The Meaning of Night

flickering light revealed the quality of the Temple’s internal decoration, though it was plain that the place had been in a state of disrepair for some years. Several of the panes in the glazed door of the North Portico were smashed – fragments of dirty glass still littered the floor – and black dust-filled nets of spiders’ webs, undulating eerily in the dank air, hung all about like discarded grave-clothes.

Leaving the candle on the table, I walked over to the upturned chair and set it back on its feet. As I was doing so, I noticed a small dark form on the floor, just discernible amongst the shadows cast by the candle stub. My curiosity aroused, I kneeled down.

It was a blackbird – the poor creature must have flown in through the open door of the Temple, and dashed itself against a large gilt-framed looking-glass, cracked and mottled, that hung on the wall above where it now lay. Its wings were outstretched, as though frozen in flight. From one staring but sightless eye flowed a jagged stream of viscous black liquid, staining the dusty floor; the other eye was closed in peaceful death.

It somehow affronted me that it lay here, in this gloomy place, in plain sight, away from the warm enshrouding earth. Gently, I picked the bird up by the tip of one wing, with the intention of conveying it solemnly to some suitable resting-place outside the Temple. But the act of lifting it up from the dirty floor revealed something curious.

Beneath it, previously hidden by one of the bird’s outstretched wings, was a small piece of battered brown leather, some three inches square, with a hole punched in one corner. I took my discovery over to the candle, now nearly burned down, and saw then what it was – a label, apparently, bearing a name in faded gold letters: ‘J. Earl.’

I recognized the name, but could not for the moment recall how or where I had heard it. It seemed strangely imperative, however, to bring its significance to mind, and so I stood for a minute or more in some perplexity, racking my brains for a clue as to its associations.

At length, I seemed to hear the voice of Mrs Rowthorn, Mr Carteret’s housekeeper. Something that she had said – a trivial fact that I had half heard, and then forgotten. But nothing is ever really forgotten, and slowly the vaults of memory began to open and yield up their dead.

‘I found him an old leather bag of Mr Earl’s – who used to be his Lordship’s gamekeeper – that has been hanging on the back of the pantry door these two years …’

This rough square of leather that I now held in my hand had been attached to Mr Carteret’s bag. I was sure of it. From this deduction quickly followed another: the bag itself must surely have been here, in the Temple of the Winds. But that posed a problem. Had Mr Carteret been here also? It seemed impossible. The testimonies of those who had found him made it certain that he had been attacked soon after he entered the Park through the Western Gates. No, he had not come to the Temple, but the bag had certainly been here.

I looked about me, and began to picture what might have happened. A chair had been overturned, and this piece of leather had somehow become separated from the bag. And then – the following day, perhaps – a bird had flown into the Temple and, in its fear and turmoil, had mistaken a dirty reflection of the outside world for the living freedom of the open sky, dashed itself against the looking-glass, and fallen to the ground, just where the piece of leather lay. And there the bird, and the object beneath it, might have stayed, perhaps for weeks or months, perhaps for years, had I not, on a whim, and in a fury at Mary’s story of the murderous villain Pluckrose, taken the path up to the Temple of the Winds.

Of course it had been no whim. I believed then that I was in the Iron Master’s hands, and that he had pulled me hither for the deliberate purpose of finding this thing. But what did it signify? I sat down at the table, dropped my still-smoking cigar on the floor, and buried my head in my hands.

This much I was still absolutely sure of: Mr Carteret had died because of what he had been carrying. I was certain, too, that he had been intending to place the bag’s contents before me at our next meeting, and that he had been attacked by a single assailant who knew their worth and importance.

I began to wonder why the bag had been brought to the Temple after the attack. Had Mr Carteret’s murderer been un homme de main,^* acting on someone else’s orders? Perhaps he had been instructed to bring the bag and its contents here, to the Temple, where it was to be examined by his employer. Somehow, the little leather label had become separated from the bag.

All this seemed perfectly plausible, probable even; but I could go no further. What had been carried in Mr Carteret’s bag, and the identities of both the murderer and his master, were mysteries that – as yet – I had no means of unravelling. Until more light could be shed on them, there was nothing else to do but stumble on through the darkness a little longer.

I placed the leather label in my coat pocket, and turned back towards where the dead bird still lay, intending to carry it outside, and then make my way back to the Dower House. In that instant, the guttering candle on the table finally went out and, in the sudden enveloping blackness, I was aware of another presence. There was a figure in the doorway, a dark form against the clear, star-filled sky.

She did not speak, but walked slowly towards me, a small lantern held in her left hand, until her face was close to mine, so close indeed that I could feel and smell her warm breath.

‘Good-evening, Mr Glapthorn. What on earth brings you here at this time?’

Her voice had a delicious, inviting softness about it that made my blood race with desire, but her inexpressive stare told another story. I tried to strip that gaze of its disconcerting power by looking full into her dark eyes; but I knew that I was done for. It was all over with me. A great iron door had come down, separating me from the life I had lived before. Henceforth, I knew, my heart would be hers to command, for good or ill.

‘I might wonder the same about you, Miss Carteret,’ I replied.

‘Oh, but I often come to the Temple. It was a favourite resort of my father’s. He would sometimes bring his writing-case and work here. And it was here that I last saw him alive. So, you see, I have reason enough. But what are your reasons, I wonder?’

She continued to look at me, standing stock-still in her mourning clothes; but then she smiled – a sad, child-like half-smile – and once again she uncovered, for the merest instant, a touching vulnerability.

‘Would you believe me if I said that I had no reason at all for coming here; that I had no other object in view but to take the air, and that I found myself here quite by chance?’

‘Why should I not believe you? Really, Mr Glapthorn, your conscience seems rather too eager to protest the innocence of your motives. I merely wondered what brought you here. I’m sure I did not mean to suggest that you were not perfectly entitled to prowl around this damp place in the dark if you wished to do so. You have no need to answer to me – or to anyone, I dare say.’