iniquities of the entire world, with all the force of the pulpit; and Harriet and Lucy were making a great to-do because poor Silas was attempting to eat a ragout which they were sure was too rich for his constitution. And all the time our old friend James Laurence was talking to me incessantly about the navy.
I cannot like Captain Laurence. He is too much inclined to pressgang the conversation and carry it away aboard ship. And once he has got it there, what can his listener do? One has nothing at all to say and can only exclaim upon the captain’s bravery and hardihood – which becomes excessively dull after the first five minutes. But Lucy, I fancy, would have been exceedingly happy to do the exclaiming and was rather aggrieved that it fell to my lot rather than hers.
Well, so much for dinner. But I wish particularly to tell you about what happened afterwards. And the first thing is that Anne Harman-Foote and I had the drawing room to ourselves for a little while before tea. Harriet returned to Penelope straight after dinner and Lucy, I think, went with her. The men, I believe, were occupied in the billiard room, for I could hear the clatter of cue and balls all the time that we were talking. Anyway, Anne (you see how our intimacy is increased! I have been authorised to use the name) and I were left alone in the drawing room and I took the opportunity of finding out as much as I might about Miss Fenn.
My first business was to discover all that I could about her family and connections – but there I more or less drew a blank. Miss Fenn, it seems, was a woman of ‘very respectable’ family, but poor; she was a neighbour of old Mrs Foote in Shropshire and she came to Madderstone upon her recommendation. Mrs Foote, by the by, seems to have been a great recommender of maids, governesses and companions; she was generally regarded as being very ‘sensible and straightforward’ in these matters and it was quite the accepted practice to apply to her when any such appointment was to be made.
I asked next about Miss Fenn’s life at Madderstone. What were her pursuits? Her friends? And – that all-important question for every governess – how much did she ‘mix in the family’.
Well, if she had any friends in the neighbourhood, her pupil knew nothing of them; and her pursuits seem to have been only attending church and visiting the poor. And as to mixing in the family – Anne was puzzled by the question.
‘Why, she was with us as much as she chose to be!’
‘And when there was company?’ I pressed. ‘Dinners? Balls?’
‘She generally dined with us,’ said Anne, ‘but she did not attend balls – except, of course, the All Hallows ball. That she always attended.’
And I thought that point rather telling, Eliza. That she should be present for Madderstone’s famous All Hallows dance when the greater tenants and the half-gentry of the place are invited but absent herself from the later, grander balls of the winter, speaks to me of a woman with a delicate sense of her own place. A woman with scruples, determined not to impose too far upon her employer’s goodwill.
And, finally, I asked about the day of her disappearance.
It was, it seems, the sixth of June 1791 – a Monday, and a very warm day. There was a large party staying in the house: all the Laurence cousins were there and Mr Harman-Foote – plain Mr Foote as he was then – had arrived that morning with his mother. It had been too hot to take much exercise during the day but the evening was a little cooler and Miss Fenn left the abbey quite soon after dinner, saying that she had an appointment to keep.
I asked, of course, what this appointment was, and I wondered for a moment if Anne might know more of it than she was telling. But when I pressed her she only said she supposed it to be a charitable errand – that was the usual cause of Miss Fenn visiting the village.
And did her manner seem at all unusual? I asked. Was there anything to mark this day as different from any other?
Oh no, Anne assured me, nothing at all. Absolutely nothing at all. It had been a day just exactly like any other and she had expected Miss Fenn to return before tea – it had been agreed that they should all drink tea in the summer house.
Well, I rather fear that if there was anything unusual about the day it may now be irretrievable. Anne is either unable or unwilling to recall it.
So I turned my attention to the coins and the ring which were recovered from the lake. There is perhaps five or six pounds in money: the gold still remarkably fresh-looking – the silver coins very much tarnished and one or two of them positively misshapen with decay. As for the ring – it is rather a plain thing. Which, I am told, is entirely in keeping with the lady’s taste. It seems she had quite a horror of finery. There is nothing to this ring but a narrow gold band and a simple setting holding a curl of fine hair. The curl is dark, almost black; but, upon reflection, I am not at all sure that that is its natural hue. I think it may have been darkened by lying so long in the water.
‘Do you know,’ I said, ‘whose hair is in the ring?’
But she said she did not and, when I pressed to know whether she had ever asked about it, she smiled. ‘I did once,’ she said, ‘and was rebuked for impertinence – I never asked again.’
I looked more closely and saw that, within the gold band, there is engraved a single word: ‘Beloved’.
Dido laid down her pen and blew upon her chilled fingers to warm them. The rain was beating hard at her attic window, the wind moaning under the roof like a lost soul and the landing clock had long since struck midnight. She was determined to finish her letter before sleeping, but was unsure how to go on.
The ring had raised so many speculations in her mind, she was ashamed to reveal half of them to her sister. Had there been a secret lover? Had he played a part in the woman’s death?
Of course Miss Fenn’s character and reputation argued against it. And it was entirely possible that the ring was a remembrance of a father or mother, a brother or a sister; but if that were so, why had she not acknowledged it?
The fact was that, in this case, investigation seemed to breed suspicion. And the visit to Miss Fenn’s bedchamber had aroused even more questions in Dido’s mind …
Chapter Nine
There had been no time to visit Miss Fenn’s chamber before tea, and when tea was over the card tables were placed immediately. So it was not until Mr Portinscale, Silas and Lucy had all gone home that Dido was able to go to the room with her hostess.
All was quiet within the house as they set off from the drawing room, candle in hand; but outside, the wind was rising, driving handfuls of rain hard against the windows with a sound like thrown gravel. Mr Harman-Foote had been for some time shut up in the library talking with Captain Laurence, but as the two women crossed to the stairs he came out of the library door, pipe in hand, looking rather displeased and breathing port wine and tobacco smoke. Dido could not quite escape the idea that he had been listening and waiting for their leaving the drawing room.
‘Well, my dear,’ he bellowed across the echoing hall, ‘what are you troubling poor Miss Kent with now?’
His wife coloured a little but named their errand calmly enough.
‘It is very late,’ he said, drawing out his watch. ‘Very late indeed. Do you not think I had better order the carriage and have it take our guest home. I am sure she is very tired.’
‘We shall not be ten minutes,’ said his wife.
He looked as if he might protest again, but Dido declared that she was not at all fatigued and he knew his manners well enough not to hold out against her. ‘Well, well, have it your own way! Have it your own way! Ought to know better than to try to change a lady’s mind! But I shall ring for Thomas immediately and have the carriage at the door in ten minutes.’ There was another look at his watch. ‘There’s a storm coming on. You had better not delay any longer than that, Miss Kent.’
‘He thinks,’ said Mrs Harman-Foote as they climbed the stairs, ‘that I would be less distressed if I left matters alone. He thinks I should forget all about my poor friend. He means well, I don’t doubt, but he does not understand my feelings. So I shall tell him as little of our investigations as I can.’
At the top of the stairs they turned along a broad, carpeted passageway, into the east wing – where the best rooms were – and Mrs Harman-Foote threw open the door of a chamber close to the one which had been given over to Penelope. It was a fine, large room – a room such as a woman of consequence might be given on a visit – a room
