A Woman of Consequence

cause.

On noticing that something was discovered in the water, Captain Laurence had immediately advised Dido to remain where she was, while he went on alone to investigate. But why? How had he known – how could he have known – that the discovery was unsuitable for a lady’s eyes?

‘He knew!’ she cried wonderingly to the dripping trees. ‘James Laurence knew that there was a body to be discovered in the pool.’

Chapter Fourteen

How, thought Dido as she walked briskly towards Madderstone, could the captain have known about the body before it was discovered?

She ran eagerly through everything she knew about the man. He had certainly been at Madderstone on the day Miss Fenn disappeared. Anne had spoken of ‘all the Laurence cousins’ being in the house. But he cannot have been more than … (A little bit of rapid calculation and counting of fingers.) No, he cannot have been more than sixteen or seventeen years old at the time. One did not like to suspect anything of a boy of just sixteen or seventeen … And yet, he was a big man; even at sixteen he would have been strong enough …

It would certainly be very interesting to know whether James Laurence had been on familiar terms with the governess: whether he might have had any cause to harm her.

She stopped as she came at last within sight of the abbey, wondering how best to pursue this subject. The mistress of the house had already told all that she could – or would – tell, and the master did not wish the matter to be discussed. But there were certainly those among the servants who remembered Miss Fenn. And, in Dido’s experience, the testimony of an intelligent servant was always worth attending to.

She turned aside from the main sweep, passed the hothouses and the wall of the kitchen garden, and came into the poultry yard. Here she paused and looked about for anyone she might talk to.

It was a well-kept yard, enclosed by a wall so ancient it might be a relic of the abbey’s domain, and furnished with a dozen or so low wooden poultry houses. The hens strutted and fussed in the dusty earth and strings of black and yellow chicks hurried, cheeping, behind them. In one corner there was a rough bench and sitting on that bench, plucking a chicken, was … Harris Paynter.

She stared; but there was no mistake. It most certainly was the young surgeon sitting there with a sack spread about him to protect his clothes, his hands full of brown feathers which he was diligently stuffing into a bag, the limp body of the bird hanging across his knees. His hat was tilted onto the very back of his head and stray pieces of white down were clinging to his black hair.

How very odd!

‘To be quite candid with you,’ she said, glancing at the half-naked hen as she approached, ‘I rather think that this patient is beyond hope of recovery.’

‘Oh no!’ cried Mr Paynter who was constitutionally deaf to humour. ‘I am only collecting a few feathers, Miss Kent.’

He said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world for a gentleman to do, but Dido could not help but ask why he should find himself so urgently in need of feathers that he must gather them for himself.

‘They are required for a little … enquiry which I am carrying out at present.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes a … medical enquiry.’ He laid aside the bird and the sack and dusted a few stray feathers from his person.

‘Indeed?’ said Dido, ‘I did not know that feathers were a cure for any illness.’

‘Oh no,’ he said very seriously and raised his finger as his habit was when he wished to make a precise point. ‘In point of fact, I suspect they are a cause rather than a cure.’ He picked up his bag.

‘What? Poisoned by feathers? This is a new thing.’

‘On the contrary, Miss Kent,’ he said with a bow, and not even the hint of a smile. ‘The case I have in mind is an old one. Some fifteen years old.’ And with that he hurried off. She almost called him back; but he seemed very anxious to be gone and, besides, she did not know exactly what she could say – what she would ask – if she did succeed in delaying him …

‘Well! He’s a strange one, isn’t he?’ said a voice close beside her. She turned to see Mrs Philips, the housekeeper, picking up the half-plucked chicken from the bench and frowning in puzzlement beneath her well- starched cap.

‘Oh, yes, it does seem rather … unusual behaviour, does it not?’

The housekeeper shook her head. ‘Came here saying could he have some feathers. Said it was for his “enquiries”. “Well,” said I, “you’re welcome to all the feathers you care to take out of this bird” – and off he goes to pluck it! Ah, but he’s always been a strange one, Miss Kent; has been ever since his uncle took him in when he was just five years old.’

‘Indeed? Has he?’

‘And, in my opinion, he takes the strangeness from old Arthur Paynter. For he was a great one for “natural philosophy” and “experiments” and young Harris admired him very much.’

‘And now the nephew has taken to “experiments”?’

Mrs Philips nodded. ‘Last month,’ she said, ‘it was eggs gone bad he wanted for his enquiries. Comes here solemn as a judge – “Have you got any eggs gone bad, Mrs Philips?” “Well,” said I, “I might, but I don’t see why you’d want them.” And he says it’s a “medical enquiry” for finding out why they make folk sick.’ She folded her arms and stood with the bird dangling over her crisp white apron. ‘Don’t know what the sense is in that for I’m sure we all know a bad egg will give us a powerful bellyache. Seems to me a surgeon’d do better reckoning out how to cure folk, not how to make them sick.’

‘Oh, yes, yes indeed.’

‘Ah well, as I often say, there’s no accounting … And so, Miss Kent, what brings you here? Was there anything you wanted?’

‘Oh no … no. I just came to look about me and see how your chickens go on … I see the new clutches are all hatched. And you seem to have done remarkably well! I do believe you have hardly lost one!’

‘Well!’ Mrs Philips cheeks glowed with pride. ‘It’s very kind of you to say so, miss. And, though I don’t like to boast, these new pullets are coming on very nicely …’

Mrs Philips was an old acquaintance of Dido’s and she fell comfortably now into a conversation which, beginning upon the merits of her pullets, moved very naturally to the depredations of foxes, and thence to the even worse depredations of poachers on the estate, to the deplorable state of all the estate’s walls, to their long-awaited repair, to repairs and improvements in general, and so, at last, to the draining of the lake – and the relics which it had revealed.

‘And that,’ remarked Dido, watching her companion closely, ‘is an extraordinary business, is it not?’

‘Dear, dear, yes, a very odd business indeed,’ said Mrs Philips. ‘There’s no accounting, is there? Poor Miss Fenn lying up there in the water all this time and no one knowing anything about it! That fair makes me shudder.’

Dido nodded kindly. ‘It must have been a very great shock to everyone who knew the poor lady. And you, Mrs Philips, who had known her ever since she came to this house, must feel it very deeply indeed.’

‘Dear, dear, yes,’ she sighed, very well pleased to have her share of sympathy.

They stood together for a while without speaking, watching the hens pecking up corn. A large cockerel with a fine green and gold tail flew up onto the broken wall and crowed importantly.

‘I understand,’ said Dido as indifferently as she could, ‘that poor Miss Fenn had been low in her spirits for some time before she died.’

‘Yes …’ said the housekeeper, a little doubtingly. ‘There’s no denying she had been a little low … But … Well, there’s no accounting, is there?’

‘No accounting for what, Mrs Philips?’

‘Well, that did seem to me she’d got a bit brighter in the last few weeks. More at ease with herself.’

‘Indeed!’