Now, in order to preserve the honour of the family – for you tell me that nothing is of greater consequence with Sir Edgar than the honour of the family – he was all for smoothing matters over and covering up the business. But Mr Montague is moral and religious – for I cannot believe that dear Catherine, for all her little faults, would attach herself to a man who was not moral and religious – and he quarrelled with his father over this matter. Mr Montague left the house – perhaps he went with his friend to Tudor House – yes, I think that he must have done, because that is how Miss Wallis – who was, of course, Mr Lomax’s housekeeper – discovered that the lady who came regularly to visit her master was none other than Lady Montague. And so she pursued Mr Lomax to Belsfield, threatening, no doubt, to expose him unless he paid her a considerable sum.
And he killed her. Though I don’t doubt that the poor man is very sorry for it now…
Dido dropped the letter into her lap and stared along the polished length of the gallery, momentarily overwhelmed by such a variety of emotions that she did not exactly know what she felt.
There was anger at her sister for suggesting such an unlikely course of events. But the anger was not lasting. Eliza was not the sort of woman one could be angry with for long and soon Dido was more inclined to smile over the sorry conflict that there was in the letter between natural good nature and a desire to try her hand at mystery solving. And then, when she reread the letter, she found that, fanciful though much of it was, there was a small kernel of sense in it.
It was, she realised with shame, very true that she had not considered properly the likelihood of Mr Lomax’s guilt. She had not considered it because – and there was no escaping this horrible truth – because he was a very charming man and she was foolish, foolish in a way that she should have left behind her when she gave up curling her hair and began to sit out dances in the ballroom.
Well, she thought with determination, I shall consider the matter now. But still she found that she was strongly inclined to argue against the suggestion. She could not help it. To clear her mind she drew a pencil from her pocket and noted down on the cover of the letter her arguments against Eliza. They consisted of:
There is no appearance of affection between Mr Lomax and her ladyship. I have observed them closely and they do not exchange more than the simplest civilities with one another.
The other gentlemen swear that Mr Lomax did not leave the shooting party.
How did Mr Pollard convey the information of Mr Lomax’s adultery without saying a word?
She read through what she had written and found it singularly unconvincing. Points two and three could, of course, be argued with equal force against the guilt of any other member of the household. Nor would point one stand up to examination, for the show of indifference between the couple was entirely consistent with a guilty, clandestine affection.
So she wrote down everything she could think of that supported Eliza’s position.
Gossip about her ladyship.
Catherine’s observation of her ladyship going out in Mr Lomax’s carriage.
Her ladyship’s medicine.
Mr Lomax has a post-chaise with yellow wheels – like the one which visits Tudor House.
Well, she thought looking over the list, it is hardly enough to convict a man.
She sighed and passed a weary hand across her face. Relieved, in spite of herself, that she did not have to suspect Mr Lomax so very much.
The problem was that there was still a great deal that she did not understand. There seemed to be so much afoot – so much amiss – at Belsfield that one scarcely knew who to trust and who to suspect. As Annie Holmes had said, every family has its secrets. But there was no denying that the Montagues of Belsfield Hall seemed to have more secrets than most.
Dido stared along the ranks of old Sir Edgars and all the Annes and Elizabeths and Marys that they had married. The autumn sun, shining in through the window, was warm upon the nape of her neck; dust-motes floated in its light and a warm, pleasant scent of beeswax rose from the polished floor.
Somewhere here, if Annie Holmes was to be believed, there was a clue to one of those secrets. Somewhere among these paintings was the key to the trouble between father and son. She stood up and walked along the gallery, studying the pompous, painted faces as she had done many times before. None of them suggested any kind of solution to her.
The gallery ended in a wide staircase, which led down to the best bedrooms at the front of the house, and just to the left there was a dark, narrow passageway that led to the back stairs. As Dido reached this point she heard a voice raised on the landing below. She paused beside the banister.
‘Ah, boy! D’you mind coming here, sir!’ It was undoubtedly the colonel’s voice; there was no mistaking the hearty, archaic tone of it. But it had a pleasant, far from ill-tempered sound – indeed, it sounded almost affectionate, which made it rather surprising that it should be followed by the sound of nimble, running feet.
A moment later Jack’s black head came bobbing quickly up the stairs. Dido stepped aside and the boy ran past her, turned into the dark passage and was instantly lost to view.
She stood alone for a minute, reflecting that perhaps her notion of hide-and-seek had not been so very far from the truth after all. And then there was a sound of much heavier feet and the colonel’s broad red face appeared.
‘Ah, Miss er…’ (Would it, Dido wondered, be only fair to inform him of her name, or was it allowable to leave him floundering with his ahs and ers for the rest of her visit?) ‘Ah yes, m’dear. Have you seen young Jack? Did he come by you?’
‘No,’ she replied on an impulse. ‘He did not come this way.’
‘Ah, very well, very well. It’s of no great consequence, y’know.’
He bowed and retreated. Dido turned into the narrow passage, only to hear Jack’s footsteps fading rapidly down the kitchen stairs.
She stood for a moment in the gloomy corridor, which smelt of dust and very old carpet, with just a suggestion of the roasting of long-forgotten joints from the kitchen. She shook her head. Before she came to Belsfield she had thought she was rather partial to puzzles and mysteries. She had a great regard for the work of such authors as Ann Radcliffe and Charlotte Smith, but lately she was beginning to suspect that her appetite for the unexplained was surfeiting.
She could not even begin upon the wildest surmise as to why a military gentleman of rather advanced years should be pursuing a young footman about the upper corridors of a house – nor why the said footman should be so determined upon escape. There was nothing in Dido’s experience to suggest a solution to that particular mystery.
She started back towards the gallery, then came to a standstill.
There was another painting hanging here upon the wall of the little passage. Hanging where no one could see it. Even when she strained her eyes she received no more than a vague impression of a very large green and brown landscape in a heavy, ornate frame.
Was it perhaps a bad painting, put out of the way so that it did not spoil the effect of the gallery?
Dido was exceedingly fond of bad paintings; they appealed to that part of her that her sister called ‘satirical’. After a little struggle, two broken fingernails and a bleeding thumb, she succeeded in unbolting and pushing back one of the heavy shutters that covered a window almost opposite to the picture.