Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

‘Dead?’ I cried, almost frantically. ‘Dead? What are you saying? It cannot be.’

‘But it is true, sir,’ said the lady, ‘only too true. And what will Miss Emily do now?’

Leaving Mary to her tears, the lady, who introduced herself as Mrs Rowthorn, the Carterets’ housekeeper, escorted me through the kitchen and up a short flight of stairs, from which we emerged at the rear of the vestibule.

As was my custom, I quickly sought to fix the details of my new surroundings in my mind. A floor of black-and-white tiles; two windows flanking the front door, which was secured by two bolts, top and bottom, and a sturdy central mortice. Pale-green walls with fine stucco work, equally fine plasterwork on the ceiling, and a plain white marble fireplace. A stair-case with an elegant wrought-iron handrail leading to the first floor. Four doors leading off, two at the front, two at the rear; a further door leading back into the garden.

Out of one of the front rooms, a young woman now emerged.

She was tall, unusually so for her sex, nearly indeed my own height, and was dressed in a black gown with a matching cap that was almost indistinguishable from her jet hair.

As I looked upon her extraordinary face, I thought that I had not known what human beauty was until that moment. The beauty that I thought I had known, even Bella’s, now seemed delusive and figmental, a half-realized dream of beauty, moulded by invention and desire. But now beauty stood in plain sight, real and unmediated, like starlight, or sunrise over a snow-covered land.

She stood, in the diminishing afternoon light, with her hands folded in front of her, regarding me calmly. I had expected a homely, round person, like Mr Carteret; a welcoming domestic angel. She wore spectacles, like her father, but the resemblance went no further; and, far from detracting from the uncommon loveliness of her face, they seemed only to heighten it – a phenomenon that I have often observed.

She possessed the exaggerated prettiness of a doll, but somehow elevated and made noble. Her heavy-lidded eyes – almond-shaped, and coal-black, like her hair – were exceptionally large, and dominated her face, which was as pale as a November moon. Her nose was perhaps a little long, her upper lip perhaps a little short; and the mole on her left cheek might have been considered by some to be a blemish. But hers was not a perfection of individual features; her beauty seemed greater by far than the sum of its parts, as music played transcends the written notes.

I desired Miss Emily Carteret from that very first moment, as I had desired no other woman. Her soul seemed to beckon to mine, and I had no choice but to follow where she led. Yet, if my true identity could be proved, we were cousins, with Duport blood in common. The thought was thrilling, and seemed to make my desire for her all the keener.

My reveries were interrupted by Mrs Rowthorn.

‘Oh, Miss,’ she said, with evident agitation, ‘here’s a gentleman been knocking to see your poor father.’

‘Thank you, Susan,’ replied Miss Carteret calmly. ‘Please bring some tea into the drawing-room – and tell Mary 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 Stamford Mercury .

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 knowingness , affected me intensely, producing a kind of paralysis of will. I felt that she knew me instantly for what I was, and for who I was, in all my disguises. It appeared to me that those eyes had taken in all the degradations of my life, and recorded all my doings committed beneath the light of heaven, or the cloak of night; that they saw, too, what I was capable of, and what, with time and opportunity, I would do. I suddenly felt unaccountably afraid of her; for I knew then that I would have no choice but to love her, with nothing given back.

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.’