And lastly, the question which I feel is of the utmost significance, why does Miss Neville not acknowledge that Mr Henderson – or anyone else – visited her cousin on that fateful evening?
For, you see, Eliza, she continues to deny it – and in the strangest manner!
She and Mr Lansdale called here today, soon after Mr Lomax left us. And, since Mr Lansdale was very happy to monopolise Flora in conversation, I was able to have a quarter of an hour’s uninterrupted talk with Miss Neville.
It was a useful quarter of an hour – though hardly a cheerful one. For behind her habitual smile, Miss Neville has a great many grievances and discontents which want only a sympathetic listener to bring them forward. Or perhaps I should rather say, an insignificant listener, for I do not doubt that, with people of rank and fortune, Miss Neville knows well enough how to make herself agreeable – or she would not have continued long with Mrs Lansdale.
She was much concerned with her own future and told me that Mr Lansdale has invited her to stay on with him until the house is given up in a week’s time. Which is, of course, quite remarkably civil of him. Though she does not suppose for one moment that she will be idle, in that week, for there is a great deal to be done as to settling what is to become of her cousin’s gowns and a great many other little matters which a gentleman has no idea of. And she does not doubt that all this will fall upon her shoulders…though, of course, she does not mean to complain…
And, all in all, she presents a very amusing mixture of gratitude and resentment.
As to Mr Henderson’s visit: well, Eliza, I am becoming an adept at the business of discovering secrets and so I came at that by strategy. I wondered, I said, towards the end of her visit, since I understood that she had lived in Richmond all her life, whether she was at all acquainted with a gentleman that my brother knew – a Mr Henderson.
She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I do not believe that I am.’
And, Eliza, there was not the least trace of consciousness in her voice or in her manner. I will almost swear that she had never heard the name before in her life – unless of course she is such a consummate actress that she ought to be making her fortune in Drury Lane rather than playing the part of a poor relation here in Richmond.
So I said no more of Mr Henderson. But then, almost as they were leaving, I contrived to turn the conversation back to her recent loss. ‘It is a great comfort to you, I am sure,’ I said, ‘to know that the poor lady died quietly and peacefully; but you must also regret that it was not possible for you to bid her farewell, for I understand that you had no reason to believe her unwell when she retired for the night.’
‘Oh no, no reason at all. And you are quite right Miss Kent,’ – with an expression of great feeling – ‘quite right. It grieves me terribly that I did not go to her all that evening. If I had heard the slightest sound from her chamber, I would have gone.’
‘Or,’ said I, ‘if you had only had a message to take. If, say, there had been a visitor called.’
‘Oh,’ said she, ‘but there were no visitors. There never were – I believe Mr Lansdale explained as much before. All her acquaintance knew that she went very early to bed and, in general, she slept so lightly that even a knocking on the house door was enough to wake her. Evening visitors were quite forbidden.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘Then my friend Miss Prentice must have been mistaken.’
‘Miss Prentice?’ she asked.
‘Oh it is nothing,’ I said. ‘But Miss Prentice thought that she saw a gentleman call at the house that evening.’
And then, Eliza, she looked very conscious indeed! The colour flooded to her cheeks. And, though she continued to deny that there had been any visitor, her voice was shaking dreadfully as she did so!
So what can all this mean? The name of Henderson meant nothing to her, and yet the news that his visit to Knaresborough House had been observed threw her almost into a panic.
Why? Could it be that she saw the gentleman that night, but did not know his name? Was she disconcerted to hear that the house was watched? Or could it be that for some reason she did not know of the gentleman’s having called and was shocked to find that she had been so deceived? Yet it is scarcely possible that she could have known nothing of his visit, for the drawing room at Knaresborough House is at the front and hard by the house door.
Well, I shall soon have further opportunity for talking to her for Flora and I have been invited to eat a family dinner with them. And, in the meantime, there are other enquiries which I wish to make. I think I shall pay a visit to the circulating library…
Chapter Eight
For anyone at all addicted to overhearing conversation and gossip, there is nowhere quite like a fashionable circulating library, for, among its shelves, rumours circulate quite as freely as novels and poems – and a great deal more freely than serious histories.
And it was, in part, this consideration which took Dido to the library at Richmond, while Flora completed some errands at the linen draper’s shop. She wished most particularly to know whether Mrs Midgely’s poison was spreading among the general population and, also, if she could discover it, whether the apothecary had been persuaded into pursuing his accusations.
The library was situated in a spacious, light room, well furnished with shelves of books, drawers of trinkets, and loitering readers. Sunlight fell in through the large windows, to make great squares of brightness on the wooden floor and raise a pleasant smell of warm leather from the bindings of the books. A cluster of smart officers was gathered by the door, more intent upon looking at young ladies than novels. And most of the young ladies in the place had been drawn away from the novels, the rings and the brooches, to gather in tight knots, pretend indifference, and whisper about officers.
Meanwhile, those women who had attained an age at which it is possible to remain unmoved by a red coat were occupied with the more serious business of the place: books – and gossip.
Dido wandered in among this last group, provided herself with a volume of Moss Cliff Abbey and, while pretending to read, listened intently to the talk around her. In the course of ten minutes she learnt a great deal. She heard: that there was a new preacher from Northamptonshire visiting Saint Mary’s – who was expected to preach a very interesting sermon on Sunday, which would be ‘all about the French and their terrible way of carrying on’; that ‘Mr Vane, the apothecary, believes that Mr Lansdale killed his aunt’; that there was thieving carrying on in the shops of Richmond, with two bottles of eye tincture stolen from the apothecary and a whole ten yards of ‘good yellow ribbon’ from the haberdasher; that Sir Joshua Carrisbrook’s new wife was ‘Quite lovely! but just a bit of a girl, not half his age,’ and, finally, that ‘Mr Vane is gone to the magistrate today to tell him that Mr Lansdale poisoned his aunt…’
As this last piece of news burst upon her, Dido was just reaching the head of the room. There was a broad table here and a chair beside it, into which she sank as she watched the speaker – an elderly woman in a black gown – hurrying off to spread her tidings elsewhere.