The Truth-Seeker's Wife Page 24

  She stood aside and I walked in to their dark, cramped parlour. Tibby sat by the hearth in a rocking chair.

  ‘I have just come from the church,’ I said. ‘I have been looking in the registers of marriages and of baptisms.’

  I expected her to show anger, or fear. But she seemed hardly to have paid attention to my words.

  ‘Did you see him?’ she asked fiercely. ‘They drove by here.’

  ‘If you mean Sir Henry’s coffin, yes. I saw the carriage arrive with it, and the vicar, and Mr Beresford riding behind. They have taken it to the crypt. It must not be disturbed again, Tibby.’

  ‘It will not be,’ she said.

  ‘You have a married name, Evans, but you do not use it, even though Davy Evans, who is your son, lives here with you.’

  Cora had seated herself in the far corner in another rocking chair, and watched us, tilting the chair back and forth. It creaked faintly. I was left with a wooden chair on which to perch.

  Tibby said, ‘I did not choose to take the name Evans. The marriage was his doing, Meager’s, to save his reputation from further damage.’

  ‘Tell me about it, Tibby.’

  There was a short pause during which only the faint creak of the rocking chair in the corner broke the silence.

  Then Tibby heaved a deep sigh. ‘Very well, I will tell you, because you will give me no peace until you know it all.’ She gave a strange, crooked little smile. ‘The truth-seeker chose well, in marrying you. He found one who thinks as he does. He cannot abide the notion that old sins should remain secret; no more can you. Only remember this: there are things that are better never spoken of.’

  ‘There are deeds, Aunt Tibby, that are better not committed. But once they are, they can never remain hidden forever.’

  ‘Now you call me “Aunt Tibby”!’ She gave an unexpected cackle of laughter and shook her finger at me in reproof. ‘Let me tell you then, since you are so very anxious to know, how I came to kill Henry Meager.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Elizabeth Martin Ross

  ‘I was Miss Madeleine’s personal maid,’ she began, then paused and looked at me inquiringly.

  ‘Sir Henry’s wife,’ I said. ‘I have seen her portrait.’

  ‘To me she will always be “Miss Madeleine”. It was an evil day when she married into that family. I know the portrait you spoke of. It does not do her justice. It shows only her looks, not the beauty of her character. She was good and kind and loving. She even loved that brute she married. He beat her. I saw the bruises, so I know. He blamed her for being childless. He said he needed a son and she should give him one.’

  ‘Did she know he had children himself, elsewhere, out of wedlock?’ I asked.

  She sighed and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Well, there was Robert Harcourt, the Frenchwoman’s child. I think she knew about him.’

  ‘You believe it’s true, then, as Robert Harcourt himself told my husband, that Sir Henry was his father?’

  ‘Of course he was!’ Tibby snapped. ‘And when Sir Henry told his own father that the French lady was carrying his child, he was ordered to put her away; and so he did. Everyone was afraid of the Old Indestructible, including his son!

  ‘It was the Old Indestructible, Sir Hector, who set the pattern of how to deal with such inconveniences. He bought the Frenchwoman a husband, old Mr Harcourt the ship’s chandler in Lymington. In that way her child had a name and a respectable family background. Later, after old Mr Harcourt and Sir Hector had both died, Sir Henry would ride over to Lymington from time to time, to visit the widow. He also paid for the boy’s education. All this I fancy Miss Madeleine knew, because Sir Henry did it quite openly.’ A look of anger crossed Tibby’s face. ‘It was perhaps the first time money bought Henry Meager out of an awkward situation; but it would not be the last.’

  I thought of the entries I’d read in the registers of marriages and births. Isaac Evans, itinerant labourer. His compliance would have cost far less than that of old Mr Harcourt, the Lymington chandler.

  ‘Your son, Davy, is Sir Henry’s child,’ I said.

  She raised a hand to silence me. She would tell the tale in her own time; and not be hurried. ‘No pretty girl was safe from him. The tenant farmers knew to hide their daughters. Then Miss Madeleine fell sick. She had the disease of the lungs, consumption, as they call it. There was talk of taking her to Switzerland where the air is said to be very good for such illnesses. But she became too weak to travel.’ Tibby paused. ‘It was during that time that Sir Henry turned his attention to me. He would have no refusal. The night my dear lady died, she took my hand as I sat by her bed. She had realised that I was with child by then. She said, “I am very sorry, Tibby. I would have protected you, if I could have done.”

  ‘She fell asleep a little after that and never awoke again. He had her room cleared as soon as she was buried. Everything must go. I don’t know where all her gowns went. Her jewellery was sold, I believe. He didn’t ask me if there was anything of hers I wanted as a memento, so I took something for myself.’

  I said, ‘You took a little painted fan.’

  Tibby Dawlish smiled. ‘Yes. You see, truth-seeker’s wife, you have a nose for secrets.’

  I said, ‘It was wrong of you to frighten Mrs Beresford as you did, slipping into the house and leaving first the roses, and then the fan, on her piano. She had done no wrong. She was already terrified enough because Sir Henry’s coffin rested nearby. Then it was followed by the dreadful business of taking the body and setting it up atop the bonfire. That was unforgivable.’

  ‘That was not my doing!’ she snapped sulkily. ‘I left the roses and the fan on the piano, yes. But I did not do it for malice. I did it because I was sorry for her and wanted to show her I bore her no ill will. The roses I cut from bushes in her own garden. I thought she would’ve realised that. The fan was Miss Madeleine’s, I admit. But Miss Madeleine would have been Mr Beresford’s aunt by marriage, so it seemed fitting Mrs Beresford should have it.’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t mean to frighten her, but you did!’ I said sharply. ‘Now, after all that’s happened, Mrs Beresford has been driven from her own home.’

  ‘Wrongdoing breeds more wrongdoing. Ask your husband!’ The words were spoken belligerently by Cora Dawlish. She had been sitting so quietly in the corner that I had forgotten her; and the suddenness of her intervention made me start. ‘If you must ferret your way into other people’s business, you must accept what you find. If you don’t like it; then perhaps it would have been better to leave well alone!’

  It was a harsh sentiment but there was some truth in it, I had to admit.

  Tibby Dawlish made no comment. Perhaps she had not even heard her sister, so intent was she on telling her own tale. She took it up again now.

  ‘After Miss Madeleine died, when Meager saw that my pregnancy was showing, he did as his father had done for the French lady. There are men who travel around the country together in a group, seeking work, as you may know. They go from farm to farm, sleep in a barn, stay a few weeks, then take their money and move on. There was such a group working on Sir Henry’s land at the time. Sometimes their women, poor wretches, travel with them. But there was one of those there at that time who had no woman of his own. Isaac Evans was his name. So Meager paid him to stand up in the church and marry me. He made this cottage available to us to live in, rent-free. Rent-free it has remained until this day, though Isaac did not linger long. He left within a few weeks of the wedding. He was a travelling man by nature, and liked the freedom of the road. From time to time, while Davy was a small child, I’d receive a little bag of coins, handed to me by a complete stranger, an itinerant like Isaac. He would tell me, “Isaac sends you this!” He was not a bad man.

  ‘My sister—’ Here Tibby acknowledged Cora’s presence with a nod of her head in the direction of the corner. ‘My sister had also been working as a maid, for a lady in Winchester. When I grew near my time, Cora left her position and came to live with me
here to look after me while I was lying in.’ Unexpectedly, she smiled. ‘Davy was a fine baby, was he not, Cora?’

  ‘He was,’ agreed Cora.

  ‘The vicar at that time was old Mr Burrell,’ Tibby continued. ‘He was a bachelor who lived with his nose in his books, and had an interest in botany, as he called it. He would go wandering about, all over the heath and the fields, with his nose nearly to the ground, looking for some kind of moss.’

  ‘I learned much from him about the properties of plants,’ said Cora so quietly I fancied she spoke to herself. ‘He had big books with pictures of the plants in them, all coloured and beautiful. He was pleased I was interested and took time to explain it all to me.’

  Tibby continued, ‘I don’t mean Mr Burrell wasn’t a good parish priest and a kind man. But I think he was afraid to offend any Meager in case he lost his living. Because of this he made no fuss about marrying Isaac and me.

  ‘I believe his conscience troubled him, though, after Isaac left. He needed a housekeeper, so Cora went to take up that position. She went to the vicarage each morning and came home here at night. He had no wife or kin; but with Cora looking after him he was very comfortable. When he died, he left her an annuity.’

  ‘And some of the plant books,’ said Cora.

  I wondered if the old man had left her the books or she had just helped herself to them, as Tibby had to the fan.

  ‘It was after that I stopped using the name “Evans” and went back to being Dawlish,’ said Tibby.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘Cora has a modest income thanks to Reverend Burrell; and Sir Henry let you have the cottage here rent-free.’ I almost added that between them they had done pretty well, but of course it was all guilt money. Sir Henry had rid himself of an awkward problem. Burrell had salved his conscience because he must have realised that the child, Davy, was not Isaac’s. He had been complicit in the deception. Perhaps he had convinced himself that, in agreeing to marry Tibby and Isaac, he was doing the only thing he could to help both Tibby and the child. For both of them the future would otherwise have been very uncertain. When Isaac deserted his new wife within weeks, Rev. Burrell must have been dismayed.

  I asked, ‘Tell me about the night Sir Henry died.’

  ‘I must go back before that, about two months ago, it was.’

  Tibby began to rock herself back and forth again in the chair and now adopted a slightly sing-song way of talking. I recognised it as the traditional pattern of speech of the storyteller since time immemorial. With her chair creaking back and forth before me, and Cora tilting the companion rocker by the far wall, it was as if the room moved around me and only I stayed still. I began to feel a little nauseous.

  ‘Mr Pelham, the lawyer, came down from London because Meager wanted to bring his will up to date. By then, Harcourt had been working for him for some time as estate manager, with a house provided, and no doubt a good salary. Meager always looked after the Frenchwoman’s child.’

  I thought, yes, he did look after Robert during his life. Perhaps, if his own father had allowed it, he would even have married the Frenchwoman when he first brought her home. But he did not and he would not, even in death, ever have declared that Robert was his child. And without that declaration, spoken or in writing, there would always be a doubt.

  ‘He didn’t look after, as you call it, your son, Davy?’ I asked aloud.

  ‘In a way he did, but it was a poor way compared with what he’d done for Robert Harcourt. He paid for no schooling for Davy. He gave him work from time to time. Word had gone round, as it does, that Sir Henry meant to leave a little bequest to all the servants at the Hall, and a decent bequest to Robert Harcourt, for being his manager. So, I thought to myself, he ought to leave something to Davy, since all the others, his kin or not, would be remembered.

  ‘I was walking up on the heath one day, looking for herbs for Cora’s medicines, while Mr Pelham was here. I saw Sir Henry, riding alone, and coming towards me. I stepped out into the path, so that he must stop.

  ‘“Well, Tibby,” he said. “What is it?” He spoke coldly and carelessly, but I reckoned he knew what I’d ask.

  ‘So I told him. I knew Lawyer Pelham had come to update the will. It was common knowledge the household servants would be remembered, and that Harcourt, as estate manager, would receive a more generous amount. Even though the truth of Harcourt’s birth was supposed to be a secret, both of us knew he was Sir Henry’s son. Would it not be right and fair that he should leave something to Davy, who was also his son? I was alive to testify, under oath if need be, that he had fathered my child. It would not force him in law to acknowledge Davy; but it would embarrass the Beresfords.

  ‘He gave a great shout of laughter that rang out across the heath. Then his face grew cold and stern again. He leaned forward in the saddle and said, “I have done more than enough for Davy Evans, and for you. All I have done for you both was for the sake of my late wife who was very attached to you. Mark you! I was not required to do anything. As the mother of a bastard child you would have been driven out of the village. Who knows where you would have gone, or how you would have supported yourself. You would have had to give your infant to the workhouse or to a baby-farmer; and everyone knows babies in their care have a habit of dying pretty quickly. Davy has lived to reach manhood, and you have kept your good name, because of my generosity towards you both.

  ‘“In addition, I have allowed you to live rent-free. I have seen that Davy has work. As a magistrate, I have kept him out of gaol. Don’t imagine I am unaware that he does more than fish from that boat. He meets out at sea with smugglers who bring tobacco and brandy from France.”

  ‘“Yes,” I said. “And you smoke the tobacco and drink the brandy.”

  ‘“You can say what you like, Tibby,” he said. “No one would believe you. Davy is a bad lot and everyone knows it. If you started any rumour, I’d have you out of your cottage, you, your sister, and Davy, straight away. I’d see he got no more work. If necessary, I’d see him sent to gaol for smuggling. Don’t forget!”

  ‘Then he rode on. I knew he meant it. I wasn’t sure that he would not send Davy to gaol just to spite me, but I had to be sure that could not happen.’ She looked me full in the face. ‘There is a saying, isn’t there? About someone “signing his own death warrant”? Well, that is what Henry Meager had done.’

  ‘Why did you seek to draw me into it?’ I asked her. I looked towards Cora, who still sat impassively in the far corner, by the window. ‘When I first arrived and found you sitting with your sister out there, before the cottage, you, Miss Cora, said I brought death with me.’

  Cora shrugged. ‘I knew what my sister intended. And I also knew that as soon as he died, people in the village would want to blame someone at once. For this reason I directed their thinking towards your presence. They would not think you had killed him, of course! But they would blame you for bringing death; and it would keep their minds busy.’

  ‘And they did blame me,’ I snapped. ‘The children threw stones at me!’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Cora complacently, ‘it worked.’

  She levered herself to her feet in a rustle of clothing and went to the window. There she turned her back to me and to her sister, signalling that she had said her part and would say no more. She fixed her stare along the length of the front garden and towards the road. I thought perhaps she was looking to see if Andrew Beresford would ride by again, on his way back from the church, after seeing his uncle’s coffin safe in the crypt.

  ‘On that day,’ Tibby began again, very quietly, so that I had to ignore Cora and turn back to catch what she was saying. ‘The day of the dinner party to which you and Mrs Parry went, I’m talking of. It was a good day for what I needed to do. The servants were so busy. I slipped into the house. I knew it like the back of my hand from the days when I worked and lived there. I went upstairs to what had been Miss Madeleine’s room. I knew no one went there. The staff were superstitious about it – and he would neve
r go there.’

  ‘You are adept at slipping in and out of other people’s houses,’ I said. ‘You entered and left unseen from Oakwood House, after leaving the items on the piano.’

  ‘Who notices what a servant does?’ she retorted. ‘They are all trained to be quiet and not intrude. Why, one of them might come into a room with a coal scuttle and make up the fire, rattling the tongs, yet no one pays the slightest attention. Or bring dishes to the table. A hand takes away the dishes from one course and puts down the dishes of the next and not one of the people sitting round the table, drinking and laughing, is aware of it. So I walked through the house, as I had done years ago, and went to Miss Madeleine’s room.

  ‘I waited there, thinking about my dear lady, and about all the mischief Sir Henry had done in his life, and would go on doing if he wasn’t stopped. At last the guests had gone and he, Meager, had gone to bed. It was peaceful. I knew about the pistols in the library drawer. I went down, broke the lock, took a pistol and loaded it and then I went up to his room. He was asleep. I shot him, threw down the pistol and went back to Miss Madeleine’s room. In the morning, when the staff were busy, and the kitchen door unlocked, I made ready to leave. Lynn, the valet, made it even easier for me. He’d found the body and went screaming about the place, attracting everyone’s attention. I walked out and came home here.’

  She sat now, silent and looking at me in a kind of triumph. But I felt suddenly certain that, though she’d told the truth until the last little piece, she was lying about firing the pistol.

  ‘You conspired with your son,’ I said. ‘You laid the plan with him, told him where to find the pistols and to wait in Lady Meager’s room until the moment came. But he fired the fatal shot.’

  The triumph was wiped from her face and she scowled at me. ‘No! I killed Meager.’

  ‘I don’t believe you, Tibby,’ I replied firmly. ‘You seek to save your son from the gallows, even if it means you are judged guilty yourself.’

  ‘It does not matter whether you believe me or not, truth-seeker’s wife! It is what I say happened, and I shall say it before the judge.’