignorance she would have had a perfect right to complain very loudly indeed at my somewhat clandestine presence in her household.”

Axel was much too adroit to ask me angry questions or to censure me in the presence of a stranger. I saw his face assume a tight controlled expression before he glanced away and pushed back his hair as if such a slight gesture could release some of his pent-up fury.

“I apologize for leaving the room, Axel,” I said nervously, “but I thought the footsteps I overheard belonged to Alexander and I decided—wrongly, I know—to try to talk to him.”

“It’s unfortunate,” he said without looking at me, “but now you’re here there’s little I can do to alter or amend the situation.” He turned to Charles Sherman. “Everything is ready and everyone has gone to their rooms. We should take up our positions without delay.”

“Which positions do you suggest?”

“If you will, I’d like you to go to my apartments. You can hide yourself in the dressing room on the other side of the bedroom beyond the bed. I’ll be at the head of the stairs and will follow him into the bedroom and block his exit into the sitting room should he try to escape. We’ll have him on both sides then.”

“By God, George, I hope your plan succeeds. Supposing he didn’t in fact read the letter? Or supposing he read it and decided not to act upon it in the way we anticipate?”

“He must,” said Axel bluntly. “He’s killed three times, twice to protect the original crime from being attributed to him. He won’t stop now. Let’s waste no more time.”

“No indeed, we’d better go at once.”

Axel turned to me. “It seems I dare not trust you out of my sight,” he said dryly. “You’d better come with me.”

In the doorway Mr. Charles stopped, appalled. “Surely, George,” he began, but was interrupted.

“I would rather have my wife where I can see her,” said Axel, still refusing to look at me, “than to run the risk of her wandering about the house on her own and spoiling all our careful plans.”

I said nothing. I was much too humiliated to argue, and I knew his lack of trust was justified.

“And remember,” he said quietly to me as Mr. Charles went out into the corridor, “you must be absolutely silent and do exactly as I say. I don’t know how much Charles told you, but—”

“Everything, within the limits of what he termed ‘delicacy.’ ”

“Then you’ll understand how vital it is that nothing should interfere with our attempts to set a trap. I presume I may trust you not to scream no matter what happens.”

I promised meekly to make no noise under any circumstances.

We set off down the passage then, and as Axel carried a single candle, its light shaded with his hand, I was able to see the way without trouble. At the top of the back stairs, however, he extinguished the flame and put down the candlestick on the floor.

“Follow me closely,” he whispered. “We’re going to the landing. If you’re frightened of not being able to keep up with me or losing me in the dark, hold the tails of my coat and don’t let go.”

I smiled, but of course he could not see my smile for we were in total darkness. We started off down the stairs, my left hand on the bannisters, my right holding one of his coattails as he had suggested, and presently we stood in the passage below. When we reached the landing a moment later it seemed lighter, probably because there were more windows in the hall than up in the attics, and I was able to make out dim shapes and
corner
s. Axel led me to the long window on one side of the landing and we stepped behind the immense drawn curtains.

We waited there a long time. I felt myself begin to sway slightly on my feet.

Beside me Axel stiffened. “Are you going to faint?”

I looked coldly through the darkness to the oval blur of his face. “I never faint.”

In truth I was shivering and swaying from excitement, nervousness and dread rather than from the arduousness of standing still for so long. I leaned back against the window to attempt to regain my composure, and then just as I was standing up straight at last I again felt Axel stiffen beside me. Following his glance I peered through the small gap in the curtains before us.