Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

And then he apologized for inflicting what he called his usual homily on me, and went on to speak of the present Lady Tansor, and of his Lordship’s increasing desperation, over the years following his marriage to her, that no heir had been forthcoming.

After a while, he fell silent and sat, hands on knees, regarding me as if in anticipation of my making some remark.

‘Mr Carteret, forgive me.’

‘Yes, Mr Glapthorn?’

‘I am here to listen, not to question you. But will you allow me to ask this one thing, concerning Mr Phoebus Daunt? He has been mentioned to me, by Mr Tredgold, as a person who enjoys Lord Tansor’s particular favour. Are you at liberty to say now, or when we next meet, whether this gentleman’s position, in respect to his Lordship, is in any way germane to the concerns that you voiced in your letter?’

‘Well, that is a very lawyerly way of putting it, Mr Glapthorn. If you mean, has Mr Phoebus Daunt become the object of Lord Tansor’s ambitions to secure an heir, then I can of course answer immediately in the affirmative. I am sure, in fact, that Mr Tredgold must have told you as much. Do I blame my cousin for the action he wishes to take with respect to Mr Daunt? No. Do I feel slighted by it? No. Lord Tansor’s possessions are his to dispose of as he wishes. Even if I should succeed to the title, it would be an empty dignity, a name only; and I truly do not desire it – full or empty. However, the matter that I wished to place before Mr Tredgold, and which I am now to place before you, does not concern Mr Daunt directly, though indirectly it certainly bears – rather critically – on his future prospects. But if I am to say more, then I think perhaps it will be best to do so at our next meeting. I see the rain eases a little. Shall we go back?’

I waited in the doorway of the tap-room while Mr Carteret retrieved a battered leather bag from the hall-porter and spent some few minutes in conversation with him. Out of the corner of my eye, I observed him hand over a small package, and then speak a few more words to the man. He rejoined me, and we walked out together into the stable-yard, where he girded his little round body in a capacious riding-coat, slapped a battered old hat on his head, and secured the bag tightly across his chest. ‘Will you reach home before dark?’ I asked.

‘If I press on now. And I have the comfortable prospect of tea, and the welcome of my dear daughter, to light my way.’

We shook hands, and I waited in the yard while he mounted a stocky black horse.

‘Come to tea tomorrow,’ he said. ‘About four o’clock. Dower House, Evenwood. Just by the Park gates. South side.’

He was about to pass through the archway at the far end of the cobbled yard when he turned, and shouted back: ‘Bring your bags and stay the night.’

After dinner, I retired to my room to write a brief account for Mr Tredgold of my first meeting with Mr Carteret, which I sent down to the desk to be despatched by the early post the next morning. Then, overcome with tiredness, and feeling no need of my usual opiate cordial, I went to bed, and quickly fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

After some time, I was conscious of being gradually drawn back into wakefulness by an insistent tapping against my window. I rose from my bed to investigate, just as the nearby bell of St Martin’s Church chimed one o’clock.

It was nothing more than a loose tendril of ivy moving in the wind; but then I happened to glance down into the stable-yard.

Under the archway at the far end was what appeared to be a single red eye. Slowly, the darkness around it began to coalesce into a darker shape, enabling me to discern the figure of a man, half lit by the light of the street lamp on the other side of the archway. He was smoking – I could now make out the glow of his cigar expanding and contracting as he drew in and released the smoke. He remained motionless for some minutes; then he suddenly turned, and disappeared into the shadows of the archway.

I thought nothing of this at the time. A late dinner guest on his way home, perhaps, or one of the hotel staff. I shuffled back to bed, and fell fast asleep once more.

Early the next afternoon, I set off on one of the hotel’s horses to Evenwood, reaching the village just before three o’clock.

In the main street of the village, I pulled up my horse to look about me. There was St Michael and All Angels, with its soaring spire, a little beyond which stood the creeper-covered Rectory, home of the Reverend Achilles Daunt and his family. A great stillness had descended, broken only by the faint sound of a breeze passing through the trees that lined both sides of the lane that led down to the church. I moved off, following the line of the Park wall until I reached the towered gate-house – put up in the gloomy Scottish style by Lord Tansor in 1817, in a temporary fit of enthusiasm after reading Scott’s Waverley . Once in the Park, the main carriage-drive began its gradual ascent, for the great house is hidden from here, a pleasure cunningly deferred by ‘Capability’ Brown when he remodelled the Park; but a building could be glimpsed to the left, through an area of thickly planted trees.

A spur from the main driveway passed through the Plantation and brought me to a gravelled space. From here, it bisected an area of well-tended lawn, and led up to the main entrance of the Dower House – a fine three-storeyed building of creamy Barnack stone, built in the second year of King William and Queen Mary, *as proclaimed by the incised numbers on the semi-circular pediment above the shallow portico. It struck me as looking like a beautiful doll’s house for some giant’s child, perfect both in its simple proportions and in the well-mannered taste of its construction. A flight of half a dozen or so steps led up to the pillared portico. I dismounted, ascended the steps, and knocked at the tall unglazed double doors; but no one came to my knock. Then I heard the sound of a woman crying, somewhere at the back of the house.

I tethered my mount, and followed the sound through a gate and down a short flight of steps into a walled garden, lying now in the shadows of late afternoon, then towards an open door in the rear of the residence.

A young serving girl was sitting on a chair by the door being comforted by an older lady in cap and apron.

‘There, there, Mary,’ the older lady was saying, stroking the girl’s hair and attempting to brush away her tears with the hem of her apron. ‘Try to be strong, my dear, for Missie’s sake.’

She looked up and saw me.

‘Forgive me,’ I said. ‘I have been knocking at the front door.’

‘Oh, sir, there is no one here – Samuel and John are up at the great house with his Lordship. We are all at sixes and sevens, you see. Oh sir, such a terrible thing …’

She continued in this, to me, incomprehensible way for some moments until I interrupted her.

‘Madam, perhaps there is some misunderstanding. I am here by appointment to see Mr Paul Carteret.’

‘No, no, sir,’ she said, as Mary began to wail with renewed force, ‘Mr Carteret is dead. Killed on his road back here from Stamford last evening, and we are all at sixes and sevens.’

*[‘Trust, but be careful in whom’. Ed. ]

*[The celebrated gambling house in St James’s. Ed. ]

†[A curtain-raiser. Ed. ]

*[A member of the working classes during the French Revolution, who wore trousers as opposed to the knee-breeches of the aristocracy. Ed. ]

*[i.e. 1690. Ed. ]

20

Vae victis! *

I pride myself on my coolness under duress – a necessary quality for my work at Tredgolds. But I simply could not disguise my shock, my complete shock, at this news.