Fool's Gold (A Lord Ambrose Mystery) Page 2

  Here, she paused as if contemplating what was strange in her new employer, tossing back a lock of hair, and continued: “The effect of my lady’s speech is a trifle unusual; though she may speak with a country burr, yet she can imitate a fine gentlewoman’s manner quite perfectly, if she chooses. I think that she did not have the advantage of much education of any kind when she was young, yet she speaks uncommonly well. But indeed, she is of low birth, so Lady Anderton considers it.”

  “Well, if Lady Jesmond is at least legitimate, that will be a living rebuke to the race of Anderton,” said I, but could not deter my companion from her topic.

  “It is said that Sir Antony met her when he was on a journey and was forced to take shelter in a thunderstorm. Anyway, it seems that lightning struck! She is his second wife—there is a son by the first, who died some years ago, but he, of course, is grown now; he is a student at Oxford and comes home only during the University vacations. In fact, I don’t suppose he can be so many years younger than Lady Jesmond; they are probably much of an age! She still has the freshness of youth, I thought upon meeting her, only perhaps rather run to embonpoint.”

  “The sooner Lady Jesmond learns French, the sooner she will grasp the meaning of such delicate terms,” said I. “What else does her ladyship require?”

  “To learn a little music and drawing and so forth. She has never been taught the accomplishments of a lady, and I, as you know, have been instructed in little else.”

  “The rest of your spirit comes to you naturally, then,” I observed, and dodged the book she swung at my head. “But what of Sir Antony? Does he approve this plan for educating his lady?”

  “Yes, or so he said, but I confess I talked to him only for a few minutes. He seemed pleasant enough—rather distracted, I thought. He is very much older than she, I should say by twenty years or more. And they have appointed a resident physician, a young man called Kelsoe, to attend to Sir Jesmond during his rheumatic attacks. Lady Jesmond seems an amiable and good-tempered creature. The house is rather dark, but I am to have a very comfortable room with chintz hangings.”

  There was a pause, I having nothing to say on the subject of chintz, and no capacity at that moment for saying anything on more serious matters. Then she added, slowly, “So you see, nothing stands in the way of my going.”

  How I wish to Heaven I had said then and there: “Yes, I stand in the way—I and Malfine—we will not let you depart. Damn the chintz! Never leave!”

  Of course, I said not a word.

  I cannot claim any great prescience of the events that followed, for my first apprehension was only that Elisabeth might be unhappy, not that she might be in danger. Yet, later in this history, I should have understood the meaning of that scrap of paper, with those few words upon it.

  Coals of fire.

  Quicksilver.

  Cakes of glass.

  Isolation. That was another key, or so I would remember, later on. Too late.

  Jesmond Place is about thirty miles west from Malfine, near a small village called Combwich. It is an odd area: dotted about with drowsy little huddles and apple orchards, yet close to the shore, washed by the high waters of the Bristol Channel which swirl inland, gushing up the creeks and rivers. At low tide, the banks of rivers and streams are smooth pillows of shining mud; at high tide, the brown seawater pours in to cover them. This gives the landscape an uncertain, unstable effect, if I may describe it so. Sometimes it is rolling rich green pasture and hedge: then round a bend in the road ahead there may suddenly glimmer a wet and glistening vista, merging in the distance into a silvery vaporous sky. The Jesmonds lived inland about three or four miles distant from the coast; their noddle-headed ancestors at least had the sense to build on rising ground.

  I had ridden past the house on one or two occasions, though I had never been inside it, and had never met any of the Jesmond family. I recalled a poky, rambling old manor house, probably complete with wormholed timbering and dank little garrets: it had moldered quietly along since before the time of old Queen Bess.

  I hate dark and ancient houses. It is one of the blessings of my existence that instead of a crumbling ivy-covered mass which has stood on the spot for centuries, such as the Jesmonds inhabit, I have my present airy dominion, a rational classical mansion with clean marble stairs and great windows that flood the rooms with light. Otherwise I might have had to live in such a dismal rabbit-warren as that where Elisabeth took up residence as my lady Jesmond’s companion.

  I had Elisabeth’s description of the Jesmonds, but wanted to know more.

  “The Jesmonds were always respectable enough, though inclined to book-learning. That is the talk in the village, my lord.”

  Belos, my manservant, was decanting claret in my dining room, holding the blackish bottle of wine up to the light to inspect it, pouring the fluid as gently as if he were tending an infant’s posset-cup, giving the glinting facets of the decanter a final polish with a silk kerchief. He is an actor who has retired from the stage, but not from life.

  And could be relied upon to pick up news, for unlike myself he is afflicted with the need for human company, and occasionally passes a few hours in the village alehouse that lies just beyond the gates of Malfine.

  “I did not think, Belos, that they would know anything about the Jesmonds; it is quite some distance from here.”

  “You would be surprised, my lord, at how news blazes about in the countryside. They are so starved for any titbits of gossip; anyone who travels the roads—the carter, the peddler, the coachmen—they are all mobbed as soon as they come through the village. Besides, I made it my business to make some inquiries, as soon as I heard Miss Anstruther was going there. I would not like her to be entering into a household of which we knew nothing at all.”

  “Your concern for Miss Anstruther does you credit, Belos. But what of Lady Jesmond—do they say anything of her in the village?”

  “That she was once very lovely, though now somewhat run to fat, and that she is generous. Also that she is rather neglected by her husband, who spends his days in his library, and is very much older than his lady. His rheumatic afflictions prevent him from…er, from riding, I understand.”

  “Quite so, and delicately put. Well, we must hope for the best.”

  This conversation took place a few days before Elisabeth left for Jesmond Place, and it had done something to reassure me as to her departure. Not only was the Jesmond household a model of respectability, so it appeared, but of excruciating dullness, and I was sufficiently vain to imagine that no woman could prefer a quiet life without me to the exotic excitements of my company. She would get bored soon enough.

  Perhaps Sir Antony Jesmond was unsound, for there is always something a little dangerous about “book-learning,” but in the country a few dusty shelves in a library could well lie behind such a reputation. In any case, I hardly imagined that the squire of Jesmond Place could prove a spark-striking intellectual tinderbox.

  I therefore told myself that this new state of affairs whereby Elisabeth departed Malfine to live beneath the roof of some country booby could not long endure. And I made no more objections.

  So it was that one chilly day in late spring the Malfine carriage, with its black coachwork polished up a little and the doors adorned by the faded gilt of my wolf’s-head crest, took Elisabeth, her trunk and valises, with her paints and brushes and drawing-board packed up in one folder and her sheets of music in another, to her new abode. I had misgivings, I must confess, as I watched the carriage roil down the ruts in my weed-filled drive and observed Pellers getting out to tug the gates open from their ivy entanglements. Centered upon my own feelings as my thoughts usually are, my doubts related to the nature of her feelings toward me, and did not allow for the world outside.

  When her letter arrived, therefore, I was unprepared for its tone, for the general undercurrent of distress that I sensed lay behind the calm terms with which she recorded the household and events at Jesmond Place.

&nb
sp; That letter, to be sure, contained little that, on the surface of things, appeared likely to cause any alarm. What was it, then? “I understand,” Elisabeth wrote,

  that Dr. Kelsoe has been engaged specifically to take charge of Sir Antony’s health, he having suffered much of late, not only from rheumatism and similar afflictions of anno domini but from shooting pains in his chest, which according to the physicians augured that all might not be well with the heart. It is about three miles to Combwich village, and there is nowhere nearer in the neighborhood. Not a good situation for an invalid, if Sir Antony should suffer some difficulties with his health. The house here being so isolated and far from help in any emergency…

  There! That’s what it was! Those were the words that made the hairs stand up on my neck, though it was not Sir Antony’s health that concerned me. Merely the knowledge that Elisabeth would be away from any assistance.

  I read on, and the sensation of unease increased. I was crumpling the edges of the paper as my eye raced along the lines.

  The house here being so isolated and far from help in any emergency, it was felt that it would be well to have a resident medical man, and Dr. John Kelsoe arrived from Bristol a few months ago. to supply the want. He had not set up in independent practice, his experience deriving chiefly, it seems, from acting as locum tenens to several medical men in Clifton.

  I heard about him from the lady of the house. “I believe, Miss Anstruther, he was thought a most brilliant young man by his professors,” Lady Jesmond told me when we were sitting drinking tea one afternoon. “My husband speaks most highly of his qualifications! And the young man is willing to help Antony with his scientific papers and so forth. I trust, Miss Anstruther, that you are not hoping for a lively addition to our household, for he is a quiet-minded sort of creature who spends his evenings shut away! He told Sir Antony that he wanted to leave Bristol in order to carry out some studying for which he never had time…That’s why Jesmond Place will suit him so well, you see. He has agreed to come very cheap…”

  Here she paused, laughing in a little embarrassed way, no doubt wondering whether this were not too vulgar an expression, and then continued: “By that I mean for less than such a clever gentleman might expect, so that he can bury his head in his books, for that is his idea of pleasure, it seems! Well. I never thought studying did a body much good, Miss Anstruther. You cannot say it has kept my husband in good health, and I’m sure he has spent most of his life moiling over his old papers and those stinking flasks and powders!”

  Her ladyship uttered a great sigh, and truly I felt much sympathy for her; the edge of her beauty is perhaps gone, faded off but her hair is still bright, of a lively golden tone. her eye still blue and her cheek rounded and charming. Her figure is too full to please the fashionable. but she dresses well, even in the depths of the countryside. This is really one of her chief entertainments, for she delights to put on new lace, or to have a dress made up from a pattern arrived from Bath, although there are so few to make observation of her charms. As for her husband, he may see but appears not to care a jot. He seldom pays his lady any compliment or little attentions, though he is always careful to be very courteous to her and correct in his address. Indeed, I noticed on one occasion that he reprimanded the housekeeper, Mrs. Romey, for presuming not to use my lady’s title and taking a liberty beyond that usually permitted to a servant.

  Mrs. Romey has sometimes a kind of affectionate freedom of address. I suppose the consequence of having been so long here that she partly takes the privileges of a member of the family, and one day at tea-time when my lady did not take anything to eat, Mrs. Romey leaned over her chair and said in motherly tones, “There, my pretty, tha must keep thy strength up!” Sir Antony happening unusually to be in the room, he immediately called out to Mrs. Romey: “Kindly address her ladyship respectfully!” I confess that I was not much endeared toward him by this instance, for Mrs. Romey’s remark, though perhaps a trifle familiar, was kindly meant.

  Dr. Kelsoe was introduced to me at dinner, where he sat opposite on my first evening here. He is a pale man, perhaps in his early twenties, not so young as I had expected, with reddish-brown eyes, deep-set and restless. He looked about all the time, seeming to wish particularly not to look at my lady Jesmond, for he always answered her with his eyes on my face, arid not on hers, where she sat at the end of the table, facing Sir Antony.

  The four of us were at the dining-table—Sir Antony and Lady Jesmond. Dr. Kelsoe and myself—and to say that the conversation flagged would give an extravagantly lively picture! It was already stone dead. I struggled politely for a while with remarks about the charms of Bristol, to which Dr. K. gave no more response than the barest of polite nods and mumbles. Poor Lady Jesmond made a few frivolous requests for information about cashmere shawls which Dr. Kelsoe lately might have seen on a visit to Clifton, which received such snubbing comments from the young man as: “I fear, madam, that I do not take much consideration of such trifles.” And as for Sir Antony, he said almost nothing, merely slurped his turbot soup over his skinny knees (Sir Antony is not a nice eater), and “trusted that Dr. Kelsoe would give him some advice as to which items of diet might over-heat the blood and should on that account be avoided.”

  Dr. Kelsoe’s replies seemed modest and sensible: of the quality of his medical opinions I cannot judge, but Sir Antony pronounced himself satisfied. The young man is taciturn, or perhaps preoccupied would better fit the case, as if he were thinking of something beyond our little social pleasantries. I will not say that I find his manner to be entirely agreeable; it is too aloof and superior for my taste.

  The housekeeper, Mrs. Romey, attends to all the domestic arrangements needed by this odd and diverse band of people. She is plump, pink-faced, wears a white mob-cap with the strings pulled under her chin, a very countrywoman with open countenance and careful habits. In her kitchen at Jesmond Place she presides over order and cleanliness; a great table, well-scrubbed; ovens well blacked. Sometimes I have to go into the kitchen on an errand from Lady Jesmond, and Mrs. Romey is often there. She is the only servant who sleeps in the house, though there is a boy in the stables and the maids come in from the village each day.

  But my letter runs on, and I turn to thoughts of you…

  There followed some private comments of an entirely different nature, which showed me that the chilly atmosphere of the Jesmond household had not wholly overwhelmed at least one inhabitant. Cold blood, hot blood…

  That was her first letter. Dawn was breaking when the groom brought me the second one, three weeks later. In the meantime, I had refused to fret, as much as I was able, and had ridden hard every day, galloping through the neighboring countryside to the surprise of the peasantry, who were not accustomed to see me so far from home. On that particular morning I was still at home, in the library, watching the shadows falling black and green across the lawn, fading slowly. In the distance the clumps of trees at the edge of the wood were already visible; the spring dawn was environing the house gradually, like silent, cool, silver water.

  The superscription on the letter was in Elisabeth’s hand. As always, I knew it in an instant, would have known it among a thousand others, will know it till my dying day.

  Not pausing to light a candle though it was still shadowy, I broke the seal, letting the crumbs of red wax fall to the ground as I held the papers up to the window and read on, as the day slowly brightened.

  We have endured the most frightful event and I have only now been able to retire to my room and write. I have scarce been able to leave Lady Jesmond’s side.

  The body was found yesterday. When I first heard the alarm raised, I apprehended of course that there was something amiss with Sir Antony, for the household has, as I mentioned in my last letter, been perturbed about his heart. Yet, sad though we would have found some final shock delivered to the master of Jesmond Place, a worse tragedy has struck, in circumstances which must create fear and suspicion and have ended a life which had scarcely beg
un to fill its promise.

  CHAPTER 2

  My eye rushed along the lines as the early-morning sun fell on the pages of her letter.

  Young Dr. Kelsoe was discovered lying in his own bed, a lifeless corpse. What was the cause of his death? Apparently the poor fellow was not a suicide, which makes worse the anxiety and doubt which now overshadow Jesmond Place.

  I will recount the events as briefly as I may, for I write in haste, not knowing when I may be called for to assist my lady.

  The first I knew of the tragedy was when Mrs. Romey roused me late at night—about midnight, I think—and asked me to follow her upstairs. I went at once, and heard, Lady Jesmond calling out from the young man’s chamber. I assumed Mrs. Romey had already summoned her. I do not know that she was saying anything in particular—it was really more of a frantic calling and crying. When I entered I found her distractedly trying to raise Dr. Kelsoe up from the bed.

  All was panic and alarm, for the body had just been discovered, or so I was told; I gently pulled Lady Jesmond away, persuading her that she could do no good there. for there seemed no signs of life in the young man whatsoever. She was sobbing and distraught, yet let herself be persuaded away from the deathbed, which I must admit was a fearful sight. He lay there in the most pitiful way—it would have broken a heart of stone to see it, his face so bluish-pale, his jaws tight-clenched. I bent over him, so close to his lifeless face that I could smell a strange odor emanating from the mouth and I could see the lips were purplish and streaked with froth. The eyes were horrible to behold, glaring, fixed, starting out of the head and with a dreadful glassy look. That face haunted my dreams last night, I must confess it!

  I got my lady out of the room and down the stairs, and desired Sir Antony that a physician should attend her as soon as he had seen the tragic figure lying upon the deathbed. I was in no doubt that a few moments would suffice for it to be obvious that the spark of life was utterly extinct, and the poor wretch lay beyond the care of any physician.