A Gentleman of Fortune (6 page)

Dido wiped her eyes and, hardly knowing what she was doing – or why she was doing it – she leant over the river. There were torn fragments of paper slowly darkening in the water and beginning to sink.

Interested in spite of her misery, she pushed aside a twig of willow and looked upstream to learn whence the pieces of paper had come.

On a sandy bank a few yards away stood a woman – a small woman in a brown dress – urgently tearing at a bundle of papers and throwing the pieces down into the river. Now and again she would look quickly to left and right as if to ensure she was not observed, then she would return to her tearing and throwing.

As she finished her task and shook the last fragments from her hands she lifted her head in relief. The sun shone full upon her face… It was Miss Prentice.

Dido stared, wondered…and looked down at the pieces of paper drifting within her reach among the rushes. Some of them were already sunk down into the mud – but many others were still floating, the black words upon them still visible. She hesitated, struggled against temptation – and failed. In one swift movement, she stooped, plunged her hand into the cool water and snatched up some of the pieces.

Then she stood for a moment, allowing the water to drain away through her fingers and fighting off the last attacks of conscience. The papers were almost certainly letters which the lady wished to destroy. It was not honourable to look. But why had she been so intent upon disposing of them quietly? Was it in any way connected with the shock which had made her faint yesterday? Was it connected with Mrs Midgely’s mysterious visit to the Lansdales – and the rumours which were circulating against Mr Lansdale?

She
must
look.

She held one dripping fragment up to the dappled sunshine that fell through the willow branches and was very much surprised to see, not handwriting but squarely printed words. It was not letters which Miss Prentice was throwing away, it was the pages of a book!

And a rather boring book too. The words upon her scraps were long and closely printed and rather smudged from the water, but here and there a phrase was discernible. Phrases such as:
the inevitable progress of improvement
and
inalienable privileges of all mankind and justifiable opposition.

Dido turned the pieces over in her hand, quite at a loss as to why they should merit such eager destruction. As she did so, something else caught her eye. On one fragment, there was a little bit of faded handwriting in slightly bluish ink. At first she thought it might be a note or comment that had been written in a margin, but, when she looked closely, she saw that it was the torn end-paper of the book – with
Richmond Circulating Library
written upon it.

Her surprise increased and she peered upstream through the curtain of branches. Miss Prentice had now regained the path and was hurrying away between willows and hawthorns and trailing pink dog-roses, her narrow brown back bent over in haste. Dido watched her go with a frown and a puzzled shake of the head.

What possible reason could there be for a respectable, middle-aged lady to take a book from a circulating library, tear it up in secret, and cast the pieces into the Thames?

Dido soon caught up with Miss Prentice. She was resting upon the step of a stile where the shade of willows gave way to more open ground and the long grass foamed white with cow-parsley and wild garlic. The path was busier here, with several gentlemen, ladies and parasols strolling by, and an anxious nursemaid urgently forbidding her charges to wander near the river. Beyond the stile a small herd of cows tore rhythmically at the rich June grass and, in another field close by, two men with gypsy tans were tossing hay onto a wagon.

‘I am very glad to see that you are recovered from your illness of yesterday,’ said Dido when the first greetings were over.

‘Oh yes! Thank you. As to that… It was the heat you know,’ replied Miss Prentice with some confusion. ‘Nothing but the heat I assure you. I am quite well today. I am seldom ill – quite blessed with good health, which is so very…’ Her voice trailed away. She stood up and proposed their walking back to the town together.

Dido gladly agreed, and fell into step beside her. Her curiosity was now once more in full play, acting like a kind of half-effective analgesic to blunt the edge of painful disappointment. She looked sidelong at her companion; there was a rapid blinking of the eyes which spoke of some agitation, but a very determined pretence at calm.

It was as fair an opportunity for conversation as she was likely to get, and there were a great many questions which she was longing to ask. But she judged it best not to reveal that she had witnessed the tearing of the book. That mystery would be more likely solved by strategy than questions. And, as for pursuing the business of Mrs Midgely’s acquaintance with the Lansdales –
that
, she thought, had better not be attempted. A fainting fit in the heart of the countryside would be very inconvenient indeed!

So she settled upon what seemed a safe branch of the interesting subject and began cautiously with: ‘Before you were overcome by the heat yesterday morning, Miss Prentice, you were telling us about Mr Henderson – the gentleman who used to live at Knaresborough House.’

‘Oh yes! Mr Henderson – we were talking of him, were we?’ She seemed relieved.

‘You were telling us,’ Dido continued, assured that she was upon safe ground, ‘that he visited Mrs Lansdale – on the evening before she died. And, I wondered, if you have ever seen him visiting before?’

‘Oh, no. No I do not believe that I have. The Lansdales had very few visitors as a rule. Very few. Which I always thought rather a shame – for such a fine house. It was
very
different when Mr Henderson lived there himself,’ she continued eagerly. ‘He kept a great deal of company – not dinner company…’ She leant close and whispered – though there was no one to hear but a pair of swans sliding by upon the river. ‘Between ourselves, I rather fancy that money was not very plentiful with Mr Henderson. However, though he gave no dinners, he kept a
great deal
of evening company… But the Lansdales, they were very quiet…’

There was no mistaking the note of regret in her voice. The Lansdales, it seemed, were unsatisfactory neighbours – they provided too little to watch.

They walked on a little. Dido’s mind was busy with a new idea – the idea of a ‘fine- looking’, but impoverished man visiting in secret an ageing, wealthy widow, and visiting her, furthermore, in a room fitted up with red, flattering lights.

Had he perhaps come in the form of a lover? And had Miss Neville been sworn to secrecy lest the nephew find out?

Dido paused when they came to the next stile. ‘What manner of man is Mr Henderson?’ she asked. ‘Is he a married man? Has he any family?’

‘Oh! He is a widower, my dear. A widower with three unmarried daughters – very pretty girls. At least, I suppose they are pretty. One did not see their faces – close bonnets they had on when they walked out. And very plain gowns… Which was another thing made me think the family were a little distressed for money.’

‘I see.’ Dido mused a moment. ‘But he was a gentleman of some standing I imagine – to have rented such a house, I mean.’

‘Oh yes! He was well connected for sure. The people who came to his evening parties! The Wyat’s carriage was often there.’ Miss Prentice began to check the illustrious names off upon her fingers. ‘And Mr and Mrs Edward Connors – their chaise came very often. And that gentleman who was at Mrs Beaumont’s delightful picnic, Sir Joshua Carrisbrook. Oh yes…’ She considered a moment. ‘Yes, all in all, I think Mr Henderson is of a good family, but that he has been obliged to retrench lately.’

‘I see.’ Dido’s suspicions deepened. And, as they did so, she began to feel more and more uneasy about Mr Lansdale. All this did not bode well for him.

By the time she reached home she had worried herself into a little fever on this subject and she was very much looking forward to a little quiet reflection and an opportunity to write a reply to her sister’s letter. She was not pleased to hear, as she paused in the welcome cool of the hall, the sound of voices coming from the drawing room. She sighed, laid aside her bonnet, and prepared herself unwillingly for company.

And then, upon opening the drawing room door, she saw Mr William Lomax sitting in quiet conversation with Flora…

She stopped and stared, almost supposing that she had made a mistake. But it was indeed Mr Lomax sitting there in solid certainty beside the open french doors of Flora’s pretty, flowered drawing room. It was the same lean figure she had been remembering; the same long legs stretched across the polished wooden floor; the same, rather grave face – certainly past its first youth, but with remarkably clear grey eyes and that kind of strong chin and profile which give a man distinction as he ages.

Her surprise was very great: so great as to leave – at first – no room even for pleasure: so great as to overcome her manners and make her demand, rather abruptly, how he came to be there.

He stood up to greet her, laughing at her amazement – and apologised for being its cause. ‘But your cousin has invited me into her drawing room,’ he assured her solemnly. ‘I am no intruder.’

‘I am sorry, Mr Lomax.’ She recovered herself a little and held out her hand. ‘But it is so strange, so very strange, to suddenly meet with a friend I had supposed to be a hundred miles away.’

‘A hundred and fifty,’ he said, as he took her hand. ‘I believe it is nearer one hundred and fifty miles, from Belsfield into Surrey.’

‘You are a very exact reckoner.’

He smiled and bowed over her hand. ‘I would by no means wish you to underestimate the journey you have brought me on, Miss Kent,’ he said.

‘The journey
I
have brought you on?’ Dido coloured with pleasure, but just then her gaze fell upon Flora. There was no mistaking her look.

Flora might not understand an allusion to Shakespeare, she might be entirely deaf to metaphors, but in matters of love she was
very
quick-witted indeed. She recognised an attachment when she saw it (and even, sometimes, when she did not). Before Dido had sat down, her cousin was delightedly planning a Michaelmas wedding and determining just where the happy couple should set up home.

Meanwhile, Mr Lomax was explaining his visit. ‘I am staying eight miles away – at Brooke Manor, with Sir Joshua and Lady Carrisbrook. I believe he is a friend of yours, Mrs Beaumont?’

‘Oh yes! Yes he is. A very good friend indeed.’

‘Sir Joshua,’ he said with a little lifting of his eyebrows, ‘believes that my sole purpose in coming is to convey some papers concerning his property in Somersetshire – and I beg you will not disabuse him of that notion. But he has been so kind as to invite me to stay on for a few days – an invitation which I have been particularly pleased to accept.’

There was such meaning in these last words and they were accompanied by such an earnest look at Dido as made Flora wonder whether she had better not leave them alone together directly.

Dido herself hardly knew what she felt – so intent was she upon allaying Flora’s suspicions. ‘My sister told me that business had taken you from Belsfield, Mr Lomax,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘But I had no idea of that business bringing you into Surrey.’

He leant forward, studied her face. ‘I found,’ he said eagerly, ‘that I must try for an opportunity of seeing you. I could not be quite satisfied with answering your queries in a letter.’ He stopped, seemed to recollect himself and turned slightly so as to include Flora. ‘This rumour against your friend, Mrs Beaumont – it is such a very delicate business, I thought it would be better if we all three talked about it together.’

‘You are so very kind Mr Lomax! I am sure we are both very much obliged to you. Are we not, Dido?’

‘Oh yes, yes, of course.’ Dido exerted herself against a great confusion of emotions – some of which were most unpleasant. An hour ago, when she had been sitting beside the river, she would have counted such a visit as this to be one of the greatest pleasures life could afford. But now that Mr Lomax was actually here in the room with her, she found that she could not be comfortable. She must reflect an hour or so in peace upon his looks and his words before she could hope to understand them; but for now, what mattered most was to seem calm – unconcerned.

‘It is…’ she began – and her own voice sounded as if it were a long way away – ‘it is very kind of you, to make such a long journey for our sake.’ She turned to Flora. ‘Mr Lomax,’ she said, ‘has studied the law and I hope that he will be able to tell us how great the danger is – I mean as to Mr Lansdale and the rumours which are being spread about him.’

This was immediately effective in diverting Flora’s mind from the discovery she had just made. She forgot to watch for signs of love and began instead to relate eagerly the whole business of the death, the picnic and all the details of the ‘horrid, horrid, abominable’ things which had been said by Mrs Midgely.

Mr Lomax listened to her very gravely with his fingertips pressed together and his chin resting upon them, his eyes only once or twice straying, rather anxiously, in Dido’s direction.

Dido herself began to breathe more easily and by the time her cousin had finished her tale, she was tolerably calm. ‘It is a strange business, is it not, Mr Lomax?’ she said.

‘It is certainly very unpleasant.’

‘Can you tell us what might happen – I mean if Mrs Midgely prevails upon Mr Vane and persuades him to take some action?’

‘Well,’ he said very seriously, ‘if the apothecary has a genuine suspicion of Mr Lansdale, then the law requires that he should bring a complaint against him.’

‘And that complaint would have to be made to the magistrates?’

‘Yes. And the magistrates would then put it to a Grand Jury – probably at the midsummer Quarter Sessions. And the men of the jury would either dismiss it, or else find it “a true bill” – which would mean that, in their opinion, there was a case to be made against the gentleman.’