The Solitary House (33 page)

“I do not know if that was any use to you, Mr Maddox,” says the doctor with a sigh, “but I fear you will get little more. His heart has very nearly given up, and will labour but a little further.”

It’s only now, in the full light streaming from the windows overhead, that he notices Charles’s hand.

“May I?” he says, gesturing to the dressing.

Charles nods. It may not be such a bad idea, after all, for a professional to take a look.

“Has a surgeon seen this?” says the doctor with a frown, echoing Charles’s thought.

Charles shakes his head, watching the bandage removed by a practised and skilful hand. As the last strip of cloth lifts from the wound he winces, then shakes his head again as the doctor eyes him with concern. “It’s nothing.”

“On the contrary. This is a serious injury. It must be very painful, even now.”

He lifts the hand so he can examine it more closely, then touches here and there, but gently, so as not to cause unnecessary pain.

“You have had a good nurse,” he concludes eventually. “I see no sign of infection at present, but you must remain vigilant. You risk losing the hand, if not worse.”

He asks Phil for a basin of water, then cleans the hand again and dries it, and binds it up in a new dressing. And as he does so he asks,
with what is perhaps a rather artificial nonchalance, “I have had occasion recently to treat a number of people wounded in a wreck at sea, but this injury does not resemble any of them. The cut is too clean, too expert. This was no accident, was it? Someone attacked you.”

Charles smiles bitterly. “I found out to my cost, that if one approaches too near the knuckle with the likes of Mr Tulkinghorn, one risks having the metaphor turn to reality in the most unpleasant fashion.”

He sees the trooper start at this, and a look flashes between him and the doctor.

“I see you know the name,” says Charles, his interest aroused.

“As I said to the doctor only yesterday, Mr Maddox, I know the name. Aye, I know the name, but only to my sorrow.” The trooper rubs his large hand over the back of his neck, sending his thick hair standing on end. “You have gathered, no doubt, that I am in difficulties just at present. It is this man, this Tulkinghorn, who is at the root of it. He has the power to turn me out of this place neck and crop, if he chooses, but he does
not
choose. He threatens, and then he withdraws. Even when I have money to give him, he passes me from here to there, refusing to see me, keeping me hanging on until it fair maddens my mind to fury.”

The trooper’s face is by now, as red as the soiled bandage cast aside on the table and he heaves a heavy sigh, as if fearful of what else he might say.

“And you say this Tulkinghorn is responsible for your injury?” the doctor asks Charles, stopping for a moment in his bandaging.

“Not directly, of course,” replies Charles. “He would not dirty his hands with such disagreeable matters, even if he had the heart and stomach to undertake them.”

“Aye,” agrees the trooper, “as I said to the doctor here, I wish I had the chance of setting spurs to my horse and riding at that bloodless old man in a fair field. For if I had that chance, he’d be the one to go down, I can promise you that!”

“And the police?” asks the doctor calmly, still intent on the dressing.

Charles shrugs. “I have no proof. And even if I had, I suspect Mr Tulkinghorn’s word would weigh more heavily with certain officers at Bow Street, than even the strongest and most incontrovertible evidence.”

It is the doctor’s turn to glance up now, and his face is troubled.

“I told you a few minutes ago,” he says slowly, “that I did not believe there could be any connexion between the crime you are investigating and the callous moving-on of this poor lad. I am not so sure of that now. Indeed,” he continues, “I always found it odd that such a man should have taken so much time and trouble to pursue and harry that pitiful creature—a proceeding which has unquestionably brought the boy directly to the sad state into which he has now descended. To track him as far out of London as the house in which he was found”—and here the shadow passes again across his face—“and then have him taken away in the dead of night. What was there to be gained from it? Whom could it possibly benefit?”

“I think you know the answer now, sir,” says the trooper, his face grim. “It is this Tulkinghorn—this man who hoards the private secrets of a hundred noble families, and whose sole concern is to preserve them from prying eyes and common tongues. You have a dangerous enemy, Mr Maddox, and his reach is long.”

Charles looks from the trooper to the doctor, who takes up his thought again. “Indeed, this would seem to be the only explanation for another otherwise inexplicable aspect of the affair. The fact that the boy remains—as you saw—in a quite irrational terror of the person who ordered him to keep out of the way. He still believes this person to be everywhere, and to know everything.”

“I know to my own cost,” returns the trooper, shaking his head, “that this person he speaks of is undoubtedly a rum customer—and a deep one. The boy is right about that, in every particular. I never
saw a man with such an outward appearance of candour, and yet so secretive a way of going on. Nor did I ever meet a man who seems so clearly to be marching straight ahead, only to veer off, at the last moment, in another course entirely.”

“Of course,” says Charles slowly, as the final recognition dawns. “Inspector Bucket.”

TWENTY

Hester’s Narrative

A
ND NOW
I come to a part of my story touching myself very nearly indeed, and for which I was all unprepared. It was some months after Clara had been ill, and yet I felt still that there was some strange and inexplicable shadow between us, and yet in every other way my life was just as it had always been. Until that day—oh, that terrible day!—when I first felt myself unwell. My dreams the night before had been unusually tangled and hectic, and when I woke the room was still dark and I could not free myself from the impression that something had happened during the night, though I did not know what it was, that had left me with a curious sense of fullness, as if I were becoming too large altogether. I made myself a little tea, and sat down heavily before the dying fire. And as the room grew gradually colder and colder I found I was shivering from head to foot, and yet I was growing all the while not more wakeful but more somnolent, and my thoughts soon became so confused that I began to lose a sense of who I was—now the girl in the room was me, and now she was Clara, and now she was poor confused Miss Flint, distraught and tormented, and crying aloud in fear in the darkness.

I do not know how long it was that I remained there, but my next recollection is of the grey light of morning stealing between the curtains, which I must have left open. I rose, somewhat stiffly, and went to close them. It was still very early, and the sky overcast and drab, but I was sure I could see figures in the garden. I believe—I am sure I caught a glimpse of white—that one of them was Anne, the boarder I think I referred to once before. She was walking on the farther side of the lawn, accompanied by one of the maids and another woman I had never seen. I should have remembered if I had, for though her figure was comely and her manner elegant, I could see even from my window that her face was ugly. I am not being unkind, I assure you—her skin was swarthy, her forehead low, and her features almost masculine. I had no looking-glass to compliment my own looks but I could not help feeling a most pleasant satisfaction with them—such as they are. Looking back at what I have just written, I realise that I have omitted to mention that Anne had recently returned to our company after an absence of some months. To my mind, she seemed rather changed from when I had last seen her, but my Guardian said she had been very ill and the slight changes to her appearance were no doubt due to the effects of that illness. Did not my own darling pet look rather different now than once she did? And no doubt he was right, in this as in all things.

But to return to my narrative. When Carley came to wake me, I asked her who had been in the garden and she looked at me in some perplexity and replied that I must be mistaken. There had been no visitors at that hour of the morning, she said, and none of the maids would have the leisure for a walk at such a time. And in truth, I was by then feeling so much worse that I was no longer sure of what I had seen. Indeed, Carley soon saw that I was very indisposed, and helped me to return to my bed before going at once for Miss Darby.
She must have come, and come quickly, for I remember her placing her cool hand on my forehead, and the taste of something bitter between my lips. That day turned into night, and the night into another day, and I had not left my bed, or seen anyone but Miss Darby. Though I found it difficult to talk, I asked once or twice for Carley, but was told she was indisposed, and unable to come. Soon after that I heard my darling in the corridor outside, but Miss Darby went to the door and said that I was asleep. I heard her whisper softly, “You must not come in now, Miss Clara—not for all the world!”

And then I knew how ill I must be, and turned my face to my pillow and wept.

I lay sick a long time, and my old life became like a distant memory. Everything I knew and loved seemed to have retreated to a far remote place, leaving me alone and abandoned in that shuttered room. There were times when all my recollections seemed to run into one another and melt together, so that there was one moment when I thought I was a little girl again at my mother’s knee, but there was my Guardian sitting with us too, caressing my mother’s face and running his hand over my hair. This vision was painfully real to me—the colours too bright, the lines too sharp. I doubt that anyone who has not experienced such a thing can quite understand what I mean, or why I shrank from this vision as if it were a thing of terror, though it was, in every respect, a picture of love. There were nights too when I believed myself harnessed to a terrible treadmill, or forced to work forever some unbearable machinery that burned my hands and brought hot tears to my eyes. But there were other times when I talked quite lucidly with Miss Darby, and felt her hand on my head. But I dare not even think of that worst of times, when I felt drowned in a dark place, while my whole body was ripped apart in some never-ending agony, hour after hour, and I heard a voice calling out in pain, and knew it to be my own.

But perhaps the less I think about these terrible things, the quicker I will forget them. I do remember the final utter bliss of sleep, and thinking, even in my frailty, that it was over now, and I could rest. I do not know how long this period of convalescence has lasted now. Days, perhaps weeks. I do know that the year has turned, and the weather with it. I sit at the window, wrapped in my shawl, and look down at the grey garden and watch the slow drops fall—
drip, drip, drip
—upon the terrace. And I remember Amy telling me of the footstep on the Ghost’s Walk, and I wonder if perhaps it might be true, and if it is, what does the sound most resemble? A man’s step? A woman’s? The tiny feet of a little child, ever getting closer, and never coming near? It affects me, now—that sound—as it never has before, in all the long years I have lived in this house. I cannot explain why. And in all this time of my recovery I have never seen my pet. Miss Darby makes up the fire, and brings me my meals on a tray, and she is as always the soul of kindness, but other than her I see no-one.

No-one, that is, until this morning. I slept badly last night, disturbed by the dreary and monotonous drumming of the rain on the roof overhead, and I had only just drifted into a troubled slumber when I heard a noise in the passage outside my door, and then the soft careful sound of the key turning in the lock. I sat up stiffly in bed, wondering why Miss Darby should be waking me at such an early hour, but it was not Miss Darby’s face I saw. It was Carley’s. She closed the door quietly behind her, then came swiftly across to me and took me in her arms, and I could feel her body shaking. After a few moments she sat back and held me by the shoulders, and started to speak to me. Her voice low, and her eyes always, always fixed on mine.