Lady Catherine's Necklace (12 page)

Halfway down, the cause of this became apparent. The road surmounted a rude bridge spanning a swift-running body of water coming from the moorland above. The bridge consisted of no more than a single stone arch, without parapets. As the coach crossed this structure, a mass of branches and debris, which had collected against some obstacle in the stream above, suddenly broke free, and, with a loud crash, descended upon the vehicle. The horses slipped, staggered, broke their harness and fled on down the hill at a breakneck pace, cannoning against Hoskins, who fell into the ravine. The coach toppled over, hung against a bush for a moment, then plunged on down the hillside, until it finally came to rest, entangled in the boughs of a stunted tree, which grew on a bank at the confluence of two rushing streams.

The driver had been flung off his box and lay motionless on the bridge above.

By now it was almost completely dark.

*   *   *

‘It is
so
kind of you, Colonel FitzWilliam, to give yourself the trouble of pushing me about the gardens,' sighed Miss Delaval, turning her head in the wheelchair to give the colonel, who was propelling it, her most beguiling smile, accompanied by a gentle quiver of her thick dark eyelashes. ‘My brother has been so wretchedly mortified by this unfortunate mishap that he is hardly to be seen just now, he keeps his room—'

‘Mishap?'
said the colonel, in a troubled voice. ‘You refer to the death of Mr Finglow?'

‘Oh! My dear sir,
no!
' Miss Delaval was shocked. ‘No,
that
is not less than a
tragedy!
And Ralph does, of course, take himself most bitterly to task for ever having encouraged Lady Catherine in her whim to remove the cottage. If he had
ever
considered the possibility that it would lead to such a terrible outcome, he would naturally have scotched the plan when Lady Catherine first suggested it.'

‘Oh? It was my aunt who first proposed that Wormwood End cottage be demolished?'

‘But of course! It was her own idea entirely, from the very first! No, no, Ralph would never have suggested such a thing. He has far too much respect, indeed reverence, for art and artists, especially in the persons of those two talented protagonists. Well, it is no use to say
two
now, is it – that poor, poor Mr Mynges, what in the world, I wonder, will he do now? Move back to London, I dare say…'

FitzWilliam sighed, and said in a repressive tone, ‘Well, at least he is no longer under notice to quit. My uncle Luke and I persuaded Aunt Catherine's attorney that the notice was quite ineligible, and that he might remain in the cottage for whatever length of time he wished.'

‘I dare say he will nonetheless wish to remove himself without too much delay. He cannot want to remain in a place with such awful association,' she suggested.

‘Perhaps. But if
that
affair was not on your brother's mind, what mishap do you refer to that is causing him such mortification?'

Now the colonel's voice was tinged with irony.

‘Why! I referred of course to the affair of the false jewellery! As you may recall, it was my brother who suggested summoning the man from Rundell and Bridge, and he now feels that he has made a fine fool of himself. He fears that when we return to London, his friends will have heard the tale and that he will be the butt of all the Mayfair clubs.'

‘Oh? But they were not his jewels, after all. Why need he concern himself?'

‘He feels, you see,' said Miss Delaval, twisting her head to a remarkable degree so as to fix her large, dark troubled eyes on the colonel, ‘that Lady Catherine cannot have
trusted
him; that she perhaps had her real gems hidden away somewhere, awaiting her return…'

‘Oh, I see. Is that what he thinks? It is true that my aunt is an unaccountable, devious character – on the surface she seems direct enough, even overbearing, but what governs her impulses one is not always able to guess.'

‘And you, of
all
people, should know what motivates her,' said Miss Delaval in a rallying tone. ‘Are you not her prospective son-in-law?'

‘Possibly so. That issue depends on my cousin Anne.'

‘Poor Miss Anne! She seems so utterly overset by these calamitous happenings,' sighed Miss Delaval. ‘I have tried to lighten her spirits in every way that occurred to me – encouraging her to have a new trimming on her primrose muslin, and to try the effect of doing her hair in ringlets instead of that severe, Quakerish braided coronet she wears. But she turned on me almost with indignation, as if my efforts to cheer her mounted to a kind of heresy! And when Ralph asked her, only wishing to elevate her mind from what it continually dwells on, if she had any notion of some hiding-place where her mother might have secreted the real diamonds, so that, you know, he might have them furbished up against Lady Catherine's return, she rounded on him, positively like a wildcat. “Have you not done enough mischief here?” she cried at him. I have never seen him so repulsed! He quite crept away with his tail between his legs. I believe he has now offered his services to Lord Luke for that never-ending quest in the attics.'

‘Perhaps,' suggested the colonel drily, ‘Mr Delaval has some notion of coming across my aunt's diamonds in that quarter. But if that is his aim, I fear he is due for disappointment. Aunt Catherine has quite a detestation for that part of the house – any objects, indeed, that remind her of the old castle – and never sets foot there. I think it is the last place where she would deposit anything of value. It is far more probable that she took the real gems with her, to impress my Aunt Adelaide.'

‘On a journey
overseas,
merely visiting her sister-in-law? Oh, no! Surely not!' Miss Delaval sounded outraged at the very possibility.

As the colonel and Miss Delaval approached the shrubbery, two figures emerged from it carrying baskets of cuttings.

‘What a charming friendship that is, between Miss Anne and the garden-boy – what is his name? Joseph?' said Miss Delaval sweetly. ‘At a time when poor Miss Anne is so low-spirited, it is a joy to see anybody who can bring her to a state of cheerfulness! I am sure it does one's heart good to hear her laugh.'

‘Just so,' agreed the colonel, compressing his lips.

As the wheelchair passed the pair, deep in horticultural discussion, Smirke approached from the other direction.

‘You, Joss!' he said sharply, but with a hint of indulgence. ‘His lordship was asking for you to go and help him shift a whole passel of stuff up in the attic. You'd best lay those cuttings to soak in a pail o' water.'

‘I'll take care of them,' said Anne. ‘I'll come with you, Joss, as far as the stable yard.'

‘Ragwort's full as bad as buttercup,' FitzWilliam heard Joss telling Anne as they hurried off along the path. ‘And did you know, there's a Sardinian herb that, they say, if you chew it, you die laughing!'

He and his companion burst into gales of chuckles.

‘How delightful it is to hear them!' said Miss Delaval.

Colonel FitzWilliam frowned, and accelerated the pace of the wheelchair.

*   *   *

Mrs Collins and her sister Maria were visiting Ambrose Mynges at Wormwood End. Alice the cat, who treated most visitors with haughty suspicion, had taken a fancy to Maria, and came to rub against her. Mr Willis the apothecary was there also, advising Young Tom about his sleep problem.

‘Cold water and vinegar,' he was saying, ‘sponged over the brow, last thing at night.'

‘I detest the smell of vinegar,' said Ambrose.

‘Camomile tea,' suggested Charlotte. ‘Or hops, passionflower, lemon verbena, basil, violet leaves – and of course catnip. The catnip leaves should be steeped, but not boiled, and flavoured with honey.'

‘Mrs Collins is a better physician than I shall ever be,' said Mr Willis.

‘Good friends who come and chat are the best physicians of all.'

‘We have brought you a basket of dried cherries,' Charlotte said. ‘Besides being so delicious, I find they are very soothing if chewed slowly, last thing at night.'

‘Cherries are also sovereign for gout,' said Mr Willis. ‘I always prescribe fifteen cherries a day, fresh or dried, for all my gout patients.'

‘
Grief,
not gout, is what ails me.'

‘We know. We know that,' Charlotte told him compassionately. ‘And if there were anything more we could do, you have only to ask. If you cared to come and stay at the parsonage—'

‘You are an angel of goodness, Mrs Collins, but there is nothing more that you can do. I prefer to stay here, where I feel near to my friend.'

Willis took one of the dried cherries and ate it.

‘Excellent,' he said. ‘I recognize the flavour. Are they not made from Mrs Godwin's receipt?'

‘Indeed yes,' said Charlotte. ‘I have her kitchen book and use it faithfully. Every year I take care to get a great sackful from the Rosings cherry orchards – dear me, I suppose next year I must look further afield, if the orchards are to be cut down. That is such a pity, is it not? Those trees provide a handsome crop, year after year.'

‘Perhaps, now this cottage is to be spared, Lady Catherine will have second thoughts about the lime avenue and cherry orchard also.'

‘Sir Lewis was particularly attached to that orchard,' remarked Mr Willis, shaking his head. ‘Many an evening I used to see him walking there as I drove by, especially when the trees were in bloom. And in his will, when he died, it was found that he had expressed a wish that a sack of the cherries should be delivered, each year, free, to Mr Godwin, who was then the incumbent here, for the use of his wife.'

‘Very touching – very thoughtful of him.'

‘Only, as it happened, Mrs Godwin predeceased Sir Lewis, so the bequest was not carried out. But I suspect that we are tiring Mr Tom. I think it is time I took my departure.'

Mr Willis rose, bowed to the ladies and walked outside to where his cob stood patiently waiting.

‘Did you know Sir Lewis well, Mr Mynges?' Maria was suddenly moved to ask Young Tom.

‘I? No, not well. At least, not so well as my – as my friend Desmond. D-Desmond had been coming here for a number of years before I knew him. He and Sir Lewis had been at school together. Why do you ask, Miss Lucas?'

‘I – oh, I just wondered what – what sort of a man Sir Lewis was. One receives such conflicting accounts of a person who has died, does one not? I wondered, for instance, if he was fond of poetry.'

‘
Poetry?
Why do you ask that?'

‘Oh, a person who chooses to wander in a blossoming cherry orchard must surely have poetic leanings in them, do you not think?'

‘Maria, you are letting your fancy fly away with you,' said Charlotte. ‘And it is time we returned to those four hungry children. Goodbye, Mr Mynges, we will come again soon.'

‘You cannot come too often,' he said.

On the way back to the parsonage, Maria was unwontedly silent. She was thinking about a handwritten poem which she had discovered in Mrs Godwin's kitchen book. It had been tucked inside some voluminous instructions for dealing with a chimney fire (‘Close all doors and windows tightly, then procure a wet blanket…'). The writing was not that of Mrs Lucy Godwin, who had herself transcribed many of the receipts in a small, neat hand. This was larger and more flowing. Maria remembered the poem, which had been written on a small piece of paper, perhaps torn out of a diary or notebook:

Muslin, not silk

White as new milk

The canopy spreads

Over our heads

Delicate mist

Shelters our tryst

Softer than lace

Pale as thy face.

Blossoms must pass

Scatter on grass

Cherries instead

Glowing and red

Cluster above

Speak of our love…

Not the world's greatest poem, certainly, yet Maria found something touching and straightforward about it. She wondered who had written it. She did not mention it to Charlotte.

*   *   *

‘A letter from Lady Catherine at last!' exclaimed Mrs Jenkinson, hurrying with it into the breakfast parlour.

Lord Luke looked up in surprise.

‘Not from Great Morran, surely? She cannot have travelled as far as that already? Or at least,' he added, recollecting himself, ‘if she had, a letter could not so soon have returned from there?'

‘No, this was sent from Truro. She complains about the food and the weather. Both atrocious. And hopes that you are in good health, Lord Luke.'

‘Well, I am
not,
' he said peevishly. ‘My old trouble is come upon me, I dare say thanks to all that dirt and dust upstairs. But I was never one to complain.'

Mrs Jenkinson showed in a look her disbelief of this statement, but was too well trained to utter anything more than a sympathetic sigh.

The garden-boy, Joss, was announced, and came in looking dusty but cheerful.

‘Well, Joss, how goes it?'

‘You said to bring you boxes o' papers, me lord, so here's one I found. 'Tis all full of a mort of written stuff. I brought it to ye directly.'

Mrs Jenkinson uttered a slight scream.

‘The dust! Fetch a kitchenmaid, Frinton, with a duster, and let her wipe some of that dirt off before it spreads all over the room.'

‘Oh, never mind
that!
' Lord Luke impatiently exclaimed. ‘Let's have a look – here, I'll flap a table napkin over it.' He did so, producing clouds of thick snuffy powder which caused everybody in the room to cough and sneeze.

Lord Luke, meanwhile, was delving with excited hands among the yellowing and brittle papers in the mahogany coffer.

But after a very short time he gave up in disgust.

‘It's naught but a confounded
novel!
By Mrs Ophelia Ogilvie – never heard of the woman.'