by Anna Dean
Now, in order to preserve the honour of the family – for you tell me that nothing is of greater consequence with Sir Edgar than the honour of the family – he was all for smoothing matters over and covering up the business. But Mr Montague is moral and religious – for I cannot believe that dear Catherine, for all her little faults, would attach herself to a man who was not moral and religious – and he quarrelled with his father over this matter. Mr Montague left the house – perhaps he went with his friend to Tudor House – yes, I think that he must have done, because that is how Miss Wallis – who was, of course, Mr Lomax’s housekeeper – discovered that the lady who came regularly to visit her master was none other than Lady Montague. And so she pursued Mr Lomax to Belsfield, threatening, no doubt, to expose him unless he paid her a considerable sum.
And he killed her. Though I don’t doubt that the poor man is very sorry for it now…
Dido dropped the letter into her lap and stared along the polished length of the gallery, momentarily overwhelmed by such a variety of emotions that she did not exactly know what she felt.
There was anger at her sister for suggesting such an unlikely course of events. But the anger was not lasting. Eliza was not the sort of woman one could be angry with for long and soon Dido was more inclined to smile over the sorry conflict that there was in the letter between natural good nature and a desire to try her hand at mystery solving. And then, when she reread the letter, she found that, fanciful though much of it was, there was a small kernel of sense in it.
It was, she realised with shame, very true that she had not considered properly the likelihood of Mr Lomax’s guilt. She had not considered it because – and there was no escaping this horrible truth – because he was a very charming man and she was foolish, foolish in a way that she should have left behind her when she gave up curling her hair and began to sit out dances in the ballroom.
Well, she thought with determination, I shall consider the matter now. But still she found that she was strongly inclined to argue against the suggestion. She could not help it. To clear her mind she drew a pencil from her pocket and noted down on the cover of the letter her arguments against Eliza. They consisted of:
There is no appearance of affection between Mr Lomax and her ladyship. I have observed them closely and they do not exchange more than the simplest civilities with one another.
The other gentlemen swear that Mr Lomax did not leave the shooting party.
How did Mr Pollard convey the information of Mr Lomax’s adultery without saying a word?
She read through what she had written and found it singularly unconvincing. Points two and three could, of course, be argued with equal force against the guilt of any other member of the household. Nor would point one stand up to examination, for the show of indifference between the couple was entirely consistent with a guilty, clandestine affection.
So she wrote down everything she could think of that supported Eliza’s position.
Gossip about her ladyship.
Catherine’s observation of her ladyship going out in Mr Lomax’s carriage.
Her ladyship’s medicine.
Mr Lomax has a post-chaise with yellow wheels – like the one which visits Tudor House.
Well, she thought looking over the list, it is hardly enough to convict a man.
She sighed and passed a weary hand across her face. Relieved, in spite of herself, that she did not have to suspect Mr Lomax so very much.
The problem was that there was still a great deal that she did not understand. There seemed to be so much afoot – so much amiss – at Belsfield that one scarcely knew who to trust and who to suspect. As Annie Holmes had said, every family has its secrets. But there was no denying that the Montagues of Belsfield Hall seemed to have more secrets than most.
Dido stared along the ranks of old Sir Edgars and all the Annes and Elizabeths and Marys that they had married. The autumn sun, shining in through the window, was warm upon the nape of her neck; dust-motes floated in its light and a warm, pleasant scent of beeswax rose from the polished floor.
Somewhere here, if Annie Holmes was to be believed, there was a clue to one of those secrets. Somewhere among these paintings was the key to the trouble between father and son. She stood up and walked along the gallery, studying the pompous, painted faces as she had done many times before. None of them suggested any kind of solution to her.
The gallery ended in a wide staircase, which led down to the best bedrooms at the front of the house, and just to the left there was a dark, narrow passageway that led to the back stairs. As Dido reached this point she heard a voice raised on the landing below. She paused beside the banister.
‘Ah, boy! D’you mind coming here, sir!’ It was undoubtedly the colonel’s voice; there was no mistaking the hearty, archaic tone of it. But it had a pleasant, far from ill-tempered sound – indeed, it sounded almost affectionate, which made it rather surprising that it should be followed by the sound of nimble, running feet.
A moment later Jack’s black head came bobbing quickly up the stairs. Dido stepped aside and the boy ran past her, turned into the dark passage and was instantly lost to view.
She stood alone for a minute, reflecting that perhaps her notion of hide-and-seek had not been so very far from the truth after all. And then there was a sound of much heavier feet and the colonel’s broad red face appeared.
‘Ah, Miss er…’ (Would it, Dido wondered, be only fair to inform him of her name, or was it allowable to leave him floundering with his ahs and ers for the rest of her visit?) ‘Ah yes, m’dear. Have you seen young Jack? Did he come by you?’
‘No,’ she replied on an impulse. ‘He did not come this way.’
‘Ah, very well, very well. It’s of no great consequence, y’know.’
He bowed and retreated. Dido turned into the narrow passage, only to hear Jack’s footsteps fading rapidly down the kitchen stairs.
She stood for a moment in the gloomy corridor, which smelt of dust and very old carpet, with just a suggestion of the roasting of long-forgotten joints from the kitchen. She shook her head. Before she came to Belsfield she had thought she was rather partial to puzzles and mysteries. She had a great regard for the work of such authors as Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Smith, but lately she was beginning to suspect that her appetite for the unexplained was surfeiting.
She could not even begin upon the wildest surmise as to why a military gentleman of rather advanced years should be pursuing a young footman about the upper corridors of a house – nor why the said footman should be so determined upon escape. There was nothing in Dido’s experience to suggest a solution to that particular mystery.
She started back towards the gallery, then came to a standstill.
There was another painting hanging here upon the wall of the little passage. Hanging where no one could see it. Even when she strained her eyes she received no more than a vague impression of a very large green and brown landscape in a heavy, ornate frame.
Was it perhaps a bad painting, put out of the way so that it did not spoil the effect of the gallery?
Dido was exceedingly fond of bad paintings; they appealed to that part of her that her sister called ‘satirical’. After a little struggle, two broken fingernails and a bleeding thumb, she succeeded in unbolting and pushing back one of the heavy shutters that covered a window almost opposite to the picture.
Light fell in upon it.
It was most certainly not a bad painting. Dido was no connoisseur, but she was almost sure that it was better than anything else in the gallery. For a moment she forgot everything else and simply enjoyed looking at it.
It must have been painted a little more than twenty years ago and it showed the Belsfield estate in all its grandeur and prosperity: the gardens, the elegant sweep of parkland, and even, in the distance, cattle grazing and corn in its stooks. The sun of late summer shone on a perfect day and so skilled had been the painter’s hand that there in that stuffy, cramped space she seemed almost to sm
ell the ripening grain. It was a domain that any man would have been proud to possess. And Sir Edgar was proud; for there he was, pink-cheeked and proprietorial, in the shade of a fine large tree to the left of the foreground. There was no mistaking him for anything but the lord of this domain – with his confident stance and the marks of his status: his dog gazing up at him and his shotgun on his arm. His free hand rested on the back of an ornate iron bench upon which sat his lady, with young Richard, just a baby, in her lap.
The ruling character of the whole thing was pride, from the stance of the new father, to the magnificent scale and quality of the painting and the elaboration of curling scrolls and gilding on its frame.
And yet, here it was hidden away in this dark passageway. Why?
Dido frowned and chewed at the end of her pencil. It felt as if she was a little girl again and back in the schoolroom puzzling fruitlessly over long division. Her head hurt. Everything seemed dark and confusing.
Something in this picture had had to be hidden. But what? Not the landscape, nor the wife, surely. For all his tyranny, Sir Edgar was a conscientious landlord and an attentive husband. Could it be Richard that he wanted to hide?
And then, with the suddenness of that stiff old shutter swinging open (and without so much as a split nail) light poured in upon her mind.
She understood.
She ran back into the gallery and turned about and about until she was dizzy. The cracked and grainy Edgars and Annes and Elizabeths stared down in contempt of her slowness.
It was so very obvious to her now that she had been looking at the wrong thing in this gallery of portraits. She should have looked, not at the pictures themselves, but at the names beneath them. There they were, the holders of this estate, ranked down through history: Edgar after Edgar after Edgar.
But the latest Sir Edgar, to whom the tradition of his family was as essential as the air that he breathed and the blood that ran in his veins, had not given his son the family name: he was Richard, not Edgar.
Why?
Dido spun round with her hand to her mouth. Was it because he had come to suspect that the boy was not his son?
And was that why he had hidden away that proud portrait of fatherhood and inheritance?
Chapter Thirteen
…It is very shocking, Eliza. I am almost tempted to echo her ladyship and declare that one does not know what to think. But, truly, I think that it could be so. I cannot get it out of my head. That Sir Edgar and his lady should live with such a secret between them! And how wretched Mr Montague must be if he knows about it! I have passed a near sleepless night with thinking about it all – which I tell you, of course, on purpose that you may scold me and entreat me to have more care for my health.
It is a matter to which I must give a great deal more thought before I quite decide whether I believe or disbelieve it. However, it is not entirely without a brighter aspect. For I have at last succeeded in saying something which pleases Catherine. You see, of course the great advantage that there is to her in all this. The man she loves bears the stain of illegitimacy – though Catherine will naturally not allow that there is any stain and talks very stoutly of how he is not to be held accountable for the sins of others. But, since she does not expect her liberality to be shared by Francis and Margaret, she gleefully anticipates being soon relieved of the burden of their approval.
I, as you have probably guessed, am rather less happy, being a great deal less certain that if he is disinherited they can live on love alone. But this is not a serious worry for me because I do not believe that this discovery can explain anything beyond Sir Edgar’s dislike of Mr Montague. For, no matter how certain he may be of the young man’s fathering, he could never prove it, nor, I think, cut off the entail on such grounds. Catherine, however, is quite sure that this is the information Mr Montague received at the ball – the reason he describes himself as a poor man. She talks happily of cases she has read of in newspapers in which men have been able to deny fatherhood; but I think she is led astray by her strong desire to starve in the company of her beloved. Which starving, you must understand, will be accomplished in the most elegant manner possible and will never be accompanied by such unromantic expedients as old cloaks or the preservation of shoes with pattens.
Human nature is a very strange thing, is it not?
I make that highly original observation, not because I suppose that you need it to be pointed out to you, but purely for the purposes of composition, because the next thing which I particularly want to write about is a further illustration of its truth.
Colonel Walborough.
I apologise for running on so rapidly, but there is little time for writing and there are things which I must tell you about the colonel.
He sat beside me at dinner today. This is not, in itself, a strong proof of the strangeness of his nature, though I was extremely surprised to find that he had at last discovered my name. And, by the by, he left me in no doubt that he had discovered it, for he used it at every opportunity. But the style of his conversation was a great shock to me.
In short, the colonel has heard the account of my skill as a future-gazer, which Catherine has been spreading so assiduously. And it was about that that he wished to talk. Did I often foresee the future? he wanted to know. And had I known about my gift for long? And – most particularly – what did I see in his future?
And I wondered that such a sensible man and one so successful in his profession should attach so much importance to such nonsense. It is so very strange, is it not, that men can be very clever about some subjects and foolish about others? With women I believe it is different; we are either wholly sensible or wholly foolish.
Well, the colonel talked so through the soup and the fish, with a digression or two upon the different modes of fortune telling that have fallen within his observation in various parts of the world, and I began to hope that there would be no need for me to satisfy him with a fortune; but, just as the mutton was put upon the table, he began to press me for an answer.
‘A man of action like yourself will make his own fortune,’ I said, meaning to be very clever and to flatter him into dropping the subject. ‘You can have no use for future-gazing.’
But, unfortunately, that only took me deeper into the matter. He confessed that in his professional life he did indeed, as I so aptly put it, make his own fortune. No man more so. There he never had a doubt; had never yet had to ask for anyone’s advice and sincerely hoped he would never need to. G_ _! m’dear, he’d put a gun to his own head rather than ask for help. With men and weapons he always knew just what to do. But, he didn’t quite know why it should be. Never had understood it, don’t y’know; but in matters of the heart – and here he cast a rather fearful look across the table at the Misses Harris – he had not quite the same d_ _ _ _d certainty.
He was not, he confessed, always quite the thing in society. Didn’t know what to say to the ladies. Indeed, sometimes he felt it necessary to quite shut himself away. Like a hermit of old – don’t y’know.
And he talked on until I began to fear that all the hopes and accomplishments of the Misses Harris would come to nothing if I did not oblige him with a reassuring fortune.
So I have agreed that I will soon look into his palm to see what I may of his future – though I do not quite know when this will be achieved since the colonel is as anxious as I am that we have no audience for the performance and I do not know how we are to gain a tête-à-tête without arousing the jealousy of the Misses Harris. However, I am determined that when it does take place I shall use the opportunity to discover a little more about him. I most particularly wish to know why he has so recently broken his resolution against marriage – has something occurred in his private life to incline him towards matrimony – or perhaps to free him for an advantageous match?
For, you see, a very intriguing thought came to me when the colonel spoke of sometimes shutting himself away. Eliza, you write in your letter that Mr Blacklock might be Mr Lomax,
and I have wondered whether he is Mr Montague. But could he not also be Colonel Walborough – or indeed Mr Harris, or Sir Edgar, or Tom? Gentlemen are so free to move about in the world; they are not fixed in one place as women are.
I have contrived to send a message to the bobbing maid by Jenny the housemaid, whose home, you will remember (if you have been paying my letters the very close attention which they deserve) is at Hopton Cresswell and who, I am glad to find, is due to take her monthly day off again very soon. I have asked whether it is possible to discover from Mrs Potter’s Kate what Mr Blacklock’s appearance may be.
Unfortunately, before I can hope to receive any reply to this enquiry, I must go to Lyme. It is all quite settled. We are to travel there tomorrow and spend the night at an inn in the town. It is, as Catherine says, to be a regular exploring party, comprising myself and Catherine and the Misses Harris, escorted by the colonel and Tom Lomax. Sir Edgar condescendingly hopes that a little excursion will cheer the ladies and take our minds off the unpleasantness of late events and regrets that his public duties prevent him from availing himself of the honour of accompanying us, etc etc. Her ladyship is not to be of the party; she is indisposed. (I very much fear that she has procured a replacement for the physic which I poured away.) Mrs Harris stays behind to bear her ladyship company, and Margaret remains here too – because she wishes that she had been the chosen companion and, no doubt, hopes to prove herself better suited to the office.
Catherine is quite wild to go. She is very certain that she will find Mr Montague at Lyme, upon which she plans to throw herself into his arms, declare that she cares not whether they have bread to eat or not, so long as they can be together, and so live out the rest of her days in blissful poverty.
Oh, Eliza, I wish I too could believe that it will all be so easily settled!
