Andrew Taylor - The American Boy

When we reached the mansion, which was ablaze with lights, the footmen were carrying the boys up to bed, with Miss Carswall, Sophie and Mrs Kerridge fluttering about them on the stairs. But Sophie ran back to the hall for a moment, and pressed Harmwell's hand and then mine.

"Tell them to bring you whatever you wish, Mr Harmwell, Mr Shield – you must be chilled to the bone. I shall go to the boys."

"Let them grow warm gently," I said, for my father had been used to dealing with frostbite in the Fen winters. "Wrap them in blankets. Sudden heat is harmful."

Carswall appeared, stamping into the hall in his dressing gown, ready to rant and roar. But Mrs Johnson under her black cloak brought him up short. Sophie left us and ran upstairs without another word.

"Uncover her," he said to Pratt, who had just returned from carrying Edgar upstairs.

Carswall studied Mrs Johnson for a moment, as she lay there on her back, her skin grey and waxen, her big body ungainly in that unseemly attire, the hat tied under her jaw, as though she had laid herself out for death and did not want to be found with her mouth open. He looked up, saw me standing there at the foot of the stairs and at once looked past me to Harmwell.

"Was she dressed like that when you found her?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"What: the devil possessed her?"

Harmwell shrugged.

Carswall told Pratt to cover her face again. "Take her up to the Blue Room, and lay her on the bed. Find Kerridge to go with you and do it decently. Then lock the door and bring me the key." He turned on his heel and went into the library, calling over his shoulder for someone to make up the fire.

A maid approached me, and said that soup, wine, sandwiches and a good fire were waiting for us in the little sitting room. We ate and drank in silence, facing each other across the fire. Miss Carswall came in as we were finishing.

"No, do not get up. I came to tell you that Charlie and Edgar do very well and are now sleeping the sleep of the unjust. Are you yourselves recovered from the ordeal? Have they brought you all you wish for?" She was kindness itself, yet it was not long before her curiosity peeped through. "Poor Mrs Johnson! I'm sure none of us will sleep a wink for thinking of the horror of it. Tell me, was there no clue as to why she was there, and how she happened to fall?"

We assured her there was none.

"Sir George must be told as soon as possible – quite apart from the tie of blood, he is the nearest magistrate. Mr Carswall has ordered a groom to ride over to Clearland at first light."

She wished us goodnight, and Harmwell withdrew at the same time, leaving me to my wine and my reflections, which were not happy. The clock on the mantel was striking three in the morning when I stood up to leave. In the hall, I picked up my candle from the table. Pratt was waiting there, and he coughed as I approached.

"Mr Carswall's compliments, sir, and it will not be convenient for you to leave tomorrow after all."

That night I hardly slept, and when I did my sleep was uneasy, crowded with memories and fears which mingled with one another and masqueraded as dreams. In one of them all was dark, and I heard again the clang of the mantrap closing its jaws; but this time the sound was immediately followed by two others, first a high scream, rising rapidly in pitch and volume, and then the sound of hooves on the lane by Grange Cottage.

What lawful business would take a man and horse abroad on a night like this?

Early in the morning, the sound of the groom's horse on the drive brought me back to consciousness in a rush, yet seemed also an echo of the hoof-beats in my dream. In a flash, the events of the previous night lost their fantastic forms and paraded through my mind as black and sober as a funeral procession.

I spent that day in limbo. I had no duties. But I could not leave. Mrs Frant sent word that she would stay with the boys, and that Charlie, though recovering rapidly from his ordeal, would spend at least the morning in bed.

There was little to keep me within-doors. The silent presence in the Blue Room cast its shadow over the house. But the morning was fine and the temperature had risen a few degrees. After breakfast, I decided that as I had nothing better to do I might as well indulge my curiosity. I took the path to the lake, retracing the route we had taken the previous evening. A knot of men was standing by the door to the kitchen gardens. As I drew nearer, I recognised two under-gardeners and one of the gamekeepers.

My approach stirred them into activity. Each of them bent and seized a leg of the dead mastiff. The door to the garden was open. Immediately inside stood a sledge. Muttering curses, they hoisted the unfortunate animal on to it.

"Have you found his fellow?" I asked.

The gamekeeper turned and civilly touched his hat, which told me that news of my disgrace had not yet reached him. "Yes, sir. In the shell grotto. As dead as his brother here."

"And for the same reason?"

"Poison," he said flatly.

"Are you sure?"

"He had a mutton bone in there with a few grains of powder still on it. Rat poison, I'd say."

I beckoned him aside. "Mr Harmwell and I were out last night."

"I know, sir." He watched the other men hauling the sledge along the path, their heavy boots slipping and sliding on the layers of snow.

"We found the dog. There was something else. As we were passing the lake, we heard a noise in the distance. Mr Harmwell thought it was a mantrap snapping shut."

The man rubbed his unshaven chin. "He were right. One of the big ones in East Cover was sprung last night."

"The wood beyond the lake?"

"Aye." He spat. "That thieving bugger had the luck of the devil. The teeth caught his coat, look, tore off a piece. A few inches to the left and we'd have had his leg."

"A poacher? And a poacher could have been responsible for poisoning the dogs?"

He looked beyond me at the little procession moving down the central path of the garden, the men's panting breath loud in the surrounding silence and the sledge's runners slithering on the icy ground. "Who else would it be, sir?"

"Where precisely was the mantrap set?" I asked.

He looked askance. "I told you, sir – East Cover. We got several in there, Master had them put down in the autumn, but this one was near a place we call Five Ways, where five paths meet. We move them around, though. It's no good leaving them in the same place, is it? You'd never catch anyone that way, even those chuckle-headed numskulls from Flaxern Magna."

I left him and walked on. East Cover, the larger of the two enclosures near the lake, lay on the right of the broad path leading to Flaxern Parva and the church. On the other side of the wood was the undulating open parkland that sloped down to the monastic ruins, with Grange Cottage on the far side. If Mrs Johnson had wanted to go by the shortest way from Grange Cottage to the mouth of the defile which led to the ice-house, then passing through the middle of East Cover might have been the best way for her to do it, assuming that she was not troubled by the thought of mantraps and armed gamekeepers. I would have liked to examine the paths in the wood and the mantrap itself, but I did not feel sufficiently intrepid to do so without a gamekeeper to guide me; and I dared not make my interest too obvious, in case Mr Carswall heard of it.

Yet there was something not quite right with this: we had been approaching the lake when we heard the clang of the mantrap closing its jaws. If the trap had been sprung by Mrs Johnson, I did not think she would have had time to come through the cover, work round the northern bank of the lake, negotiate the defile and fall to her death in the chamber of the ice-house. Had she done so, we must have heard her movements, particularly as she went up the awkward broken terrain of the defile. Moreover, we should have found traces in the snow of such a recent passage. And her body would still have been warm to the touch.