The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (40 page)

Her eyes rested on my face. “I did more often than not. Though Miss Alleyn or Elizabeth more usually applied them.”

“Where were they kept?”

“In a stone jar in his closet. The jar was filled with water. When he called for them, we’d fish them out half an hour early, to make them bite better. Then we’d take them to him in a glass with a dish of milk.”

“And then?”

“Usually Miss Alleyn or Elizabeth would wipe the part the leeches were to bite—neck or head in the main—and smear that part with milk to encourage them. Then the leeches, two or three of them, were put in a glass and turned over on the spot. Afterwards we’d return them to the jar or, if he wanted, put them on a dish of salt so he could see the blood they’d taken.”

During this exchange Mrs. Cummings was still busy with her brawn, listening with half an ear to all we said. Knowing this made it difficult for me to ask Connie what it was she’d tried to tell me when I was staying in Hindlesham, and again in London when she wrote to arrange a meeting. I sensed she’d say nothing in front of Mrs. Cummings. Just then, however, the cook finished pressing the meat into muslin cloths and bustled towards the larder, muttering something about bay leaves, mace, and vinegar. Connie was still engrossed in her description of the habits of leeches, but seeing Mrs. Cummings would not be gone long, I dared interrupt her.

“Connie, tell me quick. What was the article of news you had for me when you came to the inn, and when you wrote to me?”

“Oh, that.” She shrugged. “I thought you’d taken no notice, for you never came to meet me.”

“I couldn’t come to Covent Garden when I was with Foley at Whitely. Course I took notice, I’ve come here quick as I could, haven’t I?”

She tossed her head as if my lack of interest didn’t bother her. “It was the valet that remarked it first. And afterwards when I thought on it I wanted you to know.”

“Know what?”

But Connie said no more except that she’d rather show me, so I could decide for myself, than tell me and put thoughts in my head. She turned her gaze in the direction of the larder, where Mrs. Cummings was still conveniently occupied. Abandoning her half-finished work, Connie placed a finger to her lips and beckoned me to follow. She led me up the narrow back stairs, through the first-floor servants’ passage to Henry Montfort’s bedchamber.

It was a vast, splendidly furnished room of pea green walls and heavy damask curtains. Two walls were adorned with extravagantly framed family portraits, the largest of which was a full-length likeness of Henry Montfort in hunting dress with an array of dead game spread at his feet. Another wall sported a dozen or more swords, pistols, and lances mounted to form an intricate design. Opposite, a large bay window overlooked the park, through which streamed motes of winter sun. Despite the light, the room seemed somehow dulled by the heavy pictures and draperies. Looking around, I felt this was a room in which one would never be warm or comfortable. I fancied I could still see the indentation of Montfort’s heavy body on the counterpane where they’d laid him out. I felt myself observed by his portrait. I could hear his rasping voice, smell his tobacco and sour brandy breath.

I gazed disconsolately out of the window. Clumps of woodland led to the reed-fringed lake and the island with its tower folly set like an accusing finger against the sky. I wondered where Alice had chosen to take her stroll, then feeling irritable and impatient for her return, turned back to the room and Connie. She was standing on the far side of the window, where a gentleman’s embroidered jacket, waistcoat, and breeches were hanging on a coat stand before a cheval mirror, as if waiting to be donned. Ranged beneath was a pair of colored slippers.

I recognized the costume as the one Montfort had worn the night he’d died. The rusty bloodstains were still visible on the collar and sleeve of the coat. Connie came directly to the point. “Do you remember remarking anything about Lord Montfort’s feet on the night he died?”

“His feet? I remember that his shoes had no blood on them, and from that deducing it could not have been he who made the footprints.”

“Anything else? Did you observe his feet earlier that same evening?” she persisted.

I thought back to that night. Dimly I recalled crawling on the ground among the seated diners to retrieve the oranges I’d spilled. I’d seen the diamond buckles on Foley’s and Robert Montfort’s shoes from beneath the table. But that was
after
Lord Montfort had left.

“No. The last thing I remember of Lord Montfort alive is hearing his footsteps retreating. Where’s the significance in that?” I said.

Ignoring my question, she stooped to pick up the slippers by the mirror and handed them to me. They were made from soft blue morocco with a small heel and a black riband, such as fashionable gentlemen often wear indoors.

“Are these the same shoes that were on his feet in the library?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“You are correct. I assisted the valet Forbes to lay him out. You may be quite sure there is no mistake; they are the same pair.”

I put the slippers down gently where she’d found them. I was on the point of saying “What of them?” when suddenly I stopped and picked them up again. I flexed the shoes in my palm, feeling the softness of the soles. Such soft leather as I had never worn, such softness as would make it impossible, were I wearing them, to make my footsteps audible.
And yet I’d heard Montfort’s angry footsteps retreating down the hall.

Connie saw my dark expression and must have suspected the line of my thoughts. “Forbes too was most perplexed when he saw them. He swore Lord Montfort wasn’t wearing these shoes when he dressed. He’d have said nothing of it, only the shoes he
was
wearing that night were new, and Robert Montfort asked for them, and now they’ve disappeared. Forbes says something else has gone missing too. A flask from Lord Montfort’s closet. It contained a sleeping draft prescribed by the apothecary.”

I turned back to gaze from the window, still muddled by this information. During some part of the evening Montfort had been wearing different shoes. Why would he change them? Because there was something about them he disliked; they were uncomfortable perhaps? It seemed unlikely that a man with Montfort’s preoccupations would worry about his feet, and it didn’t explain why the first pair had vanished. Had someone else changed them? The murderer perhaps? I remembered the bloody footprints in the library—the fashionable square toe of a gentleman’s shoe. Were Montfort’s shoes responsible for those prints? Was that why his shoes had been changed? Then I considered the medicine bottle. Why would that go missing? Had Montfort taken a sleeping draft that night after all? In which case, why employ the leeches as well? I looked back at the garments hanging on the stand, and at the rusty stains of blood spattering both sleeves. It was the blood on both sleeves that had made me sure Montfort had been murdered. But I hadn’t comprehended then, nor did I comprehend now, the reason for the leeches.

I returned to the matter of the gun. Connie said it wasn’t Henry Montfort’s. Guns raised another disturbing thought in my mind. Alice had said she had discussed pastimes with Robert Montfort and he had declared himself a keen shot. Was this the reason for the invitation to Horseheath? Had he inadvertently let slip to
her
that the murder weapon belonged to him, then realizing his error decided to plan her death? In this confused state I cast about the room to see if anything else here might afford any prospect of a clue. I looked at the weapons on the wall to see if any of the pistols were missing. None was. The arrangement was perfectly symmetrical. Connie waited attentively by the bed, observing my face for signs of my thoughts. My gaze swept past and came to rest in the alcove behind her. In it stood a plain mahogany writing bureau. I had never considered that such a piece of furniture might be in Lord Montfort’s bedchamber, assuming that since he possessed such a finely appointed library, all his private correspondence would be contained within it. But of course this was a foolish assumption; the library was only recently completed. While I was installing it Montfort must have kept his private correspondence here.

I strode towards the alcove, even as I opened my mouth to speak. “What you say is all most interesting, Connie, and I believe it to be mightily significant. And now, since you have brought me here, it occurs to me there may be more to find in this room, perhaps inside this bureau.”

Without waiting for her reply, I turned the key and tried the flap. Lying inside was a slender monogrammed leather-bound volume. It contained sheets of paper, several of which protruded from the binding. Clearly this was Montfort’s letter book. I had searched for it in the library, wondering who might have removed it, never drawing the obvious conclusion that he might have kept it elsewhere.

The first page was a note scrawled in a hand I identified as Montfort’s.

Montfort

The second was written in the elegant, careful hand that I recognized as Partridge’s.

I lowered myself heavily onto the bed and dropped my head in my hands. For some time I sat there, dazed by my discovery, dazzled by the startling thoughts it provoked. All that I had groped so long to comprehend was now becoming clear. Understanding emerged from confusion like a landscape becoming slowly visible as dawn breaks. I saw now how my logic had taken a wrong turn, how I’d run upon false premises. I understood how my consuming preoccupations had deceived me. I felt as though I were on the deck of a ship that has come into port after a long voyage, watching antlike figures moving on the quayside. I knew the people were familiar to me, I knew that they were preparing themselves for my arrival, yet for the time being I could not make out who was who, and I had absolutely no connection with them. Connie seemed to sense my distance and to know she couldn’t reach the place where I had gone. She looked on wordlessly, waiting for me to speak.

I walked over to the window, still holding the letters in my hand, wondering how to begin, how to frame a coherent explanation of the path my thoughts now traced. I had yet to open my mouth when my attention was abruptly diverted.

In the parkland below, some short distance from the house, two ladies emerged from a copse of trees and began to traverse the grassland in the direction of a Palladian bridge leading to the island. They walked leisurely, cloaks billowing softly as occasional gusts of wind caught them. Even from this distance, by the way she raised her hands to speak, inclining her head towards the other, I could see that one of them was Alice.

The other, standing slightly behind her, was no less distinctive. She was wearing a tall black hat, veiled to mask her face, and a cloak of oxblood red. Who was she? I looked down at the letters which I still held in my hand. Dreadful conviction gripped me. The person with Alice was the person to whom Partridge had addressed this letter. The person who had promised to help him. I knew her identity with as much certainty as if she had been standing barefaced not two feet distant from me.