A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery)

by Alys Clare

  She looked up briefly and smiled.

  ‘You wouldn’t object if she took up permanent residence here?’

  She looked indignant. ‘Not up to me to mind, doctor, but in any case I certainly wouldn’t.’

  I glanced quickly at her, but her expression was innocent.

  I took the tray from her and went upstairs to confront my sister.

  ‘It seems the coroner is content to conclude that Jeromy was killed by the same man who murdered Nicolaus Quinlie,’ I began as we settled in chairs either side of the fireplace, glasses in our hands.

  I heard her swift intake of breath. ‘Has – is it likely this man will be found and put on trial?’

  ‘Not likely at all,’ I said.

  I was watching her closely, and I was sure I saw her slump a little with relief.

  ‘There is no possibility,’ I went on, ‘that, under harsh questioning, he will convince his accusers that, while he killed Quinlie and, indeed, others, he is innocent of the charge of murdering Jeromy.’

  Her head shot up and she stared at me like a frightened animal. ‘But – but of course this violent man killed Jeromy!’ she protested. ‘He – he must have done, who else could possibly have …’ Her voice trailed off.

  I leaned forward, clutching both her hands in mine. ‘Dearest, you must believe me when I tell you there is no possible chance of this man coming to trial.’

  ‘Has he gone away, then?’ she asked in a small voice.

  ‘Far, far away,’ I said. ‘And he will never come back.’

  She was holding my hands as if they were a rope and she was in deep water. Her eyes bored into mine. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ I whispered. ‘There’s only me to hear, and you must know I will never repeat it.’

  She did not reply for some moments. Then she said, so quietly that I could scarcely hear, ‘Yes. Yes, I do know that.’

  ‘Would it not be a relief to share it at last?’

  She closed her eyes briefly, and a spasm of pain crossed her lovely face. ‘Oh, Gabe, you have no idea!’

  ‘But I have,’ I said swiftly. ‘Truly, my dear heart, I have.’

  She was staring at me again. ‘You’ll hate me,’ she whispered.

  I smiled. ‘I could never do that.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘So,’ I prompted. ‘I’d very much like to know the truth.’

  And this is the story she told me.

  It had taken Celia only a short time to understand that her impetuous marriage to the flamboyant, handsome and charming Jeromy had been a mistake.

  It had begun so well, and she had been so happy she thought she would burst. The exciting weeks and days leading up to the wedding had been so wonderful, and the aquamarine silk which her bridegroom had presented her for her bridal gown was the most gorgeous fabric she had ever seen. Just to touch its expensive, luxurious smoothness had been a talisman; as if this costly present from the man she was to marry vouchsafed all the other good things that were to come. And the house! Let her family sniff and say it was all a little brash, and should a man demonstrate his wealth with such flagrant disregard for refinement and taste? Celia didn’t care. Ferrars was going to be hers, hers and Jeromy’s, and if the furnishings were too grand, if the hangings were so voluminous that they drooped in pools on the floor, if the huge bed with its purple silk hangings was a little vulgar and more suited to a king than a country gentleman and his wife, then that was too bad.

  Her wedding day had passed in a whirl. Preparations; dressing herself in that gorgeous gown; arranging her hair and her veil, and the fresh, fragrant flowers that held it in place. Looking at herself in the glass and knowing she had never looked lovelier; walking into the church and seeing the same knowledge in Jeromy’s eyes. Speaking the solemn words; striding out into the sunshine on Jeromy’s arm, to face the greetings and the congratulations of friends and kin, the wedding breakfast back at Fernycombe.

  Going to Ferrars with her husband. Going home, for the first time as man and wife. Ripping off each other’s garments in their impatience; falling across that great bed, in far too much of a hurry to pull back the sumptuous bedclothes and slide in beneath them. Lying, spent, sweating and panting, in a wonderful tangle of limbs, amazement filling her that this act that made it a marriage, this wedding-night moment that women spoke of in whispers, that both her mother and her nurse had warned her about as something a wife must endure, should turn out to be so incredibly pleasurable!

  In her innocence and delight, it had not occurred to her to wonder how Jeromy, as new to marriage as she was, should have such skill; should know unerringly how to bring his young and totally inexperienced wife to orgasm, only a short while after he had taken her virginity and made her bleed. She had imagined, if she’d thought about it at all, that this was what always happened; had not known that many women went right through their lives without experiencing that unique delight, and that, even for couples whose private married life was reliably satisfying, it took time and knowledge to develop the skill.

  Jeromy, of course, was no virgin. Jeromy had been introduced to sexual intercourse when he was a precociously aware fourteen-year-old, by a handsome, wealthy and voluptuous widow in her late twenties. He’d been frequenting whorehouses since he was fifteen.

  She could not afterwards have said precisely when the shadow began. With the first occasion when he didn’t come home when he said he would, and responded to her gentle queries with angry words? With the slow, awful realization that he liked to gamble, and had absolutely no skill at it? With the horrible understanding that he liked a drink; no, not a drink, but many drinks? As many as he could force down his throat before he vomited, fell over, pissed himself, passed out, sank into bed in a dishevelled, stinking, ungainly, ugly mess.

  But the trouble was that drunkenness did not straight away bring insensibility. First there would be that awful time to endure while he tried to take her. While he lumbered up on top of her, pushed up her luxurious pale silk nightgown, thrust apart her legs and tried, tried, tried, tried to force his limp and disobliging penis into her.

  And when it failed, as inevitably it did, always it was her fault. ‘You don’t want me, you frigid bitch!’ he yelled, face scarlet and wet with sweat, spittle dribbling from his loose lips. ‘I come home tired after a long, hard day, wanting my wife, wanting the comfort of her body which it is her duty to open to me, and what do I get but a cold, unmoving statue that lies there, lips firmly together, head turned away, disapproval and rejection radiating from every single part?’ He gasped, as if horrified at his own words. ‘Is it any wonder you rob me of my manhood?’

  That was the first time he hit her: a swinging backhanded blow with a clenched fist that knocked her head sideways so hard that she heard her neck snap and thought, in the initial, frantic, agony-filled instant, that he’d killed her.

  Sometimes later she’d wished that he had.

  Life went on. Jeromy was absent from home with increasing frequency, and without those blessed periods of respite, Celia believed she might have taken her own life and saved him the trouble.

  For he was killing her; slowly but surely, he was taking from her every joy, every moment of sweetness; taking the very will to keep trying to stay alive.

  On many occasions she almost ran back to her parents, or to Gabriel. But she couldn’t; her pride was too strong. She had forced her dear father to permit the marriage, despite his misgivings and despite the fact that he had tried so hard to make her change her mind. How could she now go back like a beaten dog and beg for sanctuary? How could she tell them all that she’d been wrong and they’d been right, and Jeromy was a nightmare? A good-looking, elegant devil in rich man’s clothes?

  She couldn’t.

  She thought she was with child, but it came to naught. Her feelings were mixed but overall she was relieved, for at that time Jeromy’s gambling debts had begun to worry even him, and she did not believe he was in a state to greet the news of a baby with any pleasure.<
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  Time passed.

  Then she discovered she was pregnant again.

  She was very, very afraid, for now Jeromy was becoming increasingly violent. Nicolaus Quinlie had begun to tighten the screws on him, demanding the return of his loans. Jeromy was by now deeply, hopelessly in debt, running out of people from whom to borrow, beg, extort or steal money, increasingly desperate. Too cowardly to take it out on anyone who would fight back – he had neither the skill with his fists nor the courage to pick a quarrel with one of Quinlie’s toughs, although not a few of them would gladly have taken him on – he went instead for the soft option and got drunk, then expended on his wife the violence he wanted so much to throw at Nicolaus Quinlie.

  Driven by a terrified anxiety, both for herself and, even more, for the child she carried, Celia realized she had to act; to make plans to defend herself. It was risky, perhaps, to ride, especially astride, as she liked to do. Or so people told her, Jeromy in particular, who had all but forbidden her to leave the house on her own and would have been angry in the extreme if he’d known what she planned to do.

  But Jeromy was not at home. Jeromy had gone to Exeter.

  Before he left she had approached him meekly and asked his permission to visit her brother during his absence. ‘I am lonely without you, dear husband,’ she said, ‘and Gabriel’s company lessens the pain of missing you.’

  She thought she’d gone too far. But Jeromy, loving himself as he loved no other being on earth, had long ago convinced himself of his own irresistibility. As if bestowing upon her some kingly gift, he flicked his fingers in her face and said, ‘You may go, and the grooms will take you in the litter. That brother of yours will see that I do things in style!’

  The grand remark was somewhat undermined by a drunken, wine-smelling belch.

  She didn’t go in the litter. She couldn’t have done, for there weren’t the servants to bear her. Jeromy spoke pompously of grooms, but there was only one now, and he was a skinny, weedy-looking boy. The household had gradually been reduced to the barest skeleton of staff but, if Jeromy noticed, he didn’t comment.

  She didn’t go to Rosewyke; not initially, anyway. She took her grey mare, rode as she always did and went to Fernycombe, where her parents, delighted to see her, fed her and cosseted her.

  She knew there was a hoard of old blades and weapons in one of the barns. Unlike Nathaniel or Gabriel – the one preoccupied with learning everything there was to know about being a farmer and the other having left home young and, even when still there, taking precious little interest in the farm or anything in it – she had lived at Fernycombe all her life until her marriage. Ever curious, ever adventurous, her fertile imagination full of stories in which she was a soldier, a sailor, a pirate, an explorer, she had spent her childhood nosing around.

  She crept into the old, dilapidated barn one quiet afternoon when nobody was about and made her choice. She didn’t believe her father would miss it. As far as she knew, he rarely went out there. If he did notice it had gone, he would probably think Nathaniel or one of the farm hands had borrowed it.

  How likely was it that he would suspect his pretty, elegant, beautifully dressed and happily married daughter?

  She visited Gabriel on her way home to Ferrars. She didn’t like the deceit, but she had to go there in case Jeromy checked up. She spent the afternoon with her brother, and made quite sure that his housekeeper and outdoor servants saw her, too. There had been a moment of horror when Gabriel had reached up to untie her pack, for she had wrapped the stolen weapon in a blanket and the moment he touched it, he would know it wasn’t the sort of object a lady normally carried with her.

  But happily the moment had passed, and she was safe.

  He’d hurt her a lot when he held her waist to help her down from her mare. Her ribs were blue-black with bruises, for Jeromy had given her quite a beating the day before he left for Exeter. She couldn’t remember why; often – usually – there wasn’t really a why.

  Gabriel noticed she had put on weight; he didn’t say so in as many words, but she knew it all the same. He said she looked pale, and asked her if she was well. She managed to deflect him, telling him quite abruptly that her digestion was suffering after a surfeit of her mother’s cooking and generous helpings.

  Then Jeromy came home.

  More time passed. A week? Two weeks? The memory was vague, for her mind was in turmoil and she was able neither to eat nor sleep.

  And his state was the worst she had ever seen.

  He was beside himself with a sort of nervous, terrified excitement. He had not a single coin with which to begin the repayment of his huge debts. He had called upon everyone he knew – friend, distant acquaintance, business contact, colleague – trying to raise money, with absolutely no luck. And Quinlie would be sending for him very soon …

  She thought, but could not be sure, that he was up to something; that, against all odds for he was not a clever or quick-thinking man, he had found – or thought he’d found – a way out of his frightful difficulties.

  If he had, she realized that she had absolutely no faith that it was going to work.

  Despite everything – despite all the harm he had done to her – still she felt a stab of pity for him.

  The house was as good as empty. Ruth, the only indoor servant, slept far away in a tiny room off the scullery.

  He picked a fight. He always picked a fight, now. Thinking about it later – and how much time she had spent thinking about it – she thought that he was deeply inadequate and, quite unable to face up to it, made himself feel bigger, better, by treating her like a dog. A dog? No, for he liked his dogs …

  She tried to defend herself. Tried to tread the fine, delicate and ultimately unguessable balance between defending herself and not antagonizing him further by letting him see that she was.

  Impossible.

  His fists drove into her breasts, then her stomach. Instantly she doubled over, protecting what curled inside her. So he began on her buttocks, as so often he had done before, pushing her face-down across a chair and thumping, thumping, thumping his fists into her flesh.

  She managed to wriggle free. Her backside on fire, she ran around the big, shiny, rectangular table that stood so proud and grand in the brilliant, gaudy room.

  He ran after her.

  He grabbed her by the upper arm, fingers biting into the skin, tearing the silk of her sleeve. Frantic now, swiftly she turned her head and bit his hand.

  He roared in pain. Then, in one fast, powerful movement, he gathered her up and hurtled her against the table.

  Its sharp corner drove hard into the soft swell of her belly.

  The pain made her pass out.

  When she came to, it was dark and she was very, very cold. Shivering. Wet. All wet, lying in a puddle.

  But the puddle was warm.

  She lay on the floor half under the table, in a flood of her own blood.

  Judyth – kind, tactful, strong Judyth – looked after her. Someone must have summoned her. Probably that someone had not been Jeromy.

  Judyth told her gently, hugging her all the while, that the force of the table digging into her had ruptured something. Her womb, attacked, distressed, had ejected its contents.

  ‘Will I have another chance?’ Celia whispered, face pressed to Judyth’s warm breast.

  But Judyth said sadly, ‘I do not know.’

  Judyth was wise, and very observant. She saw the bruising on Celia’s body. It was consistent with the cover story – ‘I fell down the stairs’ – but also there was a deep mark right across Celia’s lower belly. In addition to that – as if it were not enough – Celia’s buttocks were so badly damaged that there wasn’t an inch of unbruised flesh.

  Celia recovered. She was grieving; the development of the foetus was sufficiently advanced to show it was a little girl. She had been uncertain, before, as to whether or not she wanted a child. Knowing that child had been a girl somehow made her real; now Celia knew just how much
she did want a baby, and the knowledge was a deep, enduring pain.

  She began to plot.

  And so the story reaches its end.

  It is late.

  Jeromy has had a good day. He has ensnared a new victim and safe in his keeping is a stout leather bag of coins to give to Nicolaus Quinlie. It may not be much, but Jeromy is pretty confident this is merely the first of many payments as his victim is very rich, has a particularly nasty, dirty little secret, and consequently has a very great deal to lose. Jeromy comes swaggering into his house and immediately goes to the sideboard where the drink is stored. He has already had a few celebratory drinks on the way home. ‘Why not?’ he asks himself aloud. ‘I work very hard, I get precious little thanks, and nobody appreciates me!’ He is feeling very randy. The house is very quiet, and nobody is about. He calls out to his wife: ‘Celia? Celia! Where are you? Come here, wife, I’m desperate for a fuck!’

  There is no reply.

  He begins to search for her. He searches downstairs. She isn’t there. He goes upstairs and finds her in their bedroom, lying down, eyes closed, her feet up on several pillows.

  She has been bleeding again.

  He stands watching her, swaying slightly.

  She opens her eyes. Sees him. Draws up her legs, curling herself tightly, her eyes wide in fright.

  ‘I want,’ he says, slowly and deliberately, ‘to bed my wife. Take your clothes off.’

  But her miscarriage and its aftermath have wounded her, and she’s still sore, raw and seeping. ‘No. I can’t!’ she whispers urgently.

  He launches himself on her, and she manages to fight him off. He grabs at her between her legs, his fingers digging into the tender flesh of her thighs, and she howls in pain. The sounds of her distress seem to egg him on. He pushes her down onto the hard stone floor, so roughly that she bangs her head violently against the flags and briefly sees a dazzle of white lights. Then he is ripping at her undergarments, shoving her knees apart, tearing aside the soft pads she’s been using to absorb the blood and thrusting brutal fingers deep inside her. She screams again and he claps his other hand so tightly over her mouth that she can’t breathe. She looks into his eyes and knows it’s him or her.