The Grenadillo Box: A Novel (28 page)

I
was still mulling over what Miss Alleyn had told me when Connie bustled in. “Letter’s come for you with the carter. And Robert Montfort wants you to go to him directly in the library. From his black expression and hearty curses I’d venture he’s vastly angered to learn of your presence here.”

“Who’s it from?”

“The letter? How’d I know? Letters and writing are mysteries to me, though John’s tried more’n once to teach me.”

“Where is it then?”

“Mrs. Cummings has it, and she reads well enough. I wager unless you hurry she’ll have opened it and announced the contents to the entire kitchen.” She chuckled at this thought as I scurried from the room.

Mrs. Cummings was flushed from the bread ovens when I found her. “It’s safe enough for you here,” she said, patting her capacious bosom in response to my inquiry, before stooping to remove three golden loaves from the oven with a long-handled spade. “It’s from London. A delicate hand, a lady’s I’d say, but I can tell you no more about it,” she confided.

“Quite so. I’d be obliged if you’d hand it to me.”

“Give me a moment to test these, would you.” She rapped the loaves with her knuckles to see that they were done. “Have you not heard his lordship has sent for you? And if you’ll listen to my prudent and sage advice, I’ll tell you he’s not one to keep waiting.”

“I’ll take the letter before I go, if you please.”

“Course you will, Mr. Hopson. Here it is then, but you’d best read it quick or save it till later.”

I took the letter, glanced at the hand, and realized with a shiver of joy that it was Alice’s. But before I could open it Elizabeth Montfort appeared in the kitchen doorway. I started to see her thus in widow’s weeds, her hair scraped back under a plain black bonnet with long lappets framing her face. She looked for all the world like a governess or shopkeeper rather than the mistress of a grand estate; it was hard to believe this was the same wanton creature I’d witnessed thrashing in ecstasy in Robert Montfort’s bed.

“Hopson,” she announced softly in her curiously childish voice, “I’ve been sent to bring you directly to Robert. The matter is most urgent.” Her eyelids were lowered as she addressed me, but when she looked up for an instant it wasn’t shyness I saw in her face, more a curious detachment. It was, I mused, the face of a woman in a trance, or preoccupied by some other far more pressing matter.

“Of course, my lady,” I said. “You should not have troubled yourself to come. I was just on my way to him.”

“He is most anxious that I escort you,” she said. Again I felt myself fall under the scrutiny of her pale blue eyes.

I followed her down the corridor, but we did not progress directly to the library as I expected. Halfway along the passage she sidestepped into an anteroom and drew me after her. She closed the door, turned the key in the lock, then moved to the center of the room, where she stood facing the window with her back towards me. I stayed close to the door, shifting my weight from foot to foot, uncertain if I should speak and if so what I should say. The key was still in the lock.

“Hopson,” she began, “there is something I should like to say before you speak with Robert.” She wheeled round abruptly to face me, eyes flashing with intensity. “I came to find you because I wished to intercept you and converse with you in private before you spoke to him.”

“I confess I am puzzled, my lady. What is it you wish to tell me so urgently?”

Her mouth was pursed, and I could see some private resolution burned in her eye. “First, I do not wish to tell you anything. I wish to show you something that I believe you will recognize.”

I was astonished. What could she have that she wished me to see?

“Before I reveal to you what it is, let me forewarn you. Robert believes you were in his laboratory last night, that you entered from the corridor and that he must, inadvertently, have left the door unlocked.”

“I do not know what gave him that idea,” I lied, wishing I’d had the wit to lock the door behind me, though what I would have done with the key was another matter I couldn’t begin to consider.

There was silence for a moment as she took something from her pocket. “Let me spare you from concocting any more untruths, Mr. Hopson. I have a different opinion as to the manner by which you gained access. I discovered this in Robert’s bedchamber.”

I looked at the article she held out in her hand. It was a brass chamber light, the one Mrs. Cummings had handed me, the one I had taken with me on my nocturnal adventure. I remembered only then I’d left it behind on the windowsill when I made my escape from the room. I felt myself redden to the roots of my hair. My jaw opened and closed, but no words came. Eventually I managed to stammer out with feigned innocence, “A chamber stick, how curious to find it on his sill. How do you think it came to be there?”

She grasped the back of a chair. Her slender white fingers were splayed across crimson damask silk like an open fan. “You knew where it was…without me telling you.”

“No, my lady, I only presumed—”

“Hopson, don’t try to deny you left it there. I have spoken with Mrs. Cummings, who told me this stick was given to you last night.” I couldn’t bring myself to meet her eye or to issue further denials; she already knew the truth.

“I will not ask you how it came to be where I discovered it, nor what you were about when you left it there, nor at what time you were in Robert’s room. These are matters of little interest to me. Nor have I told Robert of my discovery. But if you breathe a word of
anything
you may have witnessed last night to Foley or Bradfield or Miss Alleyn, you may rest assured I
shall
tell Robert of my suspicions, and his temper in those circumstances will be most remarkable. I’m sure you have already observed that he has inherited his father’s propensity for violent outbursts.”

I nodded meekly, unable to think of any appropriate response save for a few stammered words of assurance that I would never speak of my foray into Robert’s room, and that in any case nothing I had seen there was in the slightest way compromising. She waved me into silence. “There is no more time to lose if you are not to worsen Robert’s temper. Let us go now.”

As she ushered me towards the library, I wondered why she had chosen to keep this matter concealed from Robert. I knew it wasn’t a question of saving me from his wrath, for she’d made her disdain for me eminently visible. Had she then some other plan for me? Could it be that
she
was the person responsible for Montfort’s death? I remembered that she was absent from the room when the shot was fired. I’d presumed, however, that she was with Foley and Robert, and hadn’t investigated the matter further. She had an obvious motive for wishing her unkind husband dead, but was she capable of killing him in such a horrific manner, and what possible reason could she have for murdering Partridge? I wondered too at the sudden transformation in her demeanor. Some new spirit had kindled in her. The girlishness and dazed expression had been replaced by a look of feverish animation. I could not be certain whether the cause of the sudden change was the supremacy she held over me or whether she had been feigning her weakness all along. In any case, she was far from the feeble puppet I had first thought.

The moment she stepped towards the door to lead me through to the library, the fire in her eyes faded. I turned and took a last look at her before entering the room. There was a smile on her face, but the expression in her eyes was once more that of a somnambulist in whom all emotions and senses are deadened. It occurred to me then that her sporadic remoteness was, in its way, far more frightening than the bellowing fury I expected Robert Montfort to bestow.

R
obert Montfort stood before the blazing fire. Lost in some absorbing reverie, he gazed through the windows at the statue of a marble nymph in the Italian Garden. He was dressed in his boots and a heavy caped overcoat of dark green, as if he were about to go out, and he was holding something behind his back. As soon as he caught sight of me hovering on the threshold, he lost his vacant look. He gestured me to enter, stepped from the hearth, and advanced towards me. I could now see that concealed behind him had been a horsewhip. He drew closer, bringing the whip to the fore, flexing it and whisking it up and down on his thigh, as if testing its sting. I was oddly reminded of his aunt’s gesture with the gloves earlier that morning.

“Hopson,” he said, drawing his face so close I could clearly smell breakfast kedgeree on his breath, “finally you deign to answer my summons.”

“I came as soon as I could, my lord. I was engaged with Miss Alleyn.”

“Phaw,” he spat, “you’d take me for a blockhead, would you? Don’t lie to me, you impudent scoundrel!”

He thumped the crop down on the desk so violently the ink slurped over the rim of its cut-glass bottle and flooded the tray beneath. His bulbous eyes protruded like billiard balls. “Miss Alleyn passed by here ten minutes ago. I know where you’ve been.”

The stench of his fishy breath repulsed me; I hung my head and tried to hide my disgust.

“I believe you’ve been prying and poking in places that don’t concern you.”

Cautiously I half raised my face. “Forgive me, my lord, I should have explained. I’m here because Lord Foley requested my assistance.”

“And Foley gave you authority to skulk about in my laboratory, did he? Told you to nose about and see what you could find?”

“I’m sorry, my lord. I’ve been in the library this morning. I don’t take your meaning.”

“You’ll take this well enough though, I presume!” he bellowed, flogging the chair closest to me so hard with his whip that he left a stripe in the velvet upholstery. “I am not quite the dolt you take me for. The door from the corridor to my laboratory is always locked from the inside. This morning, however, I discovered it unlocked.”

There was a long uncomfortable silence while he glowered at me and I endeavored to muster my courage.

“Forgive me, my lord. What has this to do with me?”

“Let me explain. Since you and Yarrow and Mrs. Cummings were alone here last night, and since the other two know never to venture there, it follows that it must have been
you
prying before I arrived. I cannot conceive
why
you were in my private laboratory, nor what you thought you might find, but I’ll tell you this. Lucky for you no damage was done, for if there was I’d thrash you within an inch of your miserable life.”

“My lord,” I said, “I beg you to give me leave to explain. I stumbled into the room yesterday afternoon by accident. I was looking for Mrs. Cummings. As soon as I realized she wasn’t there I left. I was unaware of where I was…”

“Whatever your excuse, you won’t alter my first opinion of you—I believe you to be no better than your dead friend, nothing but a detestable rogue, and I’ll not have you under my roof a moment longer. Now leave this house and don’t let me see you here again, or I give you my word at the very least I’ll have you branded a thief and transported.” He began once more advancing towards me while stroking his whip against his thigh. I knew if I did not move fast he would exact some awful revenge for my transgression. Without attempting to remonstrate further, I scurried straight for the garret, whispering grateful thanks to the good Lord (and Elizabeth) that he did not suspect the awful truth. Had he known I’d been in his rooms not
before
he arrived but
after;
had he suspected I’d witnessed the intimacy, there was no way I would have escaped his direst punishment.

I didn’t linger to allow him time to reconsider. Five minutes later I’d bundled my few belongings together. I left a note on Connie’s bed telling her I’d had to leave suddenly but I intended to stay in the neighboring village of Hindlesham. I had passed through this village several times on my travels to and from Horseheath. I would be in touch, I told Connie, and asked her to make my farewells to Mrs. C. Then I slipped out without a word to anyone.

T
he village of Hindlesham, some five miles distant on the Cambridge road, was a good hour’s walk away. It was larger than Horseheath, almost a small town, for it boasted a neatly kept green, now silvered with frost, a steepled church, a small but apparently well-stocked grocer’s shop, and a dozen or so well-tended houses built of honey-colored stone. Smaller, meaner ramshackle dwellings straggled along the road that led to and from the center. The inn stood opposite the church, a low ivy-clad building with a large stable yard behind. By the time I arrived, darkness had fallen and the church clock was striking six. The windows of the inn burned brightly with candles, seeming to draw me inside, where it was every bit as warm and welcoming as I could have hoped. The innkeeper, Samuel Morton, found me a chamber, and a maidservant placed a warming pan in the bed and lit a small fire in the grate. Morton meanwhile promised to prepare me a simple supper of broth, bread, and ham in an hour’s time; until then I could rest myself.

I scarce need say that what with all I’d gone through with Miss Alleyn and Elizabeth and Robert Montfort, not to mention finding the finger, I was grateful to be left in solitude. I needed time to think. I sat down by the fire and closed my eyes for a moment; then, with leisure at last to peruse Alice’s letter, I took it out. I turned the packet over in my hand, examining her elegant script, experiencing an enjoyable frisson of anticipation before I unfolded the pages.