*[The bookseller Henry Seile (fl. 1619–61).
†[Proverbs, 13: 19.
*[The quotation is from Felltham’s
42
Apparatus belli*
As soon as I enter my sitting-room in Temple-street, I walk straight over to the mantel-piece, snatch up the rosewood box, and take it to my work-table.
It seems empty, but I am now certain that it is not. I shake it, and start to pick at it with my pocket-knife. A minute goes by, then two; but, as my hands now wander over every inch of its surface, pressing, pulling and probing, I know that it will eventually yield up its secret place.
And it does. I have wriggled the tiny key in the escutcheon this way and that a dozen times; but this time, when I disengage it slightly and start to turn it a little way from the vertical position, it seems to engage with something; and then a miracle happens. With a soft click, a little drawer slides out from below an inlaid band of paler wood an inch or so from the bottom of the box. The trick is so cunningly wrought that I wonder at the country skills of Mr James Beach.
The drawer is large enough to contain two folded documents, which I now remove and, trembling, lay out on my table.
The first is an affidavit, written in my mother’s hand, sworn and signed in the presence of a Rennes notary, and dated the 5th of June 1820. It states briefly, but categorically, that the child born in the house of Madame H. de Quebriac, Hotel de Quebriac, Rue du Chapitre, in the city of Rennes, on the 9th day of March in the year 1820, was the lawfully begotten son of Julius Verney Duport, 25th Baron Tansor, of Evenwood, in the County of Northamptonshire, and his wife, Laura Rose; and that the said child, Edward Charles Duport, had been placed in the permanent care of Mrs Simona Glyver, wife of Captain Edward Glyver, late of the 11th Regiment of Light Dragoons, of Sandchurch in the County of Dorset, at the express wish of his mother, the said Laura Rose Duport, to be brought up as her own. Beside my mother’s signature – witnessed by Madame de Quebriac and another person whose name I cannot make out – is a small wax seal bearing an impression of the Duport arms, taken perhaps from a signet ring. With the affidavit is a short statement signed by two witnesses to my baptism in the Church of St-Sauveur, on the 19th of March 1820.
Together with Mr Carteret’s Deposition and the letters removed from Lady Tansor’s tomb, and supported by the corroboration provided in my foster-mother’s journals, my hand is now full, and unbeatable. I spend the rest of the day, and most of the evening, copying out extracts of particular relevance to my case from the journals, which I paste into a note-book, along with copies of the other critical documents. Then, having written up my own journal for the day, I sit in my arm-chair and fall fast asleep.
When I awoke, cold and hungry, my first thought was that I must have dreamed the discovery that I had made in Lady Tansor’s tomb, and of forcing the rosewood box to give up its secret. But there, on my work-table, lay the two letters, and the signed affidavit, palpable and present to both sight and touch. They were golden arrows, tipped with truth, waiting to be shot into the villainous heart of Phoebus Daunt. After so long, I had been given the means to destroy my enemy, and take up my true station in life. A day would soon come when I would leave behind this present sorry life of confusion and duplicity for ever, and come into the golden place prepared for me by the Iron Master, with my dearest girl by my side.
My first task of the day was to write to Mr Tredgold, telling him how my conviction had been so triumphantly vindicated, and sending him for safekeeping the copies that I had made of the new documents. That done, I went forth to take a hearty breakfast.
On the following Monday morning I returned to Evenwood.
Once again, making sure I was unobserved, I climbed the flight of winding stairs up to my dearest girl’s apartments. In the corridor, as I emerged through the stair-case door, I encountered Lizzie Brine. Stepping back, I signalled for her to follow me.
‘Is there anything to tell, Lizzie?’ I asked.
‘I do not know, sir,’ she replied.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Only this, sir. The day we met on the stair-case, when I was with Hannah Brown …’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, sir, I couldn’t tell you to your face, but then I thought you must know anyway.’
‘Lizzie, this is unlike you,’ I said. ‘You’re sounding like your brother. For God’s sake, spit it out.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. Here it is, as best as I can manage. I’d seen you arrive in the Front Court from the window there, just opposite my mistress’s door. But a few moments before, just as I was coming up these very stairs, I’d seen a gentleman go into her room. I was on my way to the laundry, but I knew that you’d be coming up to my mistress’s sitting-room at any minute. And so I naturally supposed, when I saw you later, that you must have met the gentleman. That’s as clear as I can make it, sir.’
‘And yet I still do not understand,’ I said. ‘There was no gentleman present when I was admitted to Miss Carteret’s sitting-room. Are you sure of what you saw?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘And did you see who it was? Did you recognize him?’
‘I only saw his coat-tails.’
I thought for a moment. ‘Perhaps it was Lord Tansor,’ I suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ said Lizzie, somewhat hesitantly.
‘No, it must have been his Lordship.’ I was now breezily confident that I had hit on the identity of the mysterious gentleman. ‘He had some brief business with Miss Carteret, no doubt – a few words only – and then left the apartment before I arrived. That must be it.’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sure you’re right.’
