The Keeper of Secrets (24 page)

I had closed her eyes by the time Hansard reached her, with nothing to alleviate her last agonies except the sure and certain promise of the life to come.

He nodded sadly. ‘I could not have saved her, Tobias. It was well you were here to offer comfort. What a coincidence that her house should burn down the day tragedy strikes another family,’ he added, as he straightened. ‘Will you see she is carried back to my cellar, Matthew? Thank you. And then we will see to your burns, Tobias.’

I woke when the evening sun found a gap in the curtains. I was not in my own room, but a strange one. As I struggled to my elbow, I was pushed gently back.

‘Dr Hansard says you are not to stir till he says so, Mr Campion,’ Turner said.

‘But I’m so thirsty,’ I complained, like a sickly child. Edmund had given me something to relieve the pain, and it must have sent me off to sleep.

‘I will raise you by lifting the pillow, and then you may take a sip of this saline draught.’ He suited the deed to the word, holding a glass to my lips. Laying me back again, he said, ‘Dr Hansard said you might have some more drops if the pain is very bad.’

‘I shall do very well without them, thank you, Turner. Where is Edmund?’

He tutted disapprovingly. ‘Down in the cellar looking at poor Mrs Woodman’s body, as is his way, sir. If you can spare me, I will let him know that you are conscious.’

I must have drifted off to sleep again, because the next thing I knew was Edmund feeling my pulse.

‘He must have the constitution of an ox, this young man,’ he observed.

Toone’s voice replied, ‘Indeed he must. I beat him sorely when we were at Eton – only for his own good, mind you.’

For the sake of their friendship, that was a myth I must remember to perpetuate.

‘So why do you make an invalid out of me?’ I demanded, forcing open my leaden lids. ‘I may feel buffle-headed, but I am sure that is a result of whatever concoction you made Turner pour down my throat.’

‘It is. I had to dress your burnt hands, Tobias, and that gave you pain. Thanks to Matthew’s quick thinking, however, there is very little tissue damage, and you will learn to wear your scars with pride. You should – it was no mean feat to rescue Mrs Woodman.’

‘Had I succeeded in saving her life, it might be praiseworthy.’

‘I think she would have died soon anyway,’ Toone said. ‘You told Hansard that she was unconscious when you dragged her out. That was because someone had hit her so hard they had fractured her skull. Whoever did it – and I am sure we are all in agreement as to the likely culprit – intended anyone seeing her injuries to deduce they were caused by the fire, were they of course noticeable by then.’

‘And have you arrested her yet?’

Edmund laughed, but with no gaiety. ‘Would we dare without your presence? If you feel you can get up, and if Turner can make you halfway presentable – the fire has taken half your hair, Tobias – then we will have the horse brought round and sally forth at once.’

I was making my way downstairs when I heard a maidservant calling out to Dr Hansard. ‘They do say, sirs, that there’s great doings at the big house. It seems her ladyship’s taken it into her head to go on her travels all over again. Such a hurrying and scurrying you never did see!’

‘Thank God for the nosiness of villagers!’ cried Edmund, as she left. ‘My good friends, we must be on our way.’

We rode too hard for conversation, grateful for the brightness of the spring evening. Titus seemed puzzled by my handling of the reins, but had he seen the bandages and understood why they were there, he could not have been more biddable.

‘Her ladyship is not At Home,’ Woodvine, the butler, declared.

‘She will see us,’ Dr Hansard announced grimly, veritably pushing his way into the entrance hall. ‘Where is she? Her boudoir? Do not attempt to announce me – I know my way well enough.’

Even Hansard found himself constrained by years of training to tap on the door before pushing it open. The three of us stepped in, standing shoulder to shoulder. ‘I am here not as your physician, but as a justice of the peace,’ Hansard said
portentously. ‘And I believe you know all too well why I am here, my lady.’

Before she replied, she appeared to notice something left lying on the carpet. A servant, not one of my protégées, but a new face, bent, despite an armful of clothes, to pick it up.

‘Leave it! Wait in my bedroom!’ To my amazement, Lady Elham picked up whatever it was herself. ‘And take care not to crease my new grey silk when you pack it!’ She gave an odd smile as she turned back to us. ‘Some refreshment, gentlemen? No? Forgive me if I take some of my drops, Dr Hansard – I feel my palpitations coming on.’ Her back to us, she measured a quantity into a glass, and turned to us, raising it as if in a toast. She swallowed convulsively, gasping a little. ‘And why are you all here? You can see it is not convenient.’

‘I wish to speak to you concerning Lizzie’s death. Murder, I would say. And the murder of Augustus, Tenth Duke of Elham, William Jenkins and Nan Woodman. And the illegal incarceration of John Sanderson and of George, Eleventh Duke of Elham.’

It seemed to me that she paled. Certainly her breath came in ugly gasps. But she did not reply.

‘As for Lizzie, she was with child, my lady,’ he continued. ‘And it seems to me someone wanted to ensure that she bore no more babes.’

‘Do not repine over the unborn child’s death,’ she whispered. ‘It would have been a halfwit. Inbreeding, Doctor Hansard – surely a man of your calibre knows the problems it brings. Every great family has members confined to attics or elsewhere. What hope could there be for any child of my son’s, especially one begotten of his sister?’ Her
eyes focused on me, with some difficulty, I thought.

‘She has taken something!’ Toone declared. To my amazement, he seized her, attempting to put a finger to the back of her throat. With amazing power, she fought him off.

‘A purgative, then!’

I knew that he and Hansard would do all they could but that I was superfluous. I busied myself looking round the room. What could it have been that she wished so much to pick up? Where had she put it? There was nothing untoward on the little silver tray that held her drops and the jug of water. I followed the line of the wainscoting.

‘If only we knew what poison she has taken,’ Hansard groaned. ‘Then we might try an antidote.’

I proffered a pellet I had just picked up.

Toone took it. ‘Rat poison?’

‘She must have told her staff that there were mice here, thus ensuring a ready means of escape. Good God, Hansard, how long will she be like this?’

He shrugged.

Urging her to her daybed, I took her hand and knelt beside her. ‘There is still time to make your peace with the Almighty,’ I urged.

‘No time. No time at all.’

‘There is time to confess all you have done and why you did it. Let us make a beginning. Why did you drown your husband, Cousin?’

Her smile repelled me. ‘Cousin! Well, I suppose I am. I hope you are spared the family madness, Cousin Tobias. Elham – my husband, save the mark! – was forced upon me by my family, a young man who was so far from knowing the ways
of the world that he was unable to consummate our marriage, spending what should have been our honeymoon in an asylum, but one far less charitable to its inmates than Lymbury Park. It was given out that we had gone on the grand tour. I lived in seclusion with his brother’s family until Augustus was deemed fit to emerge and breed. Once it was established that I was
enceinte
, I was spared his company, but he insisted on seeing his first-born. Never having seen a
newborn
before, he was so appalled by the sight that his madness came upon him again and he spent a further spell in the asylum. As you know, he spent longer and longer periods at liberty, but he was never strong in the intellect.’

‘Was that reason to kill him?’ Hansard demanded, muttering under his breath that if stupidity were a capital crime we would lose at least half the upper ten thousand.

‘The reason I killed him was that he gave his niece a slip on the shoulder,’ she said clearly. ‘Oh, do not look so shocked, Cousin Tobias. Even a clergyman must have heard the expression. He
forced himself upon her
, you ignorant boy.’

‘Lizzie was your daughter,’ Hansard said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘By Elham’s brother. Lord Leominster. She was conceived and born while we were supposedly on the grand tour. Hence
my
seclusion,’ she added with a twisted smile. ‘She was a taking little thing, so I had her farmed out to a recently widowed woman, who had lost her own baby, on what was then one of Elham’s less favoured estates. I thought I would never have to see her again. But then Elham got some maggot in his brain about the shooting being good here, and so it was I saw a great deal of her. You will know that Widow
Woodman was handsomely paid. Provided she kept the secret absolutely, of course. Which she did until a few weeks ago. Where is Beckles?’ she asked pettishly. ‘Such a deedy woman.’

I clutched Hansard’s shoulder to steady him. He nodded in acknowledgement. At last he had his voice sufficiently under control to continue. ‘So for that slip of the tongue Mrs Woodman had to die. Did you kill her yourself, my lady?’

‘How could I ask anyone else to? I set the place a-fire, too. Widow Woodman’s secret will die with her.’

‘Not if I run Bunce and Bargate to earth,’ he replied.

My cousin wrinkled her brow as if trying to concentrate. ‘She did not die?’

‘Not immediately. Not until she had suffered a great deal.’

She shrugged. It was as if she knew that she too had a great deal yet to endure. ‘And then there was the problem of my son. No sooner did he see a placket than he had to put his hand in it. Lizzie couldn’t be sure which man had fathered her child. I told her I would personally escort her to a place of safety. Though she was tall, I am taller, and a great deal stronger. And I had to ensure that she would bear no more babies. They would all have been mad or bad, you see.’

Were these the words of a sane woman? Even the urbane Toone, leaning at a distance on the mantelpiece, gasped with shock.

‘And William Jenkins? Why did you kill him?’

‘William Jenkins? Who—? Ah, the foolish child who saw me hold Elham’s head in the stream. He was poaching, of course, and ought to have been hanged, or at least transported. That was what I threatened him with, if he ever spoke of what he’d seen. I gave an entirely false description to
those who were searching for him, contradicting those who tried to recall him. I employed him again, just once.’ She smiled reminiscently. ‘I hope he did not hit you too hard, Tobias. It must be hard to judge, when one uses a club almost as large as oneself. But I thought it was time to bring you down a peg. And I gather you recovered your health and indeed your watch. He wanted to keep it and your boots, but I insisted he threw them away. And then he found the watch again. Foolish child.’

With great sorrow I said, ‘I rewarded him and his family generously! No wonder the poor boy was ever after uncomfortable in my presence.’

She might not have heard me. ‘Then I heard a rumour that he was sleeping ill – calling out! – and I was afraid of what he might say. So I told his mother I would turn him into a respectable footman at Elham House.’

‘Their Grosvenor Square residence,’ I explained quietly to the others.

‘There are so many bodies in the gutters of London that one more would not have been noticed,’ she said.

‘And he was so terrified of what you would do that he tried to hang himself this morning,’ I said grimly.

‘Did he say that? He lied. Typical of that class,’ she said, wincing at some fierce pang gripping her stomach.

I could not speak.

‘He may yet tell the whole truth,’ Hansard corrected her sharply. ‘He is deeply unconscious but by and by he may recover.’

‘By which time I will not be here to worry,’ she said, with grim humour. ‘Where is my maid? I had to have a new abigail,
you know, the last being unsatisfactory,’ she added in a society drawl. ‘Before that there was some blabbermouth of a butler. I forget now where I left his body. And John Coachman too. He would insist he saw me slit that chit Lizzie’s throat and bury her. I didn’t want to hurt him myself, poor old man, so I had someone poison him. That nice doctor at Lymbury.’

I tried to tell her that he still lived, but her voice grated on.

‘Do you know him? A Dr Brighouse. A most charming toady, with a vile mushroom of a wife. She probably steals the inmates’ food. Please look into it.’

‘We will indeed, my lady,’ Hansard said. ‘So remind me, why did you have your son incarcerated at Lymbury?’

‘He was as mad as his father, and far more
vicious-tempered
. I was always having to pay off some villager whose pig or hen he had disembowelled. He got worse when he came into the title and the estates. He raped Lizzie, you understand, subjecting her to the sort of practices more suited to the Hellfire Club, I do assure you. So away he goes from time to time.’ She clutched her throat, retching horribly.

‘Toone, I would welcome your professional assistance here. Pray leave us, Toby – wait outside and let no one enter without my permission,’ Hansard told me.

I did as I was told, telling a startled manservant to bring me a chair, a branch of candles, a prayer book and a decanter of wine. From time to time the terrified abigail would emerge, carrying a covered vessel. She did not tell me what it contained. I did not ask. She returned with other, empty receptacles.

A bevy of servants huddle at the far end of the corridor. I sent one of them for Mr Davies, the steward.

‘Her ladyship is very ill, Mr Davies. You should ensure that you can locate the next in line of succession and send for him.’

‘Not Lord Elham, sir?’

‘Do you not know where Lord Elham is?’ His face gave him away. ‘Although I fear he will have to return for a funeral, he will not be well enough to live at the Priory for many weeks yet. Indeed, he may never be able to. At very least, a trustee must be appointed. I’m sure I can rely on you, Davies, to be totally discreet,’ I added, stern as my father.

It was in the early hours when Edmund reappeared. ‘I think it is time for you now, Tobias.’ He led me through into the bedchamber, where she lay on the bed screaming aloud and writhing in agony but apparently insensible of our presence.

‘Good God, Hansard, how long will she be like this? Have you nothing that would help her?’

‘As I helped Jenkins out of his pain and into the next world?’ He looked me straight in the eye. ‘I have not.’

I did not believe him.

I looked on her ghastly features and prayed for a rapid end to her suffering. Then I remembered poor Lizzie’s death, and changed my prayer, that the Almighty might in His infinite wisdom suit her punishment to her appalling crimes.

It took her ladyship till noon the next day to die.