Property of a Lady (30 page)

‘There’s a corresponding handle on the underside,’ said Michael.

‘That’s unusual in a cellar. Or is it? Maybe somebody was frightened of being trapped at some time,’ said Nell, shining the torch down into the cellar itself. The light sliced through the thick blackness, showing brick-lined walls with a floor at the foot that looked as if it was black brick or stone. ‘How safe do you think the steps are?’

‘They look like solid stone, but they might have crumbled in places.’

‘I should think this was part of the foundation of an earlier building,’ said Nell. ‘Or these workshops could have been an old scullery wing or something like that.’ She looked at him. ‘What do you think? Do we go down there?’

‘As you said, if we don’t, we’re going to wonder,’ said Michael. ‘Shall I do it while you stay here?’

‘No fear,’ said Nell, getting up and stepping out of the recess. ‘Let me get another torch, and I’m coming down there with you.’ She darted back to the toolbox and found the spare torch kept for power cuts. When she came back Michael was wedging the trapdoor more firmly against the stove wall.

‘I’m making sure the hinges aren’t about to disintegrate and bring the door crashing down on our heads,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t trust this handle to open from beneath, would you?’

‘No, but let’s not even think about being trapped down there.’

‘Let me go first – no, I’m not being masculine and protective. Well, yes, all right, I am. But if I go head over heels down a section of crumbled stone, you’d still be up here to go for help.’

He started warily down, shining the torch as he went. Nell, peering anxiously over the edge saw the light sweep over ancient walls, crusted with soot and grime.

‘I’m at the bottom,’ he said. His voice echoed slightly and eerily. ‘There are ten steps, and they all seemed sound, but they’re very worn so make sure you don’t slip.’

‘Here I come,’ said Nell. ‘The smell’s clearing a bit now, I think. That’s something to be grateful for.’

But descending the stone steps was a grim experience. Once, thought Nell, someone lived here or worked down here – maybe was even held prisoner here – and whoever it was suffered such agonies of black and bitter despair, the feeling’s soaked into the walls. She remembered how Harriet Anstey had said Brank Asylum made her think of people drowning in the dark. That’s what it feels like down here, thought Nell, and for a moment she had to resist a compulsion to bolt back up the steps. But she reached the bottom of the steps and was grateful when Michael put an arm round her.

‘For warmth,’ he said.

‘Was I shivering?’

‘No, I was,’ said Michael.

The cellar was bigger than they had expected – a narrow but fairly long room that must stretch under the whole workshop and even extend under part of the courtyard. Nell had been expecting to see a traditional underground room, perhaps with a stone floor and walls, bare of anything saved the accumulated dirt of decades. But the room, although it was certainly stone, was not bare. It had been lived in. Standing against the walls were the remains of bookshelves – rotting and splintering with age, but recognizable.

‘There are still books on them,’ said Michael softly. ‘Dear God, look at them.’ He moved the torch, showing up rows of old yellowing books, many of them crumbled beyond retrieval, but some still with the leather or calf spines intact. Here and there a vagrant glint of lettering, perhaps once gold leaf, caught the light.

‘An underground study,’ said Nell in a whisper.

‘A secret library,’ said Michael. ‘Forbidden works, I should think.’

The torchlight moved again, and Nell felt as if something had slammed a clenched fist into her throat. She gasped, and in the same moment felt Michael’s hand tighten around hers.

At the far end of the cellar was a large writing desk, with a chair drawn up to it. Seated in the chair was the partly-mummified figure of what had once been a man. His head had fallen forward on to the desk, near an elaborate inkstand, and in the sweep of the torchlight it was possible to see the fragments of dried skin that clung to the rounded skull. Hands – not quite fleshless – reached across the desk, and Nell took a step backwards, because it was dreadfully easy to imagine the hands would suddenly move and reach out . . .

Michael said, very softly, ‘I think this is Elvira Lee’s nightmare man. Remember what she said to Harriet? That he had learned spells from the black marrow of the world’s history.’ He indicated the shelves. ‘I think these are those spells,’ he said. ‘This is where he studied them. That’s why he had to shut himself away down here.’

‘Brooke Crutchley,’ said Nell, unable to look away from the dreadful figure. ‘It must be. It can’t be anyone else.’

Michael took a cautious step towards the desk. Nell, who could not have approached that figure for all the money in the world, watched him.

‘Look at this,’ he said, in the same soft voice.

‘What is it?’

‘An oilskin packet. Sealed as well as anything could be sealed down here.’ He lifted it up gingerly. Showers of dust came away, and Nell shuddered.

‘Handwritten pages,’ said Michael, cautiously unwrapping the oilskin.

‘A diary?’

‘Some kind of record, at any rate. The top page is dated January 1880. Let’s take them upstairs and close this place up again. We can report what we’ve found in the morning – although I’m not sure who we actually report it to.’

‘I’d better phone Inspector Brent. He’d know the procedure.’ Nell’s eyes were on the oilskin package. She said, ‘But before we even attempt to look at those papers, let’s go back upstairs to the ordinary world and have a wash and a drink – oh, and something to eat.’

They were both so covered with dust and dirt that Nell suggested they took turns to shower.

‘And let’s eat your casserole before we even try reading those pages,’ said Michael. ‘I don’t know about you, but I’m ravenous and it smells terrific. I didn’t know it was such hungry work exploring subterranean rooms.’

For a moment there was an echo of Brad’s expression – I’m extraordinarily hungry – but it was a soft and benign echo. There was an intimacy in finding clean towels for Michael, then leaving him to open the wine while Nell showered after him. While she was doing so, he called through the bathroom door that he would check on the casserole if that was all right.

‘Give it a stir if it needs it,’ shouted Nell. ‘There’s a wooden spoon on the work surface somewhere.’ She pulled on clean trousers and a loose shirt, and padded down to the kitchen. Michael had stirred the casserole and had poured her a glass of wine. His hair was slightly damp from the shower, and Nell wanted to reach out to touch it. Instead, she ladled out the casserole and passed him the bread.

‘I think,’ he said, between mouthfuls, ‘that we might have found the – the core of the problem, don’t you? Down there in the cellar, I mean.’

‘The unhallowed spirit?’ said Nell, smiling. ‘The troubled soul that can’t rest until it gets Christian burial – or burial according to whatever it believed in?’

‘Don’t mock me, you heartless wench, it’s in all the best traditions of ghosts, in fact you said that yourself.’

‘I’m not mocking you. I still don’t believe it all – not logically and sanely. But then I remember what happened to Beth – and Alice’s journal and Harriet’s.’

‘And Elvira talking about the man who tried to find her – the man she said must never find Harriet or she might lose her sanity,’ said Michael.

‘Yes.’ Nell realized they were both looking across the room, to where the oilskin package lay on a low table. She said, ‘Can you eat any more casserole? In that case, I’ll dunk everything in the sink and bring the cheese and fruit over to the fire.’

Between them they carefully peeled away the oilskin covering and drew out the sheaf of papers. The writing was legible, although the ink was faded in places, and here and there the paper was spotted with brown mould.

With the fire burning brightly in the hearth and the curtains drawn against the night, they sat together on the sofa and began to read Brooke Crutchley’s journal.

TWENTY-THREE

December 1880

I
never expected to become entangled quite so violently with a lady. But anyone reading these pages may be familiar with that sudden lightning-sizzle of emotion that sears through the mind so that one is unable to think of anything else.

I must qualify that statement, because for some of the time I have certainly managed to think of other things, although that may be because I must. The poets talk about counting the world well lost for love, which I dare say is all very well for poets, who seem able to live on about half of nothing and appear to have no responsibilities, and who think nothing of starving in garrets where they usually end up with a galloping consumption. I see no benefit in any of that, and certainly not in wasting away for love’s sake. I enjoy my food and think of myself as a robust figure of a man with a healthy appetite. (Only the unkindly-disposed would call me portly.)

Nor do I have any family responsibilities. (I do not count the distant cousin living in Staffordshire.) But there are other responsibilities in life, and mine are towards my customers. Clockmaking is a very precise craft, and my father would have been proud of the way I had carried on the business I had inherited. ‘Brooke, my boy,’ he would have said, ‘you can be proud of what you have achieved.’ Although he would have added: ‘Not too proud, mind.’ He was strict on self-pride and the vanities.

What he did often say was that I needed a son to carry on the business. ‘A good, steady boy who can continue Crutchley’s Clockmakers,’ he used to say. ‘So take a wife, Brooke, and get a son, and remember it’s better to marry than to burn.’

I would certainly have taken a wife, if there was any possibility that the wife I wanted – the only wife I could ever have taken – was likely to accord me a second look.

Elizabeth Marston. The simple act writing the name on this page sends a spike of such fierce longing through me that—

Perhaps I shouldn’t go into that. Instead, I’ll record that she’s daughter of the Honourable Roland Marston of Marston House. The Marstons are landed gentry, padded against the world’s chills by old money, and there’s even said to be some kind of connection to royalty, although personally I’ve always doubted that.

But what with their money and their land and their fabled link to Saxe-Coburg, no matter how much I might yearn for Elizabeth – and yearn I have done – no artisan clockmaker could aspire to such a marriage.

I haven’t exactly
aspired
, but I have hoped. I have hoped for many years, and I have woven dreams in which I rescued Elizabeth from assorted dangers, or in which I became heir to fabulous fortunes and titles making me an acceptable suitor. I know it’s absurd and even pitiful to recount a portly clockmaker visualizing himself braving burning buildings or runaway carriages, but I did.

Today those dreams and hopes have died. They died between the eggs and bacon and the morning post, on a spring morning, with the birds gossiping in the trees and the meadows just becoming spangled with yellow and gold.

It was in my newspaper, in black, hateful print. And I am writing this at my little dining table, my breakfast congealing on my plate.

‘The betrothal has been announced between William Lee, son of Sir James and Lady Lee of Shropshire, and Elizabeth Alexandra Marston, only daughter of the Honourable Roland Marston of Marston House. The marriage will take place on New Year’s Day, 1881.’

Later

I’ve cut it out, that detestable oblong of print, and pasted it into this diary. I keep rereading it and, every time I do so, the words burn a little deeper into my soul.

William Lee. Thin and pale, with a scholar’s stoop and an arid soul. How much say did old Roland Marston give Elizabeth over the match, I wonder?

They never tell you, those poets and those lovers, that hatred and agony can take on solid substance on a green and gold spring morning, or that it can smell of newly-fried bacon and eggs.

January 1881

The marriage has indeed taken place. I was not invited, of course – I dare say neither the aristocratic Marstons nor the patrician Lees are even aware of my existence, and if they were, they would hardly include a common clockmaker in the guests.

I was there, though, watching the ceremony from behind a pillar in the church. She wore white velvet, with a little fur-lined cape, and carried a sheaf of Christmas roses. While they signed the register, I slipped out through the chancel door and stood in the concealment of the yew tree until they came out.

I don’t care for that Paul Pry image of myself, but it’s what I did. I stood there, on the crisp, cold January morning, and I saw those two – my Elizabeth and that man – come out through the church doors, with bells ringing and choirs caterwauling and everyone laughing and throwing rice, and my stomach rebelled and I had to turn away to be sick behind a wall, because I could not bear it – I simply could not bear seeing them together. Mr and Mrs William Lee. I think it was then, straightening up from the spasms of sickness, wiping my mouth on my handkerchief, that the black madness entered my heart.