The Meaning of Night

place what I know before my cousin? I am tormented by the knowledge that I now possess, as I fear dear Miss Eames had been; but now, at last, I am impelled to take action – and not only to forestall any accusation that I am withholding what I know in order to protect my own interests.

My cousin’s determination to adopt Phoebus Daunt as his heir in law, the device to which he has pledged himself in order to make good the deficit that Nature has apparently inflicted upon him, renders it imperative that I make the truth known, so that steps may immediately be taken to find the true heir, if he lives. I can no longer keep silent on this matter; for if the true-born heir be yet living, then everything must be done to discover him, and so prevent the disastrous course of action upon which my cousin is set. And there is another matter of concern to me.

Late one afternoon in April of this present year, I had just entered the Library when I witnessed Mr Phoebus Daunt softly closing the door of my work-room, where he had no business to be, and then looking about him to make sure that he was unobserved. A man, I thought, is never more himself than when he thinks he is alone. I waited, out of sight, for him to quit the Library through one of the terrace doors. When I got to my room, it was immediately clear that some of the papers on my desk had been disturbed; luckily, the door to the Muniments Room was locked and the key about my person.

Over the course of succeeding weeks, I would frequently encounter Mr Daunt in the Library, apparently engaged upon reading some volume or other, or occasionally writing at one of the tables. I suspected, however, that his real purpose was to seek an opportunity to enter my work-room, and perhaps gain access to the Muniments Room. But he never could, for I now took to locking the door to my work-room whenever I left the Library.

This was not the first occasion on which I had found reason to suspect my dear friend’s son of frankly despicable behaviour. Did I say suspect? Let me be blunt. I know him to have been guilty of reading Lord Tansor’s private correspondence – including letters of a highly confidential nature – when he had not been given permission to do so. I should have spoken out, and it is a matter of the greatest regret that I did not do so. But the point that I wish to make most strongly is this: what action might a determined and unscrupulous person contemplate if he suspected that his expectations – his most considerable expectations – were threatened in any way? I answer that such a person would stop at nothing to preserve his position. Let me be even clearer. I do not know how Mr Phoebus Daunt can have come by his knowledge, but I am certain that he knows the nature of the documents left to me by Miss Julia Eames.

Midnight

He is there, though I cannot see him now – he seems to melt away into the darkness, to become a shadow. But he was there – is there. I thought at first that it was John Brine, but it cannot be him. He stands so still, in the shadow of the cypress-tree – watching, waiting; but then when I opened the window, he was gone, taken up by the darkness.

I have seen him before – on many occasions, but always just out of sight, often at dusk when I have been returning home across the Park, and more frequently of late.

And then I am certain that there was an attempt last week to break into my study, where I am now writing, though I could find nothing missing. A ladder had been taken from one of the out-buildings, and was found discarded in the shrubbery, and the woodwork of my window had been damaged.

I feel constantly under his eyes, even when I cannot see him. What does it mean? Nothing good, I fear.

For I think I know who sets this watcher on me, and who it is that desires to know what I now know. He smiles, and asks me how I am, and he shines like the sun in the estimation of the world; but there is evil in his heart.

My candle is burning low and I must finish.

To those who may read this deposition, I say again that what I have written is the entire truth, as far as it is known to me, and that I have claimed nothing that has not been based on evidence provided by the documents in my possession, personal knowledge, and direct observation.

This I swear on everything I hold most sacred.

By my hand, the 23rd of October, in the year 1853.

P. CARTERET

^*[Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh (1769–1822). He became Foreign Secretary in February 1812 and, suffering from a form of paranoia, committed suicide by cutting his throat with a penknife in August 1822. Ed.]

^*[Spenser, Faerie Queene, II.xii.65. Ed.]

^†[Named after Hamnet Duport, 19th Baron Tansor (1608–70), who made extensive alterations to Evenwood in the 1650s. Ed.]

^*[Jacques Androuet du Cerceau (c.1520–.1584), French architect and engraver. Ed.]

^*[Felltham, Resolves, xlvii (‘Of Death’). Ed.]

^*[Osborne House, built as a private retreat for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert on an estate overlooking the Solent of nearly three hundred and fifty acres, purchased from Lady Isabella Blachford. The work, begun in 1845 and supervised by the Prince Consort, was completed in 1851. Ed.]

^†[The name, no longer in use, of the area of London roughly bounded by the Edgware Road on the east, Bayswater on the west, Hyde Park on the south, and Maida Hill on the north. It was inhabited mainly by professional men and City merchants. ‘Ah, ladies!’ writes Thackeray in Chapter LI of Vanity Fair (1848), ‘ask the Reverend Mr Thurifer if Belgravia is not a sounding brass, and Tyburnia a tinkling cymbal. These are vanities. Even these will pass away.’ Ed.]

^‡[In Covent Garden. A relatively inexpensive establishment; its typical clientele were single gentlemen up from the country. Ed.]

^*[A paraphrase of Psalm 32: 1. Ed.]

^*[The feminist intellectual Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) had an illegitimate daughter, Fanny, by the American speculator and author Gilbert Imlay (her second daughter, Mary, future wife of the poet Shelley and author of Frankenstein, was the product of her marriage to the novelist and social