‘Indeed!’ Dido looked across again to the captain as he smiled broadly in the ruddy light of the fire, his strong white teeth very prominent in his weather-beaten face. There was a great deal too much self-congratulation in the smile for her taste.
At tea he had devoted himself to Penelope, who had made a brief appearance in company that evening – her first since her accident. Now she had returned to rest in her bedchamber, but while she had remained below the captain had been so very solicitous for her comfort and welfare that Dido had wondered how Lucy could look on with every appearance of goodwill and complaisance …
She realised suddenly that the captain had ceased talking – that he was now returning her gaze. His smile broadened.
She turned back to Lucy quickly. ‘And Penelope knows no more about her own history?’ she asked.
‘Oh no! Though of course she remembers her mother quite distinctly!’
‘Does she?’ cried Dido in surprise – but then distrusted. ‘And what, exactly, does she remember?’
‘She remembers the sweetest, most beautiful face in the world bending over her cradle – a voice, angelic in its softness, singing her to sleep … All that kind of thing, you know – for it is quite impossible to ever forget a mother’s love.’
‘I see.’ Dido detected more of romance than memory in all this. ‘But she has never asked Mrs Nolan …?’
She stopped, aware that her companion was no longer attending. Captain Laurence himself was now approaching and Lucy was happily making room for him to sit between them on the sofa.
‘You are talking of Miss Lambe?’ he asked as he sat down and arranged his bristling brows and side-whiskers into a look of compassionate concern. ‘I was,’ he said turning to Lucy with a very particular look, ‘very glad indeed to see her so much recovered. For I know, Miss Lucy, how very, very anxious you have been about her.’
Lucy smirked and exclaimed.
Dido watched and listened with great interest as the captain talked on in a low insinuating voice. She could not help but admire the way in which every concern for, every attention to, Penelope was now explained away by his overwhelming anxiety for Lucy’s peace of mind.
‘… And so you see, Miss Lambe has told me that she is experiencing no great pain in her head; so you
It was all so very cleverly done! And no doubt Lucy – predisposed as she was to believe whatever suited her – had cause enough to think him ‘attached’.
Dido glanced about the room to see whether anyone else was taking note of the very particular attention he was paying. But it would seem that she was their only audience. On one side Silas, overheated by Mr Harman- Foote’s enormous fire, was beginning to wheeze and cough, and Harriet was entirely taken up with chiding him and placing a screen to protect him, for all the world as if he were a delicate girl. And on the other side, the whist players were intent upon their cards and a conversation on the perennial subject of poachers.
‘It’s a mystery to me, Lomax, where the devil the birds are all going,’ boomed Mr Harman-Foote. ‘They can’t be eating them all – they must be getting ’em off to sell in town somehow, but I’m damned if I know how they’re doing it, for the keepers have been out looking at every cart that leaves the village. Why, I rather take my hat off to ’em. Clever devils ain’t they …?’
‘… And I am particularly grateful to you, Miss Kent …’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Dido turned back hastily to find that the captain was now regarding her with a look of great feeling.
‘I know,’ he said, ‘that you have been doing the poor invalid the greatest of services – I refer of course to your efforts at discovering the cause of her fall. Such an explanation would’ – a solicitous glance here at Lucy – ‘help to put all our minds at rest. And I am sure there is no one better qualified for the undertaking.’
‘I hardly know about that,’ Dido replied. ‘For I am not at all certain what qualities the task might require. But if overweening curiosity and a frivolous mind which cannot allow the smallest detail to pass unnoticed are called for – then perhaps I may make some claim.’
‘You are too modest!’ he cried with habitual gallantry. ‘But I cannot allow you to escape the compliment so easily, for I hear too much about your intelligence and quickness of understanding to doubt you are capable of solving any manner of perplexity.’
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, rather wishing he would not lean so close, nor speak in such a softened tone. It was, she knew, no more than his manner – the duty of charming all women which his vanity imposed upon him. But, beyond his shoulder, she could see Lucy becoming very annoyed at having to share his attention.
‘I should be very grateful if you would tell me what you have discovered in your search. And’ – he leant closer still, sinking his voice so that only she could hear – ‘there is the other matter – the mysterious disappearance of Miss Fenn’s letters. My cousin tells me that you are making enquiries into that too …’
Dido drew back, shocked that he should know of the letters, and offended by the familiarity of his manner. She opened her mouth to protest; but her words were drowned in an exclamation from the card table. ‘Mr Lomax! Are you forgetting that spades are
She looked across to see the unfortunate Mr Lomax stammering an apology as he frowned distractedly at the game. And she was wondering whether her imagination was flattering her in suggesting that his eyes had been only just withdrawn from her corner of the room, when all other considerations were driven out by such a scream from above their heads as seemed to shake the very walls of the house.
There was a moment of complete stillness in the drawing room as the echoes died away along the stairs and hallways of the old abbey. Everybody seemed to be staring at somebody else.
And then everybody was moving and talking at once.
Silas Crockford’s voice rang out, with unusual clarity, above the rest. ‘It was Penelope!’
Lucy was taken with hysterics, and Captain Laurence was forced to attend her. Silas, Francis and Mr Lomax were running into the hall, but Harriet was ahead of them all, crying out, ‘It is of no consequence. Do not worry, please. I will go to her.’
And Dido, neatly avoiding Lucy’s clutching hands, was running after her friend immediately. She slipped past the gentlemen who were all come to an uncertain standstill at the foot of the stairs – very eager to encounter any danger, and yet unable to pursue it into a lady’s bedchamber.
She caught up with Harriet on the turn of the stairs. ‘Is Penelope alone?’
Harriet shook her head. ‘No … At least I thought not. I thought that Nanny was sitting with her …’
They were on the landing … At the door … Dido pushed it open …
The only light in the room came from the fire, burning low upon glowing embers with a small flame or two flickering unsteadily, sending fingers of light and shadow across the ceiling and the bed-hangings. There was no attendant – only Penelope sitting up on her bed, her face terrified. She turned to the door as Dido and Harriet hurried in.
‘Oh! She was here!’ she cried. ‘I saw her! The Grey Nun was here at the foot of the bed!’
‘It was a dream,’ said Harriet soothingly. ‘Nothing more.’ She went to the bed and tried to persuade her charge to lie down.
But Penelope resisted feverishly. ‘No, no! I was awake. I was quite awake! And she was just there, you know,’ she insisted, pointing a shaking finger. ‘I had just fallen asleep and then I woke up. And there was a figure in a very ugly grey gown like nuns wear. And there was a light. And a great big hood so her face was quite covered up.’
‘No, no …’
‘Yes!’ Penelope’s poor eyes seemed to be starting out of her head. ‘She spoke to me in an odd sort of voice – such as I suppose they call
Harriet shook her head, and continued to talk quietly and calmly about dreams and tricks of the firelight and the injury from which Penelope was not yet quite recovered …
Meanwhile Dido had followed the direction of the pointing finger and was looking closely at the spot by the bed’s foot where the ghost was supposed to have appeared. She stooped down and touched the bedpost lightly, raised her finger and studied its tip …
Just then the door was opened by poor Nanny, full of tearful apologies for having ‘only just gone down to the
