A Death at Fountains Abbey (31 page)

I had grave doubts upon that score. And what a convenient injury, that had left his right hand free for sketching, and every other bone in his body unbroken and unbruised. I had watched him galloping down the drive this morning. Surely he would be more cautious if his wrist and arm were broken? My guess was that he had bound up his arm to make himself appear weak, just as he had hidden his true character behind his dull conversation. Which suggested he had always planned to commit violence, long before he arrived at Fountains Hall.

But I couldn’t prove this, and such speculation would only irritate Aislabie further. ‘We don’t need proof. The three stags came from Baldersby Park. Mr Hallow investigated the matter on my behalf. I have not been
entirely
indolent,’ I said, noting Aislabie’s surprise. ‘Forster’s accomplice collected the stags from the keeper at Baldersby. Metcalfe is riding there now to secure a decent description. Once we have the fellow, we can persuade him to confess. A pistol to the head should do it.’

‘Good,’ Aislabie nodded, pleased with this at least.

‘I’m sure you will be proved wrong,’ Mrs Fairwood said, rising from her chair. ‘But either way, I cannot see why this should delay my departure any longer. This has nothing to do with me.’

‘I must congratulate you, madam,’ I said.

This surprised her enough to make her turn, rustling in her grey silk gown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘On your engagement to Mr Forster.’

It took her a moment to suppress her shock. Then she clapped her hands together, as if it were a tremendous joke. ‘Preposterous!’

‘What is this?’ Aislabie demanded. ‘You are engaged to the fellow?’

‘Of course not. I have no intention of marrying anyone. Where on earth did you hear such foolish nonsense?’

‘From Mr Forster himself.’

She fluttered a hand to her chest. ‘Then he has lost all reason. The very notion is repulsive.’

‘A strong word for an
honest gentleman
,’ Lady Judith observed, drily. ‘Though I grant you he is not the most entertaining of supper guests . . .’

‘We are not engaged,’ Mrs Fairwood snapped. Had she been a child, she would have stamped her foot. ‘Oh, this is not to be endured.’ She closed her gloved hands about her throat as if she were suffocating. ‘This place will kill me, do you not understand?’

I had placed myself at the door. Lady Judith remained at the terrace windows. ‘You are in no danger here,’ I said, ‘not if you confess your part in this. You were coerced, were you not? You love him – but you are frightened of him, too.’ She had told me the same, here in this room two days ago.
I am so afraid of him
. Love and fear – how often they were found together in one heart.

‘Lizzie,’ Aislabie exclaimed in concern. ‘My poor child. Come here.’

She drew back. ‘Leave me
be.
I am not yours to command. I will not be dictated to, and trapped. I will
not
.’ She was breathing heavily in great gulps, chest rising and falling hard. ‘I must leave. Why will you not let me leave?’

‘Do you like wallflowers, Mrs Fairwood?’ I asked.

She laughed frantically, and covered her face with her hands. ‘
Do you like wallflowers
,’ she mimicked. ‘Heaven spare me.’

‘I notice that you keep a vase in your room.’

She dropped her hands. ‘Yes, Mr Hawkins. I keep a vase of wallflowers in my room. I suppose you would see me hanged for it?’

‘Did you pick them yourself?’

Her brow crinkled as she sensed a trap. ‘I suppose I must have done.’

‘Where did you find them?’

A long, careful pause. ‘Somewhere out in the gardens.’ She began to pace the room, fingers brushing along the spines of the books, groping for comfort.

Lady Judith glanced at her husband, and then at me. ‘There are no wallflowers at Studley,’ she said, quietly.

Aislabie put down his glass of brandy. ‘They were your mother’s favourite flowers, Lizzie. Perhaps that’s why you are so fond of them. I cannot bear to plant them in the gardens. They remind me of her too much, even now.’

I hadn’t realised this was the reason, but I had
noticed that there were no wallflowers on the estate. I had only seen them once, since my arrival from Ripon – great patches of them, sprouting from the crumbling walls of a ruined monastery. ‘They came from Fountains Abbey, did they not?’

Mrs Fairwood plucked a book from a shelf and began to flick through its pages. ‘Oh, very well,’ she said, as if it were of no consequence. ‘Mr Forster gave them to me as a gift. They grow high upon the walls of my own garden, the same golden orange. I suppose I must have mentioned it to him in passing, and he was kind enough to bring some on his next visit. Is this your grave accusation, sir? Have I ruined my reputation by accepting flowers from a gentleman? Must I marry him now, or be shunned for ever by society?’ She slotted the book back on to the shelf. ‘Do
you
lecture
me
on dishonour, Mr Hawkins?’

‘And when did he bring you the flowers?’ I asked, mildly.

Mrs Fairwood opened her mouth, then closed it again, teeth biting her lip. Caught.

I turned to the Aislabies. ‘Did you see Mr Forster bringing flowers to your home in the past few days? Did he mention them to you? If we asked the servants, would they remember him riding up to the house with a bunch of bright orange wallflowers in his fist?’ I mimed one arm, caught in its sling, the other proffering a bunch of flowers.

Mrs Fairwood continued her tour of the library, the way an animal might test the bars of its cage. Her face was almost as grey as her gown. ‘Wallflowers,’ she muttered.

One can be undone by such small things.

‘I have some sympathy for you, madam,’ I said, following her with my eyes as she paced the room. ‘You are trapped, and you are afraid. But Mr Sneaton has been murdered, and Sam . . .’ I paused, unable to finish that thought. ‘You must be honest with me. This must
stop
. You cannot protect him any longer.’

‘Hold!’ Aislabie exclaimed. ‘Hold! What is this? You accuse them of conspiring together against me? Francis Forster
and my own daughter
?’

‘You were seen,’ I said, addressing my words to Mrs Fairwood. ‘Meeting in secret, at night.’

‘Impossible!’ she cried, then gasped at her mistake. ‘We never met,’ she added hurriedly.

‘Metcalfe saw you.’

She leaned her back against the shelves. She looked as if she would like to fling every book in the library at me. ‘Metcalfe is mad. And you are a scoundrel. I have nothing more to say.’

‘Very well.’ I turned to Mr Aislabie. ‘I would ask that you and your wife stay here with Mrs Fairwood until Metcalfe returns. If we release her, she might run and warn her lover.’

Mrs Fairwood curled her lip, disgusted.

‘I will not stand guard over my daughter as if she were some low villain!’ Aislabie protested. But for all his indignation, I saw uncertainty in his eyes. He was standing upon the precipice and refusing to look down. All his dreams, all his hopes, were about to be destroyed.

Which had been the plan all along, of course.

‘Metcalfe will return soon,’ I said. ‘I ask only that you all wait here, together – and speak with no one else. Now – I must visit my ward. Pray excuse me.’ I bowed.

‘Of course,’ Lady Judith said, crossing the room to take my hand. ‘We are grateful to you, sir.’ She gave her husband a sharp glance.

‘I refuse to think ill of Forster,’ Aislabie grumbled. ‘You may have convinced my wife, but you have not convinced me.’

I had reached the door of the library when Mrs Fairwood called out to me. ‘Mr Hawkins. I would speak with you a moment. In private.’

‘As you wish.’

We stood in the narrow passageway and considered each other for a moment without speaking.

‘How
clever
you are,’ she said, with some venom. ‘I should never have guessed.’

‘What hold does Forster have upon you, madam? Are you truly in love with him?’

Her nostrils flared at such an abhorrent notion.

‘You demanded this audience,’ I said, gesturing about the empty corridor. ‘What do you wish to say to me?’

She gave a bitter smile. ‘I was on my way home. Do you understand? I was on my way home and you prevented me from leaving. So remember this.’ She raised herself on tiptoes so she might reach my ear. ‘You have killed me, Mr Hawkins. You have killed me.’

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Tom no, I’m sorry, it is an interesting thought, but really you are quite wrong, there is no engagement. Come with me.’

I had almost collided with Kitty in the tattered corridors of the east wing. She had been in a desperate hurry to find me – bare-legged, no cap – snatching my hand and pulling me towards our chamber at a terrific pace. I had tried to explain about Forster and Mrs Fairwood – their secret love and plans for marriage – and received the critique relayed above. I should add that when Kitty said she found something
interesting
, she meant
ridiculous
, in the main.

There was no time to tell her about the rest of my ideas: about Forster’s clothes, his years away from England, not even that Metcalfe had set out for Baldersby. We were at the ruined door of our chamber before I’d even finished complaining about being called muddleheaded.

Sam lay under a pile of blankets. His eyes were bruised and swollen from his beating the day before. Strange to think that the man who’d beaten him now lay dead. I feared Sam might soon join him.

‘Forster is responsible for this, Kitty. I am sure of it.’

‘As am I.’ She had her back to me, shuffling through a sheaf of papers on the desk. The portraits of Mr Aislabie’s lost brothers lay propped against the wall on either side of the hearth – George the debauched rake, and Mallory, the doomed melancholic.

‘You agree? Then why am I
muddleheaded
? He confessed to Metcalfe that he was engaged.’

‘Of course. Better that than admit the truth. I mean
really
, does Mrs Fairwood strike you as a woman swept away by passion?’

‘She said the idea was repulsive.’

‘So.’ Kitty clapped her hands. ‘May I tell you what I have discovered?
All upon my own here
,
abandoned for hours
?’

I sat down upon the bed. ‘I’m not convinced it has been hours, Kitty . . .’

‘I suppose not.’ She was standing by the casement window, sunlight filtering through the branches of the oak tree. Little strands of her hair glowed bright as hot metal. ‘And in truth, Sam helped.’

‘He woke again?’

‘Briefly. I’m not sure he knew where he was. He kept whispering “brother” – over and over. I thought at first that he was calling for you. But then I thought, Sam isn’t prone to bouts of sentiment, is he? So I tried to rouse him again, but he had drifted away. He is very ill, Tom. I fear . . . Even if he recovers, I am not sure he will be the same.’

I touched Sam’s hand, refusing to understand the meaning behind her words. He would wake, and he would be Sam again.

‘Do you remember what he said earlier, about a picture? Well, then I had a perfectly
devious
idea about those portraits of Aislabie’s brothers.’ She gestured to the paintings by the hearth. ‘I stared at them for
ages
, trying to solve the mystery.’ She snatched up one of the paintings. ‘Could poor Mallory have feigned his death all those years ago, only to return to claim his inheritance?’ She lifted the second painting of the indolent, rakish George. ‘What if wicked brother George sired a bastard son, now grown and seeking a
terrible revenge
upon the family? Or a bastard
daughter
, in the shape of Mrs Fairwood? I even tore off the backing paper to see if anything was hidden beneath.’

‘And was there?’

‘No.’ She rested the paintings back against the wall and crossed to the bed, settling upon the other side of Sam. ‘So I confess I was a trifle frustrated after that, and really Tom, I don’t want to make a
fuss
about it, but I was a
little
cross with you for wandering off again, when I thought we had agreed that we are much better together, especially where
thinking
is concerned?’

I smiled at her, because she wasn’t truly cross, and she was also right. We were much better together. I waved at Sam’s sketches, strewn across the bed. ‘Sam meant
his own
pictures.’

‘He did! And if you consider how much Sam hates talking, and how we spend half our lives filling in the missing words for ourselves, then
brother picture
is practically an essay.’ She sifted through the pictures, handing one to me. The borders were decorated with detailed sketches of pistols and swords from the great hall. A magnificent pair of antlers stretched along the bottom of the page, points sharp as daggers. The images intertwined like the margins of an illuminated manuscript: a dense thicket of deathly instruments, rendered with precision.