A Woman of Consequence

such as Dido had never been offered in any country house. There were mahogany wardrobes, a large mirror, tall sash windows, very pretty wallpaper and bed-hangings embroidered with fabulous Chinese birds.

The room had the musty smell of a place seldom entered; but there was also a faint scent from old lavender laid in the bed and closets … And there was something else too, very faint, another sweet scent which was familiar, but so very out of place that it was a moment or two before Dido could identify it – as tobacco smoke …

‘It is a pretty room, is it not?’ said Anne as she set her candle down upon the toilette table.

‘Oh yes! Your father must have held Miss Fenn in high regard, to have placed her in such a room.’

‘He held her in the highest regard possible. She was quite part of our family.’

They were both conscious of the ordered carriage and began to look about them as quickly as they might. Dido could not help but feel the strangeness of entering the domain of a woman so long dead, and the few plain possessions – the wooden-backed hairbrush on the toilette table, the simple writing desk upon a window seat and the black bible and prayer book lying on a table beside the bed – all had the air of things but just laid aside, whose owner might return at any moment.

She walked about touching things here and there, keenly aware of the character which seemed still to inhabit the room – austere in the midst of luxury. Above the bed there was a text worked in faded cottons. Thou God seest me …

‘They are gone!’ cried Anne suddenly.

Dido turned to see her standing beside the open writing desk, staring in disbelief.

‘They are all gone!’ she repeated.

‘I beg your pardon?’ Dido went to stand beside her and looked into the opened desk which held only two uncut pens and some blank sheets of paper turning brown at the edges. ‘What are gone?’

‘The letters. There were letters here, letters which she had received. They were here in the writing desk.’ She sat down upon the bed among the Chinese birds, staring at the desk in disbelief.

‘Are you quite sure they were in the desk? They were not somewhere else? In a drawer, perhaps?’

‘No! I know they were in the desk. They have always been there.’

‘Have they?’ Dido felt her interest quicken. She looked more closely at her friend’s face, pale with confusion and shock. ‘Anne, who were these letters from? What was written in them?’

Mrs Harman-Foote raised her eyes in a look of amazement. ‘I had not read them,’ she replied.

At first, Dido – judging from her own unmanageable curiosity – was scarcely able to believe this. Letters left for fifteen years unread! How remarkable!

But then, allowing for a difference in character – and the profound influence of the governess upon her pupil – it began to seem less strange. Looking about the room, which seemed still to bear the imprint of its mistress, she could, after all, comprehend that the respect in which Miss Fenn’s memory was held, might make Anne reluctant to come in here and violate all the rules of honour by reading what was not addressed to her.

‘When did you last see the letters?’ she asked.

‘Today. Just before dinner. After dressing, I came in here for a moment or two. And I looked into the desk, so I know the letters were there. I was wondering, you see, whether it might be right to look at them now. Whether the higher good might not be served. I meant to ask your opinion whether reading the letters might help us discover the truth about her death.’

‘I see. So it would seem someone has taken them from the desk since then.’

‘And someone must return them,’ said Anne, regaining her usual assurance. ‘I cannot permit such a theft! But, Dido, I do not quite understand. Why would someone take them?’

‘I think we must assume that it was in order to prevent them being read.’ Dido smiled. ‘Anyone who knows me could guess that I would hesitate less over looking into them than you …’ She was forced to stop a while to consider all the implications of the letters’ disappearance. ‘Of course,’ she said very slowly, ‘anyone who was at the dinner table would have heard that you intended to bring me here. Any one of those present could have come to this room after dinner and removed the letters … And there is another point …’ She stopped.

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘Nothing … No, it is nothing of consequence.’ She had decided it would be better not to mention that little hint of tobacco smoke which she had discerned upon entering the room.

Chapter Ten

The strange disappearance of the letters haunted Dido’s dreams and occupied the many waking moments of the night. But she came to the breakfast table next morning with no clearer notion of what was carrying on – only a certainty that the nature of her mystery was changed entirely. For it would seem she faced not only the death of a woman fifteen years ago, but also a more immediate puzzle – the motives of someone who was acting now.

Who had cared enough about those letters to risk drawing attention to themselves by removing them? Was there something written in them which would cast light upon the circumstances of Miss Fenn’s death? Might they point to the guilt of someone still living at Madderstone?

There was a great deal more to investigate than she had previously supposed. Somehow she must circumvent Margaret’s demands upon her time and get herself to the abbey again as soon as she might. She had, as yet, not even looked at the place in which Miss Fenn’s remains had been discovered. And there were a great many questions which might be put to the abbey servants …

‘I declare, Dido, you are very quiet and sullen this morning. Does dining at the great house not agree with you?’ Margaret leant across the sunny table with the teapot in her hand. She looked irritably from her sister-in-law to the back of the newspaper which was engrossing her husband, in the expectation that one or other of her companions should supply her with a little conversation – and seemed to decide that Dido was the more promising subject of the two. ‘Well,’ she said, as she poured the tea, ‘you have not told me one word about who was in the party yesterday, or what you had to eat.’

Dido sighed and was on the point of giving as good an account of the evening as she could, when her brother saved her the exertion by making a sudden announcement from behind his newspaper.

‘I have had a letter from my friend Lomax,’ he said. ‘He is coming here again on Friday.’

Dido laid down her knife and stared across the bread and butter and the tea-things of the breakfast table, to the window sill where a tray of windfall plums had been laid to ripen in the sun; she noticed the deepening marks of bruises upon one, the small wasp holes in another … But, though she would not look at her, she knew that Margaret’s lips were thinning as she set down the teapot and swept a few invisible crumbs from the tablecloth.

‘And how long,’ said Margaret in her most gentle tones, ‘how long do you think Mr Lomax will remain with us, my love?’

Alerted by the extreme softness of her voice, Francis lowered his paper an inch or two; a bushy grey eyebrow and a very wary eye appeared. ‘About a week, perhaps?’ he hazarded, his voice rising into a question.

Margaret closed her eyes and sighed.

Francis retreated behind his newspaper. ‘He is on his way to somewhere else – perhaps he will only stay five days – or four. I daresay it will not be so very long.’

Margaret looked once more as if she were bound for the pagan arena, but, as wives all over the country discover every day, it is peculiarly difficult to argue with the back of a newspaper. And Dido was soon wishing that she could employ such a protection herself.

For the expectation of a visitor threw Margaret into a frenzy of activity. She was determined that curtains must be washed and beds aired – though the motive seemed to be rather less the comfort of her guest than the discomfort of her husband. And through it all she had a great deal to say about the inconvenience and expense of visitors and also her surprise that Francis should take such extraordinary pleasure in the company of a man who was, after all, not much more than the steward of his daughter’s husband.

It was a very great relief to escape at last for another walk to Madderstone.