A Death at Fountains Abbey (16 page)

Sneaton considered this for a moment then dismissed it. ‘He shouts and stamps his foot, but . . . this is too sneaking for him. And too
elaborate,
as you say.’

‘Did you tally his bill?’

Sneaton shut his eyes. ‘In truth? I can’t remember.’

I chuckled. ‘Sam can help you question the servants. He’s a sharp lad.’

Sneaton did not look pleased about that, but he didn’t have the strength to argue.

‘And what will you do, sir?’ Mr Gatteker asked.

I gazed at the trail of bootprints leading across the deer park. ‘I think I’ll follow those. Once I’ve had my breakfast.’

There was a note waiting for Mr Gatteker back in the house. Bagby brought it over. I planned to ask him why he had been so pleased by Kitty’s arrival, but he had turned upon his heel and left before I could open my mouth. What a queer fellow he was. If he disliked me so much – and I certainly wasn’t imagining his seething hostility – why should he be happy to see me reunited with my wife?

‘Oh dear,’ Mr Gatteker said, reading the note. ‘What ill news. Mrs Slingsby has died.’

‘A patient?’

‘A rich one. I thought she had another ten pounds’ worth of bills in her, at least. What a tragedy.’

‘Perhaps she remembered you in her will.’

‘That is a kind thought, sir,’ Mr Gatteker said, rallying. ‘I’m obliged to you. Let us console ourselves with a large breakfast.’

‘Good morrow,’ Kitty called down from the minstrels’ gallery. She was wearing her emerald silk gown, with matching ribbons in her cap. She skipped lightly down the stairs and allowed Mr Gatteker to take her hand.

He bowed low over it. ‘Mrs Hawkins.’

She smirked at the title. ‘Well, then – the stags! What a dreadful mess. I saw them from the window. You were very brave, Tom – examining them so closely. My husband is
incurably
soft-hearted when it comes to animals, Mr Gatteker, you have never met a more squeamish fellow. Mrs Mason says the stags were laid out to match the Robinson coat of arms. Tom, did you notice the bootprints leading off towards the gardens?’ She allowed room for me to nod that I had. ‘So I visited Metcalfe’s quarters to introduce myself, but he has locked himself in. Can you imagine? He spoke with me through the keyhole. He says he is afraid for his life, and that we should leave at once or else we will be burned in our beds. Or wherever we might happen to be at the time, I suppose. You may let go of my hand now, Mr Gatteker. That is, if you wish to.’

Mr Gatteker, enchanted, bowed again and – with clear reluctance – stepped back.

Kitty smiled at him. ‘And
you,
sir. As an expert on the human form. Would you say it’s possible for one man to carry a stag of that size on his own? How strong would he have to be? How broad his shoulders? Would he need to be of a particular height, would you say?’

He thought about this for a moment. ‘Haven’t a clue.’

I liked Mr Gatteker, but he really was quite useless.

‘I believe I could carry one,’ Kitty decided. ‘A small one, wrapped about my shoulders like a scarf.’ She demonstrated with an imaginary stag, hefting it around her neck and holding it by its imaginary hooves. ‘But for how long? That is the question.’

We took breakfast, the three of us, alone in the dining room. Mr Aislabie had returned to his study, where he was presumably buying up the rest of Yorkshire. Mrs Fairwood had escaped to the library, her sanctuary. Lady Judith had left for her morning ride.

I told Kitty about Lady Judith’s breeches. She listened intently. ‘Would she lend me a pair do you think?’

‘As a physician, I am heartily in favour of them,’ Gatteker declared. ‘I am persuaded they offer diverse benefits to a lady’s health. We must secure them for you, Mrs Hawkins.’

I frowned at him and changed the subject. ‘I’m worried about Metcalfe. This business with the stags seems to have thrown him into a fit of despair. You’re his physician, I believe?’

‘When he’s in Yorkshire,’ Gatteker said, buttering a roll. ‘Excellent man, but a profound melancholic. Prone to fits of paralytic gloom.’

Kitty blinked. ‘Is that a medical term?’

Gatteker giggled at the very notion. ‘Of course, I tend to see him at his worst. He comes home to Baldersby to rest. Lies there in his bed at odds with the world. Barely eats, barely sleeps. Days go by. Weeks, sometimes. Convinced he’s the worst devil ever to have walked the earth. He’s threatened to injure himself, you know, on many occasions.’

Kitty shook her head slowly. ‘It is a terrible affliction.’

‘Yes, poor fellow. He’ll rally for a while, but it always comes back. Runs in the blood, I think. Aislabie’s brother hanged himself at Oxford, did you know? Seventeen years old. Same age Metcalfe suffered his first attack.’

I thought of the portrait of Mallory Aislabie up in Sam’s room, hidden away in the neglected east wing like a shameful secret. Those soulful eyes – very much like Metcalfe’s, now I thought of it. ‘Would you prescribe laudanum for such an illness?’

‘Heavens, no!’ Gatteker exclaimed, waving his butter knife at me. ‘Fresh air, long walks, and good company. And regular bleedings, naturally.’

I pulled the bottle of laudanum from my coat. ‘He’s been taking this for a while. He thinks someone’s trying to poison him.’ I unstoppered the bottle and held it out to him across the table.

Gatteker took a deep sniff. ‘Smells regular to me. He does succumb to these fancies . . .’

‘He seems most confused and unpredictable. Not sure what’s real and what isn’t. Is that common for him?’

‘Not particularly. Excessive melancholy and self-hatred . . . Disproportionate sense of futility.
What’s it all, for? Why is the world so dreadful?
But he knows a hawk from a handsaw.’ He sniffed the bottle again. ‘Could be a mistake with the dose, I suppose.’

‘He said it has kept him asleep these past three days. Could you examine the contents for me, sir?’

‘Delighted. I’ll try it on one of the little Gattekers. Pray don’t be alarmed, Mrs Hawkins!’ he grinned. ‘I’ve eight or ten of ’em at home. We won’t run out.’

‘What a curious fellow,’ Kitty called out to me, later. ‘He was joking, wasn’t he?’

We were on horseback, riding through Mr Aislabie’s deer park towards the fabled water gardens. Lady Judith had promised me a tour. Instead I was riding with Kitty, following a set of bootprints that led both to and from the butchered stags. The tracks had disappeared for a time in drier grass, but now we had found them again, heavy prints pushed deep into the mud. Boots sinking under the weight of a deer. The prints were tangled together; it was hard to tell if one man had carried one stag upon three separate occasions, or whether there had been two or even three men working together. Whoever they were, they were strong. I’m not sure I could have carried such a weight upon my shoulders such a great distance.

Kitty rode behind me on a fine chestnut colt marked with a star. She was sitting side-saddle in the usual fashion, and wearing a velvet riding cap. I was riding a dappled grey mare called Athena. There had been some argument among the grooms about whether she should be ridden today. She was set to be covered by Aislabie’s best stallion, Blunt. Perhaps Athena had sensed there was something afoot, as she had been ‘skittish’ all morning, according to Mr Pugh. I must keep a close watch upon her, he warned. She seemed placid enough to me. I patted her flank and nudged her on with my knees down a long, sheltered avenue. A pheasant rustled through a patch of wild garlic, then darted across our path into the woods beyond. Athena plodded on, unperturbed.

Kitty caught up with me and brushed a hand against my leg. It was such a glorious spring day, we might be mistaken for a true husband and wife, taking a quiet tour of the county’s finest estate. I nodded to a journeyman trimming the grass along the path, and he touched his hat.

So far our views had been of woods and distant farm land, with the deer park at our backs. As we emerged from the trees, the water gardens were revealed at last. We brought our horses to a halt, speechless with astonishment. Below us, the river had been tamed into a long, straight canal, ending in a dramatic cascade. I could hear its roar even from here, a constant rushing sound. Beneath the cascade, the riverbanks had been widened to form a large fishing lake, smooth as glass. The river travelled on from there through a narrower cascade into a steep valley bristling with pine trees – and out of view.

Kitty was staring out at the lake. Its pristine surface acted as a mirror, reflecting the trees surrounding it and the sky as if there were two worlds, above and below. A pair of swans glided by, the very picture of grace.

‘Beautiful,’ Kitty murmured.

It was truly a magnificent sight, and for a moment I was left amazed. But we had not come here to admire the view. I leaned down in my saddle to inspect the ground. ‘The tracks have disappeared.’

We had reached a fork in the path, the left leading down to the lake, the right taking a steep course up a densely wooded hill. I suspected the men had travelled along one of those paths with the stags across their backs, then moved on to the grass for stealth, to avoid the crunch of gravel beneath their boots.

We turned left, following the path to the lake – and found Lady Judith by the edge of the water, astride her bay stallion. Her horse whinnied at our approach.

‘Mr Hawkins. And this must be your wife? Welcome to Studley, Mrs Hawkins.’

‘Thank you . . .’ Kitty stared at Lady Judith’s breeches, entranced.

Lady Judith laughed, and rubbed a hand along her thigh. ‘Why, I believe you are more astonished than your husband.’

‘They are a
wonder
,’ Kitty marvelled.

‘Are they not? Sadly I can only wear them about the gardens. It would be too great a scandal to present my legs to the world.’

‘The world,’ Kitty observed, ‘is full of idiots.’

Lady Judith laughed again, appraising me anew. Women judge men by their choice of wife, and Mrs Aislabie approved of mine. I edged Athena closer to the lake, curious to see myself reflected in the mirrored surface, but when I peered into the water, all I saw was the silt and mud beneath. A trick of the light and the angle of perspective – but it gave me a hollow feeling, to see nothing of myself.

‘Do you like fishing, Mr Hawkins?’ Lady Judith pointed to a pair of tiny lodges built on either side of the higher cascade. ‘The lake is stocked with carp. One can fish from the window in poor weather.’

I smiled politely.

‘Tom is too impatient for fishing,’ said Kitty, the least patient woman in the western hemisphere.

‘My husband is the same. He must be
doing
. But what do you say, sir, about our little endeavour?’

‘I’m lost for words, madam.’ And I was truly astounded – at the beauty, and the cost.

‘The canal was a nightmare of mud for almost ten years. Thousands upon thousands of cartloads,’ she shuddered, as if she had been personally responsible for carrying them all. ‘There is much yet to be done, but when it is finished I believe it will be the most embellished estate in England. You must walk the grounds with John tomorrow – he can explain his plans far better than I. This garden is his great passion. At least, it was. He has been distracted these past few weeks. Mrs Fairwood’s arrival has affected him profoundly.’

‘You wish her gone from Studley, I think?’

Lady Judith looked out across the lake. ‘If we may speak in confidence, as friends . . . Yes. I believe it would be for the best. I fear she is dangerous in some odd way. I do not like mysteries and secrets. And Mrs Fairwood is a
great
mystery.’

I explained that we had been following the trail of bootprints from the house, and that they had vanished on the path above. ‘Both paths lead into the woods,’ she said. ‘It’s the border between our land and Fountains Hall. Mr Messenger’s estate.’

‘Mr Forster is a guest at Fountains Hall, I believe? He has invited me to visit him.’

Her lips curved into their familiar smirk. ‘How curious, if the trail should lead to him. Perhaps
he
murdered those poor stags.’

‘With one arm?’

‘He might have bored them to death.’

I grinned, but was not so quick to dismiss Forster. Yes, he was a dull companion at supper, but that did not mean he was incapable of violence, one-handed or otherwise. I had learned not to underestimate anyone, these past few months.

‘Have you not explored the higher path yet?’ Lady Judith asked. ‘We must ride it together.’

We turned our horses away from the lake, following her up the steep path into the woods. We climbed for a short while before Lady Judith pulled upon the reins. ‘This is my favourite view.’

The lake was still within sight from here, but now we could also see the vast scale of the work taking place above the highest cascade. On the far side of the canal, three formal ponds had been dug into the riverbank: two neat crescents flanking a perfect circle.