Diana paused.
‘Is she important?’
‘Oh yes, we think so,’ said Nicholas.
‘Jayne Marston – “Miss Comfort’s abigail”.’
‘Abigail? A lady’s maid, you mean?’
‘Yes, quite posh. Comes down from London and – note this -without her mistress. And that’s odd. This was January. Season still in full swing in the capital. Miss Comfort wouldn’t have sent her abigail down to the country for no good reason.’
‘Does Stillingfleet give us a clue?’
‘Sort of. He refers to her quite often and affectionately.’ She quoted, “‘Ye sorrowful Jayne…that forlorn wretch… That sweet slut in her sorrow…” Something wrong there, don’t you think? And then the staircase gets under way. And in April they start getting ready for a party. Seems to be a belated celebration of the restoration of Charles the Second – the Eastons were all stout monarchists. Economically, they are planning to run it with the celebrations for Robert’s engagements to Mary Chandler. Then, in June, two or three things happen – “Did wait on his Lordship under God’s guidance and besought him to remember his Creator in the days of his youth, when the evil days come not.’“
‘That would be William he was beseeching. And did he remember his Creator? Did he do what Stillingfleet wanted?’
‘It doesn’t say, but one rather infers not. And then – dismay and disaster – on the fifteenth of June – “To me at dawn this day comes the swanward early. Jayne Marston, God receive her, found drowned in ye lake.”‘
Diana turned to me, wide-eyed. ‘And she’s not in the burial register! She’s not buried in the churchyard!’
‘Suicide, then? Denied a Christian burial.’
‘Looks like it. And then William disappears.’
‘Disappears?’
‘Yes – “…raging to London”, leaving poor old Stillingfleet to unscramble the party. Sounds as though there was the most almighty family row going on.’
‘And the staircase?’
‘Finished. Here – “Thanks be to God!” Then – and this is where the fun starts – “‘Twas as though the Devil himself wailed about the house this night and these seven days past. God bless us all.’“
‘Is that what it’s been like for you?’
‘Yes. Sobs rather than wails, perhaps, but going on and on. Just the same for Stillingfleet. At the end of every day he wrote just two words – “No change” – until we get to: “All day working in pursuit of my resolve.”‘
‘Working! Working at what, I wonder?’
‘Well, in addition to his other accomplishments, Mr Stillingfleet was a carpenter and turner, and he made tables and chairs, and he was a bit of a scientist, too. He had a workshop. We think it was the little room at the end of the stillroom passage.’
‘What do you think he was working at? The coffin?’
‘Yes, that’s what we think. A secret burial for a tiny child. A child who must have been illegitimate, inconvenient, disposable. Infanticide was sadly common in those days, and the rubbish heaps of London, certainly, were where the bodies ended up in large numbers, but this child was different. He was special to someone. Someone who was determined to grant him as decent a burial as was possible in adverse circumstances.’
‘It’s a long shot, and we’ll never know for certain,’ said Diana, ‘but listen – Jayne Marston is sent down to the country estate from London without her mistress. Pregnant?’
‘If this is her baby, and it was born in June,’ I said, hurriedly calculating, ‘she would have been three months gone in January and just beginning to show… Yes, the right moment to send her into obscurity. But is this consistent? Is that what the family would have done? Wouldn’t they have just turned her out of the house?’
‘I don’t think so – not then. This wasn’t the Protectorate, this was the Restoration. Gavalier politics and Cavalier morality. Cavalier kindness, if you like. And all the evidence from Stillingfleet is that the Eastons treated their servants with consideration. He was himself almost part of the family. They couldn’t have functioned without him. But suppose I’m right. Suppose Jayne comes down to Norfolk because she’s pregnant. Suppose Wicked William is the father. Suppose he comes down for the party and takes no notice of her, or spurns her, and perhaps that was what Stillingfleet was begging him to remember, begging him to do something for the wretched girl. Then the baby is born and is stillborn? Or dies, perhaps?’
‘Dies? How? And where?’
‘We’ll never know,’ said Diana slowly. ‘Let’s just say the baby dies. The body must have been hidden away. There is no recorded death of an infant at that time. Perhaps Jayne, at the death of her child, goes demented and throws herself into the lake?’
‘Did she fall or was she pushed?’
‘I’m sure Stillingfleet knew, but he’s not saying. Loyalty to the family. It was only a servant involved, I know, but this was an isolated community where a scandal would have torn through the county, and don’t forget that most people up here were still rigidly puritan in their outlook. William would have had a bad time of it if it had come out.’
‘At any rate, there was no Christian burial for Jayne’s child, no baptism even, and this would have been a horrifying thing for the mother. The child would have been condemned to eternal perdition.’
‘And this is when the nightly wailing starts?’
‘Yes. But Stillingfleet knows what to do. He makes a little coffin. He places the body inside with a copy of the words from the family motto…’
‘Wait a minute, though – it’s not quite the right wording, is it? Look at the third word. The motto is Deus tute me spectas. It should say “me”. “Thou, Lord, see’st me”, but this says “eum”. “Him”. God sees him. Who?’
‘I thought it might mean “God watch over him” – the child, that is.’
‘No. Spectas. It doesn’t mean look out for in the sense of watching over, it means see, look at.’
‘Well, I think this is as close as he dares get to an identification, a direct link with the Eastons. And one night, as the staircase is nearly finished, he fixes it up under a floorboard, replaces the floorboard, and says a burial service over it. It was the best he could do.’
‘Any more from the diary?’
‘Only this, but significantly – “Under the hand of God, I pray, I finish my work, and, all praise to Him, a quiet night at last.’“
We sat for a moment in silence. ‘I bet that was it, or something very like that,’ I said. ‘All quiet until I came along with a nail bar. What do we do now?’
‘I’ve been thinking about this,’ said Diana. ‘Look, Johnny is still here working on the stairs…do you think we could just put it back again? Say a few words, perhaps?’
‘Yes, I’m sure we could do that,’ I said.
We laid it back in its place and Johnny tapped nails back into position through the rim the thoughtful Hugo Stillingfleet had left for this purpose. The new nails sank in easily. We stood back and looked at each other uncertainly.
‘May he rest in peace and light perpetual shine upon him,’ said Diana quietly and clearly.
But something was worrying me. We had worked out a solution of sorts to an intriguing puzzle, but I hadn’t heard that satisfying click as the last piece of the jigsaw falls into place. We had heard the truth, I was sure, from Stillingfleet, but had we heard the whole truth? I didn’t think so.
I went to look again at the Easton portraits. I remembered Nicholas had said he would like to interrogate them. Well, why not? I thought I knew the right questions to ask, and I thought Peter Lely and his unknown pupil had given their subjects a voice which could still be heard over the years. I had released something which had lain dormant but only just contained through the years, and now I believed it was calling out for resolution and justice. The Norfolk police weren’t interested in knowing who had committed infanticide and possibly a second murder all those years ago, but I was.