steamy glass so that she could see the jagged walls and broken arches of the abbey more clearly. But the great nave of the abbey church presented only a blank wall. The gallery faced out across the parkland and no light upon it would be visible from the house. ‘Now who would be carrying a lantern about up there so late at night?’ she mused.
‘Someone up to no good,’ said the housekeeper with great conviction.
Someone up to no good upon the gallery. For some reason the description brought Captain Laurence immediately to Dido’s mind. A memory struck her with such force that she reached out to hold the gnarled trunk of the vine. The damp, peaty heat of the glasshouse seemed to be choking her.
She was remembering how the captain had come to inspect the gallery on the day that the bones were discovered. He had been so very interested in the place. His manner had been so secretive … And he had seemed to be searching for something …
Was it possible that Captain Laurence had returned to the ruins to continue his search – at night, when he might do so unobserved?
‘You are quite right to remind me, Mrs Philips,’ she said with sudden determination – and very pleased indeed to have a fresh cause of activity. ‘I believe I should be paying much more attention to what is “carrying on” over in the ruins.’
The housekeeper’s words had not exactly reminded Dido of the ghost in the ruins, for she had certainly not forgotten it; but they had served to recall her to its possible significance.
For she now remembered that the captain had behaved rather strangely when he visited the scene of the accident. She recalled how very thoughtful he had been – and how interested he had been to discover that Penelope could see the pool at the moment when she fell.
At the time, this circumstance had passed almost unnoticed. But now – now that she knew him to have had some foreknowledge of the skeleton’s presence in the pool – it took on a great deal more significance …
Was it possible that he been considering a connection between Penelope’s fall and the murdered woman?
At the beginning of this business – at the time of the inquest – Dido had herself suspected such a connection. But lately she had been drawn away by other matters and had rather overlooked the haunting … Perhaps that had been a mistake. Perhaps in pursuing the ghost she might discover something about Miss Fenn’s death. She should visit the ruins again to see whether this late-night visitor, this carrier of a lantern, had left behind any evidences.
She bade a rather abrupt farewell to the housekeeper, left the house and hurried busily along the gravel path towards the ruins, the air of the autumn morning raw and cold against her face after the clinging heat of the hothouse. Over on the lawns among the felled trees, a wagon was being loaded with great logs and a pair of big, placid workhorses were dragging away tree stumps, the rattling of chains and the shouts of their driver carrying clearly in the stillness. A raven rose from the abbey walls, crying harshly as she approached.
She walked meditatively across the cloisters, where little stunted hawthorns had broken through the stone flags worn smooth by the feet of long-dead nuns, and passed through a fallen wall into the remains of the nave. And, as she did so, she heard a sound from the gallery above – slight though it was, it echoed about the high, damp walls. She held her breath and listened intently. The sound came again – a slow, heavy footfall.
She crept very carefully across the broken pavement, and peered up into the gallery. There was a man up there: a dark figure against pale grey sky, framed by an arch of stone. For a moment the power of her expectations caused her to see Captain Laurence; but then there was a slight movement and the shape resolved itself into Henry Coulson.
Without hesitating to think what she was about, she gathered up her skirts and quietly climbed the steps.
Mr Coulson had his back turned towards her. He was walking slowly along the gallery, studying the floor as he went. About halfway along he stopped, bent down, picked something up, then looked about and picked up one, two, three more things before tucking them all away inside his coat. Dido was upon the tips of her toes, her fingers clutching tightly at the ivy for support as she endeavoured to see what he was gathering so carefully; but the bulk of his body obscured her view and, try as she might, she could not make it out …
He straightened up – and turned around.
‘Miss Kent!’ he cried. His face became very red; he laughed nervously. ‘You quite surprised me!’ He hurried towards her. ‘I was … just looking about me, you know.’ He insisted upon taking her hand and shaking it, whether she would or not. ‘I declare I am monstrous glad to see you, Miss Kent!’ he cried. ‘For, d’you know, you are the very person I have been thinking I must talk to?’
‘Indeed?’ said Dido, stepping into the gallery’s dank atmosphere and looking up at him with some surprise. He was a thickset young man with a decided air of fashion, untidy fair hair and rather weak, pale eyes which were blinking and peering in the shadows of the gallery. Now that the first shock of being observed was over, he was regaining his usual air of easy familiarity.
‘Yes indeed! I’ll warrant you are just the woman to help me! As soon as I set eyes upon you, I said to myself, now there’s a remarkably clever woman and I’ll wager fifty pounds she’s the very person to advise me.’
‘I am sure I should be very glad to be of service to you, Mr Coulson, but I do not know …’ Dido was now attempting to peer beyond him, without seeming to do so. She was particularly anxious to see whether there was anything still lying upon the flagstones.
‘And good-natured too,’ he cried, ‘which is just as I thought. Now then,’ he said leaning easily against a pillar, ‘what do you think of this surgeon fellow – Paynter? For I expect you’ve known him for ever.’
‘Mr Paynter,’ said Dido very much astonished at the question, ‘is a very respectable man: very knowledgeable, and exceedingly well regarded in his profession.’
Mr Coulson’s small eyes narrowed above his rather snubbed nose. ‘Is he now?’ he said keenly. But then he laughed. ‘Well, I daresay he does well enough. But I’ll warrant his patients die a great deal, do they not? Come, they do, don’t they?’
Dido stared. ‘I am sure,’ she began rather warmly, ‘that they die a great deal less …’ She stopped, realising that she too was now talking nonsense. ‘I am sure,’ she said with careful precision, ‘that Mr Paynter’s patients are a great deal less likely to die for consulting with him.’ ‘Yes, but he is just a country fellow. Why, I’ll wager a thousand pounds he scarcely knows Galen and Harvey and has never heard of Edward Jenner!’
‘As to that,’ said Dido doubtingly, ‘I hardly know.’ She could see beyond him now – and was quite sure that there was nothing lying on the floor of the gallery – nothing but one or two green and brown feathers. ‘I never heard Mr Paynter speak of those gentlemen,’ she said, ‘but, really, I know nothing about his acquaintances.’
‘Excellent!’ he cried, very well pleased. ‘That is just as I thought! An ignorant country fellow!’
Dido was uneasy: she did not quite like him being so well satisfied with her information. ‘Why do you think so badly of Mr Paynter?’ she asked.
‘Oh, it is nothing. Merely that I went to the inquest, you know, and there was this bumbling fellow talking – and the whole room listening and saying how much he was to be trusted on account of him being “a very clever medical man”, which, you see, I could not help laughing at!’
Dido looked up at him sharply. ‘You mistrust Mr Paynter’s testimony?’
He smiled knowingly and tapped the side of his nose. ‘I think he knows nothing at all and had better be disregarded,’ he said.
Dido’s last visit of the day was to the front of the house – in search of Mrs Harman-Foote. She wished to solicit the use of the carriage – and also to make a few more enquiries about Miss Fenn’s acquaintances. For a little reflection upon the matter had brought her to suspect that Anne Harman-Foote might know more than she was telling about ‘the woman who had brought her up’.
She was fortunate enough to arrive in the drawing room just after the children had quitted it for the nursery dinner. The room – and the mother – had a rather fagged, weary appearance. There were toys and books everywhere: a wooden doll lolled against the elegant gilded leg of a chair with a decidedly wine-flown appearance; spillikins sticks, toy soldiers and a ragged Latin grammar covered the sofas. Anne had her hair pulled down about one ear and the imprint of a small hand upon the pale grey silk of her gown in what appeared to be plum jam.
Dido brought forward the name of Mrs Pinker, but Anne immediately shook her head. No, she was quite sure she had never heard of the woman.
