The Keeper of Secrets Page 14

  Usually I crammed my pockets with sweetmeats or, on Dr Hansard’s express instruction, fruit for the children; sometimes I took the luxury of some fresh new tea for Mrs Jenkins as a gift from Mrs Beckles. Occasionally they had the pleasure I found I could not deny them of giving me something in return, an egg that they could ill afford but that their dignity insisted I accept. In return I would soon offer them another gift. Mr Ford had at last found some pigs he deemed suitable, and they, not Farmer Bulmer’s, would roam my glebe lands. I had resolved that the Jenkinses would have some of their first litter.

  I found William chopping logs, every bit the man of the family at ten – my earlier estimate of his age had been quite inaccurate. Unlike his sisters, he still treated me with some reserve, as if embarrassed that once he had clung to me like the frightened child he was. Something had certainly happened to him, perhaps in that hell-hole of a gaol, to take the shine out of his eyes.

  His mother was gathering clothes from the washing line. One day I had discovered that all she could do was spread them on bushes to dry, and had made her a gift of proper rope, which, I had had to claim, had come wrapped round a parcel. She would not have accepted it otherwise, seemingly thinking that to accept anything from me in some way compromised her. I respected her reticence, hoping one day that she would tell me shyly that she was walking out with another man. She was, after all, still in her twenties, a fact I had never grasped until I had seen her washed, with tidy hair and a gown befitting a young widow. The weight she had gained since leaving the starvation regime of the workhouse made her quite comely. Might Jem or more likely Matthew one day turn his eyes in this direction? Pray God it was only one of them, however!

  ‘William works very hard,’ I said, knowing that this would please her. ‘Thank goodness we have so many trees here, Mrs Jenkins. Where I come from, the poor things are permanently bent and twisted, the wind blows so fiercely. Instead of hedges, we have dry-stone walls.’

  She looked at me in disbelief, incapable it seemed of imagining anything other than this village.

  ‘Are all the children well?’

  ‘Pretty well, thank you, Parson. I see young Mrs Bulmer is out and about again.’ She pushed a lock of hair, torn from its cap by the wind, out of her eyes.

  ‘Yes, God be praised. And Fanny, her little daughter, is thriving.’

  ‘Maybe it was a blessing, losing the other,’ she said.

  I was so taken aback, I must have stared. ‘You can call a death a blessing?’

  ‘The poor mite was bound to die, they say. And it’s best it should sooner rather than later, isn’t it? And if Jenkins had lived, we’d still have been back down there.’ She gestured with a thick thumb towards Marsh Bottom as I tried to follow her shocking, pragmatic reasoning. ‘Or more likely in the workhouse,’ she conceded. ‘But now we’re here.’ She smiled. ‘And the children are thriving.’ As she often did she repeated the word I had used, as if she wished to establish it was the correct one. I do not think that even if she had had the chance she would ever have found book learning easy, but she would have been a rewarding pupil.

  ‘Are you sure William is well?’ I risked. ‘He seems very quiet, almost unhappy, some days.’

  She attended to another errant lock of hair. ‘Sometimes he shouts out at night.’

  ‘A nightmare? A bad dream?’

  ‘Maybe. And he cries. But he won’t tell me why in the morning. He’s too grown up.’

  I nodded. I would ask Dr Hansard to call in next time he passed by, in the hopes that he could help with a mild sleeping draught, perhaps – though families like this did not have the luxury of physicking themselves.

  Any fears I had of rivalry between Lizzie’s lovers might be put to rest, as I discovered to my infinite embarrassment. Taking a walk along the river one evening, I heard a low but urgent scream. Thinking in my innocence someone was in pain, I hastened on, but even as I did so I registered that it was not that sort of scream. There it came again, and again, with a low grunting as a sort of ground-bass. Two pairs of feet in close juxtaposition told me that I must turn immediately and hasten away. My instincts bade me give no hint of what I had seen; my conscience made me consider making such lewd behaviour a subject for my next sermon. Having at last put what I considered was sufficient distance between myself and the lovers, I paused to recover my breath. I leant on a bridge just like the one on which the late Lord Elham had met his end, and even had enough sense to test that it would take my weight. I forced myself to examine my feelings. Were they truly of disgust, or of envy? Did I not in my heart wish I could bury my longing for Lizzie between the thighs of another?

  If only there were some maiden to whom I could turn my affections. My thoughts turned briefly to the charming Miss Sophie Heath, she with the violet eyes and the extraordinary interest in Burke. Had she found her belted earl, with his ten thousand a year? And had he prostrated himself before her? Did she ever think kindly of the country parson who had stood up with her at her first impromptu dance?

  Behind me I could hear carefree laughter. I did not know the woman, but I knew her swain. It was Matthew. To avoid embarrassment, though I do not know which would have been the greater, mine or his, I strode off, hoping that they were so engrossed with each other they did not see me.

  When I preached the following Sunday, it was not to condemn furtive couplings in a riverside bush, but to urge my listeners to ponder the meaning of true charity. It was as much for my benefit as for my parishioners’.

  Try how I might, I could detect no resemblance between Susan and her lost sister. There was nothing in her voice, her face or her bearing to show the relationship. She would never be anything but short and sturdy, with a determined walk far removed from Lizzie’s ladylike glide. Her voice, now under Mrs Trent’s tutelage losing the strong local burr, was light, where Lizzie’s had been deep. Susan’s eyes were so dark a brown they were almost black, in her brown complexion. My Lizzie – but it was foolish even to think of her more, except to remember her in my prayers.

  One day Hansard caught me looking at Susan. ‘Think of my blue hyacinths turning pink,’ he said, following me into my study and making himself at home in his favourite chair.

  ‘I can only think of a more obvious explanation,’ I said prosaically, sitting in mine. ‘That Mrs Woodman has had two husbands – or at least,’ I added, thinking of the riverbank lovers, ‘two different men to her bed.’

  ‘So worldly-wise, Tobias! You impress me. But the wench is too young to mend your heart anyway. Aye, and Jem’s.’

  ‘He treats her like the sister he would have had her become,’ I said. ‘I ought to send him on his way, Edmund. How in this village can he find another to love?’

  ‘How can you? But I don’t notice your packing your bags. Which reminds me, I hope to have a drawing room soon. How shall I celebrate its arrival?’

  ‘By introducing a mistress to your house? Come, Edmund, all this talk of love, and you and Mrs Beckles have been smelling of April and May ever since I arrived! Nothing would give me more happiness than for me to join you in matrimony.’

  Had I presumed too much on our friendship?

  ‘You are right. I am honoured that Maria and I have an understanding,’ he said repressively.

  ‘Why not wed her? A more respectable widow I never met. Nor a greater lady,’ I added, in perfect truth.

  For reply, he rose from his chair, pacing towards the window and looking out. ‘And you are no bad catch! You still have your teeth; you stride about like a man half your age. True, you cannot expect to set up your nursery, but—’ As he spun on his heel, I saw his face, and stopped abruptly.

  ‘My friend, you presume too far!’

  ‘I am sorry for it. Pray, Edmund, forgive me.’ I stood in contrition, head bent.

  After a silence lasting minutes, it seemed, he clapped me on the arm and pushed me gently back into my chair. He, however, did not sit, but returned to the window and his inspection of the gathering dusk.


  He might have spoken to the glass itself, so little expression was there in his voice. ‘Nothing in the whole world would give me more pleasure than to pledge myself to her in holy matrimony. But I am not at all a good catch, Tobias. How could I confess to her why half my rooms have no hangings? Why I can afford only the bare minimum of servants – and do not think I would let any wife of mine toil over the stove.’

  ‘Some see pride as deadly sin,’ I remarked. ‘Whether it is or not, my friend, do not let it ruin your life and another’s.’ Knowing I had said enough, perhaps more than enough, I turned the conversation. ‘Now, did I tell you that blue tits are already exploring the hole in the tree at the bottom of my garden…?’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was March, and the most beautiful early spring morning. All of my young pupils had been drafted, without so much as a by-your-leave, into the fields, and my lesson was ipso facto cancelled. So, with the delightful feeling that I too was wagging, I donned my hat and boots and set forth on one of the walks I had come to love. My path took me through fields and meadows, all coming to life, under the clear blue skies that had allowed an overnight frost and promised another. Becoming over-warm, I strayed into the woodlands of the Priory estate, for no other reason than that was where my feet took me. Perhaps at the back of my mind was the knowledge that Mrs Beckles would assuredly offer me a welcoming nuncheon whatever time I presented myself, while at home Mrs Trent and Susan had decided that every mote of dust should be driven from my study.

  Sitting on a fallen branch at the edge of the woods, my eye was caught by a bird, flitting to and fro through the woodland to her unseen nesting place. It was as one of the genus Sylviidae, the warblers. I could not tell in the dim light that was all the noble trees permitted whether she was a sedge-warbler or a whitethroat. I resolved to tread softly in the hope of seeing her more closely – perhaps even finding her nest.

  There! I was almost upon her! A whitethroat, surely, with the building material of her nest in her beak – soft, delicate threads, blowing in the breeze as she darted with purpose into a rowan tree. The thread was red.

  Dared I tiptoe closer?

  A rank, sweetish smell permeated the otherwise perfect sylvan scene – no doubt one of the briefly returned Lord Elham’s illicit kills, left to rot and poison the pure air. If I saw it, I would ask Matthew to bury it. I pressed on.

  Now, while the bird was on another foray, I reached my target, her nest. A miracle of workmanship, it was even lined to protect the eggs and then the young. That much I had expected. Now I saw what I feared, that the lining was not grey-green dried grass, but that it was all a soft red. I reached to touch. Alas, yes – it was as soft and fine as hair. It was hair.

  Whence had it come? I reached and plucked a single fibre. Surely I could not fail to recognise that glow, that lustre? Did that mean—?

  It could not, must not be Lizzie’s hair.

  Cursing my morbid imaginings for such a foolish fancy, I stumbled blindly away, only to disturb a vile fevered cloud of flies, buzzing about a sinister mound, the source of the evil, pungent sickly smell. A wash of hair tumbling from it confirmed what in my heart I knew—

  I fell in what I hoped would be eternal oblivion.

  ‘It is indeed she, my poor friend,’ Dr Hansard whispered, pressing a draught of something bitter between my lips. I had swooned again when I had returned with him to this terrible place. Dr Hansard knelt solemnly beside me. I must have run to fetch him, but I could recall nothing of my journey to Langley House, or our return together, on horseback. I must have borrowed his spare mount. Yes, the animals were tethered over there, quietly eating the fresh grass.

  Kneeling, he and I regarded the poor rotting mortal remains, from which with infinite gentleness he dusted the earth that had covered them in the shallowest of graves.

  Intellectually, spiritually, indeed, I apprehended the facts of our last end. Since we had no need of our earthly body, why should it not return, ashes to ashes, dust to dust? I recalled a bishop’s tomb cover, I knew not in which cathedral, with the good man depicted in a state of advanced decay. I had even laughed at Hamlet’s savage quips about Polonius being at supper, where a convocation of worms ate him.

  But nothing had prepared me, even remotely, for the sight of my Lizzie’s half decayed, eyeless face, for the stench of her dear body. I turned again to vomit once more. Dr Hansard took the opportunity to cover her with a sheet he must have brought for the purpose.

  ‘The poor child. I will see that she is prepared for a decent burial. Will you wish to see her again before you read the service? To see how she died?’ He regarded me from beneath his thick brows, and resumed his gentle brushing of the earth away from the shallow grave.

  ‘Of course,’ I whispered, steeling myself for the ordeal. ‘And what better place than in this vernal setting?’

  Waves and waves of nausea again induced me to the weakness of a child, but I forced myself to observe what the good doctor indicated – the long slice that had almost severed poor Lizzie’s head. There was another gash.

  ‘The killer plucked out her womb,’ Hansard breathed, as ashen as myself.

  As justice of the peace, Hansard had another function – to determine the identity of the killer. To this end, he insisted that no one but ourselves should know the details of Lizzie’s fate. He sent me back for his curricle and a device he had used before for conveying sad corpses, which he kept, he said, in his stables. George would know where he kept it, but George was not to be allowed to accompany me. I knew that he wished to keep me occupied, suspected that he wished to keep me away from Lizzie while he made further, unspeakable investigations. Before, when I had helped him look at the place where his late lordship had died, I had blundered about, irritating him. This time I resolved to be as calm and efficient as any man.

  ‘As you can see,’ Hansard said, without preamble, ‘that is an old table top, flat and thin.’ As he spoke, he slid it deftly under the pitiful remains. ‘And these leather straps to fasten the poor child in place.’ He had done all this without removing her temporary shroud. ‘Now, let us lift together, as pall-bearers do. And now, softly, softly, on to the back of the gig: there. You are doing very well, Tobias. I am proud of you.’

  Eyes awash, I essayed a smile. ‘I understand you are doing this to assist in discovering her killer, though I know not how it will.’

  He gave a bark of grim laughter. ‘To be frank, neither do I, as yet. But I promise you most solemnly, my dear young friend, that I will find whoever did this and that justice will be done.’ I think he spoke to Lizzie, rather than to me.

  So solemn was his promise, I found myself adding a stern ‘Amen’.

  The poor body decently stowed in the cool of his cellar, he pressed me to join him for dinner to assist him, as he kindly put it, in his cogitations. Before he would admit us to the house, however, he insisted that we strip and douse ourselves under the pump, lending me clothes some ten years out of fashion to replace those of mine he solemnly burnt.

  As we watched the bonfire from the window of his dressing room, he said, ‘One day we will know how disease comes about and how to prevent it. I know there are far better doctors than I who will insist that such measures are unnecessary, men who will not wash their hands even after handling the dead. But it always seems to me a matter of manners, to oneself and to others. If I crush a stem of lavender between my fingers as I walk down the garden path, I enjoy pressing my fingertips to my nose to remind myself of it later during the day. If I do not enjoy touching and smelling something, why should I inflict the memory of that experience on my senses? And we should extend that courtesy to other people, too – in my case, to my patients. Why touch something pure, like a newborn babe, with hands that last handled an old man’s leg covered with running sores?’ He looked at me sagely. ‘Aye, I know you think me a gabble-monger, but what else should we speak of? And, let me tell you, it is not often I lose a mother to puerperal fever, so perhaps I hav
e right on my side. Now, I think we deserve the warmth of a fire, and a glass of my finest sherry. Come this way. Ah, now, employ that sense of smell again. Is not Cook doing us proud?’

  We drank deeply first of sherry, then, with the two courses set before us, of claret, or I swear no morsel of the excellent rib of beef, with a fricassee of turnips and mutton pie, and an even better cheese could have passed my lips. But when he offered port and brandy, I waved the decanters away. We needed our wits, I said, to be unfuddled.

  ‘We do indeed. Let us go into my study, so I can record any useful ideas either of us may have.’ All the same, as he gestured me before him, he picked up the decanters and carried them through.

  He took his place behind his desk, suddenly removing his wig and hanging it, in a gesture I found endearing, on the back of his chair, and scratching his scalp with vigour.

  ‘Who might have wanted Lizzie dead?’ he demanded, with brutal directness. He donned his spectacles, trimmed a pen and reached for a clean sheet of paper, as if to make note of our ideas. To my knowledge, however, he did not put pen to paper. ‘Her death was no accident,’ he added dryly.

  I tried to match his manner with a short laugh. ‘I would have thought any rivals to her hand would rather the others were dead, rather than the object of their affections.’

  ‘So if you or Jem or Matthew had been found thus you would have pointed the finger at the surviving lover.’

  ‘Assuming I was alive to point the finger,’ I said. I stopped short – how much wine had I drunk? Lying only feet from me was the desecrated corpse of the most beautiful woman it had ever been my privilege to meet, and here I was making jokes.

  As if he read my mind, Edmund said, ‘In my experience, laughter – especially angry, sardonic laughter – is one way of acknowledging that while we grieve, we still have to go on living. Consider Dean Swift’s impotent rage at the plight of the starving Irish peasantry and his response, A Modest Proposal.’ He might have ruminated thus for longer, but visibly straightened his shoulders. ‘Very well, you wish to exonerate both Matthew and Jem.’