Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery)

by Jane Jakeman

  I must admit these rural family dramas do add a little spice to country life. The circumstances here seemed a trifle extreme, but funerals always bring out the worst.

  Cyriack returned to the table and hacked off some slices of beef, cramming them into his pockets like a mad fellow, not ceasing in his angry complaints. “At least I’ll take what I can eat—you did as much for those village tykes just now! It seems to me there’ll be little enough left of my inheritance by the time—”

  He was interrupted at last. The housekeeper had slipped past him, up the stairs, and returned with a silver hip-flask, which she filled with brandy from a decanter on the sideboard. She held it out to him and he snatched it from her hand and tore out of the room.

  There was a long silence. Sir Antony lowered himself into a chair beside the empty fireplace.

  “My God, Malfine, there is nothing like an ungrateful child! ‘Sharper than a serpent’s tooth’!”

  “I think, sir, we should be leaving you.”

  This was Sandys.

  I joined my voice to his.

  “Yes, this is clearly no occasion for strangers, Sir Antony.”

  Only Elisabeth looked reluctant, glancing sadly at Lady Jesmond, who had produced a small black handkerchief and was dabbing at her eyes with it, holding onto the back of a chair the while.

  “Yes, Miss Anstruther,” she murmured, “I fear you will not wish to remain here now. I had hopes of some companionship, but I see it is not to be! I am sure you will wish to leave with Lord Ambrose and Dr. Sandys—pray do not feel concerned on my account. Your things may be packed straight away—Mrs. Romey will help you. You need think no more of Clara Jesmond!”

  Yes, madam, thought I, and I will call your bluff, for I am determined that Elisabeth shall remain no longer in the bosom of such a family.

  I do not know whether I would have persuaded her to depart and leave Clara Jesmond to the mercy of her violent stepson, and, to tell the truth, I would myself have had misgivings. But the fact of the matter is that a sudden and terrible event occurred, so that I did not get the opportunity to put to the test my influence over the determined character of Miss Elisabeth Anstruther.

  CHAPTER 8

  The little party standing around the remains of funeral baked meats heard Cyriack’s footsteps pounding out and down the steps of the house, and then his voice, screaming for a groom to fetch his horse. I was of a mind to go and knock him off the poor beast’s back, for he was no more fit to be trusted with a horse than with a woman; involuntarily I followed him to the door and out on to the top of the flight of steps leading up to the entrance. I was in time to see him snatching up a riding-whip that lay on a hall table.

  Meanwhile, the party remaining in the great hall, Sir Antony and Lady Jesmond, Elisabeth and Dr. Sandys, moved as if all drawn together by some sixth sense, to the mullioned window which opened on to the front of the house. From my vantage point at the top of the steps I could see their faces through the dim old panes of glass, and, so frightful were the events that followed that the scene is impressed upon my inner eye, and I fancy I can see them yet, standing at the window looking out onto the grounds like a ghostly audience peering into an arena.

  Thus it was that we were all spectators of what happened next, watching, with the sensation of people in a trance, as if in apprehension of a drama about to take place before our eyes.

  It began almost immediately. A groom came running round the side of the house with a ready-saddled horse, as if he knew his master’s demands well enough to anticipate them, and as he halted the animal before the steps, Cyriack flung himself astride it, gave the horse a cruel cut of the whip and aimed another slash at the wretched groom, who leaped out of the path of the prancing hooves as the creature surged forward.

  The drive at Jesmond Place is a long one, curving to the entrance, and we could all see what happened next. There was a flash of silver as Cyriack impatiently pulled out the hip-flask which Mrs. Romey had handed to him, screwed off the top and held it to his lips. Horse and rider thundered toward the iron gates, which stood open, but there was a momentary check as they reached them, for they were not fully open and the horse must slow down for a moment to pass through.

  What happened next has diverse accounts, according to the eyesight and perception of the spectator concerned, but Elisabeth, Sandys and I agree on the principal points. The horse resumed its headlong gallop, and as it passed through the gateway the rider appeared to suddenly stand right up in the stirrups and to arch backward in a terrible contortion, almost like an acrobat in a circus, which absurd comparison flashed momentarily through my brain as it endeavored to make sense of the scene.

  But then all frivolous comparisons were over.

  Standing in the open doorway, I heard a most frightful scream, a deep-throated shriek of agony, coming from the direction of horse and rider.

  I saw in the distance that Cyriack Jesmond slumped down, seemed to topple forward for a moment over the horse’s neck, and then rolled sideways and fell from the animal’s back altogether, yet was trapped by one foot which remained fast in the stirrup.

  Opposite the gate of Jesmond Place a clump of trees shaded the roadway; the horse now bolted straight out of the gates and between the tree-trunks, its rider dragging behind, flopping horribly upon the rough ground like a gaffed fish. The groom had started down the drive after them, and I broke free of the moment of horror which had frozen me where I stood and raced after him, catching him up with my long-limbed stride, and tearing through the gateway and into the trees, where the horse had slowed somewhat, though I still heard horrid dull sounds as the head and body of its master battered against tree-trunks and crashed through undergrowth.

  Running behind it, I called out to the animal with a special whistling sound that the Romanies use to calm a frightened pony. The panting groom was close behind me now and was endeavoring to use up his scant remains of breath by yelling at the horse, but I clapped my hand across his mouth; the animal would not be steadied by further noise and alarums.

  Gradually, the terrified creature slowed, and finally stopped. A trail of destruction lay behind it, a bloodied track where young Cyriack had been swept along. Reaching the animal’s head, I caught the reins and handed them to the groom with an injunction to make no more of his row. The mouth of the trembling horse was dripping with foam that frothed over the bit and the bridle, and upon the recumbent body of its master.

  His face was a mask of blood, mud and saliva, yet, as I bent over the form of Cyriack Jesmond, I realized that not all the slaver around his mouth was splashed from his horse. I tore off my cravat and began to wipe the muck from his face, to try to discern the extent of his injuries, and saw that a glistening foam was emanating from his own lips, which were a frightful purplish-blue in color.

  A few words seemed to issue from the contorted lips. I was close to them now. He seemed for a moment to know me. His words were forced out in agony, yet there was a hissing clarity to them.

  “The sparks, Malfine! Fire! The smoke at night.”

  He was still living at that moment, but as I bent over him his jaws clenched together in a terrible grimace and his breath came in long convulsive gasps.

  “Make way—let me look at him.”

  Sandys had reached us now, and was bending over my shoulder. I rose and allowed him to kneel on the spot where I had been, and we watched as the contortions of the body worsened, with a few great jerks of the spine, and the hands cramping tight into claws. The breath was now a sobbing panting, the whole face a horrid bluish color with a cold sweat broken out all over the features. Sandys endeavored to pull back the head so as to allow some air to reach the gasping lungs, but as he did so, there was one terrible final gulp and then no more.

  The eyes stared up, fixed, glistening, the pupils huge. The orbs seemed almost to be starting from the head. A peculiar scent arose, not merely the nasty smells of violent death where the body bursts through its sphincters, but a bitter, sharp, acr
id odor.

  Sandys stood up, brushing leaves and grass from his breeches.

  “Poison.”

  That was the one word he uttered. There was no need, at that moment, for anything more.

  CHAPTER 9

  The body of Cyriack Jesmond lay upon his bed; his eighteen brief years in this world were over. There is no purpose in mincing my words for I cannot consider him as anything but a vicious young scoundrel; sooner or later, he would in all probability have been taken out of this life and dispatched into the next after picking a quarrel with some under-estimated and unconsidered personage, yet I could not but regret that he had been allowed to grow into such a young fool and given no opportunity to learn better.

  Still, moral reflections bore me, and I did not continue with them. There is an age of creeping propriety descending upon us, and I will resist it with all my powers.

  While, therefore, the Jesmond Place household was engaged in the lamentations and exclamations which might be imagined upon the discovery of the son and heir taken so sudden by a dose of poison that he tumbled clean off his horse and was brought back stone dead to the ancestral home, I made it my business to indulge in a little activity.

  After Sandys, standing over the convulsed and disordered body in that little coppice of trees where Cyriack’s horse had finally been brought to the end of its tumultuous dash, had pronounced life extinct, the groom had run back to the house and fetched a couple of sturdy stable-hands, with a trestle upon which the body of their young master was laid. Sandys, stripping off his coat and placing it over the dead contorted face, advanced before them in order to break the news to the family, but it seemed that they had seen part of the proceedings from the window, for Sir Antony and Lady Jesmond were standing fearfully in the doorway. Sandys strode some yards ahead of the makeshift bier and urged them inside. From a distance, I could see him urgently speaking in Sir Antony’s ear as they entered under the old carved stone doorway, as generations of Jesmonds had done before, and I heard a woman’s shriek from within the house, issuing through the casement window.

  For myself, I did not hasten back. I waited for a few moments, calming the terrified horse that had dragged its master’s recumbent form through the trees. I noticed the savage cuts of the whip upon its flanks: one creature, presumably, that would not mourn the passing of Cyriack Jesmond.

  I loosened the girth of the saddle to aid its breathing, and as the breath slowed and steadied, took the bridle and began to lead the animal back to the house. The path that we followed was clearly marked with a trail of broken branches and torn shrubbery. The early summer flowers that had sprung up lately were gleaming dabbles of color, and brighter still were the splatters of blood that had sprayed out as the defenseless head of Cyriack had swung against tree-trunks and occasional rocky outcrops. Slowly, we plodded back, returning to the gateway to the grounds of Jesmond Place, and here, just inside the gate, I caught a glimpse of silver among the clumps of green.

  It was the dead man’s hip-flask, which had tumbled from his grasp. I sniffed at it: a strong odor of spirits, something like a fruity brandy. And something less familiar: that same bitter tang that I had caught on Cyriack’s dying breath.

  The same smell that had haunted the body of that other young man, just gone to his last resting-place.

  I took Cyriack’s horse round to the stables and gave the groom some instructions for its care, telling him the creature needed peace and quiet and a blanket over its back. Zaraband gave an anxious whinny as I stopped to pay her my respects. She longed for her daily gallop, I knew.

  “Soon, soon,” I murmured, but I had to turn my footsteps toward the house.

  There I encountered a scene of shock and mourning, which I imagined repeated, yet with even more intensity of feeling, that which had taken place here a few days before. On that occasion, the young man had been almost a stranger, of whose inner life these persons could have known very little; this was the only son of the Jesmond blood, the young buck whom they must presumably have believed would one day inherit all—house, grounds, horses…everything; the youth who had grown up within these walls and had played here as a child.

  Sir Antony suddenly looked to be an old, old man. You would not have believed that he and Lady Jesmond were man and wife, so ancient did he seem beside her. He had collapsed into a huge chair that stood inside the great hall, and Mrs. Romey was putting a rug around him, for he was shaking as if it were mid-winter. Lady Jesmond was rubbing his hands between her own: old gnarled brown branches, they looked like, between her plump pink fingers. Behind the shadows at the high back of the chair stood Charnock, his face anxious, his own hands twisting together as he contemplated the master and mistress of the house.

  Elisabeth entered the room. “Dr. Sandys has taken…has gone upstairs,” she murmured, and I understood that Sandys had escorted the body of Cyriack to his room. “Elisabeth, I must speak to you.”

  I drew her out of the room.

  “It was another case of poisoning—I have Sandys’ word for it, and I myself saw the signs. I am sure it was the same poison which dispatched young Kelsoe. There is real danger here, believe me!”

  To my relief, she answered that I was in the right of it. “Yes, Ambrose, I saw that something terrible had happened when the young man fell from his horse, and when I saw you going after them, I was frightened for you, also.”

  “Let us all return to Malfine now,” I urged, “you, Sandys and I. Sandys’ horse is in the stable and Zaraband can carry the two of us. Lose no time—don’t stay to be packing. Fetch your cloak and we’ll get away from Jesmond Place this instant!”

  She faltered. “But…Lady Jesmond… Can we leave her here? I fear for her, Ambrose.”

  I was about to say that in my opinion the biggest threat to Lady Jesmond’s happiness, her foul-tempered lout of a stepson, had been disposed of, but thought better of it.

  “Come with me now and in a few days I will return to see that she is safe—there is an inquiry which I particularly wish to make—and then I will look after her ladyship, trust me in that.”

  “But supposing the danger is here and now—in this house, this very minute?”

  It was going to be difficult to persuade Elisabeth to make good our escape, that I could see, but help arrived from an unexpected quarter. Murdoch Sandys was descending the stairs as we spoke, and immediately urged our return to Malfine. When he heard of Elisabeth’s fears for Clara Jesmond’s safety, he offered a solution to her difficulties.

  “I will stay here, Miss Anstruther, at least until the young man’s funeral, and take care of Lady Jesmond. You may rely on me as a medical man not to be deceived into danger. I will take every precaution, be assured.”

  “Sandys, will you have my pistol?”

  “No, Malfine, there’ll be no need of that.”

  “Very well.” But I, certainly, did not expect to have any need for it where I was planning to go, unless it be to fire a few shots to wake the place up.

  “Be so good as to deliver a line to my wife at Lute House,” said he.

  “I’ll fetch you pen, ink and paper,” said Elisabeth eagerly. “I have some in my room.”

  A thought struck me, prompted by Elisabeth’s words. “Now there’s an odd thing! In young Kelsoe’s quarters up in the attic there was neither pen nor paper to be seen. Yet you would think that as a medical man he would have been in the habit of making some notes, would you not?”

  “Yes,” answered Sandys, “and besides, did he not have a family in the north of England? Surely he would have wished to write to them from time to time?”

  “Yes, and they would write to him!” cried Elisabeth. “His mother—or a sister, perhaps. Surely there would be some correspondence.”

  “Perhaps he had been here for too short a time for any letters to arrive,” said I, though I did not in my heart believe that this was the explanation.

  “I believe I heard from a medical acquaintance that he was in Bristol for some months befo
re he came here,” was the doctor’s comment. “He must have received some letters while he was there—but perhaps he destroyed them all when he came here.”

  “That would be an odd thing to do. Yet I am sure there was no letter at all in his room,” said I.

  Sandys spoke slowly, his face grave, as he thought of something further.

  “And if it were truly suicide, I heard of no note…nothing left to give any of us a reason for the poor wretch’s dispatching himself out of the world.”

  “Well, that may be an argument that it was indeed an accident.”

  I always approve the clarity of Elisabeth’s thinking. “And maybe,” she added, “if he desired to write a letter, he borrowed pen and paper from Sir Antony. That would be normal and natural.”

  Quite. Yet the probability of Kelsoe’s death being normal and natural, a mere accident, it seemed to me, was greatly reduced by the terrible eventuality that had befallen young Cyriack. Two young men, two chance cases of poisoning from prussic acid…well, that was too much to believe. But I did not voice this thought.

  CHAPTER 10

  We rode through that warm night in late May, leaving the dark outline of Jesmond Place behind us, its chimneys twisting above the higgledy rooftop like contorted branches, dark against the lighter summer night. Zaraband carried us both with ease, and so warm was it that I found my cloak to be an encumbrance. At the edge of Exmoor, I stopped, dismounted and rolled it up, intending to strap it on the saddle, and as I did so something rolled out of it. I had feared that if she recognized it, Elisabeth might find it a disagreeable sight, reminding her of a scene which was perhaps better forgotten. But I could not have prevented her seeing it, for it gleamed in the moonlight as it tumbled away. I reached down and retrieved it.

  “Oh Ambrose, what is it?”

  I tried to make light of the matter.

  “I have been stealing the Jesmond silver—that is all.”