But if Jane bore a son, then he would have to kill again, an infant this time. How simple a thing would that be? A soft footfall in the night, a pillow laid firmly over the sleeping face. It would be finished in a matter of seconds, and no more difficult than drowning a kitten.
I sat back, feeling faintly sick with the ease of it all. So little could stand between Harry Cavendish and a sizeable inheritance—the slender thread of a child’s life and his own conscience. There was nothing else to prevent it.
Hastily, I scrabbled through the rest of the office to find whatever else I could. The only item of note was in a ledger I found tucked into a stack of books upon the shelves. It had been begun the previous year, the first third of it written in Fitzhugh’s hand, the rest in Freddie’s. I ran my eye over the usual expenditures for repairs and wages and supplies, and then, something quite out of the ordinary—payments under Fitzhugh’s reign, one per month, directed to Miss Thorne. I looked again, scrutinising the entries carefully, but there they were. Payments in cash to Miss Thorne tendered monthly. They ended abruptly with Fitzhugh’s death, and no matter how I scoured the rest of the ledger, I found no more. Whatever service Fitzhugh had been purchasing, Freddie had not continued the association.
On a hunch, I pulled out the current ledger again, the one that Freddie had begun at the start of the year and had been taken over by Harry when the management of the estate passed into
his hands. I paged through it, and just where the handwriting changed from Freddie’s careless scrawl to Harry’s tidy hand, I saw it. A cash payment made out to Miss Thorne, and heavily scored through, as if the keeper of the ledger had been angry. The amount of money had been figured back into the accounts, and no further payments had been offered. I sat back and considered carefully. Fitzhugh had made payments to Miss Thorne each month. Not enough to make her wealthy, but enough to keep her if she lived modestly, perhaps the equivalent to her salary as a governess. Then with his death, the payments ceased, perhaps with no offer from Freddie to continue them.
And then, upon Freddie’s death, Harry made one attempt, a failed attempt, to provide her once more with money for some service she had been happy to provide his grandfather, but which she refused to provide for him.
The mind reeled with possibilities, I decided. The most logical explanation was that she had been the old man’s mistress, the funds used to keep her. With a bride of his own, Freddie would likely have had no interest in his grandfather’s leman, but perhaps Harry had no such scruples. Had he offered her a similar arrangement and been scorned? Or had the truth been more sordid still? Had the old man inflicted himself upon the girl and given payment to make the arrangement more orthodox? And if that were true, had Harry offered money as a means of assuaging his guilt that his grandfather had so blatantly used a defenceless young woman?
I rose and tidied the desk, checking twice more to make certain I left everything as I had found it. I let myself out of the office, using the lockpicks to erase any trace I had been there, and made my way to my room and my notebook. I had much to record.
To my relief, Brisbane and Plum seemed to have called a truce of sorts, and they both appeared at luncheon, making a show of
elaborate politeness that stank of insincerity. No one but me seemed to take note of it, for the rest of the company was sunk deep into preoccupation, and even I gave off thinking about it after a moment. I was far too interested in the question of Miss Thorne, and how I might discover the precise nature of her relationship to the Cavendish family. For the sake of simplicity, it would have been far easier if I could have just quizzed Miss Cavendish over the prawn toasts, but it would hardly have been polite. Children seldom like to be reminded of their father’s flaws, I reminded myself. I should have to seek answers elsewhere, and as I applied myself to a rather delicious gooseberry fool, I knew exactly where to go.
I had made up my mind to call upon the Pennyfeathers, hoping for enlightenment on the subject of Miss Thorne. But no sooner had I passed the crossroads—mercifully empty of leprous old women—than I saw a figure approaching. It was Dr. Llewellyn, looking disheveled in the warmth of the afternoon sun. His neckcloth was askew and his coat creased as if he had slept in it, and as he drew near I caught the distinct smell of spirits upon him.
“Good afternoon, Dr. Llewellyn,” I said politely.
He screwed up his eyes against the sun, his expression bewildered.
“It is Lady Julia Brisbane. We met yesterday at the
pooja
. I am a guest of the Cavendishes,” I supplied.
After a long moment, his expression cleared, but it did nothing to improve his appearance. His eyes were pinkly moist and he had not shaved, and I tried to cover my distaste.
“Lady Julia,” he echoed in his musical Welsh lilt.
I hesitated, then offered him my arm. “You seem a trifle unwell, doctor. Perhaps the warmth of the afternoon has taken you by surprise. May I walk with you as far as your home?”
He swayed a moment upon his feet, then took my arm,
biddable as a lamb. “This way,” he motioned, leading me back toward the crossroads. We ventured down the road toward Pine Cottage. A wisp of smoke escaped the chimney of the little house, but no one emerged, although I thought I saw the drawing room curtain twitch as we went past. The window to Emma’s room was shuttered fast, and I hoped she was resting.
We walked some little way past the cottage in silence. From time to time I glanced at the doctor to find his eyes closed as he gave himself up to being led home. After several minutes’ walk, we came to a pleasant little villa, or what might have been a pleasant villa were it not for the garden. It was overgrown with rank weeds, and the pond, which must once have been a pretty feature, was thick with slime. The doctor seemed not to notice the odours, but only politeness prevented me from holding a handkerchief to my nose as we ventured past. The door to the villa swung open and unsecured upon its hinges, rather reckless, I thought, but then it occurred to me that crime was unlikely given the remote and intimate community of the valley.
Aside from murder, I corrected. But pushing aside all thoughts of Freddie Cavendish, I guided the doctor in to a peaceful blue sitting room where he collapsed onto a sofa, his hands covering his face.
There seemed to be no servants about, so I undertook to attend him myself. The kitchen was easy enough to find, but the tins of tea held the merest crumbs and there was no sugar to be found. I carefully collected the tea sweepings from the various tins and boiled the whole mess, then poured it into a stout cup and stirred in a hefty measure of the dusty spices I had found languishing upon the kitchen shelf.
I found a tray to carry in the tea, and was rather surprised to find him still awake. I had expected him to slink into unconsciousness as soon as he landed upon the sofa, but he was staring
at the ceiling. No doubt counting cobwebs, I thought with a shudder of distaste.
“I have made tea,” I announced, thrusting the cup into his hands.
He looked startled, but he must have been reared to exercise the manners of a gentleman, for he immediately thrust himself into a sitting posture and began to sip. At the first swallow he heaved over, coughing until tears streamed from his eyes. He wiped at them, then smiled.
“It is very good.”
“It is the first time I have ever made it myself,” I confessed. “Is it the servants’ day off?”
He shook his head, causing the light to gleam upon his head. It was lovely hair, thick and tawny as a lion’s, and his broad, rather flat nose only enhanced the resemblance.
“They’ve all left me now. Cannot blame the poor devils. They’ve had no wages for six months.”
“Dear me,” I murmured. “Well, I suppose it must be difficult to find help here.”
“No. They are eager enough to leave the picking and come to work as house servants,” he told me. “It’s me they won’t work for. They say I’m cursed.”
“Cursed? Whatever for?”
He gave me a harsh laugh. “Because the devil himself has better luck than I. Whatever can go wrong for a man has gone wrong for me in this place. Everything I had, everything I was, is gone now. I am a ghost.”
The words were melodramatic, but spoken in such a bleak tone of abject misery that I felt chilled to the bone.
“Surely it is not so bad as all that,” I said gently.
“Is it not? In the space of a year, I have lost everything,” he repeated. “I have lost my wife, my practice, and my dignity, and
I do not know which has cost me more. It is only a matter of time before the Cavendishes give me the boot,” he finished miserably.
“The Cavendishes? Are they your landlords?”
“More than. I am employed by the estate to look after the workers. Proper medical care is one of the ways planters look out for their pickers. Miss Cavendish posted an advertisement in the newspaper when she was in England. It was Susannah found it,” he said, breaking off with a faraway look.
“Susannah was your wife?” I again adopted a soft, soothing tone to encourage his confidences without his hardly being aware of my presence.
“Yes.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, tears stood in the soft brown eyes. “She had always wanted to do real missionary work. She thought it would be an adventure to come here. I would run the infirmary and she would sew for the poor and teach letters and speak to them about God.”
He gave a short laugh. “Poor angel. They never wanted to hear. She would make the children presents of sweetmeats to listen to Bible stories, but they would simply take the candy and run away, and she never learned to preach to them first and make them wait for the sweeties.” He fixed his gaze upon me. “Folk will say she was a busybody, but you mustn’t believe it. There was no harm in her. She simply wanted to help and her greatest sin was earnestness. She was a good woman,” he insisted.
“I am sure she was,” I murmured.
His gaze drifted again. “She worried about my habit of drink. I lied before,” he admitted. “I always did like a drop or two at the end of a day. But I was never a drunkard. I always collected myself the next morning and did what I had to,” he said firmly. A little too firmly, I thought. It would not have surprised me to
find that some laxity in his professional demeanour had been behind his motivation to leave England.
He continued on. “I was a fair doctor in England, some even said I was gifted. But here,” he said with a child’s air of bewilderment, “it was so different. I began to make a bad job of it. I found diseases difficult to diagnose and everything turns septic so quickly.”
My thoughts flew to Freddie Cavendish and his septic snakebite, but this was not the time to intrude with my questions. I simply sat and sipped manfully at the vile concoction I had brewed.
“And the more I failed, the more I drank,” he told me. “My evening dram became a bit of something in my tea, and then a glass taken with luncheon. Susannah and I fought, bitterly. We fought the day she died. She left the house, she was that upset. And I drank to forget that we fought because I drank,” he said with a bitter laugh. The mirthless sound died upon a smothered sob. “They carried her home, torn and bleeding, and I was too far gone to do anything for her.”
I put an impulsive hand to his. He started as if my touch scorched him, but he made no move to withdraw it. “Was there anything that could have been done?”
He shook his head. “No. I went to see her when I was sober. I owed her that much, don’t you think? I went and forced myself to look at her and I realised it was a miracle she had lived a minute beyond the attack at all.”
“You must not reproach yourself,” I instructed. “There was nothing to be done.”
“I might have eased her out of the world,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper, as if even in that restricted company he could scarcely say the words aloud.
“You mean a merciful death?”
“I might have saved her suffering.”
“And increased your own,” I countered. “The guilt you bear now would be nothing compared to that you would carry if you had actually dispatched her.”
He rallied a little at this and sipped again at his tea. This time he did not choke, but merely coughed a little, and I noticed the streaming of his eyes had nearly abated. He was lost in memory for a moment, and I do not think the trip was a pleasant one. But he recalled himself and looked earnestly at me. “You must have a care when you go about on your own. The tiger that killed her still roams these hills. He has tasted blood once. He will kill again.” His voice rose, as if some tightly wound grasp upon his nerve was coming undone.
I patted my pocket. “I am prepared, I promise you.” I hastened to change the subject. “Perhaps you ought to think about leaving this place,” I suggested. “You seem most unhappy. A change of scene—”
“A change of scene!” He burst out laughing, a rich and mirthful sound that must have been engaging once. At last he sobered again, and I noticed fresh tears stood in his eyes.
“No, I will stay here and live out my life, what remains of it, as a penance for my sins.”
Sins! There was the word again, I mused, although Dr. Llewellyn seemed rather further from death than Emma Phipps. Curious that they should both be contemplating eternity.
“But if there are so many reminders of your previous life, perhaps to start anew, where no one knows you would be a good thing.”
A mantle of hopelessness seemed to settle over him. “You do not understand,” he said softly, gazing into the depths of his tea. He lifted his eyes, and there was world of anguish there, so complete and so sharp it took my breath from me.
“Wherever I go, my mistakes will follow me. My follies, my failures, they are my constant companions.”
He paused and I said nothing for a long moment. I had thought to question him about valley gossip, but there was such tremendous pain in the man, I had not the heart to press him. I felt only a true sympathy for this shattered soul, and I wondered if he could ever be mended. I sensed no evil in him, no viciousness, only weakness and self-loathing and pity without measure.