He looked up at Hastings, the valet who had been his faithful, caring servant for over twenty years. Inappropriate as it might be, he had treated Hastings almost as a confidant, if not a friend. Never once had Hastings taken advantage of this relationship, and now he, Brook, was having difficulty reconciling himself to the fact that Hastings was not only questioning his behaviour, but even more outrageously, accusing Felicity, who had become both a companion and a friend, of trying to murder his wife!
‘Dammit, man, you are not making any sense,’ he said harshly. ‘I thought better of you, Hastings, than to be heeding the servants’ ridiculous gossip. No one could have been more caring or more attentive to the mistress than Mrs Goodall has been. I find it unbelievable that you are standing there accusing her of trying to poison my wife. Have you completely lost your senses?’
Hastings shook his head. ‘No, sir, I wish I had done so.’ And he repeated Bessie’s tale of the kid’s illness.
Anger now cleared Brook’s mind sufficiently for him to say, ‘Pull yourself together, Hastings! It’s not like you to be so … so fanciful … letting Bessie put such ridiculous ideas into your head. What exactly are you expecting me to do? Jump on my horse, ride over to Melton Court and tell Mrs Goodall she is to stop trying to murder my wife! Pull yourself together, man!’ he repeated, ‘and take this damn tray away – yourself, too.’
His voice softened a little at the expression on Hastings’ face. ‘I’m sure you mean well but I don’t want to hear another word on the subject. I mean it, Hastings! Mrs Goodall is not only a good friend to the mistress, she has proved a great comfort to me since … since our estrangement. We enjoy many activities together – hunting, backgammon and so on, so kindly keep your silly notions to yourself in future and tell Bessie to do likewise. I will do my best to forget this whole ridiculous discussion. Away now, before I change my mind.’
Quietly, Hastings approached the bedside and removed the untouched breakfast tray, his heart full of misgivings. He was certain that his master was being drawn into a terrible tragedy, and that it might soon be too late to avoid it.
Taking the tray down to the kitchen, he resolved to discuss the matter once more with Bessie in the hope that she might have a further suggestion as to what might be possible for them to do for the two people they loved.
TWENTY
1869
Paul Denning was worried. There was something about his sister’s behaviour which he could not define. He was aware that she enjoyed entertaining and had welcomed with enthusiasm the opportunity to arrange his engagement party, but her present euphoria seemed quite out of proportion judging by the amount of time she was devoting to it. There would be no more than two hundred guests and possibly eight house guests. Simkins, the family butler, was unconcerned about the numbers. With the extra staff employed for the weekend, he’d assured Paul, it should all run smoothly.
Felicity, however, had insisted that Brook Edgerton should be involved in the planning. Paul did not dislike Edgerton. On the contrary, they enjoyed each other’s company, sharing interests not only in shooting but in the new industrial technology and, of course, the railways. However, Felicity’s insistence that Brook Edgerton should be present on such an occasion did seem unnecessary.
There was something indefinable in Felicity’s behaviour when Edgerton was around which concerned Paul – a heightened vivacity, perhaps, or a change of her tone of voice. Her manner with Brook had always bordered on flirtatious, but harmlessly so. Now he found himself wondering if her changed behaviour did not disguise something a great deal more serious than he’d supposed.
On one of his recent evenings with Felicity she had told him that the Edgertons had quarrelled and were barely talking to each other: that the quarrel had to do with their child. Paul was astonished. No couple he had ever met had seemed as devoted as Edgerton and his wife. In fact, he had actually delayed his own proposal of marriage to his future bride, uncertain as he had been that they were as close in spirit as the Edgertons were.
He put such speculations to the back of his mind as he made his way to his father’s study, and gave his attention to the list of guests he wished to invite to his engagement party.
After Matthew Denning’s death his personal effects had been sorted, and his study was locked up and remained unused. Felicity had her own writing desk in her dressing room and, other than for a yearly spring cleaning, the study remained unoccupied.
Paul now decided to make use of his father’s old mahogany cylinder desk. He rang the bell for the butler and asked him to bring him the key. Apparently it was in Felicity’s possession, Simkins told him, but he believed there was a spare one in the housemaids’ pantry. He left the room to see if he could find it and returned shortly after, bringing the key with him.
Paul now unlocked the study and sat down at his father’s desk. He found some writing paper, slightly discoloured with age, in one of the drawers, and then, as he closed it, his eye was caught by something shiny. It was a small bottle with a label on it which he read with a look of utter astonishment on his face. ARSENIC. CAUTION.
The words jumped in front of his eyes and questions flooded his mind. What possible use had his father had for such an unpleasant poison? And why he not seen it when he’d disposed of all his father’s papers after his death?
Quite suddenly, another question came into his mind. Did Felicity know the poison was here? Was that the possible reason she had the other key, as Simkins had told him? The only place where arsenic was kept that he could recall from his youth was in the padlocked gardener’s shed used by the old man for killing vermin. As children he and Felicity had been warned never, ever to touch it if they found the shed door open because it could cause death …
He picked up the bottle a second time and unscrewed the top. It was by no means empty. Quite suddenly, a frightening memory flashed into his mind – how his young sister had attempted to poison the governess she disliked with poisonous berries. Only a little older than Felicity, he had heard his father and the doctor’s raised voices, and disbelieved what they were saying.
He pushed the bottle hurriedly back into the drawer, as if putting it out of sight would put it out of mind, and telling himself it was he, not his sister, Felicity, who was deranged; that he must be insane even allowing himself to wonder – still less suspect – that his sister might now be trying to kill someone … Edgerton’s wife.
Paul felt sickened by the way his mind was working – Felicity, a widow, doting on Edgerton …? It was a horrible possibility.
He wanted to get up and leave the room, shut the door and forget he had ever gone in there, but he could not even raise himself out of his chair. Memories were returning to him like angry bees in his brain: all too clearly he could hear Felicity telling him that Harriet and several of her staff had recently been laid low with an unexplained sickness. She had related some time ago that Harriet, Edgerton’s wife, had deceived him and was not worthy of his devotion: how she was needed to keep the peace between the two and do her best to distract Brook from the unhappy state of his marriage. Paul had yet another memory – to add to Felicity’s heightened colour and her vivacity when Brook was in the room, Paul now recalled her insistence that he was needed to help organize the party when clearly he was not.
Paul glanced at his timepiece. It was twenty minutes to four o’clock. Felicity was out riding with Brook and they were due back at any minute for afternoon tea. He realized that he must leave the study and get back to the drawing room – and sanity – before they returned. Edgerton, he told himself, was a thoroughly decent chap: he would never cheat on his wife the way some husbands of his acquaintance did. His manner with Felicity seemed to be similar to his own – protective, jocular, teasing by turn, and solicitous, but never overly flirtatious.
As Paul settled himself in the drawing room, the writing of the guest lists forgotten – his heartbeat slowed and he started to see more clearly. It was utterly absurd, he reflected, even to have
thought for a moment that it was Felicity who had hidden the arsenic in the study for some nefarious purpose. However unlikely, it could have been left there by a member of staff who had seen mice in the empty room.
Paul glanced once more at his watch. It was now half past the hour. Frowning, he rang the bell and told the footman that he would not wait for them and to bring him tea.
Whilst he awaited its arrival, his thoughts were still in turmoil as he continued to dwell on his sister. Despite the social life she had led ever since she had been out of mourning, Felicity had been quite lonely before the Edgertons had come to live in Hunters Hall. He had hoped then that she would meet a suitable man and marry again. She was an attractive woman, and men rather liked her somewhat masculine personality. She did not simper or titter or play the helpless little woman as some young women did. Nor did she have the vapours or flutter her eyelashes behind a fan. Yet for all that, she was still attractive to the opposite sex. Two of Paul’s unmarried friends who had met Felicity in London had demanded to be invited to Melton Court in order to get to know her better. That nothing had come of such encounters had been of her choosing, not theirs.
Paul might have succeeded in putting all such fears to the back of his mind had not Edgerton, when the couple finally joined him for tea, talked of the illness that had been affecting Harriet and three of their servants. The doctor, Brook told him, had suggested that an animal might have fallen into the well and contaminated their water supply, but he himself had not been infected.
‘At one point,’ Brook elaborated, ‘one of the young maids nearly died.’
Paul was gripped once more with frightening doubts. There could be no reason for Felicity to harm a servant, he told himself, but had she been trying to divert any suspicion that Harriet was her target? Again he fought against his irrational fear for his sister’s sanity – something which he knew had once been questioned all those years ago. He tried to argue against such thoughts, telling himself that if Edgerton wished to be free to marry Felicity, then he had only to divorce his wife. As for his ongoing relationship with Felicity, he had only ever shown a friendly affection for her.
Quite suddenly Paul was stuck by a frightening thought. Was this where the trouble lay? Felicity had always craved those few things in life denied to her. If her desires were not fulfilled, she had flown into ungovernable rages. As a child when he had refused to give her one of his possessions she had flown at him, swearing, hitting him, even biting him in the hope of making him hand over what she wanted. Such tantrums had continued until their doting father promised to buy her whatever she wanted which, as often as not, she ceased to want once it belonged to her. Could Edgerton’s unavailability have aroused that dangerous, obsessive determination to fulfil her desires?
Paul’s uneasy speculations continued into the night, preventing sleep. Something, he knew, needed to be done before anything dreadful could happen: but what? Would he be able to entice her to go abroad with him? Could he take her on a prolonged holiday during which there would be time for her passions to cool? Fortuitously, his fiancée was about to return to France to see her parents after their engagement was made official, partly to visit her many relatives but also, he suspected, to give her time to ascertain that she had made the right choice of husband.
The following morning he put the idea of a holiday to Felicity. ‘You never did take that steamship passage to America you promised yourself,’ he said, ‘and I have been thinking that once my dearest Denise and I are married next year, I will not be available as I am now to escort you. Or, if you preferred, we could do a tour of Europe or, perhaps more exciting, travel to Egypt and see the pyramids.’
Felicity shook her head. ‘I don’t have the slightest wish to go anywhere, Paul,’ she told him, ‘though I thank you for the offer. I have a number of plans for the next few months which will occupy me here.’ And she changed the subject.
Paul stayed on a further two weeks longer than he had planned in order to visit the Edgertons with Felicity, in the hope of reassuring himself that his suspicions were totally unfounded. Although he thought that Harriet seemed quiet and rather pale, Brook seemed reasonably attentive to her, much as any normal husband might be, and there was no indication of any serious discord between them, although there had been a certain coolness, nonetheless. He was further reassured when a servant arrived at Melton Court with a letter from Brook saying he would not be able to meet up with Paul for some time as he had just learned he must sail at once to Jamaica where there had been another serious outbreak of trouble at their plantation.
If, Paul had told himself, Felicity had been planning in some way or another to tempt Edgerton into an affair, she would have no opportunity for some time to come. As for any intention to harm Harriet, he had convinced himself that he’d been out of his mind even to have entertained such an idea. Furthermore, he’d spoken to Simkins about the arsenic, and the butler had suggested that one of the maids cleaning the room before it had been closed up might have found it and locked it safely away.
It was, therefore, in a far calmer frame of mind that Paul returned to London.
If Felicity was devastated by the news of Brook’s sudden departure, Harriet was even more so. She was now reasonably certain that the cause of her sickness was that yet again she was pregnant. She knew exactly when she must have conceived – the night Brook had come to her bed and wordlessly, without love, forced himself upon her.
She had been waiting for the right moment to tell him of her condition, hoping desperately that the news might heal the dreadful rift between them. On the contrary, when Brook told her his father expected him to take responsibility once again for their plantations, he had said in a cold, hard voice,
‘I trust when I return home this time, Harriet, that you will not have another unacceptable and unwelcome shock for me.’ Without looking at her, he’d added, ‘I shall be taking Hastings with me, of course, and I have informed Fletcher not to expect me back for at least two, if not three, months.’
Two days after his departure, when Felicity came to see her, Harriet gave way freely to the tears she had been too proud to shed in Brook’s presence.
‘I have made up my mind,’ she told the woman she considered to be her best friend and confidante, ‘to go away myself. I cannot stay here in this house watching the days pass slowly by waiting for Brook’s return. I am leaving next week with Bessie and Charlie to stay with my sister in Ireland. It will make up a little for the disappointment we both felt when I was unable to receive her at Easter.’
Felicity regarded her in dismay. ‘You cannot go away …’ she began and added quickly, ‘that is to say, you have not been well and …’
She broke off as Harriet interrupted with a wan smile. ‘Dearest Felicity, I have not had an illness,’ she said. ‘I am certain that I am pregnant. I only realized it when I missed the second time.’
Mistaking the look of disbelief followed quickly by anger on Felicity’s face for one of concern, she added: ‘I know I lost my last baby on that fateful journey to Ireland, but I shall not go unprotected this time. I shall take one of the footmen with me, armed if he thinks fit. Believe me, I shall be quite safe as it is another six or seven months at least before I have this baby …’
She broke off to take hold of Felicity’s hands. ‘I now have hope, dearest! Don’t you see, I can hope that the arrival of his child will soften Brook’s heart. His absence may also do so, and we shall be reconciled. I shall get well in Ireland with my sister, regain my looks, I trust, and when I return, I shall hope you will see me looking my old self again.’
It was only with huge self-control that Felicity managed to conceal her desperate dismay. She declined to stay for luncheon, summoned her groom and as soon as she could decently do so, she rode home. Once there, she gave way to her fury, shouting at her staff, trashing the drawing room and turning the meal her cook had prepared for her upside down on the table. It was not the behaviour of a gentlewoman, but Felicity did not
care. Only later, as she grew calmer, did she decide that whilst both Brook and Harriet were away she might as well accept her brother’s invitation to take her travelling. His fiancée was conveniently away visiting relatives in France, and after the engagement party Paul would not be seeing her at least until Christmas.
Harriet, she told herself, should make the most of these extra weeks of life whilst she was travelling with Paul. It was only the time of her death which had had to be postponed.
TWENTY-ONE
1869–1870
Felicity’s enjoyment of her European tour in Paul’s company had been tempered by thoughts and dreams of Brook. Wherever they visited, there was always something which reminded her of him – a man’s tall figure crossing St Mark’s Square in Venice; the sound of a similar voice to his in a restaurant in Paris; a stallion in Vienna identical to Brook’s favourite mount.
She was tormented, too, by her failure to succeed in poisoning Harriet, although not altogether surprised. She had read in her father’s medical directory that arsenic was sometimes administered medicinally, but in the book the amount to be used was obscure. She did learn that if a person had been given a regular amount and it was suddenly ceased, it could be very dangerous, but because she had not been able to visit Harriet on a regular basis, she’d had no chance of administering it daily. Moreover, before leaving England, she had been forced to face the fact that she could not use poison again when she returned home. Paul had told her he’d found the bottle of arsenic and disposed of it. He had not overtly accused her of secreting it in the desk, but she’d had the impression he believed it to be so. She wondered uneasily if he suspected her of using it, although it had occurred to her that this was the reason he had persuaded her to accompany him on the lengthy holiday abroad. Newly engaged as he was, with an engagement party in a few months’ time, it had struck her as strange.
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