The Meaning of Night

‘Dearest Edward, you have asked me to do this for you, and I have said I will. Whatever you ask of me, now and in the future, I will do my best to carry out.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘You know that I shall soon, I hope, commit myself to honour and obey you, in sickness and in health, and so there is no harm in beginning now. It is such a little thing to ask of me, after all, and I would do anything – anything – for the man I love.’

She walked with me to the door, and we kissed for one last time.

‘Come back to me soon, my dearest love,’ she whispered. ‘I shall count the minutes till you return.’

I left, unseen, by the new way, down the little winding stair-case and out onto the path by Hamnet’s Tower.

At the South Gates of the Park, I stopped. The Dower House could just be glimpsed through the Plantation; lamps were burning in the drawing-room, and in one of the upstairs rooms. On a sudden impulse, I took the track round into the stable-yard. My luck was in; the door to the tack-room stood open, throwing a pale rectangle of light onto the cobbles.

‘Good-evening, Brine.’

He had been binding the head of a besom broom when I had entered, and looked round in surprise at the sound of my voice.

‘Mr Glapthorn, sir! I – we did not expect you.’

‘And you have not seen me,’ I said, closing the door behind me. ‘Have you the duplicate key I asked for?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He opened a drawer in an old dresser and handed the key to me.

‘I shall need some tools. Can you get me some? And a lantern.’

‘Tools? Why, yes, of course, sir.’ I told him what I required and he went into an adjoining room, returning in a few minutes with a bag of the necessary implements, and a bull’s-eye lamp.^*

‘Remember, Brine, I was not here. You understand?’ I handed over the usual consideration.

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’

In a few moments, with the bag across my back, I was walking along the gravel bridle-way that skirts the Park wall and leads up to the Mausoleum. It was just at that melancholy time when the savour finally goes out of the day, and twilight begins to surrender to the onset of darkness. Somewhere ahead of me a fox barked, and a cold low wind troubled the trees that lined the path running up from the bridle-way to the clearing in front of the Mausoleum. My head had been full of my dearest girl; but as I approached the lonely building, my wildly joyous mood began to seep away as I contemplated the awful reality of what I had come here to do.

Sursum Corda. What else had Miss Eames intimated, in sending these words to Mr Carteret, than that what they were inscribed upon covered something of crucial significance? This was the instinctive conclusion that I had reached, and on which I was now about to act. But it was a fearful prospect: to break into my mother’s tomb, without the least idea of what I was looking for. I prayed that, whatever was hidden there, if it was hidden there, would be easily found within the loculus itself. But if it should be in the coffin! That might be a horror beyond even my ability to face.

I entered through the great double doors, using the key that Brine had provided, and went about my work.

It was past midnight when the slab that closed off my mother’s burial chamber finally yielded to my chisel. I had broken open the protective gates of the loculus easily enough, but it took nearly an hour to cut out the rectangular slate slab, and all my strength to support the weight of it and lay it on the floor. But at last it was done, and I turned to see, by the light of the lamp that I had brought from the tack-room, what lay within.

A plain coffin of dark oak, placed lengthways in the space, filled most of the cavity. Lifting the lantern a little higher revealed a simple brass plate, bearing the words ‘LAURA ROSE DUPORT’, affixed to the lid of the coffin. There was barely a foot between the lid and the vaulted roof of the little chamber, and only two or three inches between the coffin itself and the back wall of the loculus; on either side, however, there was a narrow gap, perhaps eight or nine inches wide. I kneeled down at the foot of the coffin, and reached forward into the darkness, but only cobwebs and fragments of mortar met my touch. Moving across to the other side, I reached in again.

At first I could feel nothing; but then my fingers closed round something soft and separable, almost like a lock of flattened-out hair. Quickly withdrawing my arm and reaching for the lamp, I peered in.

Protruding from the narrow space between the back wall of the chamber and the coffin was what I could now see was the edge of a fringed garment of some kind – a shawl perhaps. I extended my hand behind the rear of the coffin and began to pull, but immediately met some resistance. I pulled again, with the same result. Lying down on my side, I stretched into the space and round the edge of the coffin as far as I could. After a little more gentle tugging and grappling, I finally extracted my discovery from its resting-place, and set it down in the yellow light of the lamp to examine it, breathing out my relief that it had not been necessary to disturb the coffin.

It was indeed a fringed shawl – a Paisley shawl, which had been rolled up and wedged behind the coffin. It seemed of little interest at first, until I began to unroll it. Then it soon became apparent that there were other objects wrapped inside it. I laid the shawl out on the floor.

Within another wrapping of white linen, I was astonished to find an exquisitely embroidered christening robe, a pair of tiny silk shoes, and a small book bound in old red morocco. This last item was quickly identified: it was the first edition of Felltham’s Resolves, printed in duodecimo for Seile in about 1623.^* It bore the bookplate of William, 23rd Baron Tansor. There was no doubt in my mind that it was the copy that my mother had asked Mr Carteret to bring to her from the Library before her death in 1824. Dr Daunt’s failure to locate the copy listed by Burstall when compiling his catalogue was now explained. But who had put it here, and why?

That it had been intended, with the other items, to convey some message or signification was clear. Though it had been in its hiding place for over thirty years, it was in remarkably good repair, the burial chamber being clean and dry. I examined the title-page: Resolves: Divine, Morall, Politicall. There was no inscription of any kind, and so I began slowly turning over the leaves one by one, to scrutinize each of the hundred numbered essays. I could detect nothing out of the ordinary – no annotations or marginalia, and nothing inserted between the leaves; but as I was closing the book, I observed that it did not shut quite flat. I then saw why: a sheet of paper had been carefully pasted over the original end-leaf. On closer examination, it was possible to make out that something had been interpolated between the false and the real end-leaf.

I took out my pocket-knife, and began to prise away the false leaf. It proved to have been only lightly fixed, and soon came away to reveal two folded pieces of thin paper.