Michael Cox (13 page)

HAVING LIT MY lamp, I sat down at my table, holding in my trembling hands the first of the three Letters of Instruction that Madame had promised to send me, in which she had undertaken to set out, progressively, information that would make clear the nature of the Great Task, and inform me of what she had called ‘other matters’, which it was necessary for me to know.
Out of the envelope tumbled several sheets of paper, written over in Madame’s distinctive hand, and several more printed pages, folded, and held together at the corner by a silver pin. Putting these to one side, I spread the sheets out beneath the light of the lamp, and began to read.

II
Madame de l’Orme to Miss Esperanza Gorst
LETTER 1

Maison de l’Orme
Avenue d’Uhrich, Paris

DEAREST CHILD,—
When you read this, my first Letter of Instruction, you will have commenced yr new life at Evenwood. I can easily picture to myself how you must be feeling – alone, so far removed from everything that is familiar & dear to you, amongst strangers, in a strange house, and still uninformed of why you have been sent there. So let me now begin, as I promised, to set you on the road to understanding, although it must for now be but a very little step.
You must – you shall – know everything needful, as time goes on; & what I shall reveal to you, very soon, will concern your own history, as well as that of others, with whom yours is indissolubly bound up. But, first, you must understand more concerning your mistress; for, as I have often impressed upon you, it is
imperative
that you secure her trust – her absolute trust – and also her affection; for without these, you will not succeed in the task you are there to accomplish.
Her heart, as I have previously told you, is locked against all common assault; and yet, like many proud and self-contained individuals, she is susceptible to the attractions of a single close companionship, in which she can feel herself to be the superior party, and which allows her to control and regulate those confidences with which she has chosen to favour the other. You must become such a companion.
Yet she is fickle, & ruled by iron self-interest. You may not depend on a continuity of approbation or favour from her: both must be constantly earned. Be the complaisant, acquiescent companion she craves; but know this, dear child: she can
never
be your friend, however much she may protest otherwise; for her interests and yours are, & will always be, utterly opposed, as shall be revealed to you in due course.
In a word, although it may be hard for you to believe now, she is – and will always be – your
enemy.
Know this; understand only this; let this be your watchword, your one guiding principle, in everything you do at Evenwood; for by knowing what she truly is, you will always have an advantage over her.
Never let your guard slip; &
never
succumb to her flattery. Be always vigilant; mistrust her at all times, as you would a serpent in the grass.
Above all, seek to understand her weaknesses. The greatest of these – her cardinal passion – is the blind worship of the man to whom she was engaged to be married, Mr Phoebus Daunt. I say that this is a weakness because it deprives her, like all consuming and abiding passions, of reason; and this must always be of profit to you.
I have told you something of Mr Daunt. By way of supplementation, I am sending the enclosed printed pieces, which I ask you to read, note carefully, & then destroy.
This is all I wished to say at present; but you may depend on a further communication from me soon.
I pray for you every night, my dearest child, & think of you every hour of the day. Be strong – have courage. You cannot conceive the prize that awaits you if we are granted success in what we have undertaken.
Write when you can.
Mr Thornhaugh sends his
very
best regards.
My love always,
M.
I SAT FOR some time, staring into the darkness beyond my window.
I had hoped that Madame’s letter would have fortified my resolve, and spurred me on in the prosecution of my task, but it had not done so. All was still vague, and undefined.
Lady Tansor’s interests and mine were apparently irreconcilable, yet I did not know why, or, indeed, what those interests were. I must bring my mistress down, yet I did not know why, or how I was to do it. I was a blind soldier, sent weaponless into battle, fighting for an unknown cause, against an enemy towards whom, in my present state of knowledge, I felt no animosity.
Could I believe the little Madame had chosen to tell me? I supposed I must, for she would never deceive me. This was my only comfort, and to this I knew I must cling.
Tearing a dozen or so pages from my note-book, I began to write – row after row, column after column – until my hand ached:
Lady Tansor is my
Enemy
.
Lady Tansor is my
Enemy
.
Lady Tansor is my
ENEMY.

7

In Memoriam P.R.D.

I
Extract from
The London Monthly Review
1ST DECEMBER 1864

L
AYING MADAME’S
letter aside, I picked up the two printed enclosures. Both consisted of pages clipped from the
London Monthly Review
.
The first was an article taken from the December issue for the year 1864. The occasion was the anniversary of the murder of Phoebus Daunt, ten years earlier.
Madame had marked certain paragraphs for my attention, and had also underlined individual words and phrases. I read the article through twice, to fix its contents in my head; then I transcribed the salient paragraphs into my Book, before throwing the original pages on the fire.

IN MEMORIAM P. RAINSFORD DAUNT
1819–1854

The brutal, and apparently senseless, murder of the celebrated poet, Phoebus Rainsford Daunt, on the 11th December 1854, was a national sensation, and for a brief time eclipsed even the news from the Crimea. Those of us who were living in London at that period will never forget the sickening horror of the event.
Following the tragedy, a torrent of outrage naturally flowed from the pages of the public press, and from the justifiably indignant and anxious mouths of all sections of educated society, as they gathered together at table that cold Christmas.
That the author of such deathless, and universally commended, works as
The Pharaoh’s Child
and, his most acclaimed achievement,
The Conquest of Peru
, could be struck down in the house of a peer of the realm – and so consequential a peer as the 25th Baron Tansor – seemed to many of us to threaten the very foundations of modern British civilization. The cry went up in every quarter: ‘Something must be done!’ If a gentleman could not consider himself to be safe from mortal harm as he smoked a cigar in the garden, after taking his dinner in Park Lane, surrounded by friends and guests from the highest ranks of Society, including the Prime Minister himself, where could refuge from criminal violence be found?
At that dinner, Mr Daunt had been toasted as the heir to Lord Tansor’s property and business concerns, his Lordship lacking a son or daughter of his own to succeed him. Lord Tansor had always regarded Mr Daunt with exceptional favour – and rightly so. Through his influence, he had been sent to Eton, as a Colleger on the Foundation. Popular and naturally gregarious, he had prospered there, securing the highest academic prizes the School could offer, and then proceeding to Cambridge, as a Scholar of King’s College, the recipient of the unfeigned admiration of his many friends.
He duly took his degree, soon after which he commenced his literary career by publishing his first volume of poems,
Ithaca: A Lyrical Drama
, which appeared under the imprint of Mr Edward Moxon in 1841. The success that greeted
Ithaca
was instantaneous. Encouraged by the reception given to his first attempt at dramatic verse, the poet immediately began to compose a more ambitious work, in the epic style this time, entitled
The Maid of Minsk
. Once again, the critics were unanimous in their praise, and the volume sold in gratifyingly large numbers for Mr Moxon. A succession of notable works followed, each one increasing Mr Daunt’s reputation as one of our finest narrative poets.
Turning now to the circumstances and motivations that culminated in the poet’s death, they remain both mysterious and unresolved. The identity of his murderer, a certain Edward Glyver, is not in doubt. He and Mr Daunt were at Eton together – indeed, they enjoyed a close friendship for much of their time there; but a falling-out in their last year at the School had given this Glyver cause to hate his erstwhile friend, although whether the injury that he felt he had suffered at Mr Daunt’s hands was real or imagined remains an open question.
Those who knew him best consider it impossible that Mr Daunt could ever have been capable, even as a school-boy, of behaviour so despicable, and so wounding, that it could have impelled a person to commit murder against him after an interval of eighteen years; a person, moreover, who, by all accounts, was once genuinely attached to his future victim.
After leaving Eton, which he did rather precipitately in 1836, on the death of his mother, Edward Glyver quit England to study at the University of Heidelberg, after which he travelled for several years on the Continent. He did not return to England until the year 1848, when he secured employment, taking the false name of Edward Glapthorn, in the distinguished firm of City solicitors, Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, of Paternoster Row, for many years legal advisers to the Duport family, where he worked under the direct supervision of the Senior Partner, the late Mr Christopher Tredgold, although it would appear that he had received no legal training of any kind.
It further appears that, through his position at Tredgolds, Glyver had discovered Lord Tansor’s resolve to leave his property to Mr Daunt, and that this reanimated his antagonism towards the latter, compounded now by bitter envy that his hated former school-friend stood fair to inherit so much, when he himself lived on a modest salary.
Yet still he took no action, but seemed content with watching his victim from the shadows. Then, in the autumn of 1854, some crisis occurred that brought on the final catastrophe. What had been smouldering in the depths of Glyver’s deranged being for so long now burst forth, to lethal purpose.
It seems probable that the engagement of Mr Daunt to the former Miss Emily Carteret, now Lady Tansor, was the spark that ignited the final conflagration; for it is known that Glyver – still using the name Glapthorn – had visited Miss Carteret in Northamptonshire, ostensibly as Mr Tredgold’s surrogate on legal business connected with her late father’s affairs. Miss Carteret testified that Glyver soon began to pay her unwelcome attentions, which she found she could not evade, even when staying with a relative in London. To discourage his visits, which became increasingly distasteful to her, Miss Carteret was obliged to absent herself from her home at Evenwood for long periods; but Glyver continued to harass her until, at last, she was forced to tell him of her impending marriage to Mr Daunt, before insisting – in the strongest terms – that he must not call on her again.
Thus jealousy now augmented injured pride and material envy in the disordered mind of Edward Glyver. What had begun as a school-boy quarrel appears to have become an imperative desire to rid himself, once and for all, of the man whom, in his deluded rage, he saw as having irreparably blighted his own amorous intentions – entirely fantastical and unreciprocated – towards Miss Carteret.
So the end came, as all the world knows, on the 11th December, in the year 1854, at the now infamous dinner given by Lord Tansor at his house in Park Lane to celebrate the engagement of Mr Daunt and Miss Carteret, and to mark the conclusion of the legal arrangements that made Mr Daunt heir to his Lordship’s material possessions.
In the guise of a footman, Glyver followed Mr Daunt into the rear garden, and there took his long-contemplated revenge by stabbing him to death. He left behind a most bizarre offering: the stiffening fingers of the corpse’s right hand were found to be clutching a copy, made by the murderer himself, of lines taken from Mr Daunt’s celebrated lyric ‘From the Persian’, on the association of night and death.
Despite the best and most prolonged efforts of the police, the murderer has remained at large. Whether he is still alive or dead, in England or abroad, no one can say. If he has been called to his Maker, then it is fervently to be hoped that he now suffers in eternity the punishment for his wickedness that he escaped on earth.
At Lord Tansor’s generous insistence, the poet was laid to rest in the Duport Mausoleum at Evenwood, on the 20th December, 1854. Ten years have now passed since the world awoke to the news that Phoebus Rainsford Daunt had been cut down at the height of his powers, and with an even more brilliant future before him.
As the anniversary of that dreadful night approaches, it has seemed fitting to offer this brief, and necessarily incomplete, account to the British public, in order to commemorate Mr Daunt’s many literary achievements, and to pay tribute to the man himself – a man of instinctive probity and generosity, whose conviviality, perfect manners, and natural wit, endeared him to a wide circle of friends and acquaintances, amongst whom the present writer is proud to have been numbered.

A.V.

AS I PONDERED the concluding initials, it did not take long to be convinced that the memorial’s author could have been none other than lupine Mr Armitage Vyse, who had taken his dinner with my Lady in her Crimson-and-Gold dining-room that very evening.
What role this distinctive and, I was sure, dangerous gentleman now played in my Lady’s life, I could not imagine. Another mystery, then, to add to the puzzle of ‘Mrs Kennedy’.
Laying conjecture aside for the moment, I now turned to the second of the printed enclosures.

II
Extract from
The London Monthly Review
1ST JANUARY 1865