He approached the house by the back way, which was used mostly by the staff and tradesmen because it was a short cut; and this brought him to the stable yard. The light from the two lanterns hanging from brackets in the wall made it appear like daylight; and Jimmy Fawcett, coming out of a stable carrying yet another lantern, exclaimed, ‘You come in the back way, Mr Douglas?’
‘Yes, Jimmy. It’s been a long walk.’
‘You walked from the town?’
‘That’s it, I’ve walked from the town, and don’t I know it.’
‘Why didn’t you take a cab, sir?’
‘Oh, I wanted exercise, and’—he laughed—‘I got it.’
When from the stable there came the loud neigh of a horse, Jimmy jerked his head back, saying, ‘The Admiral’s on his high horse, so to speak, Mr Douglas. He’s always like that. And he hasn’t had enough exercise; and Mr Lionel doesn’t like him used too much when he’s away. And he won’t be pleased either to know he’s been to the blacksmith’s. When Ron had him out on exercise he sprang a shoe.’
‘He always seems to be springing shoes.’
They were walking across the yard now and Jimmy hesitated a moment before saying, ‘Oh, no, not the Admiral, Mr Douglas; he wears them down like nobody’s business. He’s got that kind of hard hoof. I don’t know the last time it was he sprang one. Now Prince and Dobbie, oh aye, they’re springers all right. By’—he shivered—‘it’s goin’ to be a cold ’un the night. And you should get somethin’ hot into you after that walk, Mr Douglas.’
‘I’m on my way to do just that, Jimmy.’ And with this he made for the kitchen.
This way took him through the bucket and brush room, then the boot room which led into a big scullery, and from there he pushed open the kitchen door and startled the entire staff, who were sitting round the table. There was the butler James Bright, and Mrs Pullman the housekeeper, Rose Jackson the cook, and Kate Swift and Minnie Carstairs. And it was evident that they had been in deep conclave. He began by saying, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t get up,’ and he swept his hand across them to indicate he was meaning them all as they rose from the table; then he went on hurriedly, ‘I…I came the back way, walked from the station. I’m a bit cold; I wonder, Cook, if I could have a bowl of something hot?’
‘Yes, Mr Douglas, of course, of course. You’ll have it in a jiffy.’ Rose Jackson scurried towards the stove and the butler, assuming the dignity that went with his position, said, ‘Could I get you a drink first, sir?’
‘Yes. Yes, thank you, Bright. That would be very acceptable.’ He walked past them now, nodding and saying, ‘I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
In the hall, then going up the stairs, he was wondering what all the conclave could have been about. Likely the young mistress and her interfering. In this respect, at least, he was sorry for Victoria: although he considered her a silly, empty-headed individual, she had tried her best to get the household into shape, but it had been a losing battle from the beginning, for now with five servants expected to do the work of what had at one time been twelve indoor staff, it was a task that would have thwarted even someone much more capable than Victoria…
It was half an hour later. He had drunk a glass of port, got through a bowl of soup, then the leg of a chicken and a piece of bacon and egg pie, and was now making his way to the drawing room. He was actually at the door when it was pulled promptly open and Victoria almost flounced past him on her way to the stairs, and he turned and said, ‘Good evening, Victoria,’ but without response until she had her foot on the bottom step when she, too, turned and said, ‘It hasn’t been such for me.’
‘Dear! Dear!’ And after entering the drawing room and seeing his father lounging on the couch and a decanter and glass on the small table to his side, he again said to himself, ‘Dear! Dear!’ His father in his cups wasn’t a pleasant individual. Sober, he was inclined to be a taciturn man, but drunk, his tongue would be loosened and his conversation bawdy. What is more, drunk or sober, he had never been a man to defer to women. And so it was likely Victoria had been the recipient of some of his less nice pleasantries.
‘Bloody stupid girl, that! Her belly full but afraid to talk of it. Silly bitches, women. All because I asked her how she thought it got there…Where’ve you been? Haven’t clapped eyes on you hardly in days.’
‘I have work to do, Father.’
‘Work? Oh aye. Two sons working now, and a bloody lot of good they do me. And another thing I’ll tell you, her bloody solicitor, Miss Starchy Bridget’s, he’s doling out the money every month. If it’s Lionel’s, he should have it…lump sum, and get the interest. And I’m going to have it out with him an’ all, ’cos now he’s been taken on at Barnett’s, d’you know that? Although he knows bugger all about ships or their cargoes or their victualling. Of course, he’ll be no more than office boy, he can’t be, yet why are they paying him all that to be an office boy?’ He hitched himself up to the end of the couch now by placing his outstretched palm under his stomach to get him there. Then, leaning forward to speak to Douglas, who was standing near the fire, he muttered in a low voice, ‘D’you think it would be anything to do with Daisy Barnett? Remember her, blowzy Daisy? She’s got through two husbands, and not yet forty. And where’s he been these last two or three days, eh? Had to go to Carlisle on business? There’s no bloody ships sailing up the main street in Carlisle, is there? But there’s an hotel or two there. Oh, aye, on the outskirts an’ all. He’ll get himself into a bloody jam one of these days with women and he won’t be able to get out of it. You’ll see, you mark my words. Now if that silly bitch upstairs had any spunk, real spunk, she would make a stand, at least she would smell a rat and wonder where the stink was coming from. But no, it’s Lionel this, and Lionel that. And isn’t he a clever boy getting such a position. God above! She should twig you don’t get a thousand pounds a year for being a glorified errand boy. Some women make me sick…’
The room became quiet, not even a crackle from the wood on the fire, until the wind blew a branch against the far window, but it could have been the crack of a gun penetrating the silence, for now William Filmore turned his head sharply towards the window. Then looking back at his son, he said quietly, ‘Give me a hand up.’ And after Douglas had helped to hoist him to his feet he stood for a moment tugging at both sides of his coat as if aiming to bring them together across the huge mound of his stomach.
His father’s next words, however, seemed to Douglas to belie any befuddled state of mind; they made him think that they were being mouthed by a different being, for spoken very quietly now, they were: ‘I’m tired of life, Doug. I wake up in the morning and I hate the light; I haven’t had a drink then to dull the day ahead. But when I knew that my daughter-in-law was carrying a child, I thought, good, I’ll wait until it’s born. It’s got to be a son. Filmores just breed sons, and once I see it then I can go any time. There’s always ways and means. The only thing I hope about the child is that it doesn’t take after its father, or its grandfather’—his head was nodding now—‘and has just a little bit of its mother, I would hope.’ He now put his hand out and placed it on Douglas’s shoulder, saying, ‘You know, you don’t look a bit like any Filmore that’s ever been born. There’s not a portrait on that staircase or in the hall that gives you the slightest resemblance. Yet inside, you’re a Filmore, more than any of us. You’re like my grandfather, not my great-grandfather. No; I remember him dying when I was just a boy. He was another me, somebody who had done nothing with his life except eat, and drink, and whore, and laugh outside while cursing inside. I used to scorn you, you know, Doug—I think I’ve told you this before—while at the same time having great hopes of my firstborn, the handsome Lionel. Why did we have him christened that name? Bloody soft name when you think about it, Lionel. It was because your mother’s grandfather or some such had been a Lionel. Ah well, I’ve wined all I’m going to wine for the night; I’m going to bed if I can make the stairs.’ His voice changing now, he threw his hea
d back and laughed as he said, ‘That’s how I’ll end, you know, two steps from the top and I’ll tumble backwards. That’s what it’ll be like.’
All that Douglas said to him was, ‘Goodnight, Father,’ and his father answered, ‘Goodnight, Doug.’
Alone in the room, Douglas now rested his arms on the mantelshelf and let them support his brow. There was a sadness in him that was dragging him into the ground. He had never liked his father. He had despised him because from early on he, too, knew that his parents despised him for not being another sturdy handsome, big-made Lionel. But in this moment his sadness was being woven by strong chords of love brought about at this late stage by an understanding as to why the man had drunk himself into a grotesque shape through an inner want, a loneliness that he recognised because he himself had inherited it. And he knew that had it been possible he would have had Lionel grow up into someone of whom his father could be proud, while he himself would remain despised for his unlikeness to any Filmore, past or present.
He had lain awake for a long time going over the events of the day, beginning with the desire to see Bridget, the desire that he had pressed down hard on for days; then his meeting with her and his pleasure in the house…his pleasure in everything that had happened until they went down to that old farmhouse. What had started that row, anyway? And why had he been so vehement? Was it because deep down he knew that her interest in the child and its mother stemmed from her deeper interest in that man, Joe Skinner? The man was dead now and he was indeed sorry that he had come to such an end, but then if you murder someone you’ve got to expect a form of murder as retribution. She hadn’t, though, mentioned the fellow’s name now for some time, but likely she was thinking all the more.
And then, his father. Those last few minutes with him this evening had been a revelation. They weren’t words of self-pity, but more like confession of guilt, the guilt of having wasted a life and the pity that there was no second chance. You had one and that was all.
He must get to sleep.
As he lay on his back, his hands above his head, his eyes closed, he was in that state between consciousness and the realm of sleep in which irrationality comes into play, mixing the events of the day or the past to form an incomprehensible puzzle. And it now caused him to run alongside a train that was going at speed, then jump onto the footplate and begin shovelling coal into the red heart of the fire. He jumped off and ran across a field and climbed a ladder and began placing stones in gaps in the wall of the big barn he had visited that day. Then Jimmy Fawcett’s voice came from the bottom of the ladder, and he looked down at him, and Jimmy was saying, ‘Oh, not the Admiral, Mr Douglas. He wears them down like nobody’s business.’ Then he was at the bottom of the ladder holding Jimmy by the shoulders. But Jimmy’s face had turned into his father’s and he was yelling at it, ‘The Admiral does cast his shoes! He cast one and threw Lionel that night I saw him in the wood.’
Now he was sitting bolt upright in bed, his eyes wide open, staring into the blackness…That was the picture he had been trying to recall, that night in the wood when the three riders passed, and then sometime later he saw Lionel walking his horse. The horse wasn’t limping but Lionel looked in a state, shaken. Yes. Yes, he had looked shaken and he said he had been thrown because the Admiral had baulked at a gate and had likely caught his shoe on the top of it.
He flung the bedclothes back and now stood gripping the front of his long nightshirt, endeavouring to stop his body shivering, not only with the cold, but with the most dreadful thought that had sprung into his mind. No, not sprung, it had been lying there dormant for a long time; it had been niggling and troubling him.
He groped his way across the room to where he knew a nightrobe was lying across the back of a chair, and after getting into it he groped his way back to the table and lit the bedside lamp. Then standing staring at its glow, he muttered aloud, ‘He was shaking like a leaf and he was all dishevelled. It was two nights before his wedding day. But…but what reason would he have for killing the man?’
He dropped down onto the side of the bed and his mind started to work backwards. The two dead men were brothers. The man Joe knew who the father of the child was, and if this was so his brother probably held the same knowledge. Now it came out in the court, didn’t it, that the brother was of low character. Suppose he had come and tackled Lionel to expose him. It was only suppose, his mind told him. But it also told him there was one thing certain, that on meeting Lionel that night, his condition had immediately surprised him, as did the reason he gave for being thrown from his horse.
He stood up again and began to pace the length of the room.
He couldn’t do that, slit a man’s throat. He wouldn’t do that, slit a man’s throat. But then if he hadn’t done it, the other man must have, and he had continually stressed his innocence until the day before he was hanged.
Oh God, don’t let this happen to the house, for his father would then have no need to fall downstairs to die, he would die of shame. And then there was Victoria and the coming child. He stopped abruptly…What was he talking about? He had no proof. A knife had been used and the police had been unable to find the knife: they had seemed to prod and scrape all round the glade. What would a man do with a knife after he had killed someone with it? Bury it? Throw it in the river? Well, there was no river near, and he wouldn’t likely stay around and bury it. Hide it somewhere in the house? Yes, he could have done that; there were the attics. But again, what was he talking about? He was condemning him on nothing more than a fancy.
He was pacing again, his mind uttering the words deep within him: It was no fancy; he had known from that night there was something wrong. Even when he was admitting that he had seen the man Joe and had talked with him in that wood, he had not wanted to admit he had recognised him. And why hadn’t he brought to the fore when being cross-examined that he had also spoken to another man, his brother, who had been leading his horse, not galloping with the other three men, as his evidence had suggested? Why? Why had he omitted to say that his brother was in a state? And, if he had been speaking the truth, would have added, in an unusual state for him?
Oh dear Lord!
He took off the robe and slowly got into bed again. Tomorrow he would go up into the attics and go through them, through all the old furniture, the boxes, and any place where a knife was likely to be hidden.
What was Mr Douglas doin’ scramblin’ about in the attics? He had the whole place turned upside down. He said he was lookin’ for a map that he remembered bein’ used in the schoolroom up there. Well, the boys’ books were still scattered on the shelves of the schoolroom. He had described it to Bright, and Bright had described it to Mrs Pullman, and she had passed on the description to the girls, but nobody could remember ever seein’ a map that was encased in a hard brown leather-back and fastened with a buckle, and the whole thing no bigger than one’s hand. Apparently, there were dotted in it the positions of some old obscure quarries and he wanted the locations to see if there was any decent stone left…He was a funny fella, was Mr Douglas. And a bit odd, too, in that he had gone into trade. Nobody in the Filmore family had ever gone into trade. The family had already been goin’ down the hill for years, and with this, as Bright said, they had reached bottom.
After two days and the map not having been found, Mr Douglas seemingly gave up his search. But then his mode of work changed. He used to spend nearly all his time in his workshop with his man and boy, but two mornings running now, Joseph Bell, one of the two gardeners, had reported that Mr Douglas had taken to going walks with Gippo. Well, as everybody knew, Gippo was a lazy dog, and it seemed content to lie either inside or outside his workroom all day; and it was getting on and past caring for long walks. It would scamper now and again in the fields after a rabbit, but that was as far as it went. Then yesterday he had the dog out for four hours!
Where did he go?
Joseph didn’t know exactly, but probably the town, for he went in the direction of Brook’s
Wood and that was the shortest way to town. He would have to go through the factory quarter. Not a very nice area. He surely wouldn’t have wanted anything there. He had always been a bit odd in his ways, had Mr Douglas. All right in his head, oh aye. Yet, when you come to think of it, it was the head that ordered the ways, wasn’t it?…
Douglas’s head had led him once again to the glade, and as he stood watching the dog sniffing about he told himself of the futility of the search. It wasn’t likely, if he had done this terrible deed, that Lionel would have immediately buried his knife; he would have been in too desperate a state to think about it. No; it was more likely that he would take it home and hide it there. He would start on the attics again tomorrow.
But why? Why? It was going to do no good, only cause a lot of pain, even if he could prove anything. And then there was Bridget. What would the effect be on her if her protégé was proved to be innocent and had been hanged for a crime he did not commit? Oh, God in heaven! She would blazen that from one end of the country to the other. Yet, would she, knowing how it would affect Victoria and the coming child? Oh, let him get home. The best thing he could do about all this business, was to forget it. But then he couldn’t forget it, he wouldn’t forget it. If that man was innocent then Lionel must be guilty…
‘Gippo! Gippo! Come here!’
The dog took no notice, but scampered into the brushwood on the heels of a rabbit, and so Douglas, knowing that the rabbit would have the best of it and would disappear down a hole, waited. But when Gippo didn’t return, his mouth open, his tongue lolling as if saying, I gave it a run for its money, he pushed his way around some bushes and there in the near distance he saw the dog scratching at a hole. And when he got up to him he bent down and said, ‘It’s a fool’s game, and you know it. That little lady or gent will have a series of bolt-holes that will reach to the end of the wood. You’re wasting your time. Come on.’
The Black Candle Page 21
