The Shrouded Walls (17 page)

Mary died at one o’clock the following morning.

Six

For several hours I was too appalled to do anything. As if in a daze I heard the doctor cautiously diagnose the sickness of which I had heard before, the illness manifested by vomiting and a pain in the right side. I heard Esther talking of notifying Mary’s distant relatives, of making arrangements for the funeral. I heard Axel arranging for the doctor to stay the night so that he did not have to travel back to Winchelsea until the fog had cleared. I heard the clocks chime and doors close and footsteps come and go, and all I could think was that the nightmare was closing in on all sides of me, that Mary had died after she had revealed to everyone, not merely to Axel, how she had seen Rodric alive after his presumed death in the Marsh last Christmas Eve.

At three o’clock Axel ordered me to bed to snatch some sleep before dawn, but sleep was impossible. Even when Axel came to bed himself half an hour later and fell into an uneasy sleep beside me I still found it impossible to relax my limbs and drift into unconsciousness. At four o’clock I rose from the bed, put on a thick woolen wrap to ward off the cold and went next door into the sitting room. It was pitch dark, but finally I managed to light a candle and sat down, teeth chattering, at the secretaire to write to Alexander.

“If you have not already left Harrow,” I wrote, “please leave now. I know not what to think of events taking place here, and am very frightened indeed. Robert Brandson’s ward Mary Moore died tonight, and although the doctor diagnosed death due to an inflammation of the lower intestine, I have reason to believe she was poisoned. I think she knew something relating to the death of both Robert and Rodric Brandson, something which was apparently so important that she was killed before she could repeat her story enough times to persuade people to take it seriously. If this is so, then Robert Brandson’s murderer was not Rodric at all but someone else—and this possibility is not as unlikely as it sounds. Any of them could be guilty, except possibly Ned, the youngest son, who isn’t Robert Brandson’s son anyway but the result of Esther Brandson’s infidelity years ago. All of them had cause. Vere had been involved in smuggling to raise money to pay his debts, and his father had found out and was threatening to tell the Watch at Rye of his activities—this would have been very grave, as apart from the smuggling Vere was dealing with the Frenchman Delancey, and this might constitute treason since we’re at war with France. It’s generally thought that Rodric was the one who was in league with Delancey in this manner, but a conversation I overheard between Vere and Alice proved that Vere was the guilty one and that Rodric wasn’t involved.

“So Rodric really didn’t have the motive for murder—unless it was that his father, believing him guilty, had threatened to cut him out of his will; in fact Robert Brandson had already done this in a new will in which he left all to Axel, but this wasn’t generally known and I suppose Rodric might have killed his
father
in the hope of forestalling any change of will. But I don’t think Rodric was the kind of man to have done this. To begin with I don’t think he would have taken his father’s threat seriously. It sounds to me as if Robert Brandson was a man who shouted and roared a great deal in rage but who seldom carried out his worst threats. I don’t think Rodric would have believed there was any danger of him being disinherited.

“
But if Vere knew that his father believed him guilty of treason and smuggling, that would have been very serious indeed; even if Robert Brandson didn’t inform the Watch at Rye (as he threatened to do) he would certainly have eliminated Vere from his will. And that would have been very serious for a man with a wife and three children and neither land nor independent income of any kind.

“Esther Brandson too had cause for murder. She was estranged from her husband and had been for nearly twenty years, since before Ned was
born
. I’m almost certain she must have hated him and loathed the isolation and rural position of Haraldsdyke. At the time of his death she was having an affair with another man, and it’s possible Robert Brandson found out about this or perhaps she thought she would have a new life with this new lover if only her husband were dead. I suppose it’s less likely that a woman could have wielded the butt of the gun to club Robert Brandson to death, but Esther is tall and I suspect fairly strong. And if she were enraged she would have even twice her normal strength.

“Axel too had cause for killing his father. He was Esther’s lover. He also benefited under his father’s new will, a fact which might or might not have been known to him, but if he did know about it, he wouldn’t have wanted that new will to be changed; and if his father found out about the affair with Esther the will would naturally have been altered to eliminate Axel as a beneficiary.

“They all had the opportunity. It was generally supposed that Vere was out on the estate till late in the day, but I heard Alice say that he came back to the house much earlier, although no one saw him. Esther apparently discovered the body, but Axel went with her downstairs to the hall, according to Ned who saw them leave Esther’s rooms together, and a long time elapsed between their descent to the hall and Esther’s screams which marked the discovery of her husband’s body.

“But now listen to what happened to Mary. When Axel finally returned to Haraldsdyke later that day with the news that Rodric had apparently drowned in the Marsh Mary was so upset that she went to sit in his, Rodric’s, room to meditate among his possessions, and it was here that
she saw
Rodric slip into the room for two seconds to get some money and then slip out again. And Rodric was supposed to be dead! She told Axel, who dismissed the story as a fantasy, and was too timid to go on reiterating the tale although she herself remained convinced she had not imagined the scene. On the day she died she revealed this story to me, and her revelations were ultimately overheard by Esther, Vere, Alice, and Axel, who again dismissed the story in such a way that even I was convinced Mary had been the victim of her imagination. But then she died. I think she was poisoned. Alice keeps poison for the mice somewhere in the kitchens and anyone could have had access to it.

“If Mary really did see Rodric, and I now think she did, does this mean that Rodric is alive today? Whatever it means it seems clear that if she did see him, he didn’t drown accidentally in the Marsh as everyone thinks he did. And obviously the murderer wants his story of his accidental death to stand unquestioned so that Rodric can so conveniently take the blame for his father’s murder. For instance, if Rodric himself was murdered the authorities would surely look at Robert Brandson’s death in a very different light. But if Rodric was murdered, where’s his body? And if he’s alive, why isn’t he here to denounce the true murderer and protest his innocence? Truly I don’t know what to think. I don’t know for certain that Axel is a murderer, but what’s worse, I don’t know for certain that he’s not. All I know with certainty is that there’s a murderer under this roof and I want nothing except to escape.

“Please come. I don’t think I’ve ever needed you more than I do now, and you’re all I have.”

After I had read the letter through twice I folded it, sealed it, and wrote “ALEXANDER FLEURY, HARROW SCHOOL, HARROW, MIDDLESEX” in large letters on the outside. Then, feeling strangely comforted by having confided my worst fears and most hideous thoughts to paper, I left
the sealed letter on the blotter and returned to bed where I fell into an exhausted dreamless sleep almost at once.

I must have slept for a long time for when I awoke the mist was gone, the sun was streaming through the gap in the curtains and I was alone in bed.

I sat up. The clock on the mantelshelf indicated it was eleven o’clock, and as I stared in horrified disbelief at the lateness of the hour I heard the sound of voices in the adjoining room. I slid out of bed, drew on my heavy woolen wrap and crossed the floor to the door. Axel was talking to Esther. I heard first his level tones, and then the sound of her voice raised in anger, and I knew at once that somet
h
ing had happened to upset her considerably.

I opened the door and then froze in amazement, hardly able to believe my eyes at what I saw.

For Esther had in her hands my letter to Alexander, and someone, I saw to my fright and fury, someone had broken the seal.

Anger overcame all fear. Conscious of nothing except that an outrage had been committed I stormed into the room and, shaking with rage, snatched the letter from Esther’s fingers before she could even draw breath to speak.

“How dare you!” The words choked in my throat. I could barely see. “How dare you open my letter!”

But she took barely five seconds to recover from the shock of my entrance. “And how dare
you
!”
she flung back at me. “How dare you write such libelous filth about me in a letter to a schoolboy! I’ve never been so insulted in all my life!”

‘‘Truth is a defense to libel! ” I retorted,
“
And only a woman who behaved like a deceitful trollop running from lover to lover would stoop to the debasement of opening another’s letters—”

“Wait,” said Axel icily, and when Esther took no notice, he raised his voice until she fell silent. “Please—no, Esther, listen to me! Listen to me, I say! I think there’s no doubt that if my wife behaved badly by gossiping to her brother, you behaved equally badly by opening a sealed letter which was quite clearly addressed to someone else.”

“She’s always writing to her brother, always so sly and so secretive—I never trusted her! And who is she anyway! The illegitimate daughter of a Lancashire rake and some down-at-heel French
émigré
e
who earned her living as a kept mistress. ”

“I
beg your pardon,” said Axel, “but I think such remarks about illegitimacy and immorality fall singularly ill from your lips, madam.”

“I—” I began, but he said curtly: “Be quiet.” And I was.

“
...
pretending she’s such a lady,” Ester was saying furiously, “always trying to behave as if she’s so well-bred.”

“And so she is, madam, better-bred than you will ever be, for no one who is not ill-bred would ever dream of opening a letter not addressed to them—no, let me finish! Her father was an English gentleman of much the same class as your husband, and I don’t think you ever quarreled with
his
birth or breeding. Her mother was a member of one of the oldest houses in France, an aristocrat, madam, far superior to any of your ancestors in rank—you’ll pardon me for being so blunt over such a peculiarly delicate subject as rank, but it was after all you who introduced the subject. And as for her illegitimacy, William the Conqueror was a bastard and he was King of England, and besides, the entire Tudor dynasty was descended from the bastard line of John of Gaunt. So let me hear no more talk of my wife being in any way inferior to you, madam, for in fact the reverse is the truth, and I think you know that all too well.”

Something seemed to happen to my mind then, the dark hidden
corner
which I hid even from myself, the raw wound which never closed, the pain which I would never admit existed. Something happened to the nagging feeling that life had been unjust, to the ache of a pride burdened with the weight of inferiority. And something seemed to happen so that I saw this man for the first time, and he was not a stranger to me at all but the man who would stand by me and speak for me and care for me against the world. And all at once the wound was healed and there were no dark
corner
s of the mind which I was afraid to examine and I had my pride and my self
-
respect restored to me as strong as they ever had been before I knew what the word legitimacy meant. The cure was so vast and so sudden that there were hot tears in my eyes and I could not speak. And I saw him through my tears, and loved him.

Esther was going. She was white-faced, furious still but her fury repulsed, her abuse shattered. Axel had said to her: “Please leave us now,” and she had muttered something and turned abruptly to the door, her footsteps brisk and her head held high. After her the door slammed and we were alone.

“Axel,” I said, and burst into tears.

He took me in his arms and I clung to him and wept unashamedly against his breast. His fingers stroked my hair, lingered on the nape of my neck.

“Hush,” he said at last. “The incident is hardly so tragic as to deserve such grief! It was a great pity you wrote such a letter but if Esther feels insulted she has only herself to blame. No matter how much she distrusted you or suspected you of writing such foolishness she had no excuse to open the letter.”

I could not tell him I was crying for another reason altogether, but perhaps he guessed for he said: “Her words grated on me. If there’s one subject I hate discussing with any Englishman or Englishwoman, it’s the subject of class and rank. I’ve too often been slighted and called a foreigner to have any patience with those who try to invoke their own blind prejudices in the name of social degree.” He kissed me lightly on the forehead and while I was still unable to speak he took the opened letter which lay on the secretaire where I had let it fall after snatching it from Esther’s hands. “I must say, however, that I do find this letter particularly unfortunate.”

It was then at last I remembered what I had written in the letter and the horror flooded back into my mind.

“You read it?” I said, hardly able to breathe. “All of it?”

“Under Esther’s direction I glanced at the parts where our names were mentioned.” He folded the letter up again and not looking at me put it away in his wallet.

All my old fears and anxieties swept over me again. I felt my limbs become taut and aching.

“May I have the letter, please?” I said unsteadily. “I would still like to send it.”

He still refused to look at me. It was the first time I had ever seen him embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” he said at last, “but I’m afraid I can’t possibly consent to you sending it. I’ve no wish to censor whatever you may want to discuss with Alexander, but in this case I’m afraid I must.”

There was a long silence. I felt the color drain from my face. Finally he brought himself to look at me.

“Much of what you say is—unfortunately—true,” he said slowly, “but there is also much that is not true. For example, you assume Mary was poisoned with rat poison kept in the kitchens. I can tell you straight away that Alice does
not
keep rat poison in the kitchens. It was kept there for a time but then a servant girl took some to try and poison her lover, and my father promptly ordered that the poison be made when we needed it and not stored. Also, there’s absolutely no evidence that Mary was poisoned. It’s true that you can think of a reason why it might have become necessary to murder her, but that’s not proof of murder and never will be. Similarly, this is true of all your statements; you say that any of us could have killed my father and that all of us had cause and opportunity, and to some extent this is true, but you have no proof which of us killed him—you haven’t even proof that Rodric didn’t kill him, and before you can begin to accuse anyone else, I think you should first prove Rodric to be innocent. The only evidence that exists all points to the fact that Rodric killed him, and as for Mary saying she saw Rodric alive after he drowned in the Marsh, I’m afraid I’m still convinced the episode was a figment of her imagination. Anyway, if it’s anyone’s responsibility to discover who killed my father, it’s certainly not yours and I would strongly insist that you go no further with your extremely dangerous inquiries. If Mary was poisoned—and I don’t for one moment admit that she was—and there’s a murderer in this house, then you yourself would be in danger if you persisted in your foolhardy inquiries. I must insist that you leave the matter alone.”