The Dead Queen's Garden (23 page)

‘When I was confined I was allowed a month to recover then I was taken to France by Miss Cole who had lately joined the
household
. I was placed in an impoverished but noble household, to
teach English to the children, while improving my own French. I believe Miss Cole was empowered by her employer, to whom she was distantly related, to pay my way for six months, after which time I found further employment in France.’

‘So Miss Cole actually knew you?’ Charlotte was intrigued. ‘But there, Lady Granville said as much up there on – on the
battlements
. It was Miss Cole who recognised you and heard that you were to attend little Algy’s christening, that she told Lady Granville, who then decided to make away with you. It’s the most fantastic tale.’

‘I know,’ Sibella looked brighter, clearly relieved by her confession and in finding only sympathy and friendship from Charlotte. ‘But we both heard her say it, didn’t we – that she knew the centrepiece of the party was to be the Finchbourne wassail brew. And that gave her the idea that it might prove the way to – to dispose of me. Her plans were thwarted when my sister drank the cup that was intended for me.’

‘So there you are, dearest Elaine.’ Charlotte sat back with a sigh of relief. ‘I believe Lady Granville succumbed to a moment’s temptation when she pushed at Sibella in the church doorway, though she cannot have hoped it would end with more than a broken leg, but she recovered quickly and pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.’

‘And this morning was that other poor young woman’s funeral?’

Charlotte nodded. ‘Verena? Yes, it was simpler to bury her in the churchyard here in Finchbourne and her husband made no difficulty. In fact, I think he was quite touched. It was very quiet, of course, but Percy conducted the service beautifully and Sibella was glad to be amongst friends.’ She shook her head. ‘Oh, I didn’t tell you, did I? Melicent, poor soul, was carried home that night in a shocking state, suffering from severe chills and after a day of high fever has no recollection whatsoever of how she came to be found half way up the ruined tower.’ She shrugged. ‘I told everyone that she’d been invited to join Lady Granville and Sibella but had slipped on the stairs. It was easy enough to persuade Melicent herself of this, as it chimed so well with what she wanted to
believe. As for the dreadful accident, I told the truth: that Lady Granville was afraid of the cat and backed away from it, obviously forgetting that there was a break in the battlements just there.’

She gave a wry smile, slightly shamefaced. ‘Sibella is proving kind as well as sensible and made no difficulty about putting out this version of the proceedings so Melicent is able to feel herself something of a heroine, though I did have a few awkward moments when she asked how her leg had become detached from its harness.’

‘I’m glad,’ was all Elaine said, then she reached out a frail and languid hand to the small table at her side. ‘I must not forget, my dear, here is your birthday present. I want you to take it now, rather than wait until Saturday. I might not be here to give it to you then.’

Charlotte’s gasp rang out in the sudden stillness of the room and she put out her hand in an involuntary gesture of protest. ‘No,
no
….’ The cry was bitten off abruptly and she raised her head to look her dearest friend in the eye.

Elaine took the younger girl’s shaking hand and cradled it in her own slender, wasted ones. ‘Thank you, dearest Char,’ she whispered and when Charlotte looked up again, a question in the hazel eyes that were swimming with tears, Elaine nodded. ‘Why thanks? For letting me be honest with you,’ she answered. ‘For allowing me, just this once, to share the knowledge with you that I
am
truly dying. Kit cannot bear to speak of it or even to think of it and for his sake, even now, I go along with his wishes. But you have been so much my friend – my sister, my child – all of these things, and I’m glad that it should be you who shares with me this last gift. The gift of honesty.’

With a slight shake of her head, Elaine changed the subject and urged Charlotte to open the parcel she indicated on the side table. ‘Come along, Char, let me see how you like it.’

With fingers that shook, Charlotte untied the silver ribbon and unwrapped the complete works of Miss Jane Austen. The books were not new and inside each cover was the inscription:
‘To my dearest Elaine on her 17
^th
birthday, from her loving Mother.’
Below this, Elaine had written her own message:
‘For my dear Charlotte, with love and gratitude for friendship so generously given.’

‘Yes,’ Elaine would brook no argument. ‘Take them, Char. My mother gave the books to me because she had loved them so and I’ve loved them dearly in my turn. It gives me great happiness to know that they are safe in your hands and that you will cherish them too.’

C
HARLOTTE
AND
Lady Frampton had been back at Rowan Lodge for a day when the summons to Knightley Hall came in the middle of Friday afternoon. She could barely speak in acknowledgment of the butler's tearful greeting, so sore was her distress and the effort to maintain her composure. With a nod she followed him up the wide Jacobean staircase and along the
oak-panelled
landing to where Jackson, Elaine's maid, was in urgent conversation with one of the other servants.

‘You bring up the Madeira this instant,' Jackson was sternly issuing orders. ‘And plenty of glasses. Madam….' Her voice cracked for an instant but a ferocious scowl helped her resume command of herself. ‘Madam frets that the master won't leave her bedside and the doctor is expected to call soon, so to make sure she'll rest easy I want you bring up wine and cakes and tea, as well. Bring it every hour, on the hour, come what may. I won't have her upset for a single moment….' She turned at Charlotte's trembling approach.

‘Ah, Miss Char, Mrs Richmond I should say.' An imperious wave dismissed the waiting servant, whose face was blubbered with tears as she hastened to do Jackson's bidding. ‘Come right in at once, Miss Char, she's that anxious to see you.' The woman bit back a sob and added, in a whisper, ‘The doctor has been giving her morphia for the pain, my dear, so she keeps drifting off to sleep. Best thing for her, and I know you'll sit quietly with her.'

Elaine's bedroom was painted in delicate pastel shades and filled with flowers sent in by sympathetic neighbours. Charlotte's face
quivered at the sight. Elaine was so passionately fond of flowers so Charlotte had tied ribbon round some of the stalks of lavender she had dried in the summer and kept in a vase in her own room. A fire burned brightly in the grate and the room was warm and welcoming, with no hint of the desolation that hovered at hand.

Kit Knightley sat in a chair close beside the bed, his wife's hand lying in his own and his head bent. He looked defeated, more than ten years older, and Charlotte felt her courage fail. If Kit could despair so, all must indeed be lost. At Charlotte's quiet approach, urged thereto by Jackson, Elaine's beloved old nurse and now her personal maid, the frail woman in the bed turned her head very slightly and summoned up the ghost of a smile.

‘Char?' It was a whisper, no more. Charlotte could tell only too clearly how great was any effort at speech and she knelt beside her friend, holding back the anguished tears that smarted behind her eyelids. Kit Knightley raised a ravaged, grieving face but it was plain that he could not trust himself to speak.

‘Dearest Elaine.' Charlotte took the thin, beautiful fingers in her own warm, sturdy clasp then she laid her head for just a moment on the pillow beside that of her friend. ‘Don't try to talk, just let me stay here with you for a while, quite quietly.'

‘Need to tell you….' Elaine ignored the younger girl's whispered words and struggled to speak, gasping on every breath and frowning at Kit and her nurse as they tried to intervene. She lay back against her pillows but with the desperate courage that was such a feature of her character, she continued, ‘Dearest Char, so much love.…' Charlotte's tears were falling now, unheeded and unchecked, as she laid the tiny spray of lavender, the scent still discernible, in Elaine's hand and bent to kiss her delicate cheek. The dying woman gave a faint, loving smile in acknowledgement. ‘Your birthday tomorrow, dearest…. Be happy. You shall have my most precious gift by and by….'

The whisper tailed into silence and she fell into a light doze so Kit rose to help Charlotte to her feet. Still not able to speak he jerked his head at Jackson who obediently poured Charlotte a glass of wine and stood over her, and Kit likewise, while they both forced down food that tasted of sawdust and ashes.

There was a fluttering sigh and Elaine's grey eyes sought the younger girl once more. Charlotte bent close enough to hear the thread of a voice. ‘I trust you, Char,' she breathed on a sigh. ‘With my dearest treasure….'

‘D
OCTOR
P
ERRY
?' Charlotte jumped up, her anxious face brightening in delighted welcome, casting her sewing aside. ‘Come in, do come in. How very pleasant to see you, just when I was feeling the need for company. Is there….'

‘No, there is nothing from the Hall.' The doctor eyed her with sympathy as she dabbed a handkerchief at her eyes. ‘Can't settle to anything, eh?' He clapped a hand on her shoulder before sitting down beside the drawing-room fire, with a nod of thanks to the little maid who was bobbing at his side with the decanter.

‘Ah, that's better. It's a cold night out there, Char. Now,' he looked round the room and raised his eyebrows at her. ‘Where's the old lady then? Not gone out at this time of night, surely?'

‘No indeed,' Charlotte gave him a faint smile as she sipped at her own glass of brandy, and avoided the thoughts of Elaine that had weighed so heavily upon her all day. ‘Her bosom friend from down in the village has been here for dinner and is to stay the night so they have removed themselves to Gran's room across the hall where, I presume, they loosen their stays and indulge in scurrilous gossip, away from my inconveniently sharp young ears.'

‘Ah well, gossip is why I've called in to see you so late, my dear,' confessed the doctor with a slightly furtive expression on his weather-beaten face. ‘And although I know I can trust your own discretion, I can't deny I'm glad not to have the old ladies present. What I have to tell you is between the two of us only, if you will be so good.'

‘I'm all agog,' she told him frankly, topping up his glass and her
own. ‘And of course you have my word that nothing you say shall be repeated.' For a moment she looked very grave. ‘In all conscience I have enough secrets locked of my own in my heart, and that's where they'll stay.'

He cast a speculative glance in her direction but clearly thought better of pursuing the topic. They made an unlikely pair, the doctor in his fifties and the young widow, but they were firm friends. Dr Perry was aware though that Charlotte's nature was reticent in the extreme, particularly about her past history.

‘I mentioned that a friend of mine had attended young Mrs Chant, did I not? Well, I've been dining with him and with the coroner,' he launched into his story. ‘They're both very old friends of mine, we were at school together and we have few secrets left between us after all these years. They had a couple of interesting items of news to tell, all in the deepest of confidence, you
understand
, but I shall tell you, in spite of that.'

She contained her curiosity while Dr Perry nibbled thoughtfully at a ratafia biscuit and took another sip at his drink. No use trying to hasten his narrative, she knew him only too well by now, so she folded her hands in her lap and let him take his time. She knew too, that while on occasion he was not above a spot of gossip, he mostly kept his lips very tightly closed, so she felt honoured by his confidence in her.

‘You're a peaceful creature,' he said suddenly, reaching forward to give her an avuncular pat on the arm. ‘Most women drive a man to distraction with their questions and frettings, but I've never known you act like that. It's a rare gift.' He smiled at her as he continued his story.

‘I am very well aware, you know, and so is my friend the coroner, that we'll never get to the bottom of the events of the other night. Oh no,' he laughed at her as she made a slight gesture of denial. ‘It's of no use for you to tell me that nothing happened, other than that remarkably plain tale you told when it was all over. You think I don't know there was some mischief afoot? And no, you can rest easy. I shan't press you for details for I know you would never divulge them anyway.

‘No, the inquest will let you have it your way. Lady Granville,
carried away by her much trumpeted passion for her garden, took it upon herself to show you and the other two ladies her wonderful ruins by the light of the full moon. Very spectacular it must have been too, I judge, by the way that first one lady seems to have slipped on the stairs, presumably overcome by the grandeur of her surroundings and not minding her footsteps in spite of her infirmity, and then her ladyship herself took that fatal tumble off the top of her home-made ramparts.'

He shook his head in mock wonder. ‘Surprising, I'd have thought, considering her lord told us she was in the habit of walking those battlements in all weathers and at all times of the day and night. But there, it was a frosty night and I daresay her ladyship was carried away by the excitement of it all; the feasting, the boy's birthday, and all.'

‘I'm sure you must be right,' Charlotte's voice was meek and submissive but she met her visitor's eye with the faintest of
twinkles
in her own. ‘It was indeed a very cold night and there was ice on the steps. I slipped once or twice myself.'

‘Indeed you did,' he rejoined. ‘I examined you myself, if you recollect? Mind you, it's a very strange thing to reflect that slipping on the ice gave Miss Sibella Armstrong considerable bruising round the throat. A very singular circumstance, but we won't go into that again. No, what I have to tell you, is something much more interesting, to a couple of students of human nature such as ourselves, my dear.'

Maddeningly, he took another sip of brandy before coming to the point.

‘What my coroner friend told us, his two old friends and colleagues, in confidence,' he said gravely, ‘was that when he examined the body of the late Lady Granville, he found that, contrary to popular belief, (and contrary, I should say, to her own husband's belief), the lady had quite clearly never borne a child.'

He sat back to watch her reaction and nodded complacently at the suddenly arrested expression on her mobile features.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘I see that doesn't surprise you in the least, does it, you surprising young woman. Would you care to share with me your speculations as to who might be the unacknowledged mother of his lordship's allegedly
legitimate
son and heir?'

‘No, Dr Perry,' she told him, in a polite but decided tone. ‘It's my belief that we should cease all speculation from this time forward. I am truly grateful for your confidence but the lady is dead and the child has to mourn the only mother he has ever known. Let us not even breathe aloud any hint that there could possibly be another side to the story.'

She said no more and he smiled. ‘The other piece of news is also shocking but again, we – my fellow medical man, the coroner and myself – have taken it upon ourselves to suppress it. It will be given out, as indeed you yourself suggested might be the case, that the unfortunate companion, Miss Cole, seems to have ventured upon a last sentimental visit to her ladyship's beloved garden, and there suffered some kind of spasm that resulted in heart failure.'

He grinned mischievously. ‘Such a convenient diagnosis, is it not? Heart failure? After all, all hearts cease to beat when death arrives.' He took a sip of brandy and looked directly at her. ‘Ever come across taxine, Char?'

‘Taxine?'

‘It is a poison derived from the seeds of the yew tree,' he told her soberly. ‘As to why I raise the subject, I heard tonight that the examination of the young woman who died so tragically after the christening at the manor, showed that she was suffering from taxine poisoning.'

Charlotte drew a shocked breath and gazed at him in mute supplication.

‘I told you, did I not, that the doctor called to her bedside was also a friend of mine? His particular interest is in determining why hitherto healthy young people so often die of what appear to be trivial illnesses. In furtherance of his studies, he reserved some of the unfortunate Mrs Chant's vomit, and caused it to be analysed.'

Charlotte turned pale and he gave her an encouraging nod.

‘However, Miss Cole seems to have died quite peacefully, which would scarcely have been the case after taxine poisoning, witness the other poor young lady's travails, so let us agree that she died, as I said earlier, of heart failure and no more questions asked.

‘As I said,' he went on, ‘With the death of Lady Granville, my
friends and I decided that there had been enough grief for Lord Granville and his son, so you need have no fear. There will be no further revelations.'

She reached out to press his hand in gratitude, but paused as he leaned towards her with a mischievous twinkle.

‘Ah, you don't escape so easily, my dear,' he smiled. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery and if I learn nothing else, I should like to know how it came about that Lady Granville broke her arm? It will be given out that it happened during the fall, but I was there and she was cradling her arm just before she tumbled down. Relieve my curiosity on this point, Char. What happened?'

She tensed for a moment, then relaxed with a faint smile. ‘She was throttling Sibella so I hit her with Melicent's artificial leg,' she confided.

He let out a bark of astonished laughter. ‘You broke her arm with Melicent Penbury's leg?' he gasped. ‘By God, Char, you'll be the death of me yet. I'll die laughing about that, you'll see, and never be able to tell my dear wife why!'

He patted her hand, still chuckling, and then cocked his head to one side. ‘And her ladyship's maid, eh? What of her?'

‘But Doctor Perry,' Charlotte was wide-eyed and innocent. ‘The coroner himself said she was done to death by person or persons unknown.'

‘Ha!' He gave a great snort of laughter. ‘Person unknown? To be sure, to be sure, that's the best verdict all round, I'd say.'

They both rose abruptly as an urgent knocking was heard at the front door. Betty hastened into the drawing-room, wide-eyed with anxiety.

‘If you please, Miss Char,' she gasped, with a brief curtsy to her mistress. ‘There's word come from the Hall, from Mr Knightley. The doctor's wanted there at once. The groom saw the horse at the door. “The utmost urgency,” he said.'

‘Oh God,' Charlotte's hand flew to her mouth and the colour drained from her face. ‘Is it time?'

Dr Perry shrugged himself into the coat Betty was holding out for him and paused only to take both of Charlotte's hands in his own.

‘Courage, my child,' he said harshly. ‘I'll send word if she's able to see you, even for a moment.'

Mutely she nodded and gave him a little push, and then he was gone.