An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (109 page)

Very carefully Caroline lowered herself out of the window until there was only a drop of a foot or so, then she finally let go of the sill. She landed with a thump on the flat roof and held her breath for a moment afraid that someone below might have heard her. But nothing happened. Everything was quiet save for a very distant burr of voices and laughter which might be coming from the tap-room.

Caroline peered down. It still seemed a long way to the ground, but there was the water butt and she realised that she must set her foot on the edge of it, holding on to the wall meanwhile. The only real danger was that she might fall into the butt itself but Caroline was sure-footed besides being able to balance herself cleverly, and with the exception of a scratched finger, a large tear in her skirt where it caught on a nail, and a great deal of dust and dirt on her hands she reached the ground without mishap.

She paused for a moment, then peeped in at the window nearest to her. As she had guessed, the flat roof was over a scullery. It was in darkness, but the door was open and beyond it she could see the big kitchen of the inn. The landlady was bustling around and there were several other people there as well. There were two young women with round, red cheeks under their mop caps and a man, with a bald head and wearing an apron, who looked as if he might be a potman. They were laughing and talking together and even though the window was closed, there was a savoury odour of roast meat.

Caroline did not wait to see more. She picked up her skirts and ran swiftly across the garden into the darkness of the trees on the other side. The wood was, not thick and, as it was still early in the year, the undergrowth was not high. There was a small path running between the trees and Caroline followed this. She had no idea where it might lead her, but her one idea was to escape as far as possible from the inn. She hurried on, deciding as she went that the main road to Sevenoaks must lie in this direction and that, if she could reach it, she would doubtless find a coaching house where she might procure a post-chaise which would carry her back to London. Once or twice she stumbled over briars which lay across her path they caught, too, in her skirt and Caroline had several times to stop, and disentangle them from the velvet, which was not improved by this rough contact with nature.

She had walked for some minutes when she heard voices. She stopped quickly. ‘Were they already in pursuit of her,’ she wondered. She had imagined it would be some little time before they ascertained that she was not in her room and as the bolt that she had placed across the door was a heavy one, it would require quite considerable strength to break it down.

Then she realised that the voices she heard were ahead of her and not behind as might be expected if someone was coming from the direction of the inn. She listened. Suddenly a cry of pain, of horror or indeed of agony, rang through the wood. It was just one cry, and then there was silence.

Caroline’s heart seemed to stop for a full second, and then beat again so fiercely that it almost leapt from her body. She pressed herself close against a tree trunk, holding on to it tightly with both her hands. The cry seemed to echo in her ears, but it was not repeated, instead she heard the sound of someone crashing through the undergrowth, moving swiftly almost as if running.

For one terrified moment she thought the person was heading in her direction. She pressed herself even closer to the tree hoping wildly that she, would not be seen. But the footsteps turned before they reached her. She heard them passing, she even saw someone moving through the shadows. She believed it to be a man, but the moonlight was deceptive and she was too frightened really to be certain of anything save that the footsteps were receding further and further away.

She listened to them, hardly daring to breathe, until she could hear them no more, and then there was silence - that strange, pregnant silence which follows a sudden noise. The wood seemed unnaturally quiet. Before there had been rustlings, the movement of small animals in the undergrowth, the flutter of a disturbed bird, now there was only silence, a silence which in itself was a fiercesome thing.

At last Caroline drew a deep breath. She moved from against the tree, aware for the first time, how tightly she had clung to it. There were marks on her hands where she had pressed them against the bark. She brushed them against each other and brushed away some leaves and dust from the front of her dress. Then she went on.

The little path she had followed still wandered ahead of her and eventually came to a clearing. The moonlight was bright, the trees were cut back to form a circle and on the far side of it Caroline could see the wails of a cottage. Studying it carefully, she perceived that the cottage was nothing more than a shell. It’s thatched roof had fallen in, the doorway was dark and empty, and the bricks were crumbling away.

There was nothing to be frightened of, Caroline told herself severely, but she was well aware that her breath was coming quickly and that her heart had never ceased pounding against her breast since that strange cry had echoed through the wood. Going forward a few more paces she stopped, and an exclamation of horror burst from her parted lips. There on the ground in the centre of the clearing was the body of a man.

He was lying crumpled up on the ground, one leg pinned under him, his arms outstretched, his hands wide-open as if in utter defencelessness, and his head thrown back so that from where Caroline stood she could only see the sharp line of his jaw. Horror stricken she stood there, seeing as if in a nightmare the moonlight shining on the buckles of his shoes, on the buttons of his black coat, and on a burnished knife-hilt where it stood out from the front of his neck. Below it a dark stream stained the purity of his frilled shirt.

For a moment Caroline’s wits seemed to leave her, and she could only stand and stare, not asking herself whether she should go forward or go back, but paralysed with the horror of those white empty hands motionless on the rough grass. And then, as she looked and kept on looking, she heard someone coming.

The movement had come from the other side of the wood firmly, purposefully, someone was approaching. There was a crackling of dry-sticks, the rustle as if a man thrust his way impatiently through the branches of the trees.

At last, just as the footsteps seemed to reach the clearing itself, Caroline moved. She was for turning and running away, following the path down which she had come even though it led her back to the inn but her knees felt too weak to carry her, and a sudden overwhelming faintness made her go no further than the trunk of a great oak tree against which she leant.

‘I must get away,’ she told herself, and yet she could not move.

It was a frailty for which she despised herself but in all her sheltered life she had never seen a dead man before, and his death cry was still echoing in her ears.

She leant against the oak and saw a man step into the clearing. He was tall and wearing a high beaver hat, his blue coat and buckskin breeches were exquisitely cut, and even in that bemused moment Caroline guessed that he was a gentleman of importance by the way he held his head and the commanding way with which he pushed his way through the bushes and into the clearing.

He walked on and saw the man lying on the ground.

“By God! What is this?”

He spoke aloud and his voice seemed to echo sharply amongst the trees.

It was that sound, the sound of a human voice which made Caroline take hold of her failing consciousness.

“I must away,” she whispered through, dry lips, and turned once again towards the path down which she had come.

The gentleman in the clearing must have seen her movement, for even as she took two steps from the shelter of the oak he looked towards her, and whipped a pistol from his pocket.

“Stop!” he called. ‘Who are you? Come here this instant!”

Caroline stopped. There was something in the stranger’s voice which demanded obedience. Very slowly she came forward into the moonlight.

“A woman!” the gentleman exclaimed and put the pistol back in his pocket

He swept off his hat.

“Your pardon, Madam. I was not expecting to find a lady lurking here and in such circumstances.”

His voice was steady and quite unperturbed and Caroline found it stiffened her pride, so although she was still frightened and her hands were trembling, she was able to drop him a curtsey.

The moonlight was full on his face. She found herself looking at the most handsome man she had ever, seen in her life. The moonlight turned his hair to bronze, but his eyes, set wide apart beneath a broad forehead, were grey as steel and seemed strangely penetrating.

“Might I ask what you are doing here, Ma’am?” he enquired, as Caroline did not, speak, “and also if you have any knowledge of this?”

He indicated with his hat the body on the ground. His voice was quiet and yet so authoritative that Caroline felt compelled to offer him some explanation of her presence.

“I was – walking through the wood, sir, when I heard voices , – then suddenly there came a cry – a cry of terror or of pain – afterwards. I heard someone moving quickly in that direction.”

She made a little gesture with her hand, and was conscious as she did so of the dirt on it.

The gentleman replaced his hat on his head and kneeling down, felt for the fallen man’s heart.

“Is he – quite dead?” Caroline asked, and try as she would she could not prevent a tremble in her voice.

“Without any doubt, whoever struck the blow struck to kill.”

He got up and stood looking down at the man’s face. ‘Strange,” he said, as if speaking to himself. “Strange, very strange indeed, for I was to meet him here.”

“You know – the man, sir?”

“Yes, I know him. He is a lawyer called Isaac Rosenberg. A rascal it is true, but I would not have even rascals meet their death in such an unpleasant fashion.”

“And you came here to meet him, sir?” Caroline asked.

She did not know why she was so curious, but something made her want to know more about this stranger.

“Yes, at his invitation,” he said quietly, “and that reminds me...”

He looked down at the dead man, dropped once again, on one knee and put his hand into the lawyer’s pocket.

“Ah, they are here!” he exclaimed, and there was satisfaction in his tone.

He drew out a packet of letters. Caroline could see there were perhaps half a dozen of them tied together with tape and sealed with a red seal. The gentleman slipped them into his own pocket, then he hesitated a moment and murmured as if under his breath,

“I wonder if they are all here?”

He felt in the dead man’s other coat pocket which was empty, and then inserted his hand in. the inside breast pocket. There was something there - a sheet of writing paper. He glanced at it and. stood upright suddenly tense.

Caroline, looking up at him, thought once again that he was, without exception, the most handsome man she had ever seen in her life and yet there was something strange in his face. It was an expression she could not fathom for the moment and then, as she watched, he crumpled the piece of writing paper in his hand and threw back his head with a sudden sharp laugh which had no humour in it.

“The devil takes it, but someone has paid a wonderful attention to detail.”

“What is it sir?” Caroline asked

He looked at her as if he had almost forgotten her presence.

“It is a jest, Madam,” he replied, and his voice was sarcastic. “A monstrous jest, I grant you, but one which will doubtless give pleasure though not to me personally.”

“I do not understand,” Caroline said.

“Why should you?” he asked. “But I will explain. This poor rogue here has been murdered for the express purpose of putting a rope round my neck. He was invited here to meet me. I was lured to this very spot. Here he is dead at my feet, and here am I all ready for justice to overtake me?”

“But, sir,’ Caroline exclaimed. “You did not kill him, I can swear to that.”

“Why, so you can! That indeed makes the joke even more enjoyable. Who knows you are in these woods?”

“No one, sir! No one at all. I did not intend to be in them myself until but a short while back.”

The gentleman, threw back his head and laughed again.

“The jest grows vastly more amusing,” he said, “and what is more, the plot becomes further entangled. How angry the perpetrator of this elegant murder will be when he finds that you can swear to my innocence!”

“Oh, but, sir,’’ Caroline cried, suddenly alarmed, “I don’t wish to swear – I mean, if it is a question of saving you from the gallows, but – but, sir, t’was my intention that no one should know that I had been here – it will be terrible for me, I assure you, should it be revealed, especially in a Court of Justice, that I was here at this hour of night.”

The gentleman smiled,

“In which case, Madam, may I beg of you to disappear as quickly as possible for if I am not mistaken very shortly someone will come and discover the corpse and, if they are fortunate the murderer lurking by it. So run away, Madam, as fast as your little feet can carry you, otherwise you will be embroiled in this most unpleasant and very unsavoury crime.”

“But sir, I cannot do that,” Caroline exclaimed. “Of course I cannot leave you when I know you to be innocent, but - ”

“There is no but, Madam, you must go.”

“And you?”

“I shall await justice.”

“But why?” Caroline asked. “Why must you be so stupid? If you are not here, they cannot prove that you murdered the man. It has got to be proved, you know. ”

The gentleman shrugged his shoulders.

“I do not cling to life so earnestly as all that Madam in fact, to put it briefly, life is of no particular interest to me at the moment. I would as soon die this way as any other.”

“Then you are either demented or foxed,” Caroline cried angrily. “There are plenty of decent ways of dying, sir, but to die through treachery, to give in meekly to what you have declared yourself to be nothing but a plot must be surely the action of a coward or a craven. Come away, sir, while there is yet time, and if they have to find the murderer, let them hunt for him.”