that she may go home if she wishes.’
Mrs Rowthorn dropped a slight curtsey and hurried back down the stairs to the kitchen.
‘Mr Glapthorn, I think. Won’t you come in?’
Her voice was warm and low, laced with a caressing but distant musical quality that somehow put me in mind of a viola played in an empty room.
I followed her into the apartment from which she had just emerged. The blinds had been drawn, and lamps had been lit. She stood with her back to the window, while motioning me with a slow wave of her hand to take a seat on a small upholstered chair in front of her.
‘Miss Carteret,’ I began, looking up at her, ‘I hardly know what to say. This is the most appalling news. If I can—’
She interrupted the little speech of condolence that I had planned to give. ‘Thank you, Mr Glapthorn, but I neither desire nor need your support at this time – for that, I think, is what you were about to offer me. My uncle, Lord Tansor, has put everything necessary in hand.’
‘Miss Carteret,’ I said, ‘you know my name, and I infer that you also know that I had arranged to see your father here today on a confidential matter.’
I paused, but she said nothing in response, and so I continued.
‘I came here with the authority of Mr Christopher Tredgold, of Tredgold, Tredgold & Orr, whose name, I also infer, is not unfamiliar to you.’
Still she stood, silently attentive.
‘I undertook to keep Mr Tredgold fully informed of my time here, and that undertaking I must of course honour. May I ask – are you able to tell me – how this dreadful thing happened?’
She did not answer for a moment but instead turned away, looking at the blank surface of the window-blind. Then, with her back still towards me, she began to recount, in a level, matter-of-fact tone, how her father’s horse – the little black horse that I had seen him mount in the yard of the George – had been found trotting riderless through the Park at about six o’clock the previous evening, on the track that led down from Molesey Woods. A search party had been sent out. They soon found him, just inside the line of trees, close to where the road entered the Park from the Odstock Road. He was alive but unconscious, fearfully beaten about the face and head, and had been taken on a cart back to the great house, where his body still lay. Lord Tansor had immediately been informed, and had sent to Peterborough for his own local physician; but before the medical gentleman arrived, Mr Carteret had died.
‘They believe he had been followed from Stamford,’ she said, now turning away from the window, and fixing her gaze on me.
It appeared that there had been a number of such attacks over the past few months, carried out by a gang of four or five ruffians, whose ploy was to follow farmers and others who appeared likely to be returning home from market with money in their bags. A farmer from Bulwick had been badly assaulted only the week before, though until now there had been no fatalities. The attacks had caused outrage in the vicinity, and had been the subject of furious calls for action to be taken in the pages of the
She stood looking down at me, as I sat awkwardly, like some scolded schoolboy, in my little chair.
She had the most extraordinary, unblinking stare that I have ever seen. Her dark, fathomless eyes revealed nothing of herself, seeming instead like perfect mechanical devices. They immediately put me in mind of the lenses of my cameras: hard, penetrative, all-seeing; impassively absorbing, capturing and registering every detail and nuance of any object that came into view, but giving nothing back. The discomfort of that gaze, its disconcerting combination of impenetrability and
At that moment we were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn, bringing in a tray of tea. For the first time since our interview began, Miss Carteret moved away from the window, and took a seat opposite me. She poured out the beverage, which we drank in silence.
‘Miss Carteret,’ I said at length, ‘this is difficult for me to ask, but it will, as I say, be necessary for me to give Mr Tredgold as full a report as possible of the recent terrible events. I shall therefore need to inform myself, as far as I can, of the precise circumstances of your father’s death. It is possible, indeed probable, that I was the last person to see him alive, other than his attackers, and that likelihood in itself involves me in the tragedy. But I would also beg you to think of me as your friend – and your father’s also – for though I only met him for the first time yesterday, I had already grown to like and respect him.’
She put down her cup.
‘You are a stranger to me, Mr Glapthorn,’ she replied. ‘All I know of you is that you are Mr Tredgold’s representative, that my father left here yesterday to meet you in Stamford, and that you were likely to be returning here today to continue your discussions. My father instructed that a room should be prepared for you, and you are of course welcome to stay for as long as you require, in order to compose your report to Mr Tredgold. I am sure, once that is done, that you will wish to return to London as soon as possible. Mrs Rowthorn will show you to your room.’ At which she rose and rang for the housekeeper.
‘Good-bye, Mr Glapthorn. You must ask Mrs Rowthorn if there is anything you require.’
‘Miss Carteret, I cannot express my sorrow—’
‘It is not for you to be sorry at what has happened,’ she interrupted. ‘You are kind, but I do not need your sympathy. It does not help me. Nothing can help me.’
Mrs Rowthorn soon appeared at the door (I knew enough of housekeepers to suppose that the speed of her arrival signified that she had been eavesdropping on our conversation). I made a slight bow to Miss Carteret, and followed the housekeeper back out into the vestibule.
Minutes later, I was being shown into a small but welcoming room on the second storey of the house. Raising the blind of one of the two windows, I saw that the room looked out across the front lawn and its screen of trees towards the South Gates. I then lay on the bed, closed my eyes, and tried to think.
