The Meaning of Night Part 17

He gave a deep sigh, and then continued.

'The death of a child, Mr Glapthorn, is the saddest thing. Tom Stevenson was mercifully spared knowledge of his poor daughter's fate. But it was not given to Lord Tansor to be so spared, or to me. We both suffered the keenest pangs of grief and loss. Prince or pauper, all of us must endure such pangs alone. In this, Lord Tansor was is no different to you or I, or to any other human soul. He occupies a privileged station in life privileged, but there are burdens, too, mighty ones. But I expect you are not persuaded. Perhaps you perceive the servility of the old retainer in me?'

I said that I was very far from possessing the natural temperament of the sans culotte, and that I was quite happy for Lord Tansor to enjoy what had been given to him by a kind Fate.

'Well, we can agree on that,' said Mr Carteret. 'These are democratic and progressive times, I know my daughter Emily constantly tells me so.' He sighed. 'Lord Tansor does not see it I mean the inevitability of it all, that it will all end one day, and perhaps not too far distant. He believes in a perpetual, self-sustaining order. It is not hubris, you know, but a kind of tragic innocence.'

And then he apologized for inflicting what he called his usual homily on me and went on to speak of the present Lady Tansor and of his Lordship's increasing desperation, over the years following his marriage to her, that no heir had been forthcoming.

After a while, he fell silent and sat, hands on knees, regarding me as if in antic.i.p.ation of my making some remark.

'Mr Carteret, forgive me.'

'Yes, Mr Glapthorn?'

'I am here to listen, not to question you. But will you allow me to ask this one thing, concerning Mr Phoebus Daunt? He has been mentioned to me, by Mr Tredgold, as a person who enjoys Lord Tansor's particular favour. Are you at liberty to say now, or when we next meet, if this gentleman's position, in respect to his Lordship, is in any way germane to the concerns you voiced in your letter?'

'Well, that is a very lawyerly way of putting it, Mr Glapthorn. If you mean, has Mr Phoebus Daunt become the object of Lord Tansor's ambitions to secure an heir, then I can of course answer immediately in the affirmative. I am sure, in fact, that Mr Tredgold must have told you as much. Do I blame my cousin for the action he wishes to take with respect to Mr Daunt? No. Do I feel slighted by it? No. Lord Tansor's possessions are his to dispose of as he wishes. Even if I should succeed to the t.i.tle, it would be an empty dignity, a name only; and I truly do not desire it full or empty. However, the matter I wished to place before Mr Tredgold, and which I am now to place before you, does not concern Mr Daunt directly, though indirectly it certainly bears rather critically on his future prospects. But if I am to say more, then I think perhaps it will be best to do so at our next meeting. I see the rain eases a little. Shall we go back?'

20:.

Lupus in fabula1 _________________________________________________________________________.

Back in the hotel, I waited in the doorway of the tap-room while Mr Carteret retrieved a battered leather bag from the hall-porter and spent some few minutes in conversation with him. Out of the corner of my eye I observed him hand over a small package, and speak a few more words to the man. Then he rejoined me and we walked out together into the stable yard. He had girded his little round body in a capacious riding-coat, slapped a battered old hat on his head, and secured the bag tightly across his chest.

'Will you reach home before dark?' I asked.

'If I press on now. And I have the comfortable prospect of tea, and the welcome of my dear daughter, to light my way.'

We shook hands, and I waited in the yard while he mounted a stocky black horse.

'Come to tea tomorrow,' he said. 'About four o'clock. Dower House, Evenwood. Just by the Park gates. South side.'

He was about to pa.s.s through the archway at the far end of the end of the cobbled yard when he turned, and shouted back.

'Bring your bags and stay the night.'

After an early dinner, I retired to my room to write a brief account for Mr Tredgold of my first meeting with Mr Carteret, which I sent down to the desk to be despatched by the first post the next morning. Then, overcome with tiredness, and feeling no need of my usual opiate cordial, I went to bed, and quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

After some time, I was conscious of being gradually drawn back into wakefulness by an insistent tapping against my window. I rose from my bed to investigate, just as the nearby bell of St Martin's Church chimed one o'clock.

It was nothing more than a loose tendril of ivy moving in the wind; but then I happened to glance down into the stable-yard.

Under the archway at the far end was what appeared to be a single red eye. Slowly, the darkness around it began to coalesce into a darker shape, enabling me to discern the figure of a man, half lit by the light of the street lamp on the other side of the archway. He was smoking I could now make out the glow of his cigar expanding and contracting as he drew in and released the smoke. He remained motionless for some minutes; then he suddenly turned and disappeared into the shadows of the archway.

I thought nothing of this at the time. A late dinner guest on his way home, perhaps, or one of the hotel staff. I shuffled back to bed, and fell fast asleep once more.

The next afternoon, I set off on one of the hotel's horses to Evenwood, a journey of some ten miles or so, reaching the village just before three o'clock.

In the main street, I pulled up my horse to look about me. There was St Michael and All Angels, with its soaring spire, a little beyond which stood the creeper-covered Rectory, home of the Reverend Achilles Daunt and his family. A great stillness had descended, broken only by the faint sound of a breeze pa.s.sing through the trees that lined both sides of the lane that led down to the church. I moved off, following the line of the Park wall until I reached the towered gate-house put up in the gloomy Scottish style by Lord Tansor in 1815, in a temporary fit of enthusiasm after reading Scott's Waverley. Once in the Park, the main carriage-drive begins to ascend, for the great house is hidden from here, a pleasure cunningly deferred by 'Capability' Brown when he remodelled the Park. But a building can be glimpsed to the left, through a narrow plantation of trees.

A spur from the main driveway pa.s.sed through the plantation and brought me to a gravelled s.p.a.ce. From here, it dissected an area of well-tended lawn, and led up to the main entrance of the Dower House a fine four-storeyed building of creamy Barnack stone, built in the second year of King William and Queen Mary,2 as proclaimed by the incised numbers on the semi-circular pediment above the shallow portico. It struck me as looking like a beautiful doll's house for some giant's child, perfect both in its simple proportions and in the well-mannered taste of its construction. A flight of a dozen or so steps led up to the pillared portico. I dismounted, ascended the steps, and knocked at the tall unglazed double doors; but no one came to my knock. Then I heard the sound of a woman crying, somewhere at the back of the house.

I tethered my mount and followed the sound through a gate and down a short flight of steps into a walled garden, lying now in the shadows of late afternoon, then towards an open door in the rear of the residence.

A young serving girl was sitting on a chair by the door being comforted by an older lady in cap and ap.r.o.n.

'There, there, Mary,' the older lady was saying, stroking the girl's hair and attempting to brush away her tears with the hem of her ap.r.o.n. 'Try to be strong, my dear, for Missie's sake.'

She looked up and saw me.

'Forgive me,' I said. 'I have been knocking at the front door.'

'Oh, sir, there is no one here Samuel and John are up at the great house with his Lordship. We are all at sixes and sevens, you see. Oh sir, such a terrible thing . . . '

She continued in this, to me, incomprehensible way for some moments until I interrupted her.

'Madam, perhaps there is some misunderstanding. I am here by appointment to see Mr Paul Carteret.'

'No, no, sir,' she said, as Mary began to wail with renewed force, 'Mr Carteret is dead. Killed on his road back here from Stamford last evening, and we are all at sixes and sevens.'

I prided myself on my coolness under duress a necessary quality for my work at Tredgolds. But I simply could not disguise my shock, my complete shock, at this news.

'Dead?' I cried, almost frantically. 'Dead? What are you saying? It cannot be.'

'But it is true, sir,' said the lady, 'only too true. And what will Miss Emily do now?'

Leaving Mary to her tears, the lady, who introduced herself as Mrs Rowthorn, the Carterets' housekeeper, escorted me through the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs, from which we emerged at the rear of the vestibule.

As was my custom, I quickly sought to fix the details in my mind. A floor of black-and-white tiles; two windows flanking the front door, which was secured by two bolts, top and bottom, and a st.u.r.dy central mortice. Pale-green walls with fine stucco work, equally fine plasterwork on the ceiling, and a plain white marble fireplace. A staircase with an elegant wrought-iron handrail leading to the first floor. Four doors leading off, two at the front, two at the rear; a further door leading back into the garden.

Out of one of the front rooms, a young woman now stepped out.

She was tall, unusually so for her s.e.x, nearly indeed my own height, and was dressed in a black gown and a matching cap that was almost indistinguishable from her jet hair.

As I looked upon her extraordinary face, I thought I had not known what human beauty was until that moment. The beauty I thought I had known, even Bella's, now seemed delusive and figmental, a half-realized dream of beauty, moulded by invention and desire. But now beauty stood in plain sight, real and unmediated, like starlight, or sunrise over a snow-covered land.

She stood, in the diminishing afternoon light, with her hands folded in front of her, regarding me calmly. I had expected a homely, round person, like Mr Carteret; a welcoming domestic angel. She wore spectacles, like her father, but that was as far as the resemblance went; and, far from detracting from the uncommon beauty of her face, they seemed only to heighten it a phenomenon I have often observed.

She possessed the exaggerated prettiness of a doll, but elevated and made n.o.ble. Her heavy-lidded eyes almond-shaped, and as dark as her hair were exceptionally large, and dominated her face, which was as pale as a November moon. Her nose was perhaps a little long, her upper lip perhaps a little short; and the mole on her left cheek might have been considered by some to be a blemish. But hers was not a perfection of individual features: her beauty was somehow greater by far than the sum of its parts, as music played transcends the written notes.

I desired Miss Emily Carteret from that very first moment, as I had desired no other woman. Her soul seemed to beckon to mine, and I had no choice but to follow where she led. Yet, if my true ident.i.ty could be proved, we were cousins, with Duport blood in common. The thought was thrilling, and seemed to make my desire for her all the keener.

My reveries were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn.

'Oh, Miss,' she said, with evident agitation, 'here's a gentleman been knocking to see your poor father.'

'Thank you, Susan,' replied Miss Carteret calmly. 'Please bring some tea into the drawing-room and tell Mary that she may go home if she wishes.'

Mrs Rowthorn dropped a slight curtsy and hurried back down the stairs to the kitchen.

'Mr Glapthorn, I think. Won't you come in?'

I followed her into the room from which she had just emerged. The blinds had been drawn, and lamps had been lit. She stood with her back to the window while motioning me with a slow wave of her hand to take a seat on a small upholstered chair in front of her.

'Miss Carteret,' I began, looking up at her, 'I hardly know what to say. This is the most appalling news. If I can - '

She interrupted the little speech of condolence I had planned to give. 'Thank you, Mr Glapthorn, but I neither desire nor need your support at this difficult time for that, I think, is what you were about to offer me. My uncle, Lord Tansor, has put everything necessary in hand.'

'Miss Carteret,' I said, 'you know my name, and I infer you also know that I had arranged to see your father here today on a confidential matter.'

I paused, but she said nothing in response and so I continued.

'I came here with the authority of Mr Christopher Tredgold, of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, whose name I also infer is not unfamiliar to you.'

Still she stood, silently attentive.

'I undertook to keep Mr Tredgold fully informed of my time here, and that undertaking I must of course honour. May I ask are you able to tell me how this dreadful thing happened?'

She did not answer for a moment but instead turned away, looking at the blank surface of the window-blind. Then, with her back still towards me, she began to recount, in a level, matter-of-fact tone, how her father's horse the little black horse I had seen him mount in the yard of the George had been found trotting riderless through the Park at about six o'clock the previous evening, on the track that led down from Molesey Woods. A search party had been sent out. They soon found him, just inside the line of trees, close to where the road entered the Park from the Odstock Road. He was alive but unconscious, fearfully beaten about the face and head, and had been taken on a cart back to the great house, where his body still lay. Lord Tansor had immediately been informed and had sent to Peterborough for his own local physician; but before the medical gentleman arrived, Mr Carteret had died.

'They believe he had been followed from Stamford,' she said, now turning away from the window and fixing her gaze on me.

It appeared that there had been a number of such attacks over the past few months, carried out by a gang of four or five ruffians, whose ploy was to follow farmers and others who appeared likely to be returning home from market with money in their bags. A farmer from Bulwick had been badly a.s.saulted only the week before, though until now there had been no fatalities. The attacks had caused outrage in the vicinity, and had been the subject of furious calls for action to be taken in the pages of the Stamford Mercury.

She stood looking down at me, sitting awkwardly, like some scolded schoolboy, in my little chair.

She had the most extraordinary unblinking stare I have ever seen. Her dark, fathomless eyes revealed nothing of herself, seeming instead like perfect mechanical devices. They immediately put me in mind of the lenses of my cameras: hard, penetrative, all-seeing; impa.s.sively absorbing, capturing and registering every detail and nuance of any object that came into view, but giving nothing back. The discomfort of that gaze, its disconcerting combination of impenetrability and knowingness, affected me intensely, producing a kind of paralysis of will. I felt she knew me instantly for what I was, and for who I was, in all my disguises. It appeared to me that those eyes had taken in all the degradations of my life, and recorded all my doings committed beneath the light of heaven, or the cloak of night saw, too, what I was capable of, and what, with time and opportunity, I would do. I suddenly felt unaccountably afraid of her; for I knew then that I would hav e no choice but to love her, with nothing given back.

At that moment we were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn bringing in a tray of tea. For the first time since our interview began, Miss Carteret moved away from the window and took a seat opposite me. She poured out the beverage, which we drank in silence.

'Miss Carteret,' I said at length, 'this is difficult for me to ask, but it will, as I say, be necessary for me to give Mr Tredgold as full a report as possible of the recent terrible events. I shall therefore need to inform myself, as far as I can, of the precise circ.u.mstances of your father's death. It is possible, indeed probable, that I was the last person to see him alive, other than his attackers, and that in itself involves me in the tragedy. But I would also beg you to think of me as your friend and his also for though I only met him for the first time yesterday, I had already grown to like and respect him.'

She put down her cup.

'You are a stranger to me, Mr Glapthorn,' she replied. 'All I know of you is that you are Mr Tredgold's representative, that my father left here yesterday to meet you in Stamford, and that you were likely to be returning here today to continue your discussions. My father instructed that a room should be prepared for you, and you are of course welcome to stay for as long as you require, in order to compose your report to Mr Tredgold. I am sure, once that is done, that you will wish to return to London as soon as possible. Mrs Rowthorn will show you to your room.' At which she rose and rang for the housekeeper.

'Goodbye, Mr Glapthorn. You must ask Mrs Rowthorn if there is anything you require.'

'Miss Carteret, I cannot express my sorrow '

'It is not for you to be sorry at what has happened,' she interrupted. 'You are kind, but I do not need your sympathy. It does not help me. Nothing can help me.'

Mrs Rowthorn soon appeared at the door (I knew enough of housekeepers to suppose that the speed of her arrival signified that she had been eavesdropping on our conversation). I made a slight bow to Miss Carteret, and followed the housekeeper back out into the vestibule.

Minutes later, I was being shown into a small but welcoming room on the third storey of the house. Raising the blind of one of the two dormer windows, I saw that the room looked out across the front lawn and its screen of trees towards the South Gates. I then lay on the bed, closed my eyes, and tried to think.

But my head was full of Miss Carteret, and whenever I attempted to direct my thoughts towards the business of her father's letter to Mr Tredgold, I could see only her great coal-black eyes under their hooded lids. I tried to think of Bella instead, but found I could not. At last, I took out paper, pen, and ink, lit a cigar, and began to compose a report to my employer on the circ.u.mstances of Mr Carteret's death, as they had been told to me.

Dusk had fallen by the time I had completed my task and taken some supper, which Mrs Rowthorn brought up on a tray. I had just opened the window, feeling the need to take a draught of the cold evening air, when the silence was broken by the sound of a piano-forte.

The delicate melody and its ravishing harmonies, the affecting shifts from the major to the minor mode, and from pianissimo to forte, took hold of my heart and wrung it dry. Such pathos, such aching beauty, I had never experienced in my life. I did not immediately recognize the piece though I know now that it was by the late Monsieur Chopin but I guessed the player. How could it be anyone else but her? She was playing for her father, articulating through her instrument, and the composer's perfect arrangement of tones and rhythm, the grief she could not, or would not, reveal to a stranger.

I listened, spellbound, imagining her long fingers moving over the keys, her eyes washed with tears, her head bowed in the desolation of her agony. But as suddenly as it had begun, the playing stopped, and there came the sound of the lid of the instrument being banged shut. I returned to the window and looked down into the garden to see her walking quickly across the lawn. Just before reaching the Plantation she stopped, looked back towards the house, and then moved a little closer towards the trees. Then I saw him, a darker form, emerge from the shadows and enfold her in his arms.

They remained in a silent embrace for some minutes before she suddenly drew back and began to speak to him in evident animation, shaking her head violently and twisting around from time to time to look back at the house. Gone was the reserve and cold restraint I had witnessed earlier: instead I saw a woman gripped by irresistible emotion. She made to leave, but the man caught her by the arm and pulled her back towards him. They continued to converse, their heads close together, for some minutes; then she broke away once more and appeared to remonstrate with him, pointing from time to time into the shadows behind him. At last she turned and ran back to the house, leaving the man standing with empty outstretched arms for a moment or two. I watched her disappear under the portico and heard the sound of the front door closing. When I looked back towards the Plantation, the man had gone.

So she had a lover. It could not of course be Daunt, for he was in the West Country, on Lord Tansor's business; I also remembered Mr Tredgold telling me that Daunt's former amorous designs on Miss Carteret had been firmly discouraged by the young lady, in deference to her papa's thorough dislike and disapproval of his neighbour's son, and that they now maintained a civil but unenc.u.mbered friendship. But she was beautiful, and unattached, and must have many admirers amongst the county's bachelors. Doubtless I had witnessed an a.s.signation with some local buck. But the more I considered the dumb-show that had been played out before me, the more puzzling it seemed. One might expect a man who comes a-courting to step up to the front door and announce himself boldly, not skulk in the shadows; nor did it seem to me that this had been a lovers' tiff, but something of far greater moment than the usual causes of such quarrels. There was, it appeared, far more to beautiful Miss Carteret than met the eye.

There was a knock at the door, and the housekeeper came in to remove my tray.

'Mrs Rowthorn,' I asked, as she was about to leave, 'these attacks that have taken place recently: how many have there been?'

'Well, sir, let me see. Mr Burton, who has a farm of Lord Cotterstock's over at Bulwick he was the last, poor man. And then there was Squire Emsley's man, and I believe there was another gentleman from Fotheringhay, but I can't recall. The poor master would be the third or fourth, I think.'

'And were they all carrying money?'

'I believe so except for the master.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, sir, that the others had all been about their business in Stamford, it being market day when they were attacked. Mr Burton had near a hundred pounds taken. But the master keeps his money at the bank in Peterborough, though I don't know how much he had about him in the normal way of things.'

'Why, then, did he go to Stamford yesterday?'

'To meet you, sir, and to go to the bank.'

'The bank? To withdraw money, perhaps?'

'Oh no, sir,' she replied. 'I believe it was to bring back some papers they'd been holding safe for him. Before he left here, he came to ask me where he could find something big enough to put them in, and I found him an old leather bag of Mr Earl's who used to be his Lordship's gamekeeper that has been hanging on the back of the pantry door these two years . . .'

I remembered the item distinctly, and how Mr Carteret had strapped it tightly over his riding coat before leaving the hotel.

'And where is the bag now?' I asked.

She paused for a moment.

'Now there's a thing,' she said. 'I don't seem to recall seeing it when they . . . excuse me, sir, I do beg your pardon . . . '

She put the tray down, and I apologized for my thoughtlessness. When she'd composed herself, and after a few consolatory words, she picked up the tray again and wished me good-night.

I was certain now that Mr Carteret had not been tracked and set upon by this supposed gang for the money they believed he might be carrying. This was no crime of opportunity. Mr Carteret had been attacked for a clear and specific purpose; and if I was a betting man, I would put money on its involving the contents of the missing bag. But it puzzled me to surmise what Mr Carteret had been carrying, if not money, and what could have been so valuable that cold-blooded, brutal murder was no bar to obtaining it. This quiet place, standing in elegant seclusion within the walls of Evenwood Park, had suddenly become a place of conspiracy and violent death. Slowly, but insistently, a conviction began to form in me of some link between the death of Mr Carteret and the letter he had written to Mr Tredgold. Bye and bye I concluded that such a conviction was groundless. Yet Mr Tredgold had told me to take care, and so I then began to wonder if his words had been anything more than a conventional farewell. I sat up for another hour or more, turning matters over in my mind, contending with vague fears and unfounded suspicions, until I could stand no more and blew out my candle. I lay, open-eyed, in the darkness, listening to the call of an owl in the Plantation, and watching shadows cast by the trees playing on the white-washed ceiling. How long I lay there, I do not know; but at last I sank into a fitful sleep, pulled down into dreams that were haunted by the face of Miss Emily Carteret.

21:.

Requiescat1 ________________________________________________________________________.

I rose early and made my way down through the silent house to find the front door locked and bolted, making it necessary to take the back stairs down to the kitchen. There I encountered the servant girl, Mary, at work at a great stone sink. She turned on hearing my footsteps and curtsied.