by Dorothy Eden
Fanny looked at them in surprise.
‘These must have been put here by mistake. They’re not in the least antique. I wonder what’s in them.’
She lay one on its side and undid the straps and fastenings. The lid opened and displayed the neatly folded Norfolk jacket, which lay on top of a miscellany of masculine clothing. ‘Goodness!’ said Hannah. ‘That’s certainly got here by mistake. It’s a good new garment. I wonder who it belongs to, miss.’
Fanny was staring at the neat brown checks of the good expensive tweed in a fascination of horror. She could almost feel the boat rocking beneath her, see those hot eager red-brown eyes-fixed on her, the freckled hands reaching towards her. She knew every detail of the jacket Hamish Barlow had worn that day because she had had to keep her eyes fixed on it rather than on his face.
‘But he’s gone. His things were sent on!’ she whispered in desperation.
‘Whose things, miss?’
‘Mr Barlow’s. The gentleman—from China.’ She couldn’t bring herself to touch the jacket. She stared at it in horrified distaste.
Hannah had caught her feeling of unreasoning horror. ‘But he did go. His things were packed. The master gave orders.’
‘He couldn’t have travelled to London in his evening clothes!’
‘Then who brought the bags up here? To a room locked for goodness knows how long.’
‘Why hasn’t he sent for them? What’s he been wearing in the meantime?’
Dora, who had said nothing, only stared with enormous eyes, suddenly exclaimed, ‘I heard rats, one night. Don’t you remember, Hannah?’
‘Yes,’ said Hannah derisively. ‘And you thought you heard the peacock, too! In the dark, long before morning.’
‘The peacock!’ whispered Dora. ‘Screaming!’ And clapped her hand to her mouth.
23
‘WHAT WILL YOU DO, Miss Fanny?’ asked Hannah at last.
‘I don’t know.’ (Ching Mei had left her shoes, Nolly kept saying. But compared to that, Mr Barlow was practically naked. He had gone out into the world in a set of evening clothes which, no matter how distraught or even drunk he may have been, would have to have been changed by morning when he took up his ordinary life.)
‘I’ll have to tell my uncle,’ she added. ‘I wish we hadn’t come here. I wish that door had stayed locked.’ Again, her eyes met the fearful eyes of the two servants. Who had locked the door?
‘I’ll go down now,’ she said at last, standing up and brushing her skirts. ‘Lock the door again, Hannah, and Dora, go to the children. Suggest another game for them to play. Not dressing up. Tell Miss Amelia I said so.’
Was she only twenty-one today? She felt older than Hannah, older than Lady Arabella. She walked down the three flights of stairs and along the twisting passages as slowly as if already her body were fragile, and dried-up. She moved in a dream and for the first time in her life forgot to knock as she entered the library.
The two men looked up in surprise. Sir Giles Mowatt’s expression immediately changed to a welcoming smile, Uncle Edgar’s to an annoyed frown.
‘Fanny, my dear—here is Sir Giles—we were having a private conversation.’
‘I’m sorry, Uncle Edgar! But I must speak to you at once. There’s been a—a strange discovery. Uncle,’ she burst out, ‘where is Mr Barlow?’
There was the smallest silence—of surprise, of consternation?
‘Gone back to where he came from, I believe. And entirely due to you, young lady.’ Uncle Edgar was fiddling with a paper knife. His voice was slightly jesting and affectionate because Sir Giles was there. Fanny knew that he would not have been so tolerant, otherwise. ‘I hope you haven’t suffered a change of heart at this late day.’
‘No, uncle. We only wondered how he could have travelled without luggage.’
‘We?’ said Uncle Edgar sharply.’
‘Hannah and Dora, and me. We found his bags and all his clothes in the attic room. They looked as if they had been hidden there. The door was locked. Hannah had a key that opened it. Uncle Edgar, he couldn’t have travelled in his evening clothes!’
‘Is this the gentleman from the East who was your brother’s trustee?’ asked Sir Giles with interest. ‘Why, Davenport, you didn’t tell me this young lady had sent him packing with quite so much speed that he abandoned his luggage.’
‘But I didn’t mean to,’ Fanny cried. ‘He had seemed to accept my decision with fortitude. I thought—’
‘Never mind about your female intuition just now, Fanny,’ Uncle Edgar interrupted. ‘And Mr Barlow’s bags will keep. They seem to have done so for some time already. Sir Giles and I—’
‘Let us know what she thought,’ put in Sir Giles. ‘I’m interested in this. It sounds quite a mystery.’
‘Yes,’ said Fanny. ‘I think perhaps you should know. Every one should know. Uncle Edgar, you heard George say this morning that he would kill anyone who came between him and me. Well, it isn’t the first time he has said that. And he warned me about Mr Barlow, I’m so afraid—’
‘Of what?’ asked Uncle Edgar, smiling, amused by the nervous imagination of the feminine sex.
‘The peacock screamed that night. Both Dora and I heard it. But it was still dark, and the sound came from the yew Garden. I have never seen the peacock in the yew garden. And it never calls after dark. Then, in the morning, Mr Barlow—had gone.’
Sir Giles sprang up with a decisive movement.
‘Davenport, I don’t know what this means but you’ll have to have it investigated.’ Uncle Edgar made to interrupt him, but he motioned him to be silent. ‘Miss Fanny, you’re an observant young woman. I wonder if you can throw any light on another affair. It has just come to my knowledge that that escaped prisoner was seen in another area altogether on the night he got away. A farmer in the Okehampton district, an illiterate fellow, has chanced to mention it at this late day. That was the night, you will remember, that the unfortunate Chinese woman died.’
‘What does this mean?’ Fanny breathed.
‘It’s up to the police, whether they decide to re-open the enquiry or not. But your suggestion that your cousin George is, let us say, not entirely responsible for his actions, throws another light on the affair.’
‘He was in the garden that night,’ Fanny said. ‘I know, because I ran into him.’ She caught her uncle’s eye, and declared agitatedly, ‘I must say this, Uncle Edgar! I must. George isn’t safe. He will kill sometime—if he hasn’t done so already…’ Her voice died away. She was shuddering at the thought that she had been kissed by a murderer, almost with the blood still on his hands…
‘Now if I may at last be allowed to speak,’ Uncle Edgar said mildly. ‘First, George had nothing to do with Hamish Barlow’s bags. He hadn’t furtively disposed of a body—forgive me, Fanny, but that is what you intended to suggest—and then tried to dispose of the evidence. No, it was I who put the bags in the attic room.’
‘You, Uncle Edgar!’
Uncle Edgar smiled, as if he were enjoying the effect of his revelation.
‘Yes, I. At the dead of night and like a criminal. But my intentions were innocent, I assure you. It was merely to stop gossip among the servants. The wretched fellow, in his hasty departure, promised to let me know where to have his bags sent, but he never did so. So I merely had them put out of sight, pending hearing from him.’
‘You mean he’s never let you have a word!’ Sir Giles said in disbelief.
‘Well, he had a broken heart, so I suppose we must forgive him. And he did have an overcoat, Fanny. He would have arrived in London, or wherever he went, quite respectably. Also, he was a man of means, you know. A little lost luggage would scarcely worry him. These fellows seem to make their fortunes in the East, Sir Giles.’
‘But your brother failed to, I understand?’
‘Ah, Oliver. My brother, I am sorry to say, was always the exception to the rule. But there’s your little mystery explained, Fanny. You see, there was no need to exerc
ise your very fertile imagination over it. You and that child Olivia are a pair. Now Amelia may be a little flighty, but she has a sensible head on her shoulders. None of these melodramas for Amelia, thank heaven.’
‘But where is Mr Barlow, Uncle Edgar?’
‘Oh, forget the man. It was you who sent him packing. If you must know, I wrote to the shipping company enquiring for his whereabouts, and they replied that they thought he had decided to travel back to China overland. Adventurous fellow. I suppose it’s as good a way as any of getting over a broken heart.’
Uncle Edgar stood up. ‘Can I offer you a little brandy, Sir Giles?’
‘No, thank you. I must be getting on my way. I thought it only fair to warn you about this other matter in case the police should call.’
‘Thanks, my dear fellow. Very good of you. But you can put that poppycock about my son out of your head. What on earth was the Chinese woman to him? I don’t believe he’d ever spoken to her. She was only a servant, you know.’
Fanny couldn’t help lingering after Sir Giles had gone. At the risk of completely offending her uncle she had to say, ‘I don’t believe a word of what you said, Uncle Edgar!’
His eyes narrowed, and became a foggy unfathomable grey.
‘So?’
‘No, I believe you made it all up to protect George. And that you’re just as afraid as I am.’
She clenched her hands. She could hardly put into words her final fear.
‘Mr Barlow is still here, Uncle Edgar. I know.’
24
NOLLY AND MARCUS WERE in Lady Arabella’s sitting room where Nolly was painstakingly finishing her sampler. They were pleased to see Fanny come in, but too occupied to pay much attention to her. Fanny sat quietly beside Lady Arabella on the other side of the room. The high back of the sofa separated them from the children. She didn’t want to talk, or even to think, but neither of these things could be escaped.
She should have asked Uncle Edgar to show her the letter from the shipping company saying that Mr Barlow was on his way by overland route to China. But Uncle Edgar would merely have said he couldn’t lay his hands on it. Fanny was quite certain that no such letter existed.
‘The child has the wrong text on her sampler,’ Lady Arabella said suddenly. ‘It should have been one about charity.’
Fanny kept her voice low so that the children sitting in the window getting the last light of the day wouldn’t hear.
‘Great-aunt Arabella, I couldn’t agree to marry George.’
‘No. You are too selfish for sacrifices. Or charity. Not that marrying George would have constituted either. Humour him and you’d have found a kind considerate husband.’
‘I don’t want a husband who has to be humoured all the time,’ Fanny said, with asperity.
Lady Arabella gave a derisive laugh.
‘H’mm. You’ve a lot to learn, my girl. What do you think every wife has to do?’
‘But not to be humoured like a child,’ Fanny persisted. ‘George is quite childish most of the time. And when he isn’t he—’
‘He what?’ Lady Arabella’s eyes were stony.
‘He’s frightening, Great-aunt Arabella. I think he’s dangerous.’
‘Fiddlesticks! You only have to know how to manage him. I hadn’t noticed you being particularly quailed by anyone before. I had thought you a young woman of remarkable spirit.’ Lady Arabella was stroking Ludwig on her lap. His fur crackled. He stretched sensuously and showed his claws. ‘I am very disappointed,’ said Lady Arabella. ‘But you will see reason eventually. You will marry George and have a child and become a contented woman.’
‘I won’t marry a mur—’ Fanny stopped abruptly, remembering the children.
Lady Arabella’s eyes flickered. She gave no other sign of having understood what Fanny had been about to say.
‘Why do you all want me to marry against my wishes?’ Fanny went on. ‘But you will forgive me, Great-aunt Arabella, just as Uncle Edgar forgave me about Mr Barlow.’
‘I am a great deal stronger than your uncle,’ said the old lady. ‘Also, I am not a forgiver. I love George dearly, more than any other person in the world. I shall see that he gets what he wants. I have ways.’
‘You may have ways of intimidating other people, but not me!’
‘You, a young dependent creature with no future,’ said Lady Arabella cruelly. ‘You must learn to know yourself, Fanny. And life. My daughter had to marry against her wishes. Almost all women do. You will see.’
Fanny was at last goaded into saying, ‘But hasn’t Uncle Edgar told you about Sir Giles Mowatt’s visit? Don’t you know the police may re-open the case about Ching Mei?’ She was whispering now, her eyes warily on the children in the window. ‘And if they do—if they do. Great-aunt Arabella—I shall tell them how I met George in the garden that night, how—’ She pressed her hands to her face, shuddering uncontrollably. ‘Mr Barlow has disappeared, too,’ she said. ‘I don’t need to remind you of George’s—insane jealousy.’
Lady Arabella’s face was old, older than Fanny had ever imagined it could look.
‘There must be an investigation,’ Fanny insisted.
Lady Arabella straightened herself.
‘Nonsense! Nonsense! George is as innocent as the day he was born.’
‘Only because he is mentally irresponsible—’
Marcus suddenly came running across the room.
‘Cousin Fanny! Look what Great-aunt Arabella found for me. You turn it upside down and all the leaves fall.’
It was a glass kaleidoscope filled with a shower of autumn leaves. When they had fallen, in their pretty amber pattern, to the bottom, they lay in a heap round a miniature dead tree. They stirred some obscure memory in Fanny’s mind.
‘It’s pretty,’ she said to Marcus. ‘It’s like the story of the Babes in the Wood. Do you remember how they covered themselves with leaves?’
The smell of wet dead leaves recently stirred …
‘Oh, it’s too dark!’ Nolly cried exasperatedly. ‘Why doesn’t somebody bring the lamps? Cousin Fanny, I’m tired. I want to sit in your lap. What are you and Great-aunt Arabella talking about?’
There was a tap at the door and Amelia came bursting in.
‘Is this where you all are? Fanny, why didn’t you dress up after all? Dora came in looking as if she’d seen a ghost. But I hadn’t time to find out what was wrong. I had to be with Mamma. She’s terribly upset. Do you know that just now Papa has been saying George may have to be put—’
‘Amelia!’ said Lady Arabella in a voice of thunder.
Amelia, for once, was not intimidated by her grandmother’s anger. Her words were tumbling over themselves as usual, but now Fanny noticed there was a look of intolerable excitement in her eyes.
‘Hasn’t Papa told you about Sir Giles’ visit? Don’t you know that poor escaped prisoner was miles from here that night?’
‘Hearsay!’ declared Lady Arabella contemptuously. ‘We won’t discuss this in front of the children, if you please, Amelia. You ought to have more sense. And must we sit in the dark? Fanny, ring for lights. And take the children to the nursery. Wait! Before they go I have a gift for Nolly.’
‘Me, too,’ cried Marcus.
‘No, greedy. You have the kaleidoscope which you may keep. Nolly is to have my pincushion. The one I cherish particularly.’
Nolly’s eyes opened wide.
‘But, Great-aunt Arabella, you don’t let anyone touch it.’
‘I will let you touch it.’
Nolly’s nose wrinkled in distaste.
‘It’s only an old thing. I don’t care for it.’
‘Of course it’s an old thing. It’s an antique. It belonged to my grandmother, and perhaps to her grandmother before her. It has held the pins used to make gowns for the Court of Charles the Second. Now do you call it merely an old thing in that rude voice?’
‘I still don’t care for it,’ Nolly muttered, but she took the fat faded pincushion in her hand a
nd went off with it to the nursery.
When Marcus boasted that he had the best present she hissed, ‘I will stick a hundred pins in you! Needles, too!’
Before Fanny could follow the children Lady Arabella called to her peremptorily, ‘Fanny! Help me downstairs. I must see your uncle.’
Amelia, deprived of her audience, cried with strange desperation, ‘Don’t leave me alone! I’m afraid.’ She gave a ghost of her old happy giggle, ‘Of I don’t know what.’
Her grandmother’s eyes went slowly over her, from head to foot.
‘That’s a pity,’ she said at last. ‘That you should be afraid of your own brother. Fanny!’
The old Lady was heavy on Fanny’s arm. She had an odour of lavender water and wool, a familiar odour that in the past had represented some security. Lady Arabella’s broad lap which welcomed children had been all the mothering Fanny had known. It was impossible to think of her as too implacable an enemy. She was merely indulging in her favourite game of intimidation.
‘He’ll be in the library,’ said Lady Arabella, panting slightly. ‘Don’t come in. Leave us alone.’
Her chair was at the bottom of the stairs in its usual place. Lady Arabella got into it and rapidly wheeled herself across the hall. She disappeared into the library and the door closed, but not completely, behind her.
‘Fanny!’ came Amelia’s voice from the top of the stairs. ‘Why should I be afraid of George? What’s Grandmamma got in her head?’
Fanny ignored her. There were no servants about. The hall was empty. She crossed it softly, and stood with her ear against the chink of light from the library, listening.
But only for a moment. She had to move away quickly into the shadows beneath the stairs for hurried steps were approaching. Uncle Edgar’s voice was raised in agitation.
‘Thank God, Mamma! I was just coming for you. One of the servants has seen George down at the lake. He’s behaving oddly. Walking up and down, in a distraught way.’
