A Tall Dark Stranger

by Joan Smith

  A TALL DARK STRANGER

  Joan Smith

  Chapter One

  It was beautiful in the water meadow that morning. May had just arrived, but already the warm air held a foretaste of summer. Reflections of the cloud-strewn sky shone on the calm water as clearly as images in a mirror. I could even see a pair of swallows magically swooping about on the water’s surface. And greenery everywhere, with the air soft as mist against the skin.

  It was the greenery that had brought me to this isolated spot. My goal that morning was to sketch a fritillary I had spotted the day before. You might know the plant by the name checkered daffodil. Hereabouts it’s less elegantly called snake’s head. Before the petals open, it does resemble a snake’s head, or it would if there was such a thing as a purple snake. The petals are a light purple, with a pattern like a snake’s skin, or a fish’s scales, in darker purple.

  I opened my watercolor box, an elegant mahogany affair trimmed in brass, given to me by my Aunt Talbot on my last birthday when she finally accepted that I was serious about my art. The box is my pride and joy. It is every bit as handsome as a fine lady’s tea caddy. It has a handle like a reticule, drawers for vials and brushes, and compartments for dry blocks of watercolor paint.

  I settled on a table rock at the edge of the water meadow and opened my sketch pad. The fritillary was an easy sketch. The flower was simple, the stalk narrow with two long, linear leaves, one just below the flower, one an inch or two lower. I sketched the flower in pencil and then painted in the proper shades of purple.

  The fine detailing of retracing the pencil lines with black China ink would be done at home. If it turned out well, it would be varnished and added to the growing collection of paintings that would eventually be bound as a book and placed in the library at Oakbay Hall.

  My chosen subject is wildflowers. Aunt Talbot and apparently Lollie feel it would be more ladylike to sketch tame ones. We have a very nice terraced garden at Oakbay Hall with roses, daffodils, delphiniums, etc., but it is their poor cousins, the wildflowers, that attract me. One can see in them the parent of the gaudy, unnatural blooms the gardeners have forced into existence. A cultivated garden makes me think of the Marriage Mart in London, where simple country girls are teased and scolded and refined into dashing flirts.

  My younger brother, Lawrence—we call him Lollie—was with me that morning. He doesn’t share my passion for wildflowers. His notion of pleasure is in killing innocent wild creatures, preferably with a gun. This morning he was fishing. The stream that periodically floods the meadow is a clean chalk stream deep enough to hold trout. I hadn’t seen any fish in the meadow, but an occasional splash told me there were either fish or frogs present.

  Aunt Talbot and I are trying to convince him to go to a university, but he will have none of it.

  “What help will Greek and Latin be in running Oakbay Hall?” is his unanswerable question.

  None, but it would give him the air of a gentleman. He inherited the family estate two years ago. Papa’s steward, Mr. Jenkins, runs the place, but in justice to Lollie I must own he is rapidly mastering his chosen trade.

  He even looks like a farmer, with his ruddy cheeks and smattering of freckles. He is a good, strong lad whose only deficiency is a lack of elegance in his appearance and manner. His chestnut hair is straight and tends to poke out at odd angles. His brown eyes are bright and his smile ready. He will settle down and make a fine landowner in another year or two.

  He had been fishing around a bend in the meadow, where a growth of willows cut off my view of him. I heard his approach and began putting away my equipment. We had been there an hour, which is about as long as his patience lasts. I could stay all day, but it is considered unsafe for me to wander our own estate unescorted. The most dangerous animal afoot is a fox. Rabbits are more plentiful.

  “I say, Amy, are you about ready to go home?” he asked.

  “In a moment,” I replied, rinsing out my brushes in the water. They would be properly cleaned the minute I reached home.

  “Who’s the fellow with Maitland? Did you get a look at him?” Lollie asked, peering across the meadow.

  “I didn’t notice anyone.”

  “You don’t mean Morris Maitland crossed your path and you didn’t notice! By the living jingo, you’re more keen on drawing those weeds than I thought.”

  You may be wondering at Lollie’s hint that Morris Maitland means something to me. I confess he does, but alas! I mean no more to Morris Maitland than the fritillary means to Lollie. I glanced across the water meadow for a glimpse of my idol. There was no mistaking him. He is built like a Greek god. His golden curls were covered by his hat, but there isn’t another pair of shoulders like his in the parish.

  “I don’t recognize the fellow with him,” Lollie said.

  As we watched, Maitland and another man turned about and headed off toward Maitland’s meadow. Our lands touch; the water meadow is the boundary between them. Maitland’s estate is much grander than Oakbay Hall. Other than Lord Hadley, Maitland is the most important gentleman in the parish. None can touch him for appearance. I didn’t recognize the man with him, either. Maitland spends much of his time in London and has frequent visitors. Usually ladies make up part of his house parties.

  “They’re going into the shepherd’s hut. That’s deuced odd!” Lollie said.

  Lollie has, as have I, the countryman’s curiosity about our neighbors. The men were both on foot, which seemed odd. A walking tour of the estate was not Maitland’s customary manner of entertaining his guests. If they had been mounted on a pair of prime bloods, it would have seemed more natural.

  I looked across the water and noticed Maitland was looking around in a way that I can only call guilty—as if he was checking to make sure he wasn’t watched. If it was not for the man with him, I would have suspected he was meeting a female. He has a bit of a reputation that way. He didn’t look in our direction. He just stood aside and touched his friend’s shoulder, ushering him into the hut.

  “He’s up to something,” Lollie said.

  “I can’t see what mischief he can be up to in a shepherd’s hut and with another man.”

  “Well, arranging something, then,” Lollie said. “A cockfight, I wager. Or a gambling session. They say Maitland gambles like a fool.”

  “He must be lucky at cards. His estate certainly isn’t suffering.”

  “Nor is he,” Lollie admitted. “Did you see that spanking-new mare he was riding in Chilton Abbas on Saturday?”

  I hadn’t seen it, I had been too busy ogling Maitland, but I had heard plenty about the mare.

  “Let’s stay here until they leave. I’m going to scoot over to the hut,” Lollie said. “They might invite me to the cockfight.”

  I was delighted at the reprieve. I opened my sketch pad and began drawing a monkeyflower that grew at the water’s edge. Folks were beginning to introduce this modest yellow flower into their gardens. No doubt it would be forced into some unnatural growth once the professional gardeners got their hands on it.

  The buds were just forming. I sketched the plant in this state. I would return later when it was in fuller bud, then in bloom, and then again when the seed pods were forming. I make up a composition of the plant in various stages of growth and arrange them artistically on the same page, each phase dated.

  After Lollie wandered off, I became so engrossed that I even forgot Morris Maitland. When I looked up from my work, I saw Lollie coming toward me with his fishpole over his shoulder and two small trout dangling from it. They’d make no meal for humans, but the cats would enjoy them. Lollie was accompanied by the stranger. Of Maitland there was no sign.

  “This is Mr. Stoddart, Amy,” Lollie said, and introduced me to th
e gentleman.

  Stoddart was a slender fellow, very gentlemanly in his speech and manners but undistinguished physically. He had sandy hair, blue eyes, and a weak chin.

  “You’re a friend of Mr. Maitland’s, I think?” I asked, offering him my hand. When I achieved my twenty-second year, I dispensed with curtsying.

  “Not really,” Stoddart replied. “I was just out walking and met him. We shared a cheroot while he waited for his friend to join him. I fear I was trespassing, but he was very nice about it. He’s a decent chap, I expect. Well, you would know.”

  He seemed to be waiting for an answer. We assured him that Maitland wasn’t the sort to bring out his gun only because someone was on his land as long as that person wasn’t poaching.

  “He gave me directions to the graveyard,” Stoddart said.

  Lollie had already extracted the story and gave it to me briefly.

  “Mr. Stoddart is on a walking tour for his health,” he said. “He believes he has, or had, some relatives hereabouts. He’s staying at the Boar’s Head in Chilton Abbas. He couldn’t get a line on his relatives, but he thinks they might be buried here.”

  “What is the name?” I asked Stoddart.

  Oddly, he hesitated a moment before answering. Something in his expression struck me as out of kilter, not quite honest. He wore a rather cunning expression, but he finally did come up with a name. “Fanshawe,” he said. “Rupert and Marion Fanshawe. They were living here in the last century.”

  “So was I, but I never heard of them,” Lollie said. “There are no Fanshawes hereabouts.”

  “They might have died before you were born,” Stoddart said. “It was my grandmother who mentioned them.”

  He looked around, then asked if we minded if he sat and rested a while before going to the graveyard.

  “I’ll just finish up my sketch,” I said, and went to work on the complicated leaves again. Stoddart watched a moment, offered a few compliments, then began to chat to Lollie. Their talk was inconsequential: I heard Lollie pointing out the boundaries of Oakbay Hall and Beauvert, a neighboring estate, then the intricacies of sketching completely occupied my mind.

  When I had finished my work, they were deep in a discussion of some boxing match that was to occur the following week ten miles away. Stoddart didn’t think he would be around in a week’s time. With nothing better to do, I began to sketch him.

  The human face is not really my forte, but I turn my hand to it for family and friends. How else will posterity know what we looked like? You notice much more about a person’s appearance when you try to sketch or paint him or her. I noticed, for instance, that Stoddart’s head was longer than most people’s. His eyes were just a trifle uneven; one was a small fraction of an inch higher than the other. His cravat was intricately arranged, his jacket exceptionally well cut.

  I suddenly heard Lollie say, “We’ll go with you.” I looked up in alarm to see what he was getting “us” into.

  “We pass within yards of the graveyard,” Lollie said to me, “so it will be no trouble to show Mr. Stoddart where the new graves are situated.”

  I like graveyards. Aunt Talbot calls me ghoulish, but it’s the wildflowers I like and the peace and serenity, not the touch of death. I would stop and gather some wildflowers to put on my parents’ graves and on the grave of the sister I never really knew. Beth Anne died at three months. I have only the vaguest recollection of being allowed to hold her in my arms. If she had lived, she would be seventeen now, a year younger than Lollie. It would have been nice to have another young lady at Oakbay Hall.

  Stoddart insisted on carrying my paint box. He told us a little about himself as we went. He was from Bath, where his papa was a clergyman.

  “At Bath Abbey?” I asked, impressed.

  Again that look of cunning was in his eyes. “No, not the abbey,” he said. “The cathedral.”

  “But Bath Abbey is the cathedral,” I said in confusion. I had not the privilege of much travel, but I had been to Bath with my parents some years before.

  “Oh, Bath Abbey, of course. I thought you meant the other abbey, the Cistercian one, is it? Yes, at Bath Abbey, the cathedral. A beautiful building, isn’t it? I do love those old Norman cathedrals.”

  I knew by this time that Stoddart was shamming it. Bath Abbey is famous for its Gothic architecture. I said nothing but went on to catch him out in a few other errors. He praised the riding, for instance, when all the world complains of Bath’s hilly terrain. His toilette was too stylish for a clergyman’s son as well.

  We reached the graveyard. It is behind St. Peter’s Norman church, tucked into a wedge of land facing the road between Oakbay Hall and Maitland’s place. While I gathered my bouquets, Stoddart looked about for any graves marked Fanshawe, but there were none. If his relatives had been buried here, their graves would be in the northwest part of the yard, near my parents’ graves. The older ones were to the south.

  “The only Fanshawe hereabouts is Mr. Murray’s wife,” I said, “and she is very much alive. She was a Fanshawe before marriage, but she is not from this parish. I believe she came from London.” Stoddart expressed no interest in her.

  “Murray is our M.P.,” Lollie mentioned.

  It was getting on toward lunchtime. Sensing some dishonesty in Stoddart, I did not invite him home to lunch. Perhaps if I had, things would have turned out differently. But that is hindsight. We pointed out the route back to Chilton Abbas to Stoddart and then went home.

  “He seems a nice fellow,” Lollie said. He is as friendly as a pup. As long as a man doesn’t actually insult him, he is ready to call him a friend.

  “He is a liar, Lollie,” I said, and told him my reasons.

  “By Jove, I thought Maitland had a sneaky look about him as they went sliding into the shepherd’s hut. I thought he was probably meeting a woman, but when I got there, they were just having a cheroot. I shall go back this afternoon and see if I can find out what they were up to.”

  “Talking leaves no trace,” I told him, very much in Aunt Talbot’s know-it-all way. I must watch that sad tendency. Omniscience is well enough at nine and forty, but not at two and twenty. We continued on home.

  We went in at the back door as it is impossible to go to the water meadow without picking up a few traces of mud.

  “You’d best make it quick. She’s waiting for her lunch,” Cook warned us.

  She, Aunt Talbot, didn’t like waiting for her lunch. We darted upstairs to tidy up, thinking no more about Stoddart. We had no notion of the importance he would assume in our quiet lives. No notion that murder and treachery swirled around this stranger. All I knew was that he wasn’t from Bath, as he claimed.

  Chapter Two

  If Methodists ordained ladies, Aunt Talbot would make a good clergyman. She has a fine disapproving air of anything that smacks of entertainment. In appearance, she is tall and thin. Her auburn hair, her best feature, is bound in a tight knob and covered with a cap. Yet despite her sour expression and plain dressing, she has a natural air of elegance, which I envy.

  I have a similar shade of hair and I wear mine short and loose. Auntie’s elegance is entirely lacking in me. I stand five feet five inches and have a well-rounded figure. Not fat, just rounded! My fingers are usually smeared with paint or ink, my gowns splattered with mud or powdered with dust.

  Lollie tells me my best hope of nabbing a parti is my eyes and my dot of fifteen thousand pounds. My eyes are green and adequately lashed. Mama left me her dot, as Lollie was to inherit Oakbay Hall.

  Aunt Talbot is our paternal aunt, Papa’s spinster sister. She arrived in our lives three years ago when Mama died. We were already beyond redemption. I, at nineteen, was not about to be bear-led by a poor relation. On the contrary, we are slowly but surely leading Maude Talbot into a life of dissipation.

  She now accepts a half glass of wine with dinner; none for lunch. It gives her the megrims if taken when the sun is up. She accompanies us to the local assemblies, strictly in the line of du
ty. She goes to the card parlor but won’t touch cards. She gossips instead or tells the ladies’ fortunes.

  You may well stare to hear such a stickler for propriety reads palms, but so it is. The little touch of Beelzebub that lingers in the best of us must find some outlet. Auntie does not just read palms; she reads the whole hand. Auntie (and Lollie, too) has an earth hand; short palm and short fingers. These characteristics denote a hardworking, no-nonsense personality. I am afflicted with a water hand: long palm and long fingers, denoting one who lives with his or her head in the clouds and is impractical—in short, artistic.

  I got my water hands clean more quickly than Lollie despite my unreliability, however, and went below to distract Aunt Talbot from a lecture with a recital about the stranger met in the meadow. She is a glutton for gossip of any sort. When life offers no great doings, the small ones such as a passing stranger assume a large interest.

  “The man—I refuse to call a liar a gentleman—is no better than he should be,” she declared. “A man who lies about his past has some evil to conceal. But then who can you expect to meet if you go trolloping about the countryside looking like a commoner? When God gives a lady no children, the devil sends nieces and nephews in their stead.”

  That “looking like a commoner” was a dig at my oldest sprigged muslin. I have two or three such gowns that really ought to be dust rags, but they are too useful for my fieldwork.

  “Hardly the countryside, Auntie,” I objected. “I was in our own meadow. And Mr. Stoddart didn’t do anything.”

  “I don’t call lying nothing. A man who will tell an untruth will do worse. And posing as a clergyman’s son! I’m surprised Mr. Maitland didn’t run him off. But then Maitland is a perfect gentleman. Almost too good. He never suspects a trick.”

  Auntie entertains the forlorn hope that I will nab Maitland. Either that or she is so smitten by his beauty that she fails to hear the gossip about him. Age seems no inoculation against Maitland’s charm.