Silent in the Sanctuary (45 page)

Just then, a commotion arose from the hall. Servants yelling, dogs barking and, above it all, the high, penetrating voice of Aunt Dorcas. Before we could rise, the door was thrown back and Aunt Dorcas entered, flanked by two men. All three of them were garbed in Gypsy clothes, from the gold coins glittering at their belts to the scarves tied around their heads. Aunt Dorcas, who had stated loudly and with vigour her hatred of the race, linked her arms with those of her companions and raised her chin, her Roma finery clinking as she tossed her head and addressed Father.

“March! Bring food for my friends and wine as well. I am come home!”

*

In fact, the Gypsies did not sit down to table with us. In spite of Aunt Dorcas’ insistence and Father’s courteous invitation, they demurred, but agreed to take with them a hamper of hastily packed delicacies. Portia herded Aunt Dorcas upstairs for a bath and a change of clothes while the rest of us finished our meal in stunned silence. As soon as dessert was cleared I excused myself and made my way to Aunt Dorcas’ room. I knocked and waited until she called for me to enter.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Good. I rather thought it was that fool Portia again. Can you believe she’s put me to bed? I am no invalid, but she was most resolute and unnaturally strong for so slight a woman.”

I smiled and closed the door behind me. The room was a comfortable one, small, so the heat from the fireplace warmed it through. It was done in pinks and reds, with a cheerful view past the gardens to the village of Blessingstoke in the distance. The raspberry taffeta draperies were drawn now, but had they been open, she might have been just able to make out the campfires of her new friends.

But she had shed her Gypsy glamoury and was once more the quarrelsome old lady of my youth. Her nightdress, snugly buttoned at the throat, was edged in tasteful ruffles of lace to match the cap set tidily on her head. She looked up to see me eyeing it and snorted.

“I look like a muffin, do not deny it.” I motioned for her to sit forward and I plumped a few of her pillows, smoothing the bedclothes when I was done.

“Do not fuss, Julia. Sit there and talk with me, but do not fuss.”

I sat obediently, taking the chair she had indicated. It was a pretty thing, but the seat was hard and slippery.

“And do not fidget,” she scolded. “I do not trust a fidgeter.”

We sat for some minutes in silence. I looked about the room, memorising the paintings and mentally moving the shepherdess from the landscape into the still life of apples and cheese.

“Julia, do not furrow your brow like that. It will give wrinkles and it makes you look simple.”

I widened my eyes. “I am sorry, Aunt Dorcas. Would you like for me to read to you?”

I reached for a book on the night table, but she flapped an irritable hand at me, shooing me away.

“I am in no mood for reading,” she said.

“Then why don’t you tell me about your adventures?” I coaxed. “I think you enjoyed yourself whilst you were away.”

She fixed me with a cold stare, her bosom quivering with indignation. “I was in fear for my life, and you think I enjoyed myself?”

I blinked at her. “In fear of your life? From whom?”

Aunt Dorcas clamped her lips shut and shook her head. “I must say no more,” she murmured, her lips still tightly closed.

I shrugged. “Very well. I will leave you then. Good night,” I said, rising.

“It was that boy, Ludlow,” she said, and I turned back, assuming my chair once more.

“The murderer? Yes, it was. He confessed, more than once, in fact.”

She took the edge of the sheet in her fingers, worrying the lace like prayer beads. “He did not work alone,” she said, more to herself than to me. “It was her.”

I froze in my chair, uncertain of how to proceed. She was entirely correct, a woman had been involved. But Ludlow had not chosen to expose Lucy, and the girl was on her way to be married to a man who would make her life agony. Most would say justice had already been satisfied.

“You need not confirm it,” she said, nodding. “Your face is an eloquent one, Julia. It was always thus, even as a child.”

“Very well,” I admitted. “He did say he murdered Snow because of a woman. Snow was blackmailing her for some wrong-doing she had committed in her youth.”

Aunt Dorcas gave a little groan and covered her mouth.

I half-rose from my chair. “Aunt Dorcas, are you quite all right? Shall I ring for a maid?”

She shook her head, almost violently. “No, sit. And what we speak of in this room tonight must never be repeated,” she told me, fixing me with those dark toadlike eyes. “Swear it.”

“I swear.”

She relaxed a little then, but resumed her twisting of the lace. I heard a tiny rip and made a note to tell Portia to have it mended. Poor Aunt Hermia. Yet another sheet damaged during this house party. Between the guests and the cats there would be nothing left to put on the beds.

“Did he tell you why she was being blackmailed?”

“No. He simply said it was a youthful peccadillo.”

To my astonishment, she laughed. Not the tiny giggles she often affected, but great, heaving, gulping sobs of laughter that frightened me. After a moment the laughter turned to coughing and I was forced to intervene.

“Thank you,” she said finally, recovering herself. “But it was not necessary to hit me so forcefully. I think you have bruised my back.”

She gave me a reproachful look as I resumed my chair again. I said nothing and she paused, her expression faraway and touched with sorrow.

“This was no youthful peccadillo,” she said finally. “Emma was being blackmailed because she murdered my sister.”

I stared at her, gripping the arms of the chair so tightly I could not feel my hands. “No, it was Lucy he killed for, Lucy who was being blackmailed by Mr. Snow.”

Aunt Dorcas looked at me pityingly. “Are you so certain?”

I rose and paced the room, putting the pieces together again. I went over every word of the conversation with Ludlow and realised with a cold shudder that he had not spoken Lucy’s name. I had assumed it, but what if he had meant Emma? And then she came to me in tears…those had been his words, but he had never said a name. And when I asked him about the discovery of Lucy with the bloody candelabrum in her hand, he had referred to her quite clearly as Miss Lucy.

“Sit down, you make me quite dizzy,” Aunt Dorcas ordered. I did, marvelling at the wickedness. Snow was blackmailing Emma, and out of his chivalry and his envy, Ludlow had killed the man for her. Then, when her sister had happened on the scene, he had succumbed to the temptation to blame Lucy, if only for a little while, in hopes of breaking her engagement to Sir Cedric. And all the while, Emma had stood silently by, letting Lucy twist in the wind for her villainy.

And yet, I realised with a shudder, Lucy must have known. Perhaps she had not been able to look squarely at the truth, but somewhere, deep within, she must have known. Whether she saw her sister steal out of the chapel when the deed was done, or whether she merely feared Emma’s involvement, her first instinct had been to call blame down upon herself, to shield the sister who had been a mother to her during their long years of poverty and despair. No one would ever know what they spoke of during those dreary, cold hours in the chapel, or huddled in the bed behind locked doors after the attack upon them. Or whether they spoke of it now. But the murder of Lucian Snow would lie between them for the rest of their days, I was certain of it.

I felt suddenly queasy. “If you mean to be sick, do it elsewhere,” Aunt Dorcas said sternly. I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly.

“I will not be sick. But I am forced to believe you. Ludlow said there was a lady involved, but he never spoke her name. I assumed it was Lucy.”

Aunt Dorcas gave a little snort. “Lucy would not say boo to a goose. Emma would fatten the goose, invite it to tea and slice out its liver for pâté.”

The image was not a pretty one. “What did you mean about your sister?”

Her lips worked furiously for a moment, and I realised she was fighting back tears. When she spoke, the words came fast and harsh. “India. Gertrude took Emma out to find a husband.” Her thin lips curled into a sneer. “She found something else. A native man she wanted to marry, far above her station in India. His family were connected to the nazim. Gertie tried to tell her the man would never marry her, but she would not hear anything against him. Finally, it came out that Emma was pregnant by him. He offered her money, but nothing more. Can you imagine that? Offering her money like a common whore? And that’s all she was, giving herself away like that.”

I maintained a tactful silence. Emma might have chosen her lover unwisely, but taking a solitary lover hardly made her a whore.

“Gertie told her they were leaving India. Emma cried and screamed and threw such a fit she miscarried, thank God. Gertie tried to explain the child was malformed, she had seen it herself, but Emma never believed her. She thought Gertie had caused it somehow. She blamed her for the loss of her lover and her child. Gertie hushed it all up the best she could, but there were still many who knew. It was impossible to hide it, the tantrums, the dead baby. Your Mr. Snow was one of them. He served in India. And Emma recognised him, I saw it in her face the first night she met him here in the Abbey. I watched him watching her. It took him the better part of the evening to place her, but he finally did. There was an air of triumph about him, and Emma looked sick as a cat. She knew he remembered her from India and that he knew about the baby. Poor Gertie. She tried so hard to keep it all quiet, to protect Emma. In the end, she did the only thing she could. She packed Emma up and boarded the next ship home.”

Aunt Dorcas looked away then, her lips working even faster now. “Gertie never saw England again. She died on board that ship and they buried her at sea. Word got back to her friends in India, and there was talk. Not openly, no one would dare. But there was speculation. It was whispered Emma had exacted her revenge.”

I nodded slowly. “I remember now. Not about Emma, but about Aunt Gertie dying during a sea voyage. I had just come out into society and someone asked me at a ball if the lady buried at sea was a relation of mine. The newspapers mentioned it.”

“Emma told the captain and the ship’s doctor it was her heart,” Aunt Dorcas said bitterly, “but Gertie was never sick a day in her life. She was the strongest of us all. No, that girl poisoned her, I know it, though it can never be proved. She saw to that. A body buried at sea cannot be examined. She got right away with murder. And when there was murder done in this house, I knew her handiwork for what it was. And I knew I should be next.”

For the first time I saw her for the frightened old woman she was. “And you left that night? With Brisbane?”

She nodded. “The maid who brought my hot milk that night told me what had happened. I knew it was Emma, and that I had to get right away. We had never spoken of what happened to Gertie, but once or twice in the years since I have seen her eyes on me, thinking, as if she wondered what I knew. If she thought I believed her guilty of Gertie’s death, she would not have hesitated to put me out of the way, I know it.”

I thought of Emma, so solicitous of Aunt Dorcas, wanting to know if there was any news of her whereabouts. My stomach ached to think of it.

“What did you tell Brisbane?”

She shrugged. “Nothing of substance. I told him I would not stay in a house where murder had been done, and that I must speak with the Gypsies, for the spirits would reveal all to them. I told him I knew of a passageway that would lead to the churchyard.”

I shook my head. “I cannot believe he would take you there on so flimsy a pretext.”

“It was not flimsy,” she said stoutly. “It was the truth, at least part of it. I could not tell him more. He is not family. I have spent the better part of a dozen years crushing that scandal. Do you think I was going to resurrect it with my own hands? I had no proof, only my suspicions, and you know as well as I, my dear, the ramblings of an old lady carry little weight. What would have happened if I had pointed the finger at her? Eh? The lot of you would have dismissed me—mad old Aunt Dorcas is at her tricks again.”

I remembered Emma then, slyly insinuating about Aunt Dorcas and her “odd turns”, all the while watering her villainy with crocodile tears. It was diabolical.

“I prefer to think we would have listened,” I told Aunt Dorcas.

“And you might have. But I was not about to gamble my life on it.”

We fell silent then, both of us stubbornly certain we were right. But as I thought on it, I realised how brave she was. She had taken matters into her own hands when she felt threatened, and had gone to live among the Gypsies, an intrepid thing indeed at her age.

I smiled at her. “How did you like the Gypsy camp?”

She pulled a face. “No proper sanitation, and do not even ask me about the food,” she complained. But even as she spoke I saw the corners of her mouth turn up a little. It had been the adventure of a lifetime, I would wager, and the memories would warm her for a long time to come.

I rose then and dropped a kiss to her cap. She scrubbed at her cheek and scowled at me. “I do not like displays of emotion, Julia. It comes from having all these Italians in the house. I feel a headache coming on. Go and fetch me my lavender salts.”

She gestured toward her travelling case, a kidskin affair, fitted with a dozen bottles, all stoppered tightly and labelled with her spindly script. I reached for the lavender, surprised to find it empty. I turned it over and read the label. And as soon as I saw the word lettered there, I knew what she had done. I slipped the bottle into my pocket, then reached for the one slotted in the next compartment.

“Here are your salts,” I told her evenly. She took them and began to sniff, waving a handkerchief in front of her face to waft the fumes to her nose.

I drew the other bottle out of my pocket. “And you will want to restore your supply of laudanum. The bottle is quite empty. You ought to be careful with such things, you know. That much laudanum could kill a person.”