by Jane Jakeman
*
The carriage swept up to the gates of Westmorland Park and the coachman called to the lodge-keeper as usual. The iron gates swung back, and the carriage, with its strange cargo of bright blue and gold in that long sinister shape, moved off up the drive.
At the entrance, Micah Overbury sprung out as the coach slid to a halt. He was calling to the coachman to get down and fetch the lodge-keeper to help unload when two figures emerged from behind one of the pillars of the portico.
“Good day, Overbury! May we be allowed to welcome you home?”
“Malfine! Good God, sir, what are you doing here? And you, Sandys?”
“Thought I was on my travels, didn’t you? Well, Overbury, I’m pleased to report that I’ve just returned from Egypt and you’ll be delighted to hear that your niece is in splendid health! Dr. Sandys and I were just strolling over to Westmorland Park to acquaint you with the good news!”
It was quite interesting. I’d never seen anyone’s jaw drop before. I thought it was merely a literary term, but I saw that incongruously fleshy red mouth fall open and a trail of saliva slide unhindered from its lower lip on to Mr. Micah Overbury’s cravat.
“Shall we give you a hand with that curious object — ah! — it’s a coffin! Heavy, too. Who’ve you got in here, Overbury — Ozymandias?”
By now, with the combined efforts of the coachman and the lodge-keeper who hauled upon the leather straps, the coffin was sliding in gentle and controlled fashion to the ground; I stepped in to support it before it bumped down.
“There’s something wrong, here, Overbury. What have you been buying in the Orient — not all the perfumes of the East, for sure! Fortunately I’ve got a knife in my pocket — shouldn’t we take a look inside the coffin straight away?”
Overbury rushed forward as I cut at the ropes around the coffin shouting that it was his property, that I should keep my damned hands off ...
“Your property, eh? Well, you’ve acknowledged that in front of these witnesses here — three good men and true who can swear before a jury that this coffin has been claimed by Mr. Micah Overbury as his very own property! Faugh — disgusting, ain’t it?”
I had hacked through the ropes by this time, while Sandys pinioned Overbury by the arms and held him back.
I pulled up the lid. The coachman and the lodge-keeper, who had craned forward, started back with cries of disgust. The coachman turned aside from the path and I heard the sound of vomiting.
Gaping from within the lower part of the coffin was a hideous face, swollen and black with decay; the teeth gleamed through the shredding flesh of the cheeks and the eyes were liquified and putrescent.
I tipped the coffin forward and the body rolled out, filling the clean country air with foulness as a viscous dark liquid ran into rivulets across the drive.
“Looks like someone tried to do a spot of preservation but their attempts at mummification weren’t very successful — they probably didn’t have much time. And he’s been at sea for a month or so; the Arabian Lady, I believe, ran into storms off the coast of Malta. Still, here’s your coffin — do you recognise him, Overbury? You are in the most suspicious of circumstances, you know, claiming a coffin containing a dead body as your property? And no ancient Egyptian, neither! Have a good look at his face now — you two, hold Mr. Overbury close so that he can see the face — what once passed for the face, at any rate. Get a good look, Overbury — closer! Don’t you recognise it? Why, I do believe it’s your man of business — your confidential adviser!”
“Yes, yes,” shrieked Overbury. “It’s Casterman. How in hell’s name did this come about? I deny it all — this has nothing to do with me!”
“Oh, come, come, Overbury,” said Sandys. “Not only did you openly claim this coffin as your property, but Lord Ambrose has a piece of paper on which the shipper expressly sends the consignment to you!”
“Malfine, how did you get that?”
“There was a child, for she was little more than a child, whom you killed, Overbury — you or Casterman at your bidding. The servant girl, Maggie Dermott, who tried to warn your niece of the evils she suspected — and who paid for it with her life. But her sister retrieved this tell-tale piece of paper that links you with her death and with this shipment.”
I held up the paper and read aloud. “‘To Mr. Micah Overbury at Westmorland Park ... La Egiziàna.’” The Egyptian what? The Egyptian Coffin? It would have contained something else — a living, breathing human being — the Egyptian slave-girl, shall we say? Other people’s lives mean nothing to you, do they, Overbury? Neither poor Maggie Dermott, nor your own niece, nor the girl Casterman strangled in Cairo lest she, too, should try to aid Lilian Westmorland. There is a pattern there, Overbury, is there not? Young women, especially — they have no importance at all. And that is why you can trade in their flesh, you and your fellow slavers! That is why the girl would have been brought here and kept prisoner till she could be sold on at a profit and smuggled out of the country! As for your niece, you did not dare to harm her openly here, where she had friends and neighbours to watch over her! But you knew that if you sent her to the East there would likely be many opportunities for her death to occur — by a seeming accident, perhaps, or else by Casterman’s unusually resourceful methods. He didn’t succeed in contriving another accident — but he tried to take her into the heart of a raging epidemic which was almost bound to infect her with a deadly disease! Was that your idea or did he plan that on the spot? I had no opportunity to ask him and it’s too late now!”
Overbury was struggling frantically and would almost have broken free, but Sandys stepped forward, putting a hand into his pocket, and held up something that glinted in the light.
“You’re a cunning devil, Overbury, but Malfine arrived before you — as a matter of fact, he was in time to alert me and we got here together. We found these inside a room at Westmorland Park. In a room next to yours, but windowless, with a padlock on the door. But I think they will go round your wrists. We’ll use them on you, Overbury — and it’s less than you deserve. And if you don’t stop struggling, we’ll use the other tackle we found here, as well. The whip, for instance. Ah, I thought so — that’s quietened you down!”
And Sandys snapped the manacles on Overbury’s wrists.
PART V
MALFINE
TWENTY - The Further Narrative of Lord Ambrose Malfine
I strode at last across the fields from the direction of Westmorland Park, towards home. So I speak of Malfine now, if I have any such place in the world; if I have to describe where I am from, as a traveller is so often asked to do by some passing acquaintance, I answer “Malfine; that is my home.” Yet how can anyone call Malfine, this immense heap of slate and marble, this absurd and beautiful monstrous burrow in which I have the right to lay my head, home?
Nevertheless, as I grew closer, my pace quickened when I saw the white columns soaring up and the long sweep of the carriage drive. I had forgotten how fragile the vast house appeared, how it had a trick of floating above the earth, with its fragile boundaries of trees and lake, to seem like a vision in a dream.
Thus my Greek mother must have seen it, when my father had first brought her to his home, this fulfilment of a cool vision, in a setting so unlike that of her hot and stony homeland. How many deserts had I crossed now, to come here once again to these green fields where I had once, in my benignly neglected youth, run wild?
But even as I hurried towards the house, I knew that I should never come home to a mere place, not even this. My pulse was racing and I yearned now for my journey’s end — but as I ran up the driveway of Malfine, my longing was still unfulfilled. The stones were bloodless stones merely, the marble had no voice.
I had no news now for two months or more — since the last letter had reached me as I sat in a tent beneath the burning skies of Egypt. What I hoped for was impossible — there was every likelihood that she had returned to her family — that her mother had persuaded her into a se
nsible and decorous life and that her parents were even now contriving for their wayward daughter to meet some suitable middle-aged suitor. I myself had advised that course and counselled her to abandon her relationship with an eccentric and rebellious aristocrat. Of course she would not be here!
It was impossible. Yet I could not prevent myself from hoping.
And then suddenly, on the white steps of the portico, was a woman with her hair down around her shoulders, staring as if she could not believe her eyes. And then she was picking up her skirts and running. Running towards me.
Behind her, a manservant was calling out, “Miss Elisabeth, pray take care! Miss Elisabeth, who is that ruffian in the drive!”
TWENTY-ONE
Record of a Statement Made by the Gypsy, Shadrach Lee, and Set Down by the Hand of Lord Ambrose Malfine
My lord asks me to say what I know about the business at Westmorland Park, and that he will set it down as I speak it, for I have no letters, neither in English nor in our tongue of Romany.
It is not much I can say. I was sent for, together with another Romany man of our family, by name Trito Hearne, he being what is called among us a gryengro, or horse dealer, that is a man who knows the ways of those beasts — and the ways of those who deal in them. Trito has told me some of the artful ways of tickling up a beast for the buyer — that a dull horse can be made to look lively by tipping a live eel down its throat, for example, or that if the creature is too frisky and bucking about, that a gallon of strong ale will make him most agreeably placid and dozy till the deal is done and the buyer rides safely off upon the back of his new purchase.
But I don’t know if any such tricks were used that night — Trito never told me, if they were.
We were never told the name of the man who sent for us. I was with my wife and children living in our keirvardo, a caravan, in the grounds of my lord’s estate at Malfine, as he has permitted us to do. {Note: I will bear witness that this is perfectly true: these gypsies have done me good service in the past and have permission to camp on my land — A.}
But at night comes a carriage, driven by a man with a cloth over the most part of his face, save for his mouth and eyes.
I steps out of the caravan, cautious, and waits for him to speak.
“I have a horse I desire to sell,” says he.
Well, no honest man comes horse-dealing in the middle of the night, so I guesses this is a case of gry choring {horsestealing — A.} and he purposes to dispose of the beast with all speed — and hopes that a gypsy might spirit it away for him.
“Sir, if you have a horse to dispose of, you want old Trito Hearne from Callerton way,” says I. “He’s the horse-man in these parts.”
The man with the cloth says there will be a guinea in the palm of my hand if I will go straightaway with him and fetch Trito. He says the matter cannot wait till morning and I knew full well why — because the horse must be got far away by daylight. At any rate, that is usually the reason in such cases!
So we goes over and fetches Trito, then and there in the middle of the night, and the stranger took us west — I would say a distance of about ten miles — to a big house built of brick, and we creeps round, the man we did not know motioning to us all the time to be silent, to the stables at the back.
Then he leads out of a stall a horse with sacking tied round its hooves, so it makes no sound on the cobbles. I could not rightly see it in the night, but it looked to be a darkish colour: it may have had a small white blaze upon its forehead, but that I cannot swear to. I saw the creature only in the darkness: Trito went close, with a lamp.
Anyway, to return to the tale: I am taking fright, for leading away such a beast from the very stables of the house cannot be less than a hanging offence, and I whispers to old Trito to come away and leave off such games, but then another man appears, a tall gentleman, very well-dressed and with a long beard and a high black hat. Something like a parson, he looked.
“Can you dispose of this animal for a price?” says he.
Well, Trito searches the beast over, and looks in its mouth and runs his hands over its legs. Then he rubs its back and fetlocks with a bit of wet straw. He’s looking for dye covering up the beast’s markings, you see, berry-stain or suchlike.
“This is the finest mare I ever do see!” says he to me, in our Romany tongue to keep it secret, but they knows what a valuable animal they has got there, of that I am sure.
Trito says to them, “I’ll get you a price for it, and a good one. It has a cut on yon foreleg, with some tarry muck around, but that’ll heal soon enough. I’ll not ask you why a fine thoroughbred mare is being sent off — but that’s what she is, gentlemen! There’s no disguising the quality of this piece of horseflesh — no sir! Thirty guineas is the price I can get for you, if I take her far enough away.”
Far enough — they knew what he meant. Far enough so she wouldn’t be recognised, that’s what they wanted. He took their wishes, you see, old Trito, without they said a word. He’s seen a lot of this horse-dealing, has the rogue.
“Thirty!” says the second gentleman. “Why, she’s worth a couple of hundred!”
“Why, sir, advertised at leisure among the quality, and with a docket of her breeding. I doubt not she’s worth a hundred or more. But taken out of the stables at night and led across half the countryside, I’ll put it no higher than thirty. I can find a buyer at that price, and quick enough if you want her taken off your hands.”
“Can you give me the thirty in my hand now?” says the man in the tall hat.
Now, to look at him you wouldn’t think old Trito had so much as a penny-piece to his name, but as he said to me afterwards, “Us horse-dealers must be ready for any emergencies that may arise in the course of our profession.”
The old gypsy man carries round more than you would think. You know, one time I sees Trito pull a silver tankard out that he kept in the pocket of his old tail-coat, and he said he carried that tankard around so that he might never have to drink his ale out of the same up as a gorgio, (which persons, being not Romanies, begging your lordship’s pardon, we do not consider clean). That was how much Trito clung to the old Romany ways.
But to return to this business of the mare, the two men are waiting and Trito pulls out an old knotted kerchief that was slung inside his trousers, and a bag that is hung under his armpit, and another that is tied round his neck beneath his kerchief. And from every little bundle and crevice as we might say, there comes the chink of guineas here and groats there, of bits and bobs of coin so that old Trito must have been a walking bundle of fair old horse-currency. Then and there he counts out the price of the mare, and as he was pulling the money out so the fellow in the tall hat was peering at the coins and weighing them in his hand.
“I’ll get you hanged if there’s a dud!” he says to Trito. “All coin of the realm, sir,” says Trito. “You’d best count it again in daylight to satisfy yourself!”
The man gave a grunt, as if to say “Well, that’s to come” and turned away towards the house.
“Remember, far away!” says the other man. And he gives me the guinea for fetching Trito, as he had promised.
And that was all we saw of them, for we led the horse out of the stables, and once we were a half-mile or so beyond the house Trito jumps on its back and pulls me up behind, and they left me near Malfine, horse and rider going like the wind. And I’ve never had a ride so fast before, for all that mare had a cut on her leg.
But my woman, when I told her, was greatly feared, for she knew that the horse must be stolen, and thought all was contrived to put suspicion on us Romanies. So she went with our child to Malfine mansion house at night, and roused the raia, and told him of the dealing with the two men and old Trito.
And all of what I have said now is true, and may my ancestors curse me otherwise with these words: the curse of our souls light upon him and his for ever — may our spirit be deep upon him in his life and in his death — may his thirst be unquenchable — may he dwell i
n the darkness of his own heart — may his last food be the bread of his enemies — we, the ancestors, have spoken!
And if what I have said is untrue, may my children bury me in a churchyard.
The mark of Shadrach Lee
TWENTY-TWO - The Concluding Narrative of Lord Ambrose Malfine
Yet there was a mystery still to unravel. We were in the dining room at Malfine, setting our brains to work to solve this final puzzle.
My dining room is somewhat unusual as to its furnishings — it was designed as a salon of immense grandeur, for the banquet of a prince, literally, for my grandfather had thought he might entertain Prinny himself beneath his roof. But it would have been an arrangement against my grandfather’s interests, for the prince was heavily in debt and my grandfather was not, and besides the expenses would be quite monstrous — a twenty-course dinner would be a mere bagatelle. In any case, Grandfather Hedger had got wind that Prinny was looking for loans.
So the visit never took place, but there was a magnificent room with a table forty feet long and candle-sconces all around the walls, and somewhere in the butlers pantry was a blue-and-gold Sevres dinner service, every plate painted with a naked deity, that old Hedger’s Paris agent had got cheap after the sale of Madame du Barry’s effects, following the unfortunate revolutionary events in France. It would, perhaps, have been a tactless reminder to set before poor Prinny.
Such, at any rate, was the dining room, which now in early spring was beginning to be just warm enough to use on a sunny day, provided we sat at the fireplace end of the table. And there we were early one evening, surrounded by a comfortable jumble of earthenware plates, nutshells, and the Paul de Lamerie silver that Belos insists we must use, so that he can be a proper butler and polish the silver with his thumbs, or whatever butlers do when they buttle.
