A Woman of Consequence

cloak tighter about her shoulders.

Henry Coulson posed a great many problems – his role in the mysteries of Madderstone was complicated and, although she suspected a great deal, there was much of which she was still uncertain …

She turned back to Harriet who was once more attempting to read. Her book – held up high to catch the light – was obscuring her face.

‘Harriet, I have been meaning for some days past to talk to you about Mr Coulson.’

‘Oh?’ Harriet lowered the book an inch or two and looked rather apprehensively over the top of it.

Dido looked at Silas, but he was sleeping soundly, his cheek now resting upon the side of Lucy’s bonnet, his own hat sliding forward over his face. ‘Who,’ she asked bluntly, ‘is Henry Coulson – exactly.’

Harriet sighed and lowered the book an inch further. ‘Exactly? Let me see … By his account of himself to Silas, it would seem that he was third cousin twice removed to old Mr Harman. But, as you know, he was orphaned when he was a boy and Mr Harman paid for his education.’

Harriet delivered this account briskly and raised the book once more to her eyes – though there would scarcely seem to be enough light for reading in the rocking carriage.

‘And what relation is the young man to you?’ insisted Dido.

Harriet sighed loudly. ‘Dido, this really is becoming very tiresome! Am I to have no peace in which to read?’

‘It is a great deal too dark to read and conversation is our only resource. Please indulge me by answering my questions. We aging spinsters have so few pleasures!’

‘You are impossible!’

‘What relation is Henry Coulson to your family?’

‘Oh well! If his account of himself is correct, I calculate that he must be the great nephew of our second cousin – but on the father’s side only.’

‘That must have taken a great deal of time to work out,’ remarked Dido. ‘I wonder that you put yourself to the trouble of establishing it.’

Harriet’s only answer was to raise the book and pretend to read.

‘The other day,’ said Dido conversationally, ‘Silas revealed something very interesting about Mr Coulson.’

‘Did he?’ The book did not move.

‘I understand – from what Silas told me – that, although in absolute terms Mr Coulson is only a distant connection, he is, in fact, your nearest living male relation.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Harriet with a great show of indifference. ‘There does seem rather to be a shortage of men in Dear Papa’s family.’

‘In fact …’ Dido leant impatiently across the swaying carriage and pushed down the book so that she could look into Harriet’s eyes. ‘Mr Coulson is next in line to the entail on your father’s estate, is he not? He will inherit Ashfield if …’

Instinctively both women turned to look at Silas’s face, pale and delicate under the wide dark brim of his hat.

‘… if,’ Dido finished in a whisper, ‘anything should happen to your brother.’

‘Yes.’ Harriet sighed and closed her book with a snap. ‘Now, Dido, why are you inquiring so minutely into my family’s concerns? It is very impertinent.’

‘On the contrary it is very pertinent – in the proper sense.’

‘Now you are being satirical! And you know …’

‘Yes, my dear Harriet, I know you do not like it. But I think you may forgive me when you know the direction of my enquiries.’

‘Very well then, you had better explain yourself.’

‘Well, Mr Coulson’s relationship to you accounts for all his attempts to discredit Harris Paynter. You see, I realise now that Henry Coulson does not mean to throw doubt upon the testimony Mr Paynter gave at the inquest, at all – which is what I thought at first. All these slighting remarks about the poor surgeon have been aimed at Silas.’ She cast another concerned look at the sleeping boy who had been bundled by his careful sisters, not only into a flannel waistcoat, but also two overcoats. ‘He hopes to make your brother careless of Mr Paynter’s sound medical advice, does he not?’

Harriet hesitated and then put her hand to her brow as if in relief. It was perhaps a comfort to talk of something that had been weighing upon her mind for weeks. ‘Yes,’ she admitted, ‘I believe he does. Mr Coulson has next to no fortune of his own, you know. I daresay it would suit him very well indeed if Silas succumbed to the asthma. But there are none so blind as those that will not see. I cannot make Silas distrust the tiresome man. He thinks Henry Coulson is the greatest friend he has ever had!’

Dido sank a little deeper into the damp-smelling leather of her corner and shifted about her cold feet in an attempt to revive a little feeling in them. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘Mr Coulson is a very tiresome man indeed. I have known from the beginning that he was up to no good. But it was not until I first understood the great lengths to which Mr Paynter is going to help your brother, that I began to divine the cause of Mr Coulson’s defaming the surgeon. And then, of course, a great many other matters were brought within my understanding – matters such as the haunting of Penelope’s bedchamber.’

‘Do you believe Mr Coulson was the cause of that?’ cried Harriet, interested in spite of herself.

‘Oh yes, I have been sure of it from the beginning. But at first I believed he had acted on behalf of somebody else. Now I can see the cruel masquerade for what it was: a bid to take advantage of Penelope’s credulous nature in order to frighten her away from our neighbourhood.’

‘But to what end?’

‘That is what puzzled me – until I began to suspect the exact nature of Mr Coulson’s relationship to your family, and then, of course his motive was clear.’

‘Was it?’

‘My dear Harriet, besides your brother being cured of his asthma, what could be more inconvenient to Mr Coulson than the poor boy’s marrying and fathering a son? And I happen to know that Silas had confided his feelings for Penelope to “the best friend he has ever had”.’

‘Ah! Of course!’ Harriet sighed discontentedly. ‘Oh, I wish with all my heart we could be rid of the troublesome man, but I see no hope of his leaving Madderstone. He will stay, I am sure, until his dangerous friendship has destroyed Silas.’

‘Well now,’ said Dido with great satisfaction, ‘we come to my point: the reason why I believe you may become reconciled to curiosity and impertinent enquiry. You see I believe that these besetting sins of spinsterhood have led me to a solution of your problems.’

‘Have they?’

‘I would reveal it, but I fear you would think me satirical.’

‘Dido, just tell me.’

‘Very well then,’ said Dido, ‘I think that you should speak to Mr Coulson yourself, and represent to him the very great desirability of his leaving.’

‘That would not do at all. He would not listen.’

‘Oh, but I think he would. For, if he should seem reluctant, you might just mention to him the blood and the feathers which litter the ruined gallery at the abbey: suggest that they – and the lanterns which are seen in the ruins at night – should be brought to the attention of Mr Harman-Foote. I think that once you have done that you may find him much more willing to oblige you by taking himself out of the neighbourhood.’ The lights of cottages were now beginning to appear beyond the carriage windows and, as she looked out at them, Dido’s smile broadened. ‘And if you find the gentleman is still inclined to be awkward, you might mention that I saw him in the inn yard at Great Farleigh, delivering to the London mail-coach a box which smelt very strongly of game.’

There were stronger lights now shining into the carriage and showing Harriet’s face staring in half-smiling disbelief, as the wheels began to rattle loudly into the yard of the inn at which they were to stop for the night, shaking their companions awake.

They all climbed out into the welcoming lamp-and firelight that poured out of the open door onto the cobbles,