The Dead Queen's Garden
Page 24
The whisper tailed into silence and she fell into a light doze so Kit rose to help Charlotte to her feet. Still not able to speak he jerked his head at Jackson who obediently poured Charlotte a glass of wine and stood over her, and Kit likewise, while they both forced down food that tasted of sawdust and ashes.
There was a fluttering sigh and Elaine’s grey eyes sought the younger girl once more. Charlotte bent close enough to hear the thread of a voice. ‘I trust you, Char,’ she breathed on a sigh. ‘With my dearest treasure….’
New Year’s Eve, 1858
Late evening
‘DOCTOR PERRY?’ Charlotte jumped up, her anxious face brightening in delighted welcome, casting her sewing aside. ‘Come in, do come in. How very pleasant to see you, just when I was feeling the need for company. Is there….’
‘No, there is nothing from the Hall.’ The doctor eyed her with sympathy as she dabbed a handkerchief at her eyes. ‘Can’t settle to anything, eh?’ He clapped a hand on her shoulder before sitting down beside the drawing-room fire, with a nod of thanks to the little maid who was bobbing at his side with the decanter.
‘Ah, that’s better. It’s a cold night out there, Char. Now,’ he looked round the room and raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Where’s the old lady then? Not gone out at this time of night, surely?’
‘No indeed,’ Charlotte gave him a faint smile as she sipped at her own glass of brandy, and avoided the thoughts of Elaine that had weighed so heavily upon her all day. ‘Her bosom friend from down in the village has been here for dinner and is to stay the night so they have removed themselves to Gran’s room across the hall where, I presume, they loosen their stays and indulge in scurrilous gossip, away from my inconveniently sharp young ears.’
‘Ah well, gossip is why I’ve called in to see you so late, my dear,’ confessed the doctor with a slightly furtive expression on his weather-beaten face. ‘And although I know I can trust your own discretion, I can’t deny I’m glad not to have the old ladies present. What I have to tell you is between the two of us only, if you will be so good.’
‘I’m all agog,’ she told him frankly, topping up his glass and her own. ‘And of course you have my word that nothing you say shall be repeated.’ For a moment she looked very grave. ‘In all conscience I have enough secrets locked of my own in my heart, and that’s where they’ll stay.’
He cast a speculative glance in her direction but clearly thought better of pursuing the topic. They made an unlikely pair, the doctor in his fifties and the young widow, but they were firm friends. Dr Perry was aware though that Charlotte’s nature was reticent in the extreme, particularly about her past history.
‘I mentioned that a friend of mine had attended young Mrs Chant, did I not? Well, I’ve been dining with him and with the coroner,’ he launched into his story. ‘They’re both very old friends of mine, we were at school together and we have few secrets left between us after all these years. They had a couple of interesting items of news to tell, all in the deepest of confidence, you understand, but I shall tell you, in spite of that.’
She contained her curiosity while Dr Perry nibbled thoughtfully at a ratafia biscuit and took another sip at his drink. No use trying to hasten his narrative, she knew him only too well by now, so she folded her hands in her lap and let him take his time. She knew too, that while on occasion he was not above a spot of gossip, he mostly kept his lips very tightly closed, so she felt honoured by his confidence in her.
‘You’re a peaceful creature,’ he said suddenly, reaching forward to give her an avuncular pat on the arm. ‘Most women drive a man to distraction with their questions and frettings, but I’ve never known you act like that. It’s a rare gift.’ He smiled at her as he continued his story.
‘I am very well aware, you know, and so is my friend the coroner, that we’ll never get to the bottom of the events of the other night. Oh no,’ he laughed at her as she made a slight gesture of denial. ‘It’s of no use for you to tell me that nothing happened, other than that remarkably plain tale you told when it was all over. You think I don’t know there was some mischief afoot? And no, you can rest easy. I shan’t press you for details for I know you would never divulge them anyway.
‘No, the inquest will let you have it your way. Lady Granville, carried away by her much trumpeted passion for her garden, took it upon herself to show you and the other two ladies her wonderful ruins by the light of the full moon. Very spectacular it must have been too, I judge, by the way that first one lady seems to have slipped on the stairs, presumably overcome by the grandeur of her surroundings and not minding her footsteps in spite of her infirmity, and then her ladyship herself took that fatal tumble off the top of her home-made ramparts.’
He shook his head in mock wonder. ‘Surprising, I’d have thought, considering her lord told us she was in the habit of walking those battlements in all weathers and at all times of the day and night. But there, it was a frosty night and I daresay her ladyship was carried away by the excitement of it all; the feasting, the boy’s birthday, and all.’
‘I’m sure you must be right,’ Charlotte’s voice was meek and submissive but she met her visitor’s eye with the faintest of twinkles in her own. ‘It was indeed a very cold night and there was ice on the steps. I slipped once or twice myself.’
‘Indeed you did,’ he rejoined. ‘I examined you myself, if you recollect? Mind you, it’s a very strange thing to reflect that slipping on the ice gave Miss Sibella Armstrong considerable bruising round the throat. A very singular circumstance, but we won’t go into that again. No, what I have to tell you, is something much more interesting, to a couple of students of human nature such as ourselves, my dear.’
Maddeningly, he took another sip of brandy before coming to the point.
‘What my coroner friend told us, his two old friends and colleagues, in confidence,’ he said gravely, ‘was that when he examined the body of the late Lady Granville, he found that, contrary to popular belief, (and contrary, I should say, to her own husband’s belief), the lady had quite clearly never borne a child.’
He sat back to watch her reaction and nodded complacently at the suddenly arrested expression on her mobile features.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I see that doesn’t surprise you in the least, does it, you surprising young woman. Would you care to share with me your speculations as to who might be the unacknowledged mother of his lordship’s allegedly legitimate son and heir?’
‘No, Dr Perry,’ she told him, in a polite but decided tone. ‘It’s my belief that we should cease all speculation from this time forward. I am truly grateful for your confidence but the lady is dead and the child has to mourn the only mother he has ever known. Let us not even breathe aloud any hint that there could possibly be another side to the story.’
She said no more and he smiled. ‘The other piece of news is also shocking but again, we – my fellow medical man, the coroner and myself – have taken it upon ourselves to suppress it. It will be given out, as indeed you yourself suggested might be the case, that the unfortunate companion, Miss Cole, seems to have ventured upon a last sentimental visit to her ladyship’s beloved garden, and there suffered some kind of spasm that resulted in heart failure.’
He grinned mischievously. ‘Such a convenient diagnosis, is it not? Heart failure? After all, all hearts cease to beat when death arrives.’ He took a sip of brandy and looked directly at her. ‘Ever come across taxine, Char?’
‘Taxine?’
‘It is a poison derived from the seeds of the yew tree,’ he told her soberly. ‘As to why I raise the subject, I heard tonight that the examination of the young woman who died so tragically after the christening at the manor, showed that she was suffering from taxine poisoning.’
Charlotte drew a shocked breath and gazed at him in mute supplication.
‘I told you, did I not, that the doctor called to her bedside was also a friend of mine? His particular interest is in determining why hitherto healthy young people so
often die of what appear to be trivial illnesses. In furtherance of his studies, he reserved some of the unfortunate Mrs Chant’s vomit, and caused it to be analysed.’
Charlotte turned pale and he gave her an encouraging nod.
‘However, Miss Cole seems to have died quite peacefully, which would scarcely have been the case after taxine poisoning, witness the other poor young lady’s travails, so let us agree that she died, as I said earlier, of heart failure and no more questions asked.
‘As I said,’ he went on, ‘With the death of Lady Granville, my friends and I decided that there had been enough grief for Lord Granville and his son, so you need have no fear. There will be no further revelations.’
She reached out to press his hand in gratitude, but paused as he leaned towards her with a mischievous twinkle.
‘Ah, you don’t escape so easily, my dear,’ he smiled. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery and if I learn nothing else, I should like to know how it came about that Lady Granville broke her arm? It will be given out that it happened during the fall, but I was there and she was cradling her arm just before she tumbled down. Relieve my curiosity on this point, Char. What happened?’
She tensed for a moment, then relaxed with a faint smile. ‘She was throttling Sibella so I hit her with Melicent’s artificial leg,’ she confided.
He let out a bark of astonished laughter. ‘You broke her arm with Melicent Penbury’s leg?’ he gasped. ‘By God, Char, you’ll be the death of me yet. I’ll die laughing about that, you’ll see, and never be able to tell my dear wife why!’
He patted her hand, still chuckling, and then cocked his head to one side. ‘And her ladyship’s maid, eh? What of her?’
‘But Doctor Perry,’ Charlotte was wide-eyed and innocent. ‘The coroner himself said she was done to death by person or persons unknown.’
‘Ha!’ He gave a great snort of laughter. ‘Person unknown? To be sure, to be sure, that’s the best verdict all round, I’d say.’
They both rose abruptly as an urgent knocking was heard at the front door. Betty hastened into the drawing-room, wide-eyed with anxiety.
‘If you please, Miss Char,’ she gasped, with a brief curtsy to her mistress. ‘There’s word come from the Hall, from Mr Knightley. The doctor’s wanted there at once. The groom saw the horse at the door. “The utmost urgency,” he said.’
‘Oh God,’ Charlotte’s hand flew to her mouth and the colour drained from her face. ‘Is it time?’
Dr Perry shrugged himself into the coat Betty was holding out for him and paused only to take both of Charlotte’s hands in his own.
‘Courage, my child,’ he said harshly. ‘I’ll send word if she’s able to see you, even for a moment.’
Mutely she nodded and gave him a little push, and then he was gone.
New Year’s Day, 1859
SEVERAL HOURS AFTER midnight, Charlotte rose from her bed where she had been lying awake. I won’t wear black, she told her reflection fiercely as she dressed in her warmest and most serviceable dress, her shawl at hand on the bedrail; I won’t let myself believe she can have died, not Elaine, not when she is so beloved by all. I will not tempt providence. She’s rallied so many times, every time she’s seemed on the brink of death, and every time she has recovered once more. It will be no different this time. I’ll pretend it’s so, for as long as I may.
She knew it was a delusion. At midnight she had opened her window and stood, unheeding, in the freezing cold, to hear the bells. The villagers, under the vicar’s ineffectual supervision, rang out the old year and in with the new, and with it her twenty-fifth birthday. The tears fell then as she sobbed out her bitter grief, for no word had come from Dr Perry at the Hall, and she knew that meant her dear friend was beyond receiving even the most loving of visitors.
Charlotte tried to pray but the only line that came into her head seemed a mockery, ‘And joy cometh in the morning.’ With a sob she hoped that her friend was at peace at last, and all pain ceased; a sort of joy, she supposed.
Suddenly she heard a bell, tolling relentlessly. She counted all thirty-one strokes and fumbled for a handkerchief as she crossed again to the window, her limbs dragging with weary sorrow. For a moment her heart contracted, for there, casting a long shadow in the sparkling moonlight, was Dr Perry. Rarely had she seen him astride his serviceable long-legged roan unless he was trotting briskly about his business or ambling along in earnest conversation with an acquaintance; or galloping off to an emergency as he had the previous evening. This morning the doctor’s shoulders were slumped in weary dejection as he rode out from the church and across the green.
As she stared down at him, fighting against the news she had learned from the tolling of the bell, and read in his bearing – denying it to the last – Dr Perry glanced upward to see her silhouetted in the window. He stared at her for a long, dreadful moment and then turned his horse towards Rowan Lodge.
Biting her lips, Charlotte caught up her shawl and made her way downstairs to let him in.
By the Same Author
Murder Most Welcome
Death is the Cure
Murder Fortissimo
A Crowded Coffin
Copyright
© Nicola Slade
First published in Great Britain 2014
ISBN 978 0 7198 1487 7 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1488 4 (mobi)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1489 1 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7198 1038 1 (print)
Robert Hale Limited
Clerkenwell House
Clerkenwell Green
London EC1R 0HT
www.halebooks.com
The right of Nicola Slade to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988