A Gentleman of Fortune (26 page)

Having got so far, Dido laid down her pen and looked out of her bedchamber window at the streets of Richmond and the distant meadows, above which dark grey and purple clouds were gathering. She was now quite sure that she ought to continue with her enquiries; however, she could not help but wonder what Mr Lomax would think of her decision – and hope that he might never know about it. If she could retain his regard only by changing her character entirely and ceasing to care about justice, then she must forfeit it – or else deceive him and appear to be what she was not.

This thought made her so dissatisfied and restless, and yet so very anxious to complete her business that, despite the clouds being more threatening than ever, she determined on setting out immediately. Walking, thinking, acting – even in a shower of rain – were all much to be preferred to sitting still in her chamber regretting. She put on her spencer and hurried down the stairs. But in the hall she was delayed, first by choosing an umbrella from among several in the hall stand – and then by the housemaid bringing in the morning’s post.

There were two letters for her: one thick one from Eliza which could be saved until her return and enjoyed at leisure, and another whose sender she could not guess at. It was very neatly sealed and addressed in a black,
businesslike
hand which she did not recognise.

But, when she had broken the seal, she found that it was addressed from Messrs. Fossick and Bell, Land Agents, and was a reply to her request for Mr Henderson’s new address: a request which she had all but forgotten sending. However, though she might, before receiving the note, have ceased to think about the question, her attention was immediately fixed by the extraordinary reply.

The letter was short, almost to the point of incivility.

* * *

Dido’s surprise was so great that she was obliged to read the message through several times before she could comprehend it. She leant upon the newel post, and closed her eyes in thought for a moment or two: then read the letter yet again.

There was no chance that she had misunderstood: no way but one of interpreting the words.

There had been no such tenant at Knaresborough House. Mr Henderson with his powdered hair and his bonneted daughters and his evening parties: the man that Miss Prentice had observed so closely did not exist. 

By the time Dido approached the gates of Knaresborough House there was a storm brewing and, although it was no more than an hour after midday, it was as dark as if it were evening. A few large drops of rain had begun to fall on the hot, thirsty dust of the street.

The house stood stark against the lowering sky, its windows blank. It had already the look of a deserted place and, hurrying up the sweep, her mind full of the letter’s shocking information, Dido could not help but feel a thrill of anticipation at what she might find within: as if the storm and the letter had transformed a commonplace house, in which she had dined and visited, into the mansion of a romance. The notion that Mr Henderson had lived here – and yet had not lived here, was intriguing. It made a very strong appeal to her sense of the strange and mysterious.

The maid who answered her long ringing at the bell was the same girl who had once shown them to the wrong room. She was hot and breathless with a smudge of soot upon her cheek and certainly had nothing of romance or mystery about her. She was sorry to have kept Dido waiting and hoped she would excuse them ‘all being very hard at it putting the kitchen to rights’.

Dido smiled at the girl as she walked into the entrance hall. ‘You are Sarah, are you not?’

‘Yes, Madam…I mean yes, miss.’

‘Well, Sarah, would you be so kind as to answer a question or two before you return to your duties?’

‘Yes, miss,’ said the girl, pushing closed the front door and turning back, hands folded over her stained apron. Then her eyes slid anxiously towards the kitchen. ‘But I must be about my work soon…’

‘Oh, I shall not keep you long. I just wondered – did you serve in this house when the last tenant, Mr Henderson, lived here?’

‘No miss. I come when Mrs Lansdale took the place. We all did.’

‘Oh.’ Dido was disappointed – and suspicious. She studied the girl’s round, grimy face and her pale, rapidly blinking eyes. She seemed honest. Her cheeks were flushed, but that was no doubt caused by the heat of the kitchen. ‘Are you sure? Is there no one here that was a part of Mr Henderson’s household.’

‘No miss…I mean, yes miss. I mean I’m sure. Because, pardon my saying it, it’s what’s made everything a muddle here. With everyone being new, you see and not knowing what to do. My Ma says it’s always the way in a house where folk are for ever coming and going.’

Dido smiled. ‘Yes, of course. It must be very trying for you. And I am sure you manage as well as anyone could. But the butler, Fraser, he was here in Mr Henderson’s time, was he not?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘I see.’ Dido lapsed into thought. It really was remarkably convenient for Mr Henderson that no one should remain here to remember his mysterious presence…

‘Will that be all, miss?’ asked Sarah, casting another anxious look in the direction of the kitchen and her unfinished tasks.

‘There is just one other thing. On the night that Mrs Lansdale died, Miss Prentice – she lives in the house opposite the gate, you know – she believes that she saw Mr Henderson coming here to pay a visit – at about eight o’clock. Do you know if that is so, Sarah?’

The girl frowned and shook her head. ‘No miss, I don’t. Because I was gone home then. We all were. Only Mr Fraser was here. With the family all being out he had said we could go after dinner…’

‘But did Fraser say nothing about a visit? Did he not mention it the next day?’

She thought hard. ‘No, miss, I don’t think he did. But everything was in an uproar next day of course, what with the poor lady being dead and everything.’

‘I see.’ Dido shook her head in despair.

But Sarah was thinking again. ‘Perhaps,’ she began slowly, ‘perhaps Mr Fraser was expecting to see Mr Henderson that day.’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘Well, because of the letter, miss. You see, when I went to get the letters from the post office that morning – I mean the morning before Mrs Lansdale died – there was one directed to Mr Henderson and I said to Mr Fraser what should I do with it. And he said to give it to him because he expected he would be seeing Mr Henderson soon and would deliver it to him.’

‘Did he? Did he indeed? That is very interesting, Sarah. Do you know if there had been any other letters like that one?’

‘One or two, miss, I think.’

‘And Fraser always took them.’

‘Yes miss.’

‘So, perhaps he knew where Mr Henderson had removed to?’

‘I don’t know miss. Perhaps he did.’

Dido sighed. ‘I wish very much that I could talk to Fraser,’ she said.

But the girl just shook her head. ‘No knowing where he is, miss. What with him leaving in such a hurry and being in disgrace and everything.’

‘I do not suppose,’ said Dido, without a great deal of hope, ‘that he left anything behind him by which we might discover where he is gone. He did not leave any papers or anything of that sort?’

‘Oh miss! There’s papers enough left in the drawer in the butler’s pantry! Cook says me and Ellen’s to clear them all out and burn them as soon as we’re finished cleaning the kitchen.’

Immediately Dido was alive with curiosity. ‘I should dearly like to look at them.’

The maid gave her a wondering look which seemed to say it was rather an extraordinary wish. But she only said, ‘Well, miss, then I suppose you had better come and see them. Mr Lansdale said you was to go anywhere you wanted.’

Though Dido would certainly have denied expecting to find in the butler’s pantry the kind of documents that so frequently resolved mysteries in novels, there was, after all, something irresistible to her imagination about the notion of papers: a great bundle of papers left behind as the writer fled. She only said that, ‘perhaps she might be able to find out where the butler lived and so consult with him over Mr Henderson’s visit,’ but, as she followed Sarah into the offices of Knaresborough House, her mind was not untouched by thoughts of a more exciting discovery. If not the kind of obscure and thrilling narrative favoured by the writers of ‘gothic’ novels, then perhaps a diary kept by the butler that would describe the events of the night on which Mrs Lansdale died. Some fitting climax to the mystery she was pursuing.

But it had to be admitted that there was little of romance or mystery to be found in the kitchen passage. The place might be as dark and narrow as the corridor of a castle and the lightning was, most obligingly, flashing through the small, high windows; but the sight of drugget upon the floor, the sound of scouring coming from the kitchen and, above all, the lingering smells of lye soap and roast mutton, must temper any ideas of romance.

And the butler’s pantry, which Sarah pointed out to her before hurrying away to her work, was as plain and commonplace as a room can be. She paused in its doorway and looked around, wondering about the man who had once occupied the place. There was a deal table and a small black grate; an old but comfortable chair with the horsehair stuffing coming out of the seat a little; a rag rug before the fire and a chest with a long drawer in it. There was just a hint of stale cigar smoke in the air, mixing with the smell of coal – and something else: something which Dido could not quite put a name to, but which seemed familiar and which, for some reason, brought to her mind that makeshift theatre which her brothers had created in the vicarage barn long ago…

Lightning flooded the room, showing up every scratch and stain upon the table, the spots of candle-grease on the mantelpiece. Thunder rattled at the little panes of the window. Dido stepped to the chest and opened the drawer.

It was indeed stuffed full of papers.

She drew them out eagerly, bundled them together and sat down upon the horsehair chair which was below the window and so offered the best light for reading. She drew a long breath and turned over the first sheet…

It was a washing bill.

And so was the next. And the next. She smiled to herself – aware that she had been foolish to hope for anything more and very glad that there was no one by to witness either her expectation, or her disappointment. She turned the pages over one after another – the only wonder in her mind, surprise at the amount of clean shirts, cravats and waistcoats a butler seemed to require. She had not known a manservant needed to change his cravat every day and his shirt…she checked the dates upon the bills… every two days.

She sorted out these inventories of linen and set them aside. A few papers still remained.

But her perusal of these was just as unenlightening, for they contained no more than bills for shoe string and hair powder.

She sighed, set the sheets aside on the rug, and turned back to the drawer to make quite sure that there was nothing else within. There did not appear to be any more papers; but, in order to be quite certain, she ran her hand about the drawer, reaching to the very back of it. Her fingers struck against something hard; she drew it out and discovered it to be a small brown pot.

As she held it up to the light of the window, she was aware that the smell which she had been unable to identify on entering the room had now become stronger. She unscrewed the top of the pot and sniffed at the yellowish, sticky contents.

It was gum arabic. The very stuff which her brothers had used to attach the beards and side-whiskers of the villains they had played.

Dido sat for several minutes, quite stunned, and with the little pot clutched tight in her hand. Rain battered at the window; away in the kitchen a woman was singing as she scrubbed. Another flash of lightning fell into the room, showing up the coarse characters of the papers on the hearthrug. She turned back to them. And the thought darted into her mind, with all the quickness and brilliance of the lightning itself, that here was a manuscript quite as strange and exciting as any she had fancied finding. For never had there been a manservant so remarkably well dressed!

And besides, here before her was a bill for hair powder. A bill which had been sent to a man who was completely bald…