Shadow of the Past Page 5

  To my chagrin, although she regularly asked intelligent questions about our progress, Lady Dorothea never evinced any desire to participate. I ascribed that to a ladylike reluctance to appear unbecomingly forward. Similarly, although I was sure Sir Marcus must have resented the spending of every single groat that might have formed part of his inheritance, he and his wife seemed as uninterested in these plans as Miss Southey’s charges were in whatever she was trying to teach them. The boys had returned to Winchester, where I hoped they were benefiting from their education rather more than Lady Honoria and Miss Georgiana, who were far more interested in tittering at secrets than in any mature conversation.

  Today I encountered the young ladies on a country walk. As I first heard distant voices, I had hoped, with a leaping heart, that Lady Dorothea was of their company – she often was, though I have not embarrassed myself by recording the trivial details of conversations quite meaningless unless one’s heart was involved.

  This time I was disappointed.

  To celebrate the pallid sun I had permitted myself a half-holiday and strolled through my favourite tract of woodland, spongy and waterlogged though the paths might be. I might even have been whistling or singing a favourite hymn: there is nothing like the glory of the Almighty’s handiwork to make the heart glad. Back from the woodland echoed – giggles.

  Ceasing my noise immediately I waited until the young ladies came into sight, ready to smile and doff my hat. But they appeared not. I could hear the murmur of Miss Southey’s serious voice, followed by more giggles and veritable screams of laughter – in boys they would have been jeers.

  I would find out the cause.

  I strode towards the source of the sound, at last breaking into a run. I could see no cause for the cruel hilarity, just three young women whose boots were covered with mud and whose skirts and petticoats were six inches deep in the stuff. For once I looked Miss Southey full in the face. There was no doubting the pain I saw there. I must ask dear Lady Chase to discover its cause. And Lady Dorothea could – nay, should – befriend her. A sudden and quite inexplicable wave of anger gushed over me, choking any words in my throat.

  A lesser woman would have raised her eyes heavenwards in an attempt to solicit my sympathy; Miss Southey permitted no change in her countenance whatsoever as she said politely, ‘Good afternoon, Mr Campion.’

  ‘Lady Honoria; Miss Georgiana; Miss Southey,’ I said, doffing my hat. ‘Such an excellent day for a walk.’

  ‘It is indeed,’ Miss Southey agreed, attempting with a sharp glance to quell the giggles that punctuated each utterance. ‘Are you a student of nature?’ Miss Southey prompted me.

  ‘Indeed I am. Some months ago I wrote a paper for the Royal Society on the warbler family. It was, I am pleased to say, so favourably received that I am tempted to embark on another.’

  ‘On the same subject?’ She seemed to be interested.

  There was no doubt that the young ladies were not, but it was she with whom I was conversing, so I pressed on. ‘This time it will be on genus Picidae.’

  ‘Woodpeckers,’ she explained to her charges. ‘We have already heard the drumming of the great spotted woodpecker, have we not, girls? And we also saw—? The bird that laughs, Honoria?’ She explained with scarce subdued asperity, ‘The green woodpecker, Honoria.’

  The very idea of a green woodpecker seemed to destroy the last vestiges of self-control in either girl, and, as much out of pity for their governess as with irritation at their behaviour, I made my farewells and left them.

  I hoped to see no more of them that day.

  I had not, however, walked more than three or four hundred yards when the quiet was shattered once more – this time by true screams. Surely they betokened genuine terror! Abandoning all thoughts of woodpeckers, green or otherwise, I ran as fast as I could to the source of the growing hysteria.

  Although the swollen streams had generally subsided, here, upstream of a little bridge, the waters threatened to burst their banks and had formed in fact a veritable pond. For some reason Miss Southey was flailing around in it, up to her waist in water. Had she fallen? Or been pushed? Surely she could not have waded in voluntarily? Yet only the lower half of her person was wet, which suggested the latter. Then I saw a possible explanation – a bonnet, the sad rusty black bonnet I had last seen on poor Miss Southey’s head, was floating in the middle of the stream. Even such an outrage could surely not have been, however, the reason for such apparent terror, in not just Miss Southey but in the young ladies.

  ‘Miss Southey! What in heaven’s name—?’

  She could do no more than point at the bridge, her arms shaking and her face distorted with panic.

  And then I could see why the stream had formed a pond and why the ladies were in such a quake. The bridge was partially blocked by a man’s body.

  I spoke sharply to the girls. ‘Silence! Run for help!’

  They screamed on. Bending, I scooped a handful of the icy water and dashed it in Honoria’s face. ‘Do as I tell you – this instant! And take your sister too.’ The latter wasted no time waiting for my unchivalrous cure but turned on her heel and sped back towards the Court. I was afraid I would have to slap her sister’s face to achieve the same end, but at last, seeing that I intended to leave her to attend to her soaked and shaking mentor, she abandoned her histrionic display and followed her sister.

  Holding my hand out, I reached for Miss Southey’s icy hand and pulled her towards me, gently but firmly. ‘Avert your gaze, dear lady, from that hideous sight, and watch where you place your feet. Should you miss your step, the water is swift enough to carry you downstream,’ I added.

  At last she comprehended what such movement would entail – the unwilling embrace of the drowned creature by the bridge. She nodded, her mouth still frozen into a silent scream. Gradually I brought her back to dry land.

  As soon as she was safe, I stripped off her pelisse, replacing it with my greatcoat and wrapping my scarf about her thin neck. But what should I do next? If my first thought was for the living, the second must be to prevent the corpse being swept further downstream. I could no more rely on it staying where it was than I could expect an explanation from her charges to be sufficiently coherent to send assistance to us.

  But it seemed that the arrival of two sobbing girls without their governess occasioned sufficient alarm for several outdoor servants to come running towards us, shouting Miss Southey’s name.

  Consigning her to the care of two of them, I sent the third for Dr Hansard, suggesting he bring his fishing gear and a change of clothes, and a fourth to the rectory, with a message for my groom Jem to bring me dry clothes and boots. My first care must have been for the ladies’ welfare, but now I was shaking uncontrollably from the cold. If I was to be of any use to Dr Hansard, I must avoid becoming one of his patients. I added blankets and brandy to the list – all who were to be involved in retrieving that man colder than us all would need something to warm them as the bright day slid swiftly into chill evening.

  Lit by several lanterns, with not even a handkerchief over his mouth, Dr Hansard bent over the waterlogged and stinking corpse now lying on the bridge that had impeded its progress. ‘My suspicion would be that this poor man was caught in the rain, and, losing his way, fell into the torrent. On the other hand, you will note some decay of his flesh. Surely that must have occurred before immersion.’ He cocked his head in doubt. ‘I will ask my colleague Dr Toone to assist me when I examine him.’

  Jem nodded approvingly. ‘He seems to be able to read the dead like others read books or maps.’

  Hansard smiled. Some villagers regarded Toone’s ability with suspicion, others with downright hostility. Jem, however, with an enthusiasm I was quite unable to share, regularly observed the two doctors’ post-mortem examination of those patients whom Hansard’s skills had been unable to save.

  Jem peered more closely at the ravaged visage. ‘I’d say he’s a stranger to the area,’ he observed.

&nbs
p; He earned a smile. I could only look puzzled. ‘And for confirmation look at his boots, worn right down,’ Hansard told me. ‘Now,’ he continued, straightening, ‘let us have this fellow carried to my cellar so that I may have a closer look at him.’ He turned to the waiting men. ‘Could you take that gate off its hinges so we may lay him on it?’

  Jem was still peering at the body. ‘Do you have any hope of identifying him? There may be a grieving family waiting for him to return, hoping for the best, but fearing the worst.’

  ‘How can Hansard identify…that?’ I pointed to the ghastly facial remains.

  ‘I do not say I can, but as Jem says I must make the attempt. For one thing, I have that unusual hair to go on.’

  I nodded. The man’s hair was more than ordinarily dark and coarse, slightly kinked. ‘It is unusual, is it not?’

  ‘Indeed, the only time I have seen any like this it was on the – mercifully living – head of a black servant of a Bristol friend of mine. Servant! I should say slave – but I know you share my views on the iniquitous Trade. Now, what else can the dead man say?’

  ‘He was not a wealthy man,’ Jem said. ‘It is not just his boots that have worn through – the coat is threadbare.’

  Hansard nodded. ‘Turn back the collar – yes, where it is not so worn it tells us the cloth was good.’

  ‘So it was the garment of a gentleman,’ Jem agreed. ‘But old-fashioned, at that.’

  ‘Indeed it is so dirty, so out at elbows, that I suspect it was discarded years ago and came at least second hand into this man’s wardrobe.’ He straightened and looked at me. ‘You look disappointed.’

  ‘I know not whether to be disappointed or relieved. Lady Chase still awaits the return of her son, you will recall, and the hope must be that any stranger arriving unannounced in the village might be that young man.’

  ‘Well, Viscount Wombourn was dark, as I recall. Take a twig and push back what remains of his lips.’

  Revolted but intrigued, I did as I was told. The teeth I revealed were surprisingly strong and even.

  ‘Many a rich man would envy them,’ Jem said. ‘They’re well nigh perfect.’

  Dr Hansard sighed. ‘I recall young Wombourn falling off his horse at the last hunt before he joined the army. He broke no bones, but chipped a front tooth, not badly enough to turn the tooth black, but enough for me to tell you that this is not he.’

  ‘Thank God,’ I said fervently.

  ‘Amen. So I can please her ladyship and irritate that pipsqueak Sir Marcus,’ he said, with a grim smile. ‘A court case to oust her ladyship from the Court and remove her to the Dower House, indeed! What does your Lady Dorothea think of the idea?’

  ‘She is not my Lady Dorothea and we have not discussed the matter.’

  Jem shot a reproving glance at me. As usual, he was right. Edmund was an old friend and I should not have been so curt. ‘In fact,’ I added by way of an apology, ‘she is always so closely chaperoned it is impossible to exchange more than commonplaces – should she want to.’

  ‘Well, I fear that if he means to embark on what will no doubt prove a drainingly expensive court case, he will need his sister to make a profitable match, with a very interesting settlement – from what my London friends tell me he has precious little in his own coffers. More than this poor man, perhaps,’ he conceded, returning to his task. ‘Perhaps he sat down to rest and the cold finished him and then the waters rose and carried him off.’

  ‘The cold?’ I was unexpectedly relieved. ‘No human had a hand in this?’

  ‘I can see no obvious injury, but that is not to say there was none.’

  ‘I was thinking,’ I confessed, ‘of the moan that so upset me – the one I feared was a ghostly rebuke. In fact,’ I mused, ‘Lady Bramhall asked me on one occasion if the churchyard was haunted – perhaps she heard the same sound.’

  He peered at me over his spectacles. ‘So another heard it?’

  I hung my head. ‘Indeed. I would have instituted a search, there and then, but for the weather.’ The blame must be mine, not Simon’s.

  ‘Ten to one you would have found no more than a corpse and had half the village down with the influenza,’ Hansard said mildly, but I felt Jem’s reproachful eyes upon me. ‘When did Lady Bramhall mention the haunting?’

  ‘One day at the church. And Sir Marcus certainly did not like such talk.’

  He mocked me gently. ‘And since then your attachment to Lady Dorothea drove it out of your head?’

  ‘Temporarily. But the floods and my poor flock… Truly, Edmund, I have had other things to think of than the product of what I believed was my fevered imagination.’

  ‘It may be that that groan was the product of a dying man, Toby – have you thought of that?’ Jem asked bluntly.

  I nodded.

  Hansard intervened kindly. ‘The rain was torrential, like the monsoons I experienced in India. It is most unlikely he would have been found alive.’

  ‘But why should he moan so loudly?’ I asked.

  ‘I suspect that your memory has amplified the sound. Enough of speculation. Now, what evidence do we have here?’ Then he bent again to look at the boots. To my horror, he eased one off. I turned lest I see a sight I could not bear.

  ‘See! The poor man had stuffed this paper into it to keep out the cold and wet,’ Hansard said, prising open the folds. But the paper was sodden, and he desisted. He passed it to me. ‘No, don’t drop it, man! Take care of it, if you please. That is so far our only clue as to where he came from and when he set out. The date, man, and the place the journal was printed!’ He raised his eyes heavenwards in exasperation.

  Holding it at arm’s length, I wrapped the soaking wad in my handkerchief. ‘Now what do we do?’

  ‘I’ll go down to the Court to chivvy a couple of barrowloads of ice out of old Furnival,’ Jem declared, implementing what was becoming quite a well-rehearsed system. ‘I know he’ll say the icehouse is getting low, but the poorer quality stuff that the cook would turn her nose up at will do to preserve our new friend.’

  ‘Excellent. I would certainly rather continue my examination at table height. Neither my knees nor my back will tolerate this position for long. Dear me, my winter rheumatism already!’ Wiping his hands on the greensward, he pushed himself upright. ‘We will meet back at Langley Park, Jem.’

  * * *

  Unlike Jem, I could not bear to act as my friend’s acolyte as he performed his examination of the poor stranger. Mrs Hansard, apprised of her husband’s latest occupation, offered me wine, but I felt honour bound to refuse it. Moreton Hall must by now be abuzz with rumour, and Lady Chase ought to receive the news from me in person.

  Mrs Hansard nodded. ‘And so she shall. But not until you have drunk some of my special punch. Heavens, Tobias, you have been chilled to the bone, and even now your hands are like ice. When you are warm, I will accompany you to the Court. Her ladyship, not knowing whether to hope or despair, may want a little female companionship that a poor honey like Lady Bramhall cannot supply.’

  ‘Miss Southey, too, may need attention,’ I added.

  ‘I already have some of Edmund’s best composing drops for the poor girl,’ she said.

  Possibly not entirely to my surprise, Mrs Hansard had even insisted that we were provided with hot bricks for our short journey in their gig down to the Court. George, their groom, knew better than to remark on it, but I was shamefully relieved when she told him that she feared she was starting a putrid throat and that Dr Hansard had warned her against taking cold.

  Though it must have been the hour when her ladyship and the rest of the family were dressing for dinner, we were shown directly up to Lady Chase’s boudoir. She appeared a few moments later, saying something over her shoulder to her no doubt anxious abigail.

  She was pale, and far from composed. ‘I have been expecting you this hour. The body in the stream—?’

  ‘Was not that of your son, your Ladyship. Dr Hansard is certain of that. The front t
ooth was not chipped.’

  ‘Of course. Dr Hansard attended him after his hunting accident. Thank God!’

  ‘Amen.’ I should have told her that the situation she was in was neither better nor worse than before, but she had swung from agony of mind to blessed relief in a heart beat.

  Mrs Hansard produced some drops from her reticule. ‘My husband thought you might need these, your Ladyship.’

  Lady Chase shook her head emphatically. ‘I do not need physicking – though, pray, thank Dr Hansard for his kind thoughts. Where is he, by the way, that you, however welcome, are his representative?’

  ‘He is examining the poor man’s body. He has sent for a learned colleague, Dr Toone, to assist him. In the meantime, he relies on Tobias’s groom Jem. As you know, Jem is a most unusual young man, and very capable.’

  ‘Of course. One wonders what might have become of him had he been a gentleman.’

  Bowing, I said firmly, ‘There is no greater gentleman in nature than Jem.’

  ‘Forgive me. I expressed myself ill. I should have said, had he been born a gentleman, with all the advantages of education that that would have brought.’

  ‘Indeed you are right. He took to reading and writing like a duck to water, your Ladyship – it is my constant regret that he did not have the benefit of my masters at Eton,’ I added. ‘But I must turn to the next object of Dr Hansard’s care, poor Miss Southey. She has had a most terrible experience.’

  ‘And may well be in need of Dr Hansard’s excellent drops,’ her ladyship said with her charming smile, ringing for a maid to conduct us into the servants’ quarters.

  It seemed that my request to Mrs Sandys to improve Miss Southey’s lot had fallen on deaf ears. She was still housed in the nursery wing, the coldest part of the house, rather than in what I hoped were the warmer quarters of the upper servants.

  ‘The poor girl should not be in accommodation as paltry as this,’ Mrs Hansard exclaimed, huddling more deeply into her pelisse as we trod the uncarpeted and unheated corridors. ‘If Miss Southey is unwell, Tobias, it will be as much as a result of her treatment here as of her afternoon’s soaking.’