Shadow of the Past (8 page)

I was spared the need to elucidate by a knock at the door. It was Furnival, still dressed for travel. He gave the half-bow her ladyship preferred from her household.

‘Dear Furnival, I wonder if you would be so kind as to tell me in which journals you placed advertisements asking for tidings of my son, Lord Chase.’

‘Advertisements, my Lady?’ Furnival repeated, as if the sudden warmth of the parlour fire had melted his wits.

But there was no warmth in her ladyship’s voice. ‘Advertisements, Furnival. For news of my son.’

He shook his head as if doubting what he heard. ‘I have tried all the provincial periodicals once or twice, without success. But of late I have confined myself to the
Morning Post
and the
Times
. I believe the last one in the latter would have been inserted in early October. But I assure you, my Lady, that there have been no responses, none at all.’

‘Of course there have not. I merely wished to enquire. And the advertisements will continue at regular intervals?’

‘I fear it is no more than throwing good money after bad, madam.’

There was no doubting her fury. ‘You wish to desist in our efforts to find Lord Chase? Good God, man, how can that be a waste of money? Spend all this and you do not spend half enough.’ In her rage, her ladyship strode to her writing desk and produced a purse, which she flung down. It shot off the polished surface and landed at Furnival’s feet.

No one moved.

Even though his position as a most loved and trusted retainer had surely given him the right to mention his misgivings, I was shocked that he had questioned her orders. I was even more shocked, truth to tell, by a side to her ladyship I had never seen before. He bent painfully slowly, scrabbled on the floor with his poor swollen fingers, and straightened with what dignity he could.

‘Thank you, Furnival.’ It was not an expression of gratitude. It was the coldest dismissal. Lady Chase waited till he had quitted the room before saying, ‘October. London. So can we
deduce
, Dr Hansard, that that is where the poor dead man came from?’

‘We can make an intelligent guess that it was, Lady Chase, but that is all.’

‘If we make it our premise,’ I rushed in, ‘then I will set out myself in the morning.’

Her ladyship flung up her hands. ‘And now I will have to demand my purse back from Furnival,’ she said ruefully. ‘Or humbly ask him to supply me with guineas.’

‘It would be good to return to friendly terms with such a loyal servant,’ I began.

‘Not so friendly that you tell him the reason why,’ Hansard put in. ‘No, Tobias. No, your Ladyship. All this is too hasty. Tobias cannot dash off anywhere without knowing whither he is dashing. We must put local enquiries in train before he makes a grand assault on the capital. There is, after all, another enquiry to make – what has happened to the young woman who found the corpse? Where is Miss Southey, and why did she disappear so swiftly?’

The person who should be able to answer that was of course, Sir Marcus, deny it as he might. By chance, we
encountered him with his wife on the main staircase. However, before we could raise the matter, he pressed on us an invitation for dinner, overriding whatever Edmund was trying to say.

‘Nay, I insist, gentlemen – my wife and I will not take no for an answer, will we, my dear?’

‘But—’ I objected weakly. How could we cross-question a man in a social situation? In any case, I could scarce forbear to glance at my watch – surely it was almost five o’clock already.

‘You will recall we now keep town hours, gentlemen.’ His bow was an uneasy mixture of the arrogant and the ingratiating. ‘No, I will accept no excuses. Lady Chase herself has promised to honour us with her company at seven. Dr Hansard, what do you say?’

Whether or not Edmund felt similar inhibitions, he responded with a civil bow. ‘My wife and I would be pleased to accept your invitation,’ he said clearly, with what I saw as a challenge in his eye. Lady Chase treated Mrs Hansard as an intimate friend, but the presence of a
mere
doctor’s wife might not be as welcome to this upstart.

‘Excellent,’ Sir Marcus declared, not missing a beat. ‘A new batch of music arrived this very morning, Mr Campion. I trust you will not disappoint my sister?’

I already had done that, of course, with my chosen mode of life, but let that pass. In any case, Lady Chase’s words about Lady Dorothea still ringing in my ears, I felt positively queasy. Nonetheless, forbidding myself even a glance at Dr Hansard, I declared I should be charmed indeed. ‘Will Lady Bramhall be pleased to play on her harp?’ I pursued.

A curtsy and a blush were my reward. Indeed, despite the
length of our acquaintance, she was still more of a simpering miss than a matron in her behaviour. No wonder her daughters were so lacking in savoir-faire with such a model before them. And with such a domineering father, no wonder they were bullies. I could always treat them as if they were subjects of scientific inquiry. Perhaps if I did so, I would after all look forward to our conversations this evening.

I returned to the rectory to change for dinner, thanking goodness, for once, that the Bramhalls had persuaded Lady Chase to adopt London hours for dining. As I hurried past the churchyard, I saw Simon Clark still at work tidying some graves, although it was nearly dark. He deserved my courtesy as much as the Bramhalls did, so I stopped to greet him.

Simon seemed pleased to be interrupted. He leant on his scythe, contemplating the mound he’d just neatened, though the grass hardly grew at this time of year.

I complimented him on his endeavours. ‘You have another grave to prepare now, of course, Simon. That poor lost soul. Lady Chase has undertaken to bear his funeral expenses.’

‘That man Dr Hansard cut open?’

How on earth did he know that?

He spat. ‘It’s not right, Parson, that it isn’t, opening a man’s insides. With Mrs Hansard under the same roof, too.’

Little did he know how closely I shared his feelings, but I said bracingly, ‘Dr Hansard and Dr Toone merely wish to
learn more about the poor man’s death, and they believe that is the best way.’

He straightened and looked at me sideways. ‘Learning more, indeed. He’s dead, that’s what he is, and that’s all you can say.’

I was sure there was much more to say. However, it was not an argument I wanted, but progress in my enquiries. ‘What we really must discover now is his identity.’

He narrowed his sad eyes. ‘Seems he’s mighty important, with all this fuss.’

‘My friend, if your son were lying in a strange churchyard, would you not wish to know? Until we know his name, we cannot can trace his family. They will never know what fate befell him, never be able to mourn him.’

‘’Tis no worse than losing a lad to they press gangs for godamany years,’ he argued. ‘And what the head doesn’t know the heart can’t grieve over.’

‘And while there’s life there’s hope,’ I agreed ironically. Seeing no response, I continued, ‘But Simon, you can’t want an unnamed gravestone in the area you tend so diligently. Let us make an effort to lay this man to rest with all due dignity – and dignity, to my mind, involves a name.’

Jem received the prospect of curry soup with pleasure, having, he said, often enjoyed it at Langley Park. He had kept to his room, he assured me, toasting himself before the fire which even now glowed brightly.

‘I did venture out to your study, Toby,’ he confessed, ‘while young Susan stripped the bed and made it anew. I brought these back with me.’ He patted a pile of books on his fireside table. But he somewhat negated his good report by
succumbing to a bout of sneezing. He waved me away with the hand he was not employing with his handkerchief, and I did not argue.

Changing with some haste, I set off as briskly as I could. It was already dark, and the gig’s puny lamps did little beyond warn other travellers that I was on the road. However, not many folk stirred abroad at that time of night, and though I made my way unhindered to the main gates of the Hall, Old Mother Powell was just about to close them. Since Mrs Trent had charged me to deliver a fine cake, I hopped down.

Nothing ever seemed to give the old lady more pleasure than to dose me with her cowslip wine, which she reckoned was a powerful preventative of all ills from gout to the ear ache. My theory was that, having drunk enough of the innocent-seeming but potent brew, one cared not what ills might afflict one.

‘No Master Jem?’ she demanded.

I explained that he was unwell. In her mind a common cold became inflammation of the lungs, and the sounding of the death knell.

‘To be sure, you must take him a bottle of my blackcurrant wine,’ she said.

‘Blackcurrant?’ I repeated stupidly.

‘Ah, you were thinking of my cowslip wine. Cowslip is a wonderful preserver of health, Parson, but if you’ve succumbed to an ailment, then it’s my blackcurrant wine you need. Come along in and I’ll find you a bottle. He’s a good young man, Jem,’ she said, bustling ahead of me, ‘always ready with a smile and a jest. Cheers Mr Powell up something proper when he’s in his dismals.’ Mr Powell was
so old that he was in truth little more than Lady Chase’s pensioner, his wife carrying out all the duties she could and other estate workers undertaking anything she was unable to tackle.

Before I knew it I was inside her kitchen, a glass in my hand. I raised it to Mr Powell, who, slumped in a Windsor chair, responded with a sad smile. At last, his wife produced a nip for him, too, though this was a different colour – rosehip gin, she said. She’d heard it might cure his joint pains, and even if it failed in that regard it would warm his old heart.

‘It is not I who am unwell,’ I protested, ‘and indeed, I am expected any moment at the Hall.’

‘Just a sip will set you up nicely. There’s bad things happening up there, they tell me. Poor Miss Southey.’

I sat on the stool she had polished with her apron and raised the liquid to my lips. Never had the call of duty been so sweet. ‘What was it that occurred at the Hall that resulted in her dismissal?’

‘With no roundaboutation, the story is that she set her cap at you, Parson,’ came her unflinching reply.

‘Come, Mrs Powell, you know that the young lady never lifted a flirtatious finger in her life.’

She regarded me steadily, her eyes bright despite the mesh of wrinkles surrounding them. ‘Nor, I’d stake my life on it, did you compromise the poor girl’s reputation.’

I gasped. ‘I–I—’

‘Of course you didn’t,’ she said comfortably. ‘Indeed, the talk downstairs is that you are sweet on Lady Dorothea, though I always say—’ She stopped abruptly.

‘Say what, Mrs Powell? You know that nothing will go beyond these four walls.’

She looked at me appraisingly.

‘Come, we are old friends, are we not?’

She swallowed hard. ‘Indeed, sir. Which is why I always said you had too much sense.’

Now it was my turn to blush. ‘Lady Dorothea is a very talented and attractive young lady.’

‘Yes, indeed. But as I have always said to them as
match-made
, sir,’ she added firmly, ‘you want someone like Mrs Hansard, and that’s the truth. Pretty faces won’t make a clergyman’s wife, and no more will fingers clever on the fortepiano. A young Mrs Hansard,’ she concluded with a nod.

‘And will you look out for such a one for me?’ I asked gaily. The cowslip wine must have been even stronger than I remembered. I set the glass aside firmly, though it was still three-quarters full. A gleam in Mr Powell’s eye told me it would not go undrunk.

‘With all my heart.’

It was clearly time to bring the talk back to more conventional lines. ‘So, Mrs Powell, what really made them dismiss Miss Southey?’

‘And without a reference they did, God help the poor young lady. At least that’s one thing that’s said, though ’tis also put about that she left of her own accord. It was all done behind closed doors, sir, you know how it is, and ask how I might I can’t find the truth. Those young minxes might have had something to do with it. Always trying to find fault, just because she was trying to cure
their
faults. It was they that told Sir Marcus about the fires lit to give her comfort in her room, and next thing Mrs Sandys knew was that fires were forbidden and she threatened with I don’t
know what if she disobeyed. And her having to support her old parents, too.’

I nodded slowly. Perhaps that explained Mrs Sandys’ hostility to me.

‘Sir Marcus said Miss Southey was invited to the drawing room every evening and had no need of a fire. And then he would have her play to them all. It was almost as if…’

‘Go on, please.’

‘’Tis said it was almost as if they were goading her, like boys teasing a stray dog. But she never snarled, never gave any cause to dismiss her. And suddenly, there she was, gone.’

‘Someone must have seen her depart?’

‘Not according to what they say. And neither did I, Mr Campion. I may be slower than I was, but I’ve still got my eyes and ears, thank the Lord. And I swear to you I saw neither hide nor hair of her passing through my gates.’

I did not even raise an eyebrow to question her. If she said it was so, it was so.

‘Which makes me think she must have been in such disgrace as to be sent out through the servants’ gate – oh, yes, did you not hear? Seems Sir Marcus has taken it on himself to open the old lodge gates, to keep working folk away from the gentry.’

‘Has he indeed?’ What had Lady Chase made of that? ‘Thank you for telling me all this, Mrs Powell. It makes my task easier.’

She stood up, smoothing down her spotless apron. ‘Task?’ she repeated shrewdly. ‘Mr Campion, you aren’t ever going after her? Now, that would set tongues a-wagging.’ She shook her head disapprovingly.

‘Did anyone mention a loving home? Even distant relatives
with whom Miss Southey might seek sanctuary? No?Well, tell me this, Mrs Powell, how may a young woman, alone, unattended, with little money, and, I hazard, no references, find her way in the world?’

‘Indeed, I know not, Mr Campion. ’Tis a sad fix to be in. But take care not to make her difficult situation worse.’ She stared at the fire for a moment before continuing. ‘If you ask questions, Mr Campion, people may remark upon it. But if an old gossip like me asks where Miss might be travelling, it’s only to be expected, isn’t it? And I’ve got plenty of people passing this way every day. Trust me, I shall keep my ears open.’

I grinned like the schoolboy she treated me as. ‘I’m sure you will and I thank you for it.’

She patted my hand – it might just as well have been my head. ‘We see alike, Mr Campion. Now, tell Jem to dose himself on that blackcurrant wine, regular as clockwork, and pray send my very best compliments to Mrs Trent on that fine cake…’

My late arrival at the Hall went unremarked since the Hansards were even later, if only by a minute. While not exactly saying that I had accompanied Hansard to his patient’s sickbed, I let it be assumed that that was the case. Edmund and Maria rose handsomely to the occasion, as if they guessed that I had been doing something I would rather not disclose. As always in dress they were truly the gentleman and lady: his evening wear was at least the equal of Sir Marcus’s, and she looked rather better than Lady Bramhall, possibly because she held herself like a queen.

We were received, as before, in the bitter damp cold of the
entrance hall, and for what was to be no more than a family gathering, too. However, the moment our outer garments were respectfully borne away, Lady Chase descended the stairs and in person requested the pleasure of all the company in her salon. Sir Marcus was inclined to bluster, but she quelled him with the merest lift of her eyebrow and within moments we were ensconced in the warm and gracious room.

To the surprise, no doubt, of her family, but not of her three guests, she had provided her best champagne, occasioning an ill-stifled exclamation at the expense from Sir Marcus. The girls were provided with ratafia. If we conspirators minutely lifted our glasses in a secret toast, no one remarked on it – except for Lady Dorothea, tonight in the most vivid pink, the button holes picked out in gold, who appeared to assume that I was honouring her. With hardly a blush, she curtsied deeply, and then raised her glass quite particularly to me. Perhaps rumours of my family’s rank had at last reached her brother, and he now wished her, in the common phrase, to set her cap at me. How should I respond?

Would I – should I—? I knew not what I should do, other than maintain the dignity of ordinary polite behaviour. That was how I had always behaved here at the Hall – and, I hoped, elsewhere. But until I had had a period of quiet – and prayerful – reflection, I resolved to avoid what papists call, I believe, the occasion for sin.

So I moved into the neighbourhood of her nieces, determined to extract as subtly as I might the details of their treatment of Miss Southey. Would they be prone once more to unseemly giggles? Or would what they had witnessed have brought them to sobriety?

‘I trust you are none the worse for the distressing events of Monday?’ I asked, in the low voice I reserve for invalids.

Lady Honoria responded with a simper. ‘Indeed, sir, we have hardly had a wink of sleep since.’ She added a great deal more, as if she were an ailing Bath dowager, not a strapping schoolroom miss.

Since both young ladies looked in the rudest of health, I suspected that this was a mere conversational gambit designed to elicit a compliment it gave me no pleasure to offer. ‘Permit me to say, however, Lady Honoria and Miss Georgiana, that whatever you suffer within, without you are in the best of looks.’

Both bowed, concealing their faces behind matching fans – chicken skin, far too extravagant for girls not yet out.

‘I was sorry not see Miss Southey before she departed,’ I continued. ‘Was it the shock of what she found that impelled her to quit the place?’

One shot a look at the other. ‘It was found – she did not suit,’ Georgiana managed.

‘For what reason?’ I asked, trying to keep my voice light. The last impression I wished to give was that I might be interrogating them.

Miss Georgiana gave a minute shrug of her silk-clad shoulder. My mother would have sent her back upstairs to change into sprig muslin, far more suitable for a girl her age. ‘She did not suit,’ she repeated. Her voice was as cold as her father could have wished.

‘I am sorry to hear that. But I trust that her absence will not mean that your accomplishments will lapse?’

‘We are to have a London dancing-master,’ the elder sister informed me languidly. ‘And an art-master from Leamington.’

I bowed. They were to construe that I was satisfied, even impressed, by the likelihood of their future attainments. ‘I trust you will not let your more scholarly accomplishments lapse.’

‘Pooh, as to French and the globes and such, we are no longer in the nursery, Mr Campion. We are to come out in the spring, provided that Aunt Chase will—’