besides yourself, old Nanny is the only person alive who knows those secrets.’
Harriet only clutched at the post of the bed, following Dido’s restless motion with her eyes. ‘Tell me what you know,’ she said.
‘Enough. More than enough, I assure you. I know who sent that letter.’
‘But how? How can you know it?’ ‘From the writing. Oh you tried very hard to deceive me when we talked about it in Bath. Silas’s hand is so like that of the letter I could not doubt that he had been taught by the man who wrote it. But Silas was educated at home …’
‘Not entirely.’
‘No – you tried to mislead me by mentioning Mr Portinscale. But that would not do. Silas might have learnt Latin from the local clergyman, but he would not have gone to him to learn his letters.’ Dido stopped walking and fixed her friend with an earnest gaze. ‘It was your father who taught Silas to write, was it not?’
Harriet looked stubborn.
‘Oh why will you not admit it? I believe you are reluctant to confess it all even to yourself!’ She began again to pace about the room. ‘Your father taught Silas to write – and there is a likeness in their writing. The hand in the letter seemed familiar to me because your father wrote it. Admit it, Harriet. Please admit it. Your father sent letters to Miss Fenn – letters which you were determined to destroy, because they revealed the … arrangement which he had entered into with her …’
‘Oh hush, hush,’ cried Harriet, flapping her hands. ‘“Prating tongues never …”’
‘No Harriet!’ cried Dido in exasperation. ‘If we must have proverbs, let us try this: “Tell the truth and put the devil to flight”!’
Harriet moaned gently. ‘You cannot know so much, it is impossible …’ She stopped herself; afraid of what she was admitting.
‘I do,’ said Dido, putting her hand to her brow. ‘When looked at in one way all the evidence began to make sense. Little details which had only made me uneasy before, took on entirely new meanings: things like Silas’s poem …’
‘Silas’s poem? Indeed, I certainly do not understand you now!’
‘No?’ Dido paced to the side of the bed, picked up the bible and set it gently on its table again – rather as if she would propitiate the ghost which haunted the room. ‘At first,’ she said, ‘I thought it was only the hand those verses were written in that disturbed me. But then I found I couldn’t get them out of my mind and – despite my affection for your brother – I could not quite believe it was his excellence as a poet which had fixed his words in my brain.’
Dido looked down at Harriet sitting upon the bed in her pale evening gown. The candle standing beside her showed a long strand of hair which had escaped the silk bands of her headdress, hanging down across one ear. A pink rose pinned at her breast had shed petals into her lap. Her eyes were fixed – she was merely waiting. It would perhaps be kindest to continue – to tell all she knew and hope to convince Harriet that further pretence was impossible.
‘There are, in fact, three interesting points about the poem,’ she said. ‘There is, first of all, the use of the endearment ‘beloved’ and the expressions of unswerving affection which Silas uses – ideas which put me very much in mind of Miss Fenn when I read them. To begin with, I thought that perhaps Silas had somehow read a similar letter to the one I had seen – that perhaps Mr Coulson was our thief and he had shown the letters to him. But now I know that Mr Coulson has had no hand in this – and I think instead that Silas had actually
‘Oh!’ Again Harriet’s hands moved rapidly in a suppressing motion – as if she could not bear to have such things said aloud.
But Dido hardened her heart and standing at the foot of the bed, she continued. ‘Silas is no genius,’ she said. ‘A little opium might inspire a great romantic to compose exquisite poetry. But for a dear, prosaic boy like Silas, the only visions that came were drawn from …
‘No, no,’ said Harriet, shaking her head violently.
Dido could not but take the denial for confirmation. ‘You see, the second point of interest is that verse of description with which the poem opens.’ She turned her eyes upon the window and quoted:
‘It is, when considered carefully, a rather, unusual description, is it not?’ she asked.
‘It is certainly not very great poetry,’ said Harriet in a choking voice which struggled for indifference.
‘No – but why should he choose to describe the hem of her skirts?’
‘I hardly know.’ Harriet now sounded genuinely puzzled.
‘Do you not? I do. The answer is given in the next verse –
There was no reply. Now Harriet was beginning to catch her meaning and was thrown back into silence.
‘She must bend,’ continued Dido quietly, ‘because it is a
She turned away from the bed and moved restlessly to the window. Gazing out into the strange, distorting white light of the moon, she looked beyond the fallen giants to the broken outline of the ruins – all black and indistinct in the moonlight, but for the great east window standing out gaunt against sky – and the dark line of trees which marked the old pool. Their crowding shadows seemed capable of hiding all manner of meetings and partings and secrets …
‘It was down there, beside the pool that he bade farewell to his mother, was it not? When he was five years old.’
She looked back and was just in time to see Harriet raising her hands to cover her ears. ‘You know full well,’ she cried, ‘that our mother died when Silas was born.’
‘No.’ Dido went back to her and gently removed the hands, holding them firmly in her own. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Silas’s mother died here in the pool – two years after that parting. She died because she wished the man to whom she had given her son to relinquish him. And he could not bear to do that. The boy was too important to him.’
Harriet merely held her eyes in a tortured stare. Dido found herself wishing for tears – they would at least seem natural. But Harriet was not by nature a weeper. ‘You see, I was sure that someone had killed in order to avoid giving up the child. So I looked about Badleigh and Madderstone to determine who might have stood in such desperate need of a son that he might kill in order to retain him. And who, I thought, could need a son more keenly than a man with a dead wife, two dearly loved daughters – and an entailed estate?’ Dido’s lips were stiff, reluctant to pronounce the words which seemed like a death blow to her friend. ‘Mr Edward Crockford,’ she said, ‘the man who was so very determined to provide for his daughters – he would have had a powerful motive for murder.’
Suddenly Harriet gave a cry that had more of tortured animal in it than human being; seizing her candle she jumped up and ran to the hearth, took the letter from her pocket and held its corner to the flame.
‘You will never prove anything!’ she cried as the yellow light of burning paper flared across her pale, terrified face. ‘The other letters were all destroyed weeks ago.’
Dido watched the paper burn: watched grey ash fall from it onto the fender. It was a satisfying sight, for she saw in it the final defeat of Captain Laurence. Now, all the letters were gone. Congreve would never know the truth!
Harriet dropped the burning letter into the hearth and fell onto her knees, her hands covering her head as if the accusation was a blow from which she must protect herself.
In spite of everything, Dido’s heart rebuked her for unkindness as she looked down upon the bowed head, the clutching hands. Never had she been more inclined to condemn her own love of mysteries. That her curiosity had led her at last to this – to the torture of a friend! And yet … it could not be right to rest content with half-truths when they concealed past crimes – and present injustice …
‘Harriet, please listen to me.’ She knelt down by the hearth and gently pulled Harriet’s hands away from her ears. ‘You cannot hide the truth in this way. I do not need the letter for evidence – there is another proof.’
