“. . . Scrooge asked me to seek her out, to discover if she needed his assistance. But it was too late.” Bob sat down in his chair, frowning slightly and drumming his fingertips upon his ledger. “What was her husband’s name? Oh yes, James Redlaw. He called in here one night, a full seven years before Scrooge’s metamorphosis, seeking to borrow against his property and thereby pay his debts. But that was the night Jacob Marley lay at the point of death. Redlaw revealed a greater delicacy of feeling than Scrooge himself by going away without transacting his business.”
“So Belle’s husband also found himself a broken man?”
“Not only in finance, but in health—he died the next year, I’m told. In losing her father and then her husband, Mrs. Redlaw was obliged to support herself and her daughter on very little income. I can only suppose, then, that she despaired of this world and all too soon was taken up into the next.” Bob shook his head sadly.
“When you went searching for her, you discovered that she was dead.”
“Yes, and under most unfortunate and mysterious circumstances, although I don’t know the full story. When I acquainted Scrooge with this fact, he said something about having seen her in his vision, well and happy with her family, and so he hoped that she was, indeed, in that bourne from which no traveller ever returns.”
“Well then,” said Tim, properly saddened by the circumstances, and yet, at the same time, wondering if his clue had disintegrated in his hands like the ashes of a Yule log on Boxing Day. “What of Belle’s daughter?”
“I believe she went into service, as a governess in the house of Sir Charles Pumphrey, the financier.”
Another man of business, Tim thought. The gleam of gold did indeed illuminate his quest, although what the blazing pudding illuminated, he had not the least idea.
Still, perhaps he had made some progress. If Arthur Fezziwig had been one of Scrooge’s spirits, then perhaps his unfortunate daughter Belle had also been. “I shall pay a visit to the Pumphrey household,” Tim told his father.
“Very good. And may I suggest you also call on your brother Peter? The lawyer with whom he has partnered himself has worked for many years with properties, deeds, and wills—although I hope to heaven they are not chaining themselves behind him, as they did to poor Mr. Marley. There you may well learn more about the Fezziwigs and the Redlaws than I can tell you.”
“Then so I shall.” With a firm grasp of his father’s hand—strange, how that hand was growing so increasingly frail—Tim settled his hat upon his head and his feet upon the icy pavement.
* * * * *
At the sound of feminine footsteps, Tim turned away from the black marble chimneypiece and its clock enclosed by a glass dome, as though time, like a jewel displayed in a shopkeeper’s window, were a valuable commodity alloted only to those who could afford it instead of meted out to all humanity, to use or abuse at will.
“Do I have the honor of addressing Miss Redlaw?” Tim asked the elegant woman who entered the parlor, the white square of his card seeming tarnished against the alabaster of her hand.
“I was once Miss Redlaw,” she answered. “Now I am Mrs. Pumphrey. You are fortunate, Mr. Cratchit, that the servant who answered your knock has been in our employ long enough to know my former identity.”
So the governess was now mistress of the house, Tim told himself. Had she married the Pumphrey’s only son, and so restored herself to the position in life to which she had been born? Such an event seemed likely—her face and form, even in mature years, held just such a blushing beauty as he had always envisioned in Belle Fezziwig’s. But that was one question he saw little chance of asking.
He sank onto the chair that Mrs. Pumphrey indicated. When she had spread her voluminous skirts across a horsehair sofa—which movement released a scent of spring lilac into the air—he identified himself, detailed his family’s relationship to Ebenezer Scrooge, sketched out Scrooge’s story of the three ghosts, and recited the results of his researches so far.
Save for a slight creasing of her brow, Mrs. Pumphrey’s delicate features did not move for several ticks of the mantelpiece clock. Perhaps, Tim thought, she would condemn him for his effrontery in asking questions about her family. Perhaps she would order the servant who had seen him here to show him hence.
At last her pink lips parted. “I commend you for visiting Mrs. Minnow. She has afforded me invaluable assistance by contacting the spirit of my grandfather Fezziwig, who is as hearty on the astral plane as he was here on Earth.”
Tim made sure Mrs. Pumphrey did not notice the quick relaxation of his posture, and the sigh of relief that escaped his throat.
“As for my mother and father—well, as you perhaps already know, there is a tragic story. How it cheers me to know that they, too, are well and happy in the great beyond!”
“And perhaps Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Redlaw,” Tim hinted in Scrooge’s words, “after working kindly in this little sphere of earth, find their mortal life too short for their vast means of usefulness.”
“Yes,” she said, coloring prettily, “I do believe so. You see, Mr. Cratchit, my mother regretted breaking her engagement to Mr. Scrooge, because, she said, if she had been his wife she could perhaps have modified his miserly ways. And yet if she had been Mrs. Scrooge, she would never have been Mrs. Redlaw.”
“It is a paradox,” said Tim.
“But that was my mother, always thinking of others even when her—when our—position became dire. After my father passed over, Mother and I were reduced to the income from one rental property, a public house, and the interest from several India bonds. Still, though, there were others less fortunate then we, and Mother made sure that what we little we had, we shared.”
Tim, having told himself that the ladies’ income had no doubt been greater than fifteen bob a week, now congratulated himself for not stating this aloud.
“We took lodgings in a house owned by Dick Wilkins. Is that name familiar to you?”
“Why yes,” Tim said, sitting up straighter. “Was he not one of Mr. Fezziwig’s apprentices and a boyhood friend of Mr. Scrooge’s?”
The lady nodded, setting her curls to dancing. “That he was. Grandfather Fezziwig helped Mr. Wilkins establish a weaving mill, dyeworks, and clothing manufactory, which first supplied uniforms to our troops fighting the Corsican, Bonaparte, and then went on to provide ready-made clothes to all classes of folk. While Grandfather’s business failed, Mr. Wilkins’s prospered. As an old family friend, my mother was quite pleased when he offered her lodgings in his house.”
“He rented out rooms?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Pumphrey said, a slight edge entering her voice. “By this time he owned many properties, and lived with his wife Theodora—a foreign person she was, with the exotic beauty of a gypsy—in a house that had once been a lovely villa, but which he had subdivided into many small flats, the better to turn a profit, I believe.”
The gleam of gold, Tim repeated to himself, but said nothing.
The edge in Mrs. Pumphrey’s voice was taking on the sharpness of that serpent’s tooth mentioned in Scripture as belonging to a thankless child. And yet neither she nor her mother, Tim thought, was the person of whom she was thinking. “Mr. Wilkins persuaded my mother to sell him her properties and bonds, in return for which he guaranteed her an annuity for life. The bargain was fair, she felt. What she did not realize—what none of us mercifully, realize—is how soon one’s life can end.”
“What happened?” asked Tim, dreading her answer.
“My mother was found burned to a cinder, in her bed one Christmas morning.”
Tim searched for some appropriate response, and found only a simple, “I am so very sorry.”
Mrs. Pumphrey looked down into her lap, where her fair hands—white as the garment of the first ghost—were tearing Tim’s card into shreds. “Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins put it about that my mother, in her despair, had turned to drink, for such spontaneous burnings do happen to those besotted with alcohol.”
<
br /> With spiritous liquors, thought Tim, realizing suddenly that Mrs. Minnow had been speaking not only to the gentleman with the whiskers but to himself. He should, no doubt, have kept an open mind and paid closer attention.
“My dear mother, though, while having her moments of despair, was still inclined to the positive outlook of the Fezziwig disposition, and took only the occasional glass of sherry.” The lady lay the shreds of the card upon a marble-topped table and folded her hands. “Yes, Mother suffered from a cold that Christmas Eve. Mrs. Wilkins provided a counterpane from her own storage chest for Mother’s bed, and smelling salts to clear the congestion in her throat that had rendered her speechless. But Mother took no drink, not one drop beyond the brandy soaking her portion of plum pudding.”
“Was there an inquiry made?”
“The police made a brief inquiry, but brushed the matter aside, wishing to spare my feelings, they said, and those of the Wilkins family.”
“But you suspect the Wilkins of taking some action to bring about your mother’s death?”
“Indeed, while manifestly Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins profited by my mother’s death, there are no means by which they could have accomplished it. I myself saw my mother alive, if not well, when I carried her pudding into her room on Christmas Eve, and I myself was breakfasting with the Wilkins’ on Christmas morning when the maidservant came rushing in with her terrible intelligence.”
Tim eyed the lady’s bowed head with its trembling curls. So Belle had indeed died in unfortunate and mysterious circumstances, as his father had heard. Now he understood, with ghastly certainty, why it was that Scrooge’s first ghost, the Ghost of Christmas Past, had appeared illuminated by a flame.
Collecting herself with a little shudder, Mrs. Pumphrey turned a wan smile upon her guest. “You may well ask, Mr. Cratchit, whether I have ever inquired of my mother, through Mrs. Minnow’s spirit guide, exactly how she came to die.”
Yes, Tim might well have asked that, had he not been reluctant to disturb the lady’s sensibilities even further.
“To that, I can provide no answer, for my mother has spoken only of flames shooting suddenly up, and of merciful oblivion. I have more than once chided myself for not staying with her that evening, and yet there were guests downstairs and she gestured, smiling, for me to join them, and then, still smiling, reached for her bedside taper to light her plum pudding and make her own solitary celebration.”
Tim sat in silent horror at the scene that rose before his eyes.
Clearing her throat, Mrs. Pumphrey went stoutly on, “I take great comfort in my mother’s present happy circumstances, no matter how difficult was her transition to them. And in her name my husband and I have provided for many charities.”
The parlor door opened, admitting a young woman so fair, so charming, that her mother with all her comeliness seemed reduced to a crone before Tim’s eyes. He stared, then remembered his manners and leaped to his feet.
Mrs Pumphrey’s eye glittered perhaps from unshed tears, or perhaps from maternal calculation. “Mr. Cratchit, may I present my daughter Annabelle.”
“Miss Pumphrey.” Making his most accomplished obeisance, Tim wondered if—Annabelle, what a lovely name—if she heard the sudden twang of Cupid’s bow just as surely as he did. And yet how could he dare hope that such a lovely, nay such a stupendously beautiful, young lady could look with favor upon him?
She curtsied, the color rising past her exquisitely formed lips into her cheeks. A rose would surely have hung its head in shame at a comparison. “Mr. Cratchit,” she said, in a voice resembling the song of a lark, “I trust you’ll forgive me for listening outside the door. I am most impressed by the compassion of your quest, and would assist you in any way I can in its fulfillment.”
Tim would have forgiven her for plunging a dagger into his heart. “Perhaps,” he said through his teeth, quelling a stammer, “you will permit me to call upon you again, so that I may share with you my discoveries. . . .” What discoveries he made, he told himself. If he knew she was waiting to hear them, he would make them, no doubt about it.
“How kind of you,” Annabelle said.
Her mother rose. “And now, Mr. Cratchit, I’m sure you will want to continue making your inquiries.”
Tim found himself floating down the front steps of the house in a trance—odd, how icy winter had suddenly turned balmy as spring. . . . Unbidden, his feet made their way toward the law offices of William Janders, Esquire.
* * * * *
Peter Cratchit regarded his younger brother’s air of general discombobulation and laughed. “Who is she, then?”
Tim found he was, after all, capable of stringing words together and telling the tale yet again, this time appending its most recent chapter. Peter’s expression went from laughter to bemusement to astonishment. At last he emitted a long whistle. “So you think old Fezziwig and Belle are two of Scrooge’s ghosts, eh?”
“I suspect Belle of being the Ghost of Christmas Past with its crown of flame,” Tim replied. “I suspect her father, Fezziwig, of being the Ghost of Christmas Present, for by all accounts he was a hearty soul who loved to celebrate the holiday.”
“And the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?” asked Peter. “Who was, if I’m remembering the old man’s tale aright, a much more sinister figure, hooded in black.”
“That is where you come in, brother, you and your esteemed sernior partner Mr. Janders. Can we trace these properties that Belle—Mrs. Redlaw—made over to Dick Wilkins, only to die so conveniently soon thereafter?”
“Why yes.” Peter conducted Tim into the next chamber, the book-lined office of William Janders, Esquire, himself.
The man’s thick gray eyebrows, like caterpillars, lofted up his brow as though they would crawl onto the sleek hairless dome of his head and there set up housekeeping. “Well then,” he said, upon being familiarized with the facts of the matter, “there’s no need to delve into the record-books. I remember the case quite well. It all happened when I was but a clerk writing law in these very offices, younger and more junior than you are now, Peter.”
“Pray tell me what you know,” Tim asked politely, envisioning making his successful report not only to Scrooge but to the delectable Miss Pumphrey.
“The circumstances of Mrs. Redlaw’s death were peculiar, quite peculiar. Spontaneous combustion is a well-known effect of excess drink, but, being a lady of fine breeding, she was hardly given to imbibing. Still, nothing could be proved.”
That was as Mrs. Pumphrey had said, thought Tim.
“What is exceedingly interesting,” Janders went on, “is that the next year Dick Wilkins was brought up on charges of murder.”
Peter and Tim exchanged a significant glance.
“The circumstances were similar, save that this time the dead woman was a spinster. Again, though, she was of good family and modest property, which she had made over to her landlord, Wilkins. Her death was very obviously caused by poison. Poison in the plum pudding.”
“Murder is vile enough,” Tim exclaimed, “but to use an instrument of celebration in the commission of a murder!”
“Was Wilkins convicted of the crime?” asked Peter.
Janders nodded affirmatively. “That he was. And yet it was not he who prepared and served the pudding, and who then nursed the ailing woman until she died. There was some talk of charging his wife as well, but since wives are weak and subject to their husband’s will, she was never tried. Not that Mrs. Wilkins struck me as being weak-willed, no, on the contrary.”
Peter swallowed a chuckle, but not at this tale of murder most foul, Tim thought. Their mother was the strongest woman he knew, and Peter’s own wife ruled their household firmly but fairly. There was something in the set of Miss Pumphrey’s chin, Tim added silently, that told him she, too, was a woman to be reckoned with. As, in a very different way, no doubt, was Mrs. Wilkins.
“Dick Wilkins was hanged,” Janders continued, “and without his guiding hand his business failed. I d
aresay he was guilty of abetting the murder, even initiating it. So justice was done. But as for the death of Mrs. Redlaw. . . .”
“No charges could be brought because no one could prove that a murder had been done,” said Peter.
“I am at as great a loss in the matter as you are.” Janders took up his pen and dipped it in the fine brass inkwell that sat upon his desk. “Now Peter, Tim, you will excuse me. . . .”
“Just one more question, please, sir,” said Tim. “Do you remember Mrs. Wilkins’ Christian name? Was she an Englishwoman?”
Janders considered a moment, tapping his nose with his pen. “Theodora, her name was. Yes, she was as English as you or me, but I do believe her father was a native of Greece. She was quite lovely, very young, with jet-black tresses and flashing eyes.”
“Thank you.”
Peter took Tim by the collar and steered him through the doorway and into the outer office. There he said, “There’s a proper tragedy for you. Poor Belle! Scrooge will not be pleased to hear of her fate.”
“No. And yet. . . .” Tim’s brows knit tightly. “Do you suppose that the visit of her and her father’s ghosts to Scrooge had more than one purpose, not only to show him the error of his ways but to reveal the truth of her death? Her murder?”
“But how could the truth be revealed?”
“I wonder,” Tim said, as his thoughts moved reluctantly from Annabelle Pumphrey’s lovely face to the open page of a book in Lord Ector’s library. Christmas Eve. A pudding soaked in brandy and set ablaze. . . .
He took his leave of Peter and went back out into the cold afternoon air, this time directing his steps toward Ector House.
* * * * *
Lord Ector reminded Tim of an eagle, with his arched nose and small dark eyes always alert, whether to the movement of a mouse in the grass or to a ripple among England’s allies in the east, no matter.
Now he turned from positioning yet another marble bust of some ancient worthy upon a pedestal in his library and answered Tim’s question. “Yes, when I served as a diplomat in Turkey I did hear stories of the tunica molesta, the fiery cloak that brought the hero Herakles to his death.”
The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth Page 2
