A gentleman of fortune

so frequently resolved mysteries in novels, there was, after all, something irresistible to her imagination about the notion of papers: a great bundle of papers left behind as the writer fled. She only said that, ‘perhaps she might be able to find out where the butler lived and so consult with him over Mr Henderson’s visit,’ but, as she followed Sarah into the offices of Knaresborough House, her mind was not untouched by thoughts of a more exciting discovery. If not the kind of obscure and thrilling narrative favoured by the writers of ‘gothic’ novels, then perhaps a diary kept by the butler that would describe the events of the night on which Mrs Lansdale died. Some fitting climax to the mystery she was pursuing.

But it had to be admitted that there was little of romance or mystery to be found in the kitchen passage. The place might be as dark and narrow as the corridor of a castle and the lightning was, most obligingly, flashing through the small, high windows; but the sight of drugget upon the floor, the sound of scouring coming from the kitchen and, above all, the lingering smells of lye soap and roast mutton, must temper any ideas of romance.

And the butler’s pantry, which Sarah pointed out to her before hurrying away to her work, was as plain and commonplace as a room can be. She paused in its doorway and looked around, wondering about the man who had once occupied the place. There was a deal table and a small black grate; an old but comfortable chair with the horsehair stuffing coming out of the seat a little; a rag rug before the fire and a chest with a long drawer in it. There was just a hint of stale cigar smoke in the air, mixing with the smell of coal – and something else: something which Dido could not quite put a name to, but which seemed familiar and which, for some reason, brought to her mind that makeshift theatre which her brothers had created in the vicarage barn long ago…

Lightning flooded the room, showing up every scratch and stain upon the table, the spots of candle-grease on the mantelpiece. Thunder rattled at the little panes of the window. Dido stepped to the chest and opened the drawer.

It was indeed stuffed full of papers.

She drew them out eagerly, bundled them together and sat down upon the horsehair chair which was below the window and so offered the best light for reading. She drew a long breath and turned over the first sheet…

It was a washing bill.

And so was the next. And the next. She smiled to herself – aware that she had been foolish to hope for anything more and very glad that there was no one by to witness either her expectation, or her disappointment. She turned the pages over one after another – the only wonder in her mind, surprise at the amount of clean shirts, cravats and waistcoats a butler seemed to require. She had not known a manservant needed to change his cravat every day and his shirt…she checked the dates upon the bills… every two days.

She sorted out these inventories of linen and set them aside. A few papers still remained.

But her perusal of these was just as unenlightening, for they contained no more than bills for shoe string and hair powder.

She sighed, set the sheets aside on the rug, and turned back to the drawer to make quite sure that there was nothing else within. There did not appear to be any more papers; but, in order to be quite certain, she ran her hand about the drawer, reaching to the very back of it. Her fingers struck against something hard; she drew it out and discovered it to be a small brown pot.

As she held it up to the light of the window, she was aware that the smell which she had been unable to identify on entering the room had now become stronger. She unscrewed the top of the pot and sniffed at the yellowish, sticky contents.

It was gum arabic. The very stuff which her brothers had used to attach the beards and side-whiskers of the villains they had played.

Dido sat for several minutes, quite stunned, and with the little pot clutched tight in her hand. Rain battered at the window; away in the kitchen a woman was singing as she scrubbed. Another flash of lightning fell into the room, showing up the coarse characters of the papers on the hearthrug. She turned back to them. And the thought darted into her mind, with all the quickness and brilliance of the lightning itself, that here was a manuscript quite as strange and exciting as any she had fancied finding. For never had there been a manservant so remarkably well dressed!

And besides, here before her was a bill for hair powder. A bill which had been sent to a man who was completely bald…

Chapter Thirty

…It is three a.m. Eliza – or so the watchman in the street below has just called out. He has also assured me that ‘all is well’, but this I am less inclined to believe. I am convinced that all is far from well in Richmond. There are matters afoot here – deception and dishonesty and I know not what! I fear that respectable appearances may be covering all manner of corruption.

For it is true: Mr Henderson does not exist – he never did. My fanciful notion was not so very fanciful after all. There never was any such gentleman. There was only the fellow Fraser in a wig and false side- whiskers – and a great many more clean shirts and waistcoats than any servant ever required!

I have been puzzling a long while over how he could have imposed so upon the neighbourhood; but, upon reflection, I realise that, by Miss Prentice’s account, he took care to avoid his neighbours – and the guests he entertained all came from town. It was very carefully – and very cleverly – done.

But why he should have entered upon such a strange and dangerous deception I cannot begin to understand – nor why, on the night of Mrs Lansdale’s death, he should, for just a few hours, have resumed his disguise: his pretence of being the master of the house.

For that is certainly what he did. And Miss Prentice saw him on the lawn. And the things which I saw in the drawing room, the stains of hair powder upon the chairs and the music on the pianoforte, were all evidences of another of Mr Henderson’s famous evening parties.

Do you see, Eliza, how, incredible though this seems, it does bring a great many other incredible things ‘within the compass of belief’? For such a party to take place the dog would have had to be destroyed for he would have raised the alarm the moment strangers entered the house. I do not doubt that that was what Mr Henderson – I mean Fraser – was doing out on the lawn when Miss Prentice saw him.

And then there is the burglary… That very contrary and back to front burglary.

The company who gathered in Knaresborough House on the evening of Mrs Lansdale’s death came there in secret. Now, Eliza, supposing something was left behind by mistake that evening – something of value. The only way it could be retrieved would be by stealth…

Do you understand? I mean to say that, perhaps, Fraser searched the drawing room for something that had been left by one of his visitors – and was surprised by his master as he did so – and broke open the window and started the story of ‘two big rough-looking men’, in order to explain the evidence of his searching, and to draw suspicion away from himself.

Perhaps you will say that I am being too fanciful once more; but, if you are inclined to doubt my genius, I would respectfully remind you that my fancies have in the past proved rather well founded; and I would also draw your attention to the fact that those big rough fellows were never  seen by anyone but Fraser. They were – we are told – gone before Mr Lansdale entered the room. The watchmen cannot recollect seeing them; they seem to have vanished the moment they left Knaresborough House. Which, you must grant, is a very remarkable thing for two such large and obviously criminal-looking men to do – unless, of course, they never had any corporeal existence at all and were nothing more than useful products of the butler’s invention.

But, leaving aside the thieves for a moment and returning to the night of Mrs Lansdale’s death, there is another, more pressing, question which I am sure you have anticipated: what steps did Fraser take that evening to ensure that his party passed undetected by the real tenant of the house – who was upstairs in her chamber all the time that he was entertaining his guests?

Now you and I know that Mrs Lansdale presented no danger because she had been drugged by her nephew and her companion. But Fraser cannot have known that. And yet he had so much confidence in her insensibility that he dared to invite strangers into her drawing room!