by Jane Jakeman
Henderson, in the last magician’s guise he would put on.
Charnock gave a great howl of grief and ran frantically toward the house.
“Is that real gold, sir, on the cloak?” The groom had caught up by now and was gasping at the sight. The landlord had the door open, and was struggling with his stout bulk up the stairs.
The groom and I were close up. “Tinsel,” I said. “Gold ribbons, gold thread—nothing of any substance. All tinsel.”
We cut him down from the window from which he had hanged himself, and laid him in his room, still covered in the great cloak; the downy feathers stirred in the slight breeze, almost as if the form underneath it were still alive.
“He kept it folded away,” said Charnock. “It belonged to old Thomas. My grandfather said a wizard could fly in that cloak. That’s why they keep the church locked.”
For a moment, I could not follow his train of thought.
“What church—oh, that one at Otterhampton? What has that to do with it?”
Charnock looked puzzled. “Didn’t you know? He’s buried there—old Thomas, my ancestor. There’s no church at Combwich, apart from the one at Jesmond Place. After they buried him in Otterhampton, the church was locked and the rector keeps the key, only he doesn’t live at Otterhampton anyway, and the church is opened only for a service on a Sunday.”
I remembered the heavy lock on the door in the church porch.
“They keep it locked because…because people said he might fly out of it. Fly out of his grave and out of the church. They’re not educated people, my lord, and there’s been stories handed down ever since old Thomas came to live here. There’s very few go to the services in the church at Otterhampton—and they come away as quickly as possible afterward.”
And it had probably been easier for the rectors of Otterhampton to go along with the wishes of their flock. I remembered the sunny churchyard, deserted except for sheep of the woolly variety.
Young Charnock, descendant of that much-feared Thomas who might have spread wings and swooped up out of the church, went on speaking, though his voice was still shaky.
“When Dr. Henderson came, he said he would fly away in that cloak one day.”
Perhaps that had been the legendary source of the landlord’s terrified inquiry; perhaps superstitions based on the alchemist’s feathered cloak had lingered on.
“But it is terrible that Henderson should kill himself,” and I looked at Charnock, and realized for the first time how young he was. Tears stood in his eyes. He was looking at me with a kind of bewilderment.
“I think he could not stand the humiliation,” said I. “It was not just imprisonment he wanted to escape, but the demonstration that his magic was false and his alchemy mere fraud.”
I saw that the young face was twisted up with grief; in all the world, Henderson had found at least one fellow human being who lamented him, had found that devotion not in Oxford where he had demonstrated his scientific brilliance, but buried here in the heart of somebody whom I could now see was still in many ways a village boy.
The landlady of the Green Lion had arrived to join the throng and was fluttering round in a state of agitation. “The ladies at the inn! They are right anxious.”
“Oh lord, yes,” exclaimed Elisabeth. “I had forgotten. They will be waiting for news!”
“Sandys, will you go on?” I asked. “I would like to know that cursed alchemical den is destroyed. There must be many poisons in that house which should be disposed of safely, lest they fall into the wrong hands.”
“Very well, Malfine, I’ll see that no more harm can come of it.”
We hurried down the street, past the village houses. Covert observation from behind the cottage windows had been abandoned: here and there groups of people were emerging into the street, alarmed by the commotion. A woman protectively pulled her child into the deep folds of her skirt, staring down the street and shading her eyes to see what passed.
We found them in the parlor, both of them, seated at a table which bore a tray set with glasses and a decanter of something that looked like Madeira.
“Dreadful stuff,” observed Elisabeth, as she seated herself, taking a sip and tossing her ringlets with the ensuing shock. “My papa would never have allowed such vinegar in his cellar!”
She placed the glass down upon the table.
“Your papa was a wine-merchant with a fine taste and a cellar worth a small fortune,” I observed. “A country inn will never accommodate your palate.”
These were our words, not betraying our relief at knowing each other thus alive, thriving, and even complaining.
I seemed to be acquiring some British reticence in matters of the heart. Instead, therefore, of taking Elisabeth into my arms and ascending the stairs to the nearest bedchamber, I uttered polite greetings to the other persons at the table.
Clara Jesmond looked as if she had been crying. The room went very quiet as I sat down next to Mrs. Romey.
“Ambrose,” said Elisabeth, “last night when I arrived at Jesmond Place I could not find anyone—neither you nor Dr. Sandys, so I thought it better to get them out of there. There seemed to be something terribly dangerous in that house.”
“You sensed danger, yet you went back?”
For a moment, there was no one but Elisabeth and myself in the dingy little inn parlor. It was a long look, that seemed to take us half a lifetime.
“Would you doubt me?” she spoke quietly. “But first, Clara can shed some light on that poor young physician’s death, can you not, Clara? You only have to repeat what you confided in me last night.”
Clara Jesmond was sitting opposite me. Her large blue eyes gazed unhappily at me and the blonde lace collar on her dress trembled with her nervousness, but I think she knew that she could go no further along the road of deceit. Things were simply too perilous for anything but the truth.
And the deceit, I reflected, as a ray of light came through the window and fell across both Clara Jesmond and Mrs. Romey, was not all with regard to Kelsoe. I turned my head in Elisabeth’s direction, and saw a movement, just an acknowledgment. She had seen the same thing, perhaps earlier than I. But we must hear what Clara was prepared to tell us now.
“There was something further, Lord Ambrose. Something John Kelsoe must have written after that scrap which I showed you previously.”
Clara Jesmond delved within a little velvet bag on a cord at her waist and produced a strip of paper closely covered with fine writing; without a word, she passed it over the table.
My darling: my existence is now a torture to me. I had believed you loved me, and would come away with me. And I thought you wanted, me to act as I did in refusing to have anything to do with Henderson’s schemes and contrivances.
We don’t need gold—false or real! We could have lived together, like two birds of the air, and I would have cared nothing—no, nothing for wealth or fame, so long as I had you with me. But you said you would not take me—and that, my love, my beautiful bird, is my death warrant. You want something I do not have—yet perhaps I can get it for you! Not now, not now, but after my death, some time when I am beneath the soil, it will happen. When that day arrives, think of me!
There was no signature, save an elaborate J crammed on to the end of the last line; I recognized it from the note which Kelsoe had left to Clara in their secret hiding-place.
I looked up from the small strip of paper on which Kelsoe had written his last words. “I found it in his writing-case,” said Clara Jesmond. “He must have left it there before he…”
“There was no writing-case in his room!” I exclaimed. Mrs. Romey leaned forward and said with sudden determination, “No, indeed! I took every scrap of paper away. There was no time to see what was written upon it—I took his case and everything, in case there was anything of my lady’s in it.”
“But this was the only personal thing, save some letters from his mother,” added Clara Jesmond. “The rest was all his scientific papers.”
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“And that explains why you found no papers in his room. You see, he did commit suicide!” exclaimed Elisabeth. Her smoky citrine-yellow eyes turned toward the woman sitting next to her, and she gazed carefully at Clara Jesmond’s face, as if she were reading a story written there. “You see, Ambrose, as we know, Kelsoe fell in love with Clara, and when she would not have him, he killed himself. This last note proves it, does it not?”
“Yes, it would certainly seem to, taken with the previous message,” I said. “Lady Jesmond, these messages could have proved your innocence.”
“But it would have meant making everything public! Oh, I could confess certain things to you in private, Lord Ambrose, but to give Knellys this proof of—”
Here there came a sudden interference. I had almost forgotten the presence of Mrs. Romey, who was also seated at the table. She sat upright, with a light gray cloak pulled round her, and spoke softly. “It would have meant that my pretty one would have to confess everything, that she and Dr. Kelsoe…had a fondness for each other.”
Clara Jesmond sat back in her chair, and sighed. “You need not disguise it in such terms. Yes, as I told you before, we were lovers and he wanted us to be together forever.”
“But you would have been very poor!” This was Mrs. Romey.
“Yes,” said Clara softly. “We should have been poor.” She traced a finger in a pool of wine which had got spilled on to the rough table-top. “Such a life would not have been for me.” She looked up again, directly at me, and I experienced the heart-stopping gaze of those huge blue eyes. “You are aware of my character, Lord Ambrose. I am not a woman who would like to contrive and make do, never to appear in society, always to live in the poorest of circumstances. I simply could not have borne it.
“I tried to put it as delicately as I could, but yes, that was what I told him. But we spoke also of his work for my husband. I said that he had been foolish, to act as he did and refuse to take part in what Dr. Henderson was doing for my husband. I said that perhaps alchemy did work after all, and if so, my husband would soon be rich. And even if it did not, why, if John Kelsoe would only go along with it, would help with the experiments and so on, at least he could stay beneath our roof and we could continue as we were. But no, he would have none of that! He could not play at that charlatan’s game! That was what he said. So there was only one thing left—he would have to leave Jesmond Place; after all, he could hardly stay after he had more or less called my husband a fool to be taken in by alchemy!”
“And that, of course, would have meant leaving you, which he could not bear to do. So the poor young fellow killed himself. Professor Daubeny was right after all, when he said in Oxford that it was possible that a man could swallow prussic acid and still have time to compose his deathbed! But was there not more to it than that? What does the note say? ‘You want something I cannot have.’” Lady Jesmond cast her eyes down and murmured, very softly, “Wealth—I think that was what he meant. Oh, I feel ashamed to say so, but I’m afraid it is the truth. I could never have lived in some wretched lodging-house.”
“Lady Jesmond, at least you are honest,” said I. “There are many who never admit to such a thing, who would swear to embrace passion in a cottage and be content with love in a garret. It takes a brave woman to say the truth.”
“And to see into her own nature,” added Elisabeth. “But there is something I do not understand. I meant to ask you, Clara, what the rest of that sentence meant: ‘perhaps I can get it for you.’ And then he says: ‘not now, but after my death.’”
Clara Jesmond was trembling again, and Mrs. Romey got up and put her shawl around her mistress’s shoulders. “Oh, but I am not cold,” she said. “I am fearful. I do not know exactly what he meant, but I think it was something to do with Cyriack.”
“I believe that is exactly what he meant,” I said gravely. “I think John Kelsoe killed Cyriack Jesmond!”
The three women stared at me. “But Kelsoe died first,” said Elisabeth. “Do you mean he didn’t really die? That he somehow was still alive and went on to commit murder?”
There was a long moment, during which the talk of magic and sorcery of which we had heard so much these last few days must have been uppermost in their minds.
“Oh yes, he died. Cyriack followed him to the grave,” I answered. “But Kelsoe had set a trap before he died. When I went to Oxford, I had a silversmith cut open Cyriack’s hipflask. Within it had been placed a capsule, designed to dissolve when, as was his inevitable custom, Cyriack asked for it to be filled with brandy. It was the boy’s own flask, that was kept in his room when he was not at home. Once the poison had been placed within the flask, it was merely a matter of time. Cyriack would come down from Oxford, and at some point would no doubt go for one of his fast gallops, and drain the flask in his usual precipitate fashion. All Kelsoe had to do was to contrive the capsule—an easy enough matter for a doctor, for drugs are often administered in such a form—and secure it to the inside of the flask. A little heat soon fixed it deep within, so it could not float to the surface, perhaps to be noticed and spat out as soon as it touched Cyriack’s lips.”
“How horrible! What cold-blooded planning!” Elisabeth shuddered as she spoke.
“Yes,” I answered. “But it was a kind of legacy, you see. A bequest to Lady Jesmond.”
Clara Jesmond’s face told me she had understood. “Cyriack was my husband’s heir,” she murmured. “Exactly. If he were disposed of, then you would come into your own. There are no more heirs—unless you yourself were to bear a child. At any rate, the Jesmond estate would no longer fall to Cyriack, who was a thoroughly unpleasant young man unlikely to treat his stepmother with kindness. But you could not remarry—nor take a lover.”
“Yes,” cried out Mrs. Romey. “That infamous will!”
“If I were not faithful to my husband’s memory, I would receive nothing.” Clara Jesmond was speaking. “That was a provision of the will.”
“You had to make a choice, did you not?” said Elisabeth. “You could run off with your lover to romantic poverty, or you could stay and enjoy the comfort of your position as Lady Jesmond. But you could not have both. You had to make a choice, and your decision was against love in a garret.”
Clara Jesmond was nervous and trembling, but with a kind of defiance.
“And what good would it have been to go and live in wretchedness? We would have soon come to hate each other, I am sure! And his profession, his career as a medical man, that would have been in ruins also, for a doctor must be of absolute respectability, must he not? No, I gave him up!”
Well, that seemed the answer to the sad puzzles of death. Kelsoe must have expected his beloved to rejoice in his refusal to turn alchemist, and anticipated that she would share his bitter bread of poverty. When she refused, his brain contrived a twisted stratagem that, as he thought, would ensure his mistress had what she wanted above all things: not love, but money. A dead man did not kill Cyriack Jesmond: it was no ghost that did it. But he was killed by a man already dead.
CHAPTER 23
Malfine, as usual, was our refuge. Jesmond Place was uninhabitable, a roofless ruin, still stinking of smoke, but Jesmond’s household was only temporarily homeless. There was apparently a dower house, unoccupied since the death of Sir Antony’s mother some years previously, which would be made ready for habitation.
What sort of life would Lady Jesmond lead in it? I could not imagine her enduring the kind of solitary existence that threatened: she was not a creature who could survive without some society.
Belos took over the organization of a commissariat at Malfine, so that the refugees could be catered for; he had persuaded Mrs. Granby, a woman from the village, to come and see to the cooking. Yet amid the household whirlwind he began to say something to me privately several times and I was conscious that he wanted to speak to me on something which had to remain unsaid until beds had been made up and warmed, a little dressed chicken sent up from the kitchens for the ladies
and some cold beef and pickles for myself. This, of course, was after Pellers in the stables had fed, groomed and watered Zaraband, who was the love and torment of his life, done the same for the patient Dobbie/Barbary and Cyriack Jesmond’s big hunter, and found a lodging for the groom from Jesmond Place.
And Sandys came riding up later, to report that he had cleared out Henderson’s lair in Combwich. “I destroyed those nasty wax heads, and so forth, and poured the contents of the flasks away. Burned the hemlock and the poisonous fungi.” He carried a pile of tattered leather-bound books under his arm.
“But I rescued his books, Malfine. I did not wish those to be destroyed. He had some fine herbals. No harm lies in books, only in what we make of them. What shall we do with them?”
“I suppose rightly they belong to young Charnock, and he should have them eventually. But not yet. I have plans for him. I’ll put them in the library here at Malfine in the meantime.”
“Very well. Oh, by the way, my wife says that Mrs. Lawrence has already been delivered of a fine girl. It seems my services were not required!”
“Excellent—I’ll send over some grapes and wine.”
Elisabeth was inquiring with keen interest as to the name proposed for the infant.
“Well…” Dr. Sandys hesitated. “You know how horse-mad Sholto Lawrence is. He wanted to call his baby daughter…well, he wanted to call her Zaraband!”
I saw nothing preposterous in this, although Elisabeth fell into a chair with laughter.
“Oh lord, she’s a baby, not a foal!”
“So she is to be called Florence, after my wife,” said Sandys. “That is…there was some discussion between husband and wife, and the little girl is to be called Florence Zaraband!”
Now we were all reduced to laughter!
Well, we all have our fantasies! My “cakes of glass” were nigh as homely as “cakes of soap,” no more than the lumps of glass cullet which Henderson had ordered, for the making of the alchemical vessels. So much for my imagination.
