And then, with my rage, came a determination to hazard one final throw of the dice. I would go to Evenwood once again, though it might be for the last time. I would present myself to Lord Tansor, telling him to his face the truth that had been kept from him for over thirty years. I had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Eye to eye, man to man, surely he would now recognize me as his own?
I was seized by this new resolve, desperate though it might be, and instantly leaped to my feet to begin my preparations. Then I ran down the wooden stairs, boots clattering, past Fordyce Jukes’s door, and out into the world for the first time in a week.
It was a raw, dull day, and a flat and depressing sky hung over the city. I pushed through the morning crowds and was soon at the terminus, where I took my seat once more in the train that had so often carried me north, to Evenwood.
Once set down in the market-square at Easton by the Peterborough coach, I entered the Duport Arms to take some refreshment before commencing my walk to the great house. As I sat drinking my gin-and-water, served by my old friend, the sullen waiter Groves, who had been the unwitting means by which my identity had been confirmed to Mrs Daunt and her son, the thought struck me that Lord Tansor might not be in residence at Evenwood; that he might be in town, or away somewhere else; and then I grew angry at my impetuosity. To come all this way without establishing this one essential fact only demonstrated to me that I was not myself, and that I must take better care of matters in future. But then I saw that I must take whatever came; and so I drank back my gin, buttoned up my great-coat, and set off down the hill, under a creaking canopy of bare branches, towards Evenwood.
A thick drizzle began to come on. At first I paid no heed to it; but as I turned along the Odstock Road, towards the West Gates of the Park, I felt my trousers begin to cling to my legs and grow heavy as they soaked up the moisture in the air, and by the time I passed through the woods and into the open space of the Park itself, my hat and coat were dripping wet, my boots were muddied, and I was altogether a sorry sight.
The Library Terrace came suddenly into view. To my right was Hamnet’s Tower, with the windows of the Muniments Room looking out from the first floor. And there, above the Library, running the length of the terrace, were the windows of my mother’s former apartments, occupied now by my faithless love. Of course I could not help wondering whether she had returned from London and was there, looking out over the misty, soaking gardens towards the woods through which her father had passed on his last journey home. What would she think, if she saw my tall dishevelled figure striding through the murk? That I had come to kill her? Or her lover? But as I drew closer, scrutinizing each of the windows in turn, there was no sign of her beautiful pale face, and so I walked on.
I decided that there was no alternative but to present myself foursquare at the front door and ask to see Lord Tansor; and this is what I did. Luckily, the door was opened by my sometime informant, John Hooper, whose acquaintance I had made when photographing the house four years earlier.
‘Mr Glapthorn,’ he said. ‘Please come in, sir. Are you expected?’
‘No, Hooper, I am not. But I wish to speak with his Lordship on a matter of importance. Is he at home?’
‘He is in his study, sir, if you will follow me.’
He conducted me through a series of state rooms until we reached a pair of green-painted double doors. Hooper knocked softly.
‘Enter!’
The footman went in first, bowed, and said: ‘Mr Glapthorn, from Tredgolds, to see you, my Lord.’
The apartment was small and dark, but richly furnished. Lord Tansor sat behind a desk facing us. Through a wide sash window behind him, I glimpsed the main carriage-road that led out across the river to descend finally past the Dower House to the South Gates, the road that I had trodden so often in past months. A green-shaded lamp illuminated the documents on which his Lordship had been working. He laid down his pen and stared at me.
‘Glapthorn? The photographer?’ He glanced down at a sheet of paper. ‘I have no note here of an interview with anyone from Tredgolds today.’
‘No, my Lord,’ I replied. ‘I beg your pardon, most sincerely, for calling on you unannounced. But I do so on a matter of the greatest moment.’
‘That will be all, Hooper.’
The footman bowed and left, quietly closing the door behind him.
‘A matter of importance, you say? Has Tredgold sent you?’
‘No, my Lord. I come on my own account.’ His eyes narrowed.
‘What possible business can you and I have?’ His voice was hard, disdainful, and intimidating. But I had expected no less from the 25th Baron Tansor.
‘It concerns your late wife, my Lord.’
At this, Lord Tansor’s face grew dark, and he motioned me to a chair set before his desk.
‘You have my attention, Mr Glapthorn,’ he said, leaning back and throwing out a most challenging stare. ‘But be brief.’
I took in a deep lungful of air and began my story: how I had discovered that Lady Tansor had kept the secret of his son’s birth from him, and how the boy had been brought up by another in ignorance of his true identity. I paused.
For a moment or two he said nothing. And then, with unmistakable menace: ‘You had better have proof for what you allege, Mr Glapthorn. It will go hard with you if you do not.’
‘I shall come to the proof shortly, my Lord. If I may continue?’ He nodded. ‘The boy, as I say, grew up not knowing that he was a Duport – that he was your heir. It was only after the death of the woman who brought him up, your late wife’s closest friend, that he discovered the truth. The boy was by then a man; and that man lives.’
Lord Tansor’s face had now grown pale and I saw that, beneath his iron self-control, he was in the grip of mounting emotion.
