A Sickness in the Soul

by William Savage

  Even Foxe could not help feeling pity for the fellow, despite all he knew. If he could have done, he would have stopped at that point and given Valmar time to recover himself. What drove him on, against all his natural inclination, was the determination to make sure that this wreck of a man in front of him could not reach out once again to snuff out another life.

  ‘That boy,’ he said, ‘your grandson, is the legitimate heir to this estate, not your second son, Frederick, as you wished and schemed. He is also beyond the reach of your insane obsession with the purity of Valmar blood. I have seen to that. I have also laid all the evidence I possess relating to his claim before the Lord Mayor of Norwich, who has accepted its validity. Try as you may, Valmar, you will never be able to dispute his claim. Besides, if you even attempt to do so, all that I have told you today will be repeated in public and in open court. Is that what you want? To have your precious family name dragged through the mud? To see it become the butt of open derision by your so-called common folk? Is it? Is it?’

  Each sentence struck Sir Samuel another deadly blow. He huddled in his chair, helpless and afraid. In the end, all he could do was to gasp, ‘Get out!’

  Then he closed his eyes, wrapped his arms about his chest, and did his best to shut out the realisation that the full measure of retribution due had come upon him at last.

  Foxe turned on his heel and left.

  20

  Foxe left Hutton Hall with little sense of achievement and none at all of triumph. Instead, he felt only sick revulsion at the wickedness that had been revealed. That and pity for the wretched creature Sir Samuel had become. The man was caught up in the inevitable collapse of a life based solely on an obsession with family status and honour. Surely it was impossible that Sir Samuel Valmar had been sane when he had ordered the assassination of his eldest son? If he had been, he had descended into an evil greater than most could even conceive. And if he had become a madman, pity was a better response than anger.

  It was clear, however, that Mrs Crombie was in no such dilemma about her response to all that Foxe had told her. To her mind, Sir Samuel Valmar had committed dreadful sins. His actions must surely result in an eternity in hell fire.

  The two of them were sitting in the workroom behind Foxe’s bookshop. By the time Foxe had returned to his own house, he knew it was close to the time when she and her cousin, Eleanor, would be closing up for the day. They would be bustling about, sorting out books left in the wrong places and returning packets and bottles of patent medicines to the correct shelves. Charlie, Foxe’s apprentice, would probably have been sent out to deliver packages of books to regular customers. Then, after all the others had left, Mrs Crombie would make sure the shop was secure before going home herself.

  At one time, Foxe had made a regular practice of dropping into the shop at around this time. He would draw Mrs Crombie aside from her work and bring her up-to-date with whatever mystery had been engaging his interest. Somehow, those visits had become less frequent of late. On that day though, in need of someone who would listen to him while he cleansed his mind of what had taken place at Hutton Hall, he told his coachman to stop outside the shop rather than at the door to his house. For Mrs Crombie, relishing a visit of the kind that had become so infrequent, this was a heaven-sent chance to hear the outcome of a fascinating case.

  ‘Sir Samuel sounds a thoroughly unpleasant fellow,’ Mrs Crombie said, when Foxe had completed telling her about his confrontation at Hutton Hall. ‘No. That’s putting it much too mildly. The man is a pompous, domineering, evil-minded bully; a man determined to have his own way, even at the expense of those who should be most dear to him. Did he really have his son murdered?’

  ‘He did, Mrs Crombie. He as much as admitted it to me.’

  ‘Then what I just said of him is still well short of the mark. To kill anyone is wicked and a mortal sin. To kill your own son is such a heinous crime it takes the breath away. God will punish him, Mr Foxe. If anyone is destined for hell, he is that person.’

  ‘Valmar is all those things, Mrs Crombie,’ Foxe said. ‘You might also add cold and heartless. Even so . . .’ He trailed off, staring idly at the old printing press his father had once used, the one which Charlie had now put back into working order. ‘His mind has certainly become warped, there’s no doubt of that. Yet, somehow . . .’ He broke off again.

  ‘It’s his attitude to his family, isn’t it?’ Mrs Crombie suggested. ‘It’s like . . . Oh, I don’t know! It’s as if he had a malignancy growing inside him until it finally choked the life out of him.’

  It wasn’t like Mr Foxe to be lost for words, she thought. But then, he hadn’t been himself for many days now; not since he’d made such a fool of himself with Lady Cockerham.

  ‘Precisely,’ Foxe said earnestly. ‘It’s not unusual for members of ancient families to be proud of their lineage. Nor is it uncommon for them to feel that somehow gives them greater standing among their peers. I have encountered many who felt in similar ways. Give them a chance to start talking about their ancestors, and they bore you to death. But Sir Samuel . . . All I can say is, he’s . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘Obsessed?’ Mrs Crombie suggested.

  ‘That certainly. Completely consumed by ancestral pride. Yet there’s even more than that.’

  ‘It’s the bit about him saying killing his son was like dealing with a horse that had turned vicious, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘Exactly! Bless you, Mrs Crombie! You’ve hit on the exact point. It’s as if his obsession has … turned rancid; become a cancer eating away at him, just as you said. Changed from a harmless eccentric into a malevolent force: something capable of making him dismiss murder as no more than a necessity. All that balderdash about “bad blood!” Talking as if people were animals, to be improved by selecting the best bloodlines and keeping them untainted. Does that sound normal to you?’

  ‘It certainly does not, Mr Foxe!’ Mrs Crombie replied, now becoming heated herself. ‘It sounds like the fantastic ideas of some deranged ranter in front of a group of radical dissenters. Either that, or one of the wretched delusions of the miserable creatures confined in Bedlam. Sir Samuel Valmar has become insane, hasn’t he?’

  ‘No, not quite mad. He couldn’t run his estate or move in society if that were the case. Not mad, but not sane either. More like someone moving back and forth between delusion and sanity. Most of the time, his mind is probably quite sound; at least so far as you can say it of someone so domineering and dictatorial. Aye, and wicked with it. But let him come up against anything connected with his ancestry and the status of the Valmar family and the madness breaks out.’

  For a few moments, the two of them sat in silence, each considering the dreadful fate which had befallen Sir Samuel and those about him. Then Foxe changed direction unexpectedly, his face becoming more animated and a good deal less grim.

  ‘What do you know about Lady Valmar?’ he asked. ‘What is her background?’

  ‘She’s Sir Samuel’s second wife,’ Mrs Crombie replied, used by now to the way Foxe’s mind could leap between topics. ‘Did you know that? His first wife died within eighteen months of their marriage. Died in childbirth, I believe, and took the baby with her. To be honest, I know little about her, other than that it was said she was selected by the Valmar family based entirely on the size of her dowry. Before Sir Samuel married her, the Valmars had lost a great deal of their wealth. His grandfather had been something of a wastrel and a fool — a heavy drinker too. His father then compounded the losses through a number of rash speculations. By the time Sir Samuel himself inherited the estate, most of the family’s money had been lost or frittered away and the lands mortgaged to the hilt. Even Hutton Hall itself was in a sad state. It didn’t look anything like the building that’s there today, I’m told. In the last ten years or so, the place has been almost completely rebuilt and remodelled.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Foxe said. ‘Where did he get the money from?’

  ‘Sir Sa
muel has proved a most able manager of the estate, greatly increasing the income from tenancies and buying extra land where he could. However, nearly all the money required to get him started came from the present Lady Valmar. She didn’t start out amongst the gentry. Her father was a rich cloth merchant from Suffolk — or was it Essex? I can’t recall exactly. Either way, he was determined to see that his only child, a daughter, should find a husband he judged would be worthy of her. She brought Sir Samuel a huge fortune, Mr Foxe. In return, she got a title and precious little else.’

  ‘Her dowry paid off Sir Samuel’s father’s debts?’

  ‘Yes, and far more than that. Whatever faults Sir Samuel has, Mr Foxe, no one could fail to admire his skill in dealing with money. He used what was left over from his wife’s dowry to improve the estate, and then to buy more land. Whatever he had, he set out to ensure it paid him back handsomely. When Lady Valmar’s father died some ten years ago, he left her all his wealth and business interests. Sir Samuel sold the businesses at a handsome profit and took the proceeds and the rest of her inheritance into his own hands. People say he’s almost doubled the amount of her inheritance since then.’

  ‘And that’s the man who lectured me earlier on purity of bloodline!’ Foxe said. ‘The man who showed such scorn for an honest tradesman like his son’s father-in-law! It’s unbelievable! What a hypocrite! Now I understand why he said he blamed his poor wife for the “bad blood” that had caused his son George to defy his wishes.’

  ‘Families like the Valmars have always done that, Mr Foxe. Over the years, they deplete their own wealth. It’s most often by gambling, drinking or whoring. Then they recoup their losses and more when one of their number manages to marry the heiress of some rich merchant. They forget that it’s a constant influx of fresh blood and new money from the so-called lower classes which has kept them going throughout the centuries.’

  ‘You’re right, Mrs Crombie,’ Foxe said, nodding his head energetically. ‘That’s also why Sir Samuel was so set on George Valmar marrying another heiress, as ill-favoured as she seems to have been. Two heiresses in successive generations! If George had repeated his father’s success in adding to the family wealth in that way, the family might have become truly rich. Then the next generation would have had the means to do sufficient favours to people in the right places, to swap a mere baronet’s title for an earldom at the least.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Crombie agreed. ‘He might have founded a truly aristocratic lineage, conveniently forgetting the means by which it was achieved.’

  ‘Ah, but son George dashed those hopes, Mrs Crombie, didn’t he?’ Foxe said. ‘Even worse, Sir Samuel has now learned that the next heir to his wealth and his title will be the grandson of a lowly cabinetmaker. No wonder that news hit him like a charging bull.’

  ‘It’s no more than he deserved,’ Mrs Crombie replied. The severe tone of her voice and the stiffness of her posture spoke eloquently of her disapproval of such behaviour. ‘He’d done much worse, hadn’t he? Something unforgivable! He’d had his own son killed in defence of a senseless conception of family honour. It quite takes my breath away. God has brought him low, Mr Foxe, and Satan will do the rest. You may be sure of that. Whether in this life or the next, Sir Samuel Valmar will not escape what is due to someone whose wickedness must be so abhorrent to the eyes of the Almighty.’

  ‘I fear it will have to be in the next life,’ Foxe said sadly. ‘He will not face a judge in this one. For all that he confessed his crime to me, no one else was present when he did so. If I tried to bring him to court, all he would need to escape would be to deny that he ever spoke in such a way. The same applies to the evidence offered by the actual assassin, Brunetti. This is an occasion when I wish I had your faith, Mrs Crombie. It might offer me some comfort. As it is, all I feel is frustration and impotent fury. It’s enough to make me wish I had never become involved.’

  ‘You are altogether too hard on yourself,’ Mrs Crombie told him. ‘Without you, Lady Valmar would have gone to her grave never knowing what had become of her eldest son. As it is, she can at least console herself that all her husband’s plans have come to nothing. She also knows she has a grandson in whom she may place some hope for a better future.’

  Foxe would not be comforted. ‘I know you speak from kindness, Mrs Crombie,’ he said, ‘but it is Lady Valmar’s plight which I find most unbearable of all. She’s tied to a heartless brute of a man: the kind who demands total obedience and offers nothing in return, save more years of servitude to his crazed ideas. Still worse, if she obstructs him in any way he resorts to violence. I can do nothing save pity her from the depths of my heart.’

  ‘You can pray for her, Mr Foxe,’ Mrs Crombie said quietly. ‘God can do what man finds impossible.’

  ‘God and I have not been on speaking terms these many years, I fear,’ Foxe replied. ‘When I look at all the wickedness in this world, I doubt His very existence. I am a rationalist. My reason tells me men like Sir Samuel Valmar will continue to escape the justice they so readily impose on everybody else. Thus it has always been; and thus, it will continue.’

  21

  For the next day and the one after that, Foxe retreated more or less completely within himself. He rose late, picked at his food and even gave up his regular morning walks and visits to the coffeehouse. Instead, he spent all day alone in his library, speaking to no one. When Mrs Crombie enquired after him, and Captain Brock came to visit, he told his servants to say he was sick and not able to receive anybody. Most of Norwich enjoyed sunlight and warmth, uncharacteristic of the time of year, while a dark cloud hung over Foxe’s home and shop. Even the customers felt it. Few lingered to gossip or enquire after new titles, fewer than usual visited the circulating library and takings fell, adding still further to Mrs Crombie’s sense of impending doom.

  Until now, she had never realised how much the success of the business still depended on Mr Foxe himself. He may have left nearly all the running of the shop to her, but he was still its heart and soul. As a result, she fretted and fumed. She dealt brusquely with the other staff and became so severe with Charlie’s tendency to daydream that he too shut himself away in the stockroom whenever he could.

  This pervasive sense of failure which now gripped Mr Foxe defied all his efforts to shake it off. As he saw it, he had solved no less than three puzzling killings, yet found no proper resolution to any of them. He could take no pleasure in such empty achievements. The young actor who had killed Lord Aylestone had reacted thoughtlessly to overwhelming provocation. As a result, he had killed a man by mistake. Now he must face judge and jury and admit publicly to what he has done. Foxe was sure he wouldn’t face a murder charge. It would most likely be a case of involuntary manslaughter, even self-defence, followed by a stern lecture from the judge and a light sentence. Even so, his career as an actor would suffer a severe setback; possibly total collapse.

  Dr Danson’s death was also destined to go unavenged. In that case, the most likely culprit was already dead. Besides, Danson hadn’t actually been murdered. He’d died from a heart attack, even if it was brought on by someone else. What bothered Foxe was less Danson’s death than what must follow. Without an open listing of evidence in a trial and the subsequent delivery of a verdict, a cloud of suspicion would continue to hang over his young widow. There would always be those who claimed she had colluded with her brother — perhaps even urged him on; that he had helped her inherit a fortune and rid herself of an unwanted, elderly husband. Knowledge of this had already driven her to decide to leave Norwich as soon as she could. Yet even that might provide only a temporary respite. Before long, someone’s inquisitive nature would fasten on the gossip and cause her past to follow her to her new home.

  Worst of all, Sir Samuel Valmar, serial adulterer, wife-beater and killer of his eldest son, would escape justice altogether. He was destined to remain free to indulge in his insane fantasies about the purity of Valmar blood. To use his wealth and position to place every possible obs
tacle, legal or otherwise, in the way of his unwanted grandson inheriting what was due to him.

  It mattered little to Foxe that he knew that the depth of Valmar’s wickedness and madness had proceeded from some sickness of the soul, a sickness which had poisoned his life and the lives of all those around him. It was the same in Dr Danson’s case where an obsession of hidden knowledge had led to his death. A disease of the soul had also caused Lord Aylestone to turn to religious bigotry and the narrowest puritanism. It was that which caused his unjustified prejudice and violent outbursts against the theatre; and thus, produced his death in due course. In all three cases, Foxe had managed to diagnose the disease. He could even chart its destructive progress. Yet, in all three cases, he was prevented from seeing the proper administration of curative justice. That was what was required to heal wounds inflicted on family and society. It was enough to make anyone — even someone far less imaginative and dedicated to justice than Mr Foxe — fall into a pit of deepest melancholy.

  The third day dawned with no prospect of an improvement. Then Charlie burst in to interrupt his master’s fitful efforts to eat some breakfast bringing the news that Bart, Mistress Tabby’s servant and gardener, had come with an urgent message.

  ‘She wrote it on a slate, Master,’ Charlie said, breathless from the importance of the news that he was bringing. ‘It says you must go to see her right away. She has something of extreme importance to tell you.’

  ‘Has she indeed?’ Foxe said in a dull voice. ‘Tell him that I am seeing no one and send him away.’

  ‘I daren’t do that,’ the boy replied. ‘She’s also written that Bart is to stay in this house until you leave with him, even if it should take all day and more. He’s sitting in the kitchen now. Surely even you dare not ignore what the Cunning Woman wants? She’ll probably put a curse on you if you do!’