The Wages of Sin [The Mysterious] (3 page)

“He was always rather irritable by dinner time.” Elizabeth joined Charles by the mantel, covering her distress by taking down one of the shepherdesses and rubbing at an entirely imaginary spot of dirt. “The pain, you see? He would have his dinner on a tray in his room, take his dose, and then fall asleep if he could.”

“Just so.” Floyd smoothed a lock of gray hair back beneath his wig and looked imploringly between Elizabeth and George as if to say
is this a subject for the ladies
? Elizabeth brought her fan from her pocket, snapped it open. George pushed aimlessly at the cruet, and in the absence of further guidance Floyd carried on, reluctantly. “Well. Evidently what happened is that your father fell into a drugged, insensible sleep. Some time during the night the food poisoning caused him to vomit, and he, mm well, choked to death without ever waking.”

Elizabeth’s fan halted, then picked up its pace; she turned her back on the doctor, bowed over the fire. George studied the salt. And Charles said "But what about the hand-print?"

"My dear boy," the doctor loosened a button in the centre of his waistcoat and tucked his hand inside. "The mark was too definite to have been left by an assailant. Pressure of that kind would have left your father's face bruised. Um… scraped. This was nothing of the sort, only a cold white mark. No doubt caused by the blood sinking towards the, mm, nether extremities."

The fan snapped shut. Elizabeth pressed the tip to her mouth as if to keep in a cry, then said, "I'm going to take some breakfast up to Emma."

"Don't…"
"She deserves to know."
George's lips went white with strain. "Even if it kills her?"

"Your wife is not some nervous child, George. Nor does consumption destroy all the powers of the mind. She frets up there, all alone. I daresay she is more likely to expire from loneliness and ennui than from shock. She deserves to be told."

Grimacing, George gave a deep, weary sigh. He dropped his head into his hand again, waved the other vaguely towards the door. "Do as you will. You always do."

Charles opened his mouth to say
and did food poisoning fill father’s nostrils with dust?
and Jasper caught his gaze. There
was
a red note to the color of his eyes, like a thread of blood mixed in with brandy. It made Charles think again of vampires; wonder what it would be like to have the wide, sullen mouth fasten on his throat and suck. But Jasper did nothing of the sort. He just smiled a little and almost imperceptibly shook his head.

As Charles busied himself getting more bread, turning to the fire to disguise the flush, George’s longsuffering sigh came again from the end of the table. “Although I never had any doubt it was an accident, I must say it comes as a relief to hear you confirm it, Dr. Floyd. I would hate to have inappropriate remarks made, and I know father would hate it too.” He scraped his chair back. “And now I suppose I should begin making arrangements. Thank you for coming so speedily, Doctor. You have set our minds at ease.”

Charles shut the breakfast room’s door behind him and leaned against it. The rain had drawn off, and sunlight shone from a pale, washed sky, into the eggshell-like dome of the hall. On the ceiling far above, the pink drapery and golden hair of Persephone curled about the pomegranate that Hades held out to her. The Lord of the underworld had long, white limbs scarcely veiled by his indigo cloak. His face, concealed from those below by the flying silk of his jet black hair, turned to her and she smiled.

Charles started so severely that his feet almost left the ground. He thought for a moment that Death had stepped from the painting and stood before him, but it was only Jasper, materializing out of the shadow of the stairs as if he had stood there, waiting for the chance, since the doctor left.

“You startled me!” Caught between surprise and that odd flutter of not-unpleasant fear, Charles laughed. But he looked down nevertheless. Leather soled shoes. Jasper’s steps should echo through this vault as his own did—heavier than his own, in fact, for Jasper was bigger.

“I want to show you something.”
“What?”

Jasper bent his head and swallowed a smile, though part of it escaped, lifting the very ends of his lips. His eyes thinned and wrinkled at the edges. The effect was oddly sweet. “I don’t think you would come if I explained.”

Father’s enemy
Elizabeth said. And Charles’ father—it didn’t seem possible. He would sleep soon and, waking, discover it had all been a strangely theatrical dream. But Charles’ father was dead. Jasper’s shoulders were broad and his step silent. He had the power to hold an old man down while he drowned in his own vomit, and the stealth not to be caught at it.

“No.”
“Then come with me.”

Curiosity got the better of him. How dangerous could a clergyman be, after all, against an opponent not already stupefied with drugs? Charles nodded, and followed Jasper up the staircase. From the marble-topped dresser on the landing, the statue of a little black boy in a turban watched them both pass out of blank eyes outlined in gold.

Jasper opened the door to one of the guest bedrooms, stepped aside to let Charles in. Regretting the lack of his sword—still hanging in his own room—Charles brushed past. His shoulder touched Jasper’s chest, and he stopped, long enough to feel the man’s sharply indrawn breath through his own body.

The green silk wallpaper had faded in the light from the windows, and the hangings of the bed showed an early lacework of moths. The washbasin had not yet been emptied of its grey, soapy water, and on the dresser a
nécessaire
stood open, displaying a shaving kit, an unstopped perfume flask, and a sphere of wig powder tied up in a stocking.

“For a few days.” Jasper shut the door and stood in front of it. The quiet click of the latch felt ominous. The room filled with the kind of prickle that presages a storm, and sunlight pressed on the back of Charles’ head as he retreated towards the window. From the open bottle on the dresser came the animal, sensual smell of ambergris, like a fox in rut.

Charles took out his handkerchief and wiped suddenly sweaty hands. He had begun to breathe hard again, half frightened, half enthralled. “You wanted to show me something?”

Jasper’s tongue swept out to moisten his lower lip. He gave a little twitch as though interrupted mid thought. His voice, when he spoke, was husky as the scent. “I did.” He moved to the wall by the fireplace, and when Charles joined him there stood quiet for a long moment. “Do you hear that?”

They might have been in Church; Charles too felt he had to whisper. "Hear what?"
"Closer." Jasper took him by the shoulders, positioned him with an impersonal, authoritative touch. By the time it occurred to him to resent being handled like a puppet, he found himself standing flat against the wall. Its rougher texture proclaimed that they had reached the old house; the Tudor core around which his grandfather had constructed the modern wings.
The wall at his back, and all down his front pressed the living presence of Jasper Marin—the man radiated sensuality like a candle flame's light. Heat kindled in the pit of Charles' belly, and flooded his body. His yard stiffened, and that only redoubled the burn of awareness, and delight. "I don't…" he tried wriggling away, ashamed.
This time Jasper's smile was almost fond. He lowered his head so that his mouth almost touched Charles' ear, and said in that same drifting, intimate voice, "You're nothing at all like your brother, are you?" Lifting a hand, he covered the side of Charles' face, turning him gently to press his ear to the wall.
At first he was conscious of nothing but that hand curved around his cheek, the finger with its jet signet ring resting in the hollow above his lip. The little hairs there stood on end at the touch, and all over his body the rest of his skin tingled in sympathy.
Then a small part of his brain registered that this was a huge hand, much bigger than the print on his father's face. At that sobering thought he felt the cool of the plaster against his other cheek, and the smell of lime and dust made his racing heart shudder to a halt. Through one ear he could hear Jasper's breathing, the long, barely audible tide of it. Through the other came the muffled sounds of the house. Doors closing, feet in the passages. Somewhere beyond it… no, not further, but fainter,
closer
to him, as if echoing through the wood and brick of the house itself, in the hollows of the chimneys and the dust of the hearths, wailed the eerie mewling cry of a newborn child.

Jasper shook his head. “No. It’s always been here. It grew louder last night, as though the child had been left alone. I lay awake much of the night, listening to it.”

“The wind, then. Some trick of the wind across the chimneys.” Charles retreated from the wall, turned and did not stop moving until he was at the door. But when he placed his hand on the latch, the little cry, despairing, unremitting, wailed on within the metal.

“You know that isn’t so.” Jasper’s powdered face was so white that beside it the curls of his wig looked discoloured, a helmet of ivory.

It almost startled a laugh out of the man. Charles could see the amusement burst like a wave in the back of those extraordinary eyes.

"I am prepared to try it, if it will make you listen to what I say."
"Why?"
"Because there is a curse on this house, Mr. Latham and, if you do nothing to lift it, I am afraid for you all."
Charles stiffened. Abruptly the room and its occupant disgusted him; the incense-like smell and his own deeply atavistic response. "I am an educated man, Mr. Marin. Whatever is going on in this house, I'm sure it needs no appeal to the forces of childish credulity and Papist superstition. If you'll excuse me."
"And I thought you believed in honesty." Jasper raised a sceptical eyebrow, sat down on the edge of his bed. He was human enough, at least, to sink a little into the mattress, leave creases in the counterpane. "Perhaps you are more like George than I thought; happy for a congenial explanation, even when you know it isn't the truth."
"Do not insult my brother to my face." Charles paused with the door half shut. "He is the only reason you are being tolerated here at all."

Jasper bowed his head in the same meek, enduring curve he had used at breakfast. He turned his face away. "Just as you say."

Drawn to the library, as he was every day, Charles could not settle. The high windows poured light on the crimson leather chairs, and the rows of books glowed like banks of gems, their titles picked out in gold. He touched Lady Ranelagh's Collection of Medical Receipts, and snatched back his hand as if scalded. The cry reverberated even in its binding. Beneath the crackle of the fire, up through the legs of the chairs and the struts of the bookshelves, came the cat-like mew of a newborn child.

Once he had begun to hear it, Charles could not block it out. Stopping his ears only made it vibrate through the floor and up into his bones, where it resonated strangely in the sound-box of his skull.

The voice drove him out of doors, at first to the formal garden. But where the house's shadow lay across the box hedges he fancied even the flowers drooped beneath its oppression. Late lavender stood up in sticks, and the snapdragons had grown leggy; sprawling masses of multicoloured jaws. Autumnal leaves drifted yellow on the shingled paths and, as he walked further, a spattering of heavy droplets shook from the screen of cedars and soaked, darker yet, into the black wool of his mourning coat.

He opened the gate in the far wall, and stepped into the family wilderness. It felt cleaner here, the wind making the long flaxen grasses ripple like a lake of champagne. Fronds brushed his calves as he waded in, plump beads of water flashing as they fell. Cold water spread across his shins and wicked up to the kneebands of his breeches. Behind him, his wake could be traced in a trail paler blond against the honey coloured meadow.

About a mile in, a massive tree had been allowed to fall and rot. He clambered up onto the trunk and sat, gazing at the house, waiting for his unquiet thoughts to smooth.

Jasper had no right to call him dishonest. Was it dishonest to refuse to seize the first explanation that came to hand and bend all to fit it? Oh he wouldn't deny that the thing last night had struck him at the time as being uncanny, even evil. But didn't Dr. Floyd's explanation cover all the facts without having to postulate some other world of malicious spirits? His memory might indeed tell him he was attacked first, knocked down after, but surely a blow on the head
could
disarrange the mind, mix fancy with fact? He might be remembering it wrong.

And the baby’s cry? That he hadn’t heard before Jasper pointed it out, and Jasper was his father’s enemy. Jasper had every reason to want him jumping at shadows, ignoring what was plainly in the light. The theatre world had taught Charles that much could be done with suggestion, and Jasper seemed a master of it.

The unreliable sun disappeared behind a cloud, and it grew chill. A fine, light drizzle began as Charles squinted hard at the house. It looked the same as always: the two wings white and orderly, a triumph of classical reason, the core of it a more whimsical Tudor red-brick, with lines of ornament in cream and twisted, exuberant chimneys. Grafted in front, a Grecian portico attempted—almost successfully—to marry the two styles.

Could that infant have been crying, inconsolable, somewhere within the fabric of the house, even as he played in its corridors? Could he have grown up with that sound embedded in the very makeup of his being?

Maybe that explained why he seemed to have no room, within him, to grieve for his father? Maybe it excused the wicked ingratitude of such a hard heart.

Sighing, he leaped down from his perch on the tree, his stockings striped brown from the trunk, and the back of his black breeches striped green. Perhaps George and Floyd were right after all; there was no mystery, only a tragic accident that could be mourned and buried safely. The third Earl Clitheroe would become the fourth, and life would go on in much the same untroubled path it had travelled before.