Michael Cox (38 page)

IT HAD LONG been a Duport tradition, following the death of an eldest son on this day during the time of the Black Death, not to celebrate the passing of the old year, a tradition that my Lady was happy to observe. Dinner on this New Year’s Eve of 1876 was, in any event, a tedious affair.
There were, of course, no guests present, and I expended little effort in making myself agreeable. My Lady, by contrast, affected a gaily voluble mood, twittering away in a most uncharacteristic manner, triviality succeeding triviality, enumerating all over again the places she intended us to visit during our stay in London, and the people she wished me to meet, at such wearisome length that I thought I would scream.
Mr Randolph was absent – his whereabouts unknown – whilst his brother sat wrapped in an attitude of sullen abstraction, broken occasionally by peppery interjections and black looks.
Following the receipt of Madame’s third letter, Mr Perseus was now, of course, the object of the most intense interest to me, although I was careful not to show it. As he sat there, silently eating his dinner, I recalled our recent encounter in the church porch, when he had appeared angered by my repudiation of his attempts to ‘extend the hand of friendship’, as he had put it. I regretted that I had not been more receptive to his efforts; but it could not now be helped. Indeed, I drew some encouragement from his display of displeasure, and from his suspicions of my feelings for his brother to which he had subsequently given voice, thinking that these outbursts may have been the consequence, not so much of entrenched pride, but of chagrin that his regard for me had been spurned. I thought, too, of the inscribed copy of
Merlin and Nimue
that he had given me, a gesture which seemed, on reflection, to have carried more significance than I had realized at the time. Perhaps the task of conquering the affections of Mr Perseus Duport would not be as difficult as I had first thought, although marriage still appeared an impossibility. At least – or so I had begun to persuade myself – I now had a little hope that he possessed a receptive heart after all, and that I occupied a small place in it.
‘And how did you find Mr Wraxall?’ my Lady asked, as we sat together afterwards in the Drawing-Room.
‘As you might expect,’ I replied tartly, without looking up from my study of the carpet.
‘Really, Alice,’ she objected, in a disappointed tone, ‘how grumpy you’ve been this evening. Whatever can be the matter, when we have so much to look forward to? Don’t you wish to go to London?’
‘Of course.’
‘So I would hope. It will be good for you.’
I say nothing, but snatch up a copy of Mr Tennyson’s recent play on Queen Mary,
*
which is lying on a nearby table, and pretend to read; but almost immediately, the pages begin to swim before my exhausted eyes, the book falls from my hands, and I sink back limply in my chair.
‘Alice!’ cries Lady Tansor. ‘Are you feeling ill?’
At this juncture, hearing the concern in his mamma’s voice, Mr Perseus, who has been lounging alone on the far side of the room, an unopened copy of
Tinsley’s Magazine
on his lap, leaps to his feet and comes quickly over to us.
‘All right, Mother,’ I hear him say, ‘I’ll take charge. Now, Miss Gorst, how are you?’
‘A little dizzy, sir,’ I tell him, ‘but I beg you not to concern yourself. It’s nothing, I assure you. A little fatigue, that’s all. I didn’t sleep well last night.’
‘Nevertheless,’ he insists, ‘we must get you to your room, and then send for Pordage.’
I protest that this is unnecessary, but he brushes aside my objections with brusque concern, and calls out for one of the footmen stationed outside the door. It is only then that I realize that he has taken my hands – lightly, but deliberately – in his, and is now gently rubbing them. Of course I should have instantly removed them, but I did not; for it gave me a most pleasant sensation of comfort and safety, to feel the warm, white hands of the Duport heir encircling mine.
When I had been put to bed, and after the welcome departure of Dr Pordage (whose clammy hands I had been obliged to endure, in repugnant silence, as he had felt my brow, but who rightly diagnosed the need for a good night’s rest), I soon fell deeply asleep.

I WAS AWOKEN suddenly by a movement in the bed. With a start, I sat up.
A curtain had been left partially undrawn, through which thin shafts of pale moonlight fell across the bed. They revealed a recumbent figure beside me.
I call out her name. She opens her eyes, and stares sleepily at me.
‘Alice, dear,’ my Lady murmurs. ‘Did I wake you?’
I get out of bed to light my candle. She sits up, her long hair hanging loose about her shoulders and back. She seems somehow shrunken and diminished. Then I see why.
The night-gown she is wearing is a man’s. Its sleeves fall down over her slim hands, so that only the ends of the nails can be seen; her figure is entirely concealed by its ample folds; and on the left breast, underneath the Duport arms, are embroidered three initials: P.R.D.
The night-gown had been her dead lover’s.
I stand, candle in hand, looking at her in disbelief, the shadows cast by the flickering flame playing over her face, as white as the gown she wears.
Where had she kept this intimate relic? Her capacity for concealment amazed me. Then she spoke.
‘I was unable to sleep. Dreams – such strangely vivid dreams – of you, dear Alice, and yet not you. So then I had to come up, to assure myself that all was well. But you were asleep – so peacefully asleep! And so I thought I would lie down here next to you, just for a very little while; but then I fell asleep myself. Isn’t that wonderful! To have fallen so easily into glorious sleep! This bed is so comfortable, more comfortable than my own.’
She gave a soft, mirthless laugh, and slowly laid her head back on the pillows.
‘You must go back to your room,’ I told her, soothingly, setting the candle down, and sitting on the side of the bed. ‘Come, I’ll take you down. Have you forgotten that we’re to leave for London tomorrow? You must rest.’
‘Rest? Oh, if only I could! But I can never rest. Never.’
I held out my hand to her, but she made no movement.
‘Take it,’ I said. ‘You’ll rest tonight. I promise.’
She reaches out, places her hand in mine, and together we make our way down to her apartments – although not before I have slipped a small blue-glass bottle of decanted Battley’s Drops, supplied by J.M. Proudfoot & Sons, of Market Square, Easton, into the pocket of my robe.
She takes the drops willingly, accepting my assurance that they will help her sleep and do her no harm.
‘There,’ I whisper, as I pull the coverlet over her and stroke her hair. ‘Sleep now.’
‘Dear Alice,’ is all she says, as she closes her eyes.
I sit by the dying embers of the bedroom fire for half an hour, until I am certain that she is fast asleep. Then I take up the candle, and tip-toe into the sitting-room.

II
A Weapon Made of Words

THE KEY TURNED easily in the little brass escutcheon, just as it had done when I had first unlocked the secret cupboard behind the portrait of Anthony Duport. As I reached inside, the intimidating, black-bearded face of Phoebus Daunt, frozen by the photographer’s art, stared back at me from the shadowed recess.
As quickly as I could, hands shaking, and nervously listening out for any sound from the adjoining bed-chamber, I undid the ribbon securing the first bundle of letters, took it over to the table on which I had placed my candle, and began to read.
The letters were all arranged in chronological order. The first, written in November 1852 from Daunt’s London house in Mecklenburgh Square, contained a lengthy account of the Duke of Wellington’s funeral. Succeeding letters, similarly, offered nothing of interest or significance, except to substantiate the remarkable mutual affection that had existed between the writer and Miss Carteret, whom he constantly addressed in the tenderest of terms.
The second bundle was equally barren: page after page describing how he was passing the time in Town without her, whom he had seen, where he had dined, what so-and-so had said at the Club, the gratifying reception given to his poems by the critics. Then there would be long passages recounting matters of business undertaken on behalf of Lord Tansor – always discharged to the utmost satisfaction of his patron – and others describing, at equally tiresome length, various trifling incidents that had befallen him in the course of his travels.
Then, in a letter in the fourth bundle, I found the following short postscript, which I immediately scribbled down in shorthand, on a piece of my Lady’s writing-paper:
DEAREST,—
In haste. P—has just been here. He is ready, &
appears
to understand what he must do – if
you
still wish him to carry out yr plan. I continue to have qualms about the business, as I have told you, knowing what P—is capable of – but I have been at
great
pains to make him apprehend that no harm must come to P.S.C. & that we require only the papers. I
hope
I have succeeded, but cannot be sure, amp; so a degree of risk persists. Send word immediately – a single word indeed will suffice – Yes, or No. I beg you,
be sure to destroy this.
The letter bore the date 21st October 1853 – four days before the fatal attack on Mr Paul Stephen Carteret – who, I had no doubt, was the person referred to in the postscript by his initials – as he entered the Park through the western woods.
I was exultant. At last I had evidence – unequivocal, written evidence – that incriminated my Lady in a plot to ambush her father, and involved her in its tragic consequences. She had assured Mr Vyse that nothing existed to link her with her father’s death; but she had lied. Here they were, then: words on paper, which, as Mr Vyse had warned her, can have fatal consequences.
The postscript had also revealed that the attack on Mr Carteret had been carried out by one person, the mysterious ‘P—’, commissioned, it seemed, by Phoebus Daunt acting on Miss Carteret’s instructions, just as Billy Yapp had been recruited by her agent, Mr Vyse, to kill Mrs Kraus.
The purpose of the conspiracy was also becoming clearer: to obtain certain papers that Mr Carteret had been carrying. Then came a sudden rush of realization.
Mr Carteret must have discovered documents indicating that a legitimate heir might exist who would deny Phoebus Daunt his golden expectations. Was it even possible that he had made this discovery during his work on the history of the Duport family, on which his daughter had assisted him? If so, then the Duport succession might indeed link the deaths of Mr Carteret, Phoebus Daunt, and Mrs Kraus, just as Mr Wraxall and Inspector Gully had suspected.

III
An Encounter in the Fog

MY LADY TOOK breakfast the next morning alone in her private sitting-room, as she sometimes chose to do; I, too, made a solitary repast, downstairs in the Breakfast-Room, disappointed that Mr Perseus had eaten early and then ridden to Easton on estate business.
At a little after ten o’clock, under a snow-threatening sky, and chilled by a biting east wind even as we hurried the little way down the front steps, we took our seats in the carriage, drew the rugs over our laps, and set off to catch our train to London.
With us was the new dressing-maid, Violet Allardyce – a plump, vacant-looking girl, who stood constantly in awe of both her mistress and me, but who performed her duties efficiently enough, although sometimes not to
my
satisfaction.
Emily – I had by now begun to accustom myself to thinking of her, and calling her in private, by her Christian name, as she had wished me to do – was subdued at first, yet not altogether disinclined to converse. Nothing was said by either of us concerning the events of the previous night; and as we approached the terminus, her mood began to lighten. By the time we were nearing Grosvenor Square, she was once more enthusiastically rehearsing her plans for the succeeding days.
As the carriage came to a halt outside the house, gusting swirls of soft snow were coating the pavements, roofs, and front steps of the Square with deepening sheets of still-unsullied white. Emily, head bowed against the wind, her black fur stole starred with melting snowflakes, went straight inside. I lingered at the foot of the carriage steps, savouring the delicious sensation of cold snow blowing against my face, and listening to the delighted squeals of children coming from the rear of a neighbouring house.
We dined that evening with Lord and Lady Benefield at their house in nearby Park Lane – not far, indeed, from the late Lord Tansor’s former town-house, in the garden of which Phoebus Daunt had been struck down by my father. I observed Emily closely as we arrived; but if she experienced any distress at the proximity of the place where her lover had died, on another night of snow, she did not show it.
It is needless to rehearse in detail the ensuing evening. Suffice to say that I was introduced to a dozen or so eminently unremarkable people of rank and wealth; that we ate and drank from the finest china and crystal; and that we talked of this and that, and nothing, until we were taken back to Grosvenor Square at a little after one o’clock in the morning.
The next day, we awoke to find that the snow had abated, leaving the streets awash with filthy, viscous slush and mud, which made our progress through them slow and unpleasant. Nothing, however, could moderate Emily’s determination to proceed with her plans; and so, despite the difficulties, we contrived to call on several finely dressed, but blithely indolent, ladies of consequence in the vicinity of Mayfair, who all pronounced themselves charmed to meet me. We then went off to view the Queen’s Collection at Buckingham Palace, and inspect the Duke of Bedford’s Dutch pictures in Belgrave Square; we attended an afternoon concert given by the Philharmonic Society; we saw a play in the evening; and we took an informal late supper
à deux
at Grillon’s Hotel, where Emily appeared to be well known.
Our second full day, which brought more of the same, included a visit to St Paul’s, where Emily was eager for us to ascend to the celebrated Whispering Gallery, which I had claimed to have visited on our first stay in London. Before we left, she insisted that we make an experiment of its acoustic peculiarities, and so sent me scurrying over to the other side of the Gallery to press my ear to the wall.
‘Did you hear me?’ she asks excitedly when I return.
‘No,’ I reply. ‘What did you whisper?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just the tiniest little secret that I thought to share with you,’ she says, with a disappointed sigh. ‘I wonder why you couldn’t hear me? Perhaps there are too many people here today. Come, let’s go down.’
So down we went, back into the mud-splashed carriage, which took us off through the murk and mire to the Tower, and then, with an icy rain coming on, to Madame Tussaud’s wax-works exhibition, where, at Emily’s insistence, we paid our extra sixpence to view the Chamber of Horrors. The day concluded with a grand dinner at the imposing town-house of the Duport family’s banker, Mr Jasper Dinever, at which were a number of eminent people from the financial and political worlds.
I believe that I acquitted myself well that evening, and that I played my allotted part to perfection. By turns I was demure, unobjectionably coquettish, insouciant or serious, as the occasion demanded. Dressed and gilded in my borrowed finery, I listened attentively and sympathetically, flattered and admired, teased and amused, according to each person’s sex and disposition. Rather to my surprise, I began to discover that I, too, was capable of enchantment, by the exercise of which I contrived to charm the men, whilst simultaneously recommending myself to the good opinion of their ladies. In short, I triumphed – to Emily’s visible delight.
Oh Lord, how proud she was of her creation! As if she were in the least degree responsible! The truth, of course, was quite other.
I
had remade
her
. She was my creature now, although she did not yet know it.
Day after day, I had seen the slow but inexorable transformation of Emily Tansor from the cold and haughty chatelaine – secure in her beauty and power, before whom I had once stood, seeking employment as her maid – into an indulgent, susceptible, and pregnable woman in her middle years, who had revealed – to me alone – an unguessed capacity for impulsive affection.
To others, she continued to maintain her old character of icy unapproachability; but no longer to me. Where now was that unassailable heart, secure against all assault? It seemed that I had found the key to unlock that famously adamantine gate, just as I had discovered the means to open the secret cupboard containing her lover’s letters.