The Claresby Collection: Twelve Mysteries (13 page)

Before she and Rupert had gone out for the evening, Laura had placed the seventeenth century diary on the walnut desk, and it was from there that she picked it up after turning on a small bedside lamp which shed a dim light into the room. Laura changed into her night clothes, clambered into the big bed and opened up the book again. Despite her interest she found that she was tired and her eyelids already drooping. She flicked through a few pages and a couple of entries caught her eye. The first told her only that the family at Claresby Manor had been drinking syllabub – a sweet wine with cream. The second, more interestingly, detailed Eleanor’s bitter regrets about the fact that she had not been able to provide a child for her husband: “Why has God, in his wisdom, not so blessed us?” Eleanor questioned. More regretfully still, she spoke of how she felt that her barrenness had caused her husband’s affection for her to fade. Thus it was that Laura fell asleep again, the diary slipping from her hand, a vision of Eleanor’s sad face in her mind along with her sad regrets about the child she never had.

Laura’s dream on her second night in the dowager’s room differed from her previous dreams in that she was no longer victim or observer: in this dream she was Eleanor Mortimer. It was a summer’s morning, a light mist still clinging to the ground on the north side of the house as Eleanor looked out of her bedroom window, but the clear blue of the sky and heat of the sun promising a beautiful day ahead. None of this touched Eleanor at all: her heart was bleak and cold and bitter. It was months now since her husband had come to her bedroom. Indeed, the removal of her to this room on the north of the house was an insult in itself. He had pleaded the need for the large room which had been hers for the use of his sister and her husband when they visited, but they had long since departed, and she was still banished here. They ate their meals together and he would pass a few instructions to her on the running of the house, but his eyes never lifted from his plate and cup to meet her own. When visitors came, she was no longer summoned from her room to meet them. She knew it was not uncommon for men to lose interest in their wives after a decade or more of marriage, but when she recalled how he had adored her in their first years together, and how the hope of sharing the joys of raising a family had filled their lives with a bright glow of expectation, she still felt tears start in her eyes. Eleanor dashed these tears away impatiently. She would cry no more. She would harden her heart.

Eleanor could hear sounds of the house beginning to stir. She was no longer central to the life of the house, but the day when her husband started to lock the door to her room had not yet come, so Eleanor crept down the corridor in softly shod feet. A moment standing by her husband’s door brought to her ears the sound she both expected and feared – the sound of a woman’s happy laughter and her husband’s voice, inaudible, but with the low, caressing tone he had once used when speaking to her. There was silence for a while, and Eleanor placed herself behind the half closed door of the room opposite. One of the servants went past but did not see her. Eleanor waited, silent as a statute. It was another half an hour before the door to her husband’s room opened. Eleanor, peering through the crack between door and door frame, saw a swish of blonde hair and the sweep of a grey dress. She knew, without seeing the face, that this was Flossie, one of the kitchen girls.

For weeks Eleanor withdrew into herself, fired only by an obsessive need to watch for the times that her husband, Geoffrey, spent with Flossie. She might have been able to accept the fact that he was satisfying his carnal appetite by the use of a servant – such things happened. What she could not bear was the growing evidence that her husband actually loved this girl! She saw the way his eyes followed her when they were in the presence of others, saw him slip into the woods to walk with her hand in hand, listened to the warm soft confidential tones of their conversation as they lay in bed at nights whilst she stood outside the door, banished from the place by her husband’s side that was hers by God-given right as his lawfully wedded wife and social equal. From the ashes of Eleanor’s broken dreams rose the phoenix of a burning hatred.

It was one of the last days that Eleanor was ever to leave the confines of Claresby Manor, but she did not know that at the time. The spring of another year had come and she was sitting on a bench beneath the large yew tree in the grounds of Claresby. On the ground beneath her feet were needles from the tree. She knew now that Flossie was with child. The servants whispered and she heard them. The love Geoffrey had for Flossie could not be consummated by marriage but was to be sealed by the birth of a child. Of course the illegitimate child could never be recognised, but its very existence would be an insult to Eleanor and a degradation to the family. Eleanor knew that she could not allow this to happen. It fell to her to save her husband from this disgrace – and she knew just how to accomplish this task.

Laura awoke, a cold sweat on her brow. She knew what Eleanor had planned – what she herself had planned! Looking down, she saw her hands were shaking from the strength of the borrowed emotion which she had felt. But was what she had experienced just her own imaginings based on the diary entries which she had read, or were they memories which had been somehow played out in her dreams? Laura could hear the sounds of Rupert playing the piano downstairs. He had not had the opportunity to learn to play as a child and had taken up the instrument as an adult just the previous year. His natural talent was obvious; his playing improved in leaps and bounds and right from the start he played simple tunes with real musicality. Now he was exploring a prelude by Chopin with both caution and style. Feeling a little unsteady on her feet, Laura descended the grand staircase and entered the music room. On seeing her, Rupert stopped playing and came over to her. Laura almost collapsed into his arms.

“You look as pale as a ghost!” he exclaimed. “Come and sit down and tell me what has happened?”

Laura sat down and accepted the small brandy which Rupert poured from a decanter and handed to her. Hesitantly, Laura told him about her dream.

“Firstly,” said Rupert, after listening carefully, “you are not under any circumstances to sleep in that room again! For whatever reason, the room seems to have a bad effect on you. Secondly, I will find out all about Geoffrey Mortimer: whether he really did have a wife called Eleanor and if there was a girl called Flossie at Claresby and all about the younger man in the portrait. Obviously we must get to the bottom of this story to put your mind at rest. I will do a little research; but in the meantime you must put the matter from your mind. I’m going in to the library and will pick you out some light reading and I will play you some of my favourite tunes – but no more sleeping in the dowager’s room – is that understood?”

Laura nodded her head, feeling the weight lift from her shoulders. She did feel that Eleanor’s story had to be told, but what better person to investigate it than Rupert? She tucked her feet comfortably under her as Rupert disappeared, returning with a small selection of light fiction and settling himself back at the piano with a music book open in front of him.

Laura spent the final week of her pregnancy padding around the house, reading, and playing chess with Rupert in the evenings. She had successfully put her dreams out of her mind, although she was aware of Rupert spending time in the library, which held a wealth of untouched documentation relating to Claresby Manor and the Mortimer family. He also disappeared into the attic once or twice and even went down to visit the vicar, Veronica Dahl. It was impossible for Laura to tell if he was achieving anything, but he seemed to be happy and occupied, which was always a good sign. The baby’s “due date” arrived – although Keith had warned them that no baby arrived on cue and it was quite possible that Laura and Rupert might have to wait a week or more longer to meet their offspring. Apart from the lethargy which had overtaken her, Laura was in good health and there was every indication that the baby was doing well too. Nonetheless, it was with a sense of anticlimax and irritation that Laura reached the end of the day with no sign that labour was about to begin. Rupert had set out the chess pieces after they had eaten, as had become their custom. The set depicted characters from the film version of Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings”, and Laura had given it to Rupert as a present on his birthday. Once the pieces were in place, however, Laura sat back with a dissatisfied sigh.

“I’m sorry, Rupert, but I just can’t get my brain around a game of chess this evening.”

“We could watch a film,” suggested Rupert.

Laura shook her head, “There’s nothing I fancy.”

“Do you want to read?”

Again Laura shook her head. “No – I just don’t think I can settle to anything.”

Rupert seemed to think for a moment and then he said, “I could tell you all about Eleanor Mortimer if you like?”

Suddenly Laura perked up. “Have you found out everything; what happened to Flossie, and if there was a child?”

“Yes; but it took all my detective skills. Your ancestor, Geoffrey Mortimer, did everything he could to erase the memory of his wife from the face of the earth. Happily, there was a record of their marriage and her death at Claresby church, so I knew that he did have a wife called Eleanor and that she died the same year as he adopted his nephew, Bevis – being childless himself. And he never remarried. Flossie herself - Florence was her proper name, by the way – is buried at Claresby church with a very nice gravestone which just has her name and a word I make out as “Beloved” beneath it.”

“Oh, I must go and look at that,” said Laura.

“It’s in the south-eastern corner, by the big yew tree,” Rupert added. “But I can find no marked grave for Eleanor and she is not mentioned in the family vault.”

“What did she do so wrong, apart from failing to provide Geoffrey with an heir?”

“She murdered Flossie,” said Rupert, bluntly. “I don’t know how – that’s the one thing I couldn’t discover; but I did finally unearth a mention of the facts in a letter that Geoffrey left for Bevis. Apparently Bevis had been told along with everyone else that he had been adopted – all official documents still say he was a nephew – but Geoffrey wanted him to know that he was really his natural son after his death. He even names Florence as being Bevis’s mother and describes the grave: Geoffrey writes that Florence was killed by “That Witch”! I’ll show you the letter if you like – it’s in my desk now. He doesn’t mention Eleanor by name, but he does try to explain to his son why the death of his mother was hushed up for the sake of family honour.”

“I suppose Geoffrey just didn’t want a scandal – but what did he do with Eleanor?”

“He locked her up in her room and she was never seen again: she probably got off quite lightly. Geoffrey didn’t know how she killed Flossie and suspected witchcraft. Gentlefolk would probably have been beheaded for a crime like murder – if it could be proved. But even if Eleanor had been merely suspected of witchcraft she would have very likely been put to death. Tens of thousands of people were executed for being witches in the seventeenth century. I think Geoffrey just dealt with things in his own way. He obviously didn’t trust his wife even after locking her up, because it wasn’t until after her death in 1694 that he brought Bevis to Claresby – he was eight by then.”

“And Bevis knew that Flossie was his mother?”

“Geoffrey’s letter told him so. He didn’t say that Eleanor killed Flossie in so many words, but I think that we can deduce that it was her from Geoffrey’s actions – I can’t think who else the “Witch” would be.”

Laura was quiet and thoughtful for a moment. Then she said, “I don’t think it was witchcraft – at least we wouldn’t see it that way. And I think I know how Flossie was killed. Do we know which year she died?”

“1686 – the year that Bevis was born; that is in the parish records, but not on her gravestone.”

“Well,” began Laura hesitantly, “when I dreamed about being Eleanor she was sitting under a yew tree and remembering what she had heard about how women could get rid of an unwanted child. Of course for her the unwanted child was the baby that Flossie was carrying. Anyway, yew is poisonous, and a tea made from yew was used to help women lose an unwanted baby. On the other hand, Flossie didn’t lose the baby, but she did die, so there may have been something else at work.”

“Interesting,” mused Rupert. “Yew is certainly toxic, but I didn’t know that it was used to induce an abortion. There is taxine in the needles from the tree and if you used them to make up a tea or some other potion you could certainly kill. Maybe Eleanor somehow gave Flossie a drink in the hope of aborting the baby and it killed her?”

“But then surely the baby would have died too? Perhaps she arranged for a bottle with the poisoned substance in it to be left for Flossie and she didn’t drink it until after the baby was born. Do we know anything about how Flossie died?”

Rupert shook his head. “I’m still looking, of course: there are missing pieces to the puzzle and we already seem to be relying on your dreams to supply some parts. If Flossie did drink something poisoned by yew she would probably have hallucinated and fallen into a coma – death would be fairly swift.”

“I’d like to see the letter that Geoffrey wrote sometime,” said Laura.

“I could fetch it for you now,” offered Rupert.

“Maybe not this moment,” said Laura, with a little smile. “I’ve been having a few contractions in the last hour: nothing very strong yet, but they are noticeable. I think maybe we should go to bed and get some sleep whilst we can.”

Laura sat up in her hospital bed looking exhausted but happy. Rupert – who had driven her to the hospital at four in the morning – had spent the following hours pacing corridors and occasionally checking up on his wife, who seemed to prefer to manage the matter of childbirth without too much involvement from him. Now the task was complete, however, he had finally been summoned and entered the room feeling bulky and awkward and somehow unnecessary. Laura’s smile, however, made him realise that he was not only necessary but an integral part of this miracle. The small bundle of shawls with the wrinkled face was central to the miracle of creation and Rupert stared at the tiny creature with wonderment.