Michael Cox - The Meaning of Night

As he made to leave, my eyes strayed towards the baronial towers of the South Gates, and something that I had been half conscious of all day suddenly rose to the surface.

‘Dr Daunt, if you don’t mind my asking, why do you suppose Mr Carteret rode home through the woods? Surely the quicker route from Easton to the Dower House is through the village.’

‘Well, yes, now you come to mention it, that would indeed have been the quickest way,’ he replied. ‘The only reason to come into the Park through the Western Gates from the Odstock Road would be if there were a need for Mr Carteret to go up to the great house, which is much closer to that entrance than to this.’

‘And was there such a need, do you know?’

‘I cannot say. Perhaps he had some business with Lord Tansor before he returned home. And so, Mr Glapthorn, I’ll wish you another good-evening.’

With that, we shook hands and I stood watching him as he walked off towards the gate in the wall. As he passed through, he turned and waved. And then he was gone.

I took the path that led into the stable-yard. There I encountered Mary Baker, the kitchen-maid, lantern in hand.

‘Good-evening, Mary,’ I said. ‘I hope you’re feeling a little better than when last I saw you.’

‘Oh, yes, thank you, sir, you’re very kind. I’m sorry you had to see me like that. It took me hard, that’s the truth. The master had been so kind to me – so kind to us all. Such a dear man, as I’m sure you know. And then it brought to mind, in such a terrible way, what happened to my poor sister.’

‘Your sister?’

‘My only sister, sir – Agnes Baker as was. A little older than me, and a mother to me, too, after our own mother died when we were still little. She worked in the kitchen up at the great house, under Mrs Bamford, until that brute came and took her away.’

She hesitated, as if in the grip of some strong emotion.

‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m sure you don’t wish to hear all this. I’ll say good-evening, sir.’

She turned to go, but I called out to her to stop. Something was stirring in a dark, unvisited corner of my memory.

‘Mary, don’t go, please. Sit down a moment, and tell me about your sister.’

With a little more gentle persuasion, she agreed to postpone the task that she had been engaged upon, and we sat down in the fading light on a roughly made bench constructed around the thick, gnarled trunk of an old apple-tree.

‘You mentioned a brute, Mary. What did you mean?’

‘I meant that murdering villain who took my sister away, and killed her.’

‘Killed her? You don’t say so!’

‘I should say I do! Killed her, in cold blood. Married her, then killed her. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was a bad ’un, but Agnes wouldn’t hear of it. It was the only time we ever argued. But I was right. He was a bad ’un, for all he charmed her.’

‘Go on, Mary.’

‘Well, sir, he called himself a gentleman – dressed like one, I’ll grant you. Even spoke a bit like one. But he weren’t no gentleman. Not him. Why, he weren’t hardly more than a servant when he first came to Evenwood.’

‘And how did your sister meet him?’

‘He’d come up from London, with Mr Daunt.’

‘Mr Daunt?’ I said, incredulously. ‘The Rector?’

‘Oh no, sir, Mr Phoebus Daunt, his son. He’d come up with Mr Phoebus and another gent, for a great dinner, on the occasion of his Lordship’s birthday. I was by the gates when they went past. But he wasn’t invited to the dinner, just Mr Phoebus and the other gentleman. He seemed like he was a serving-man, or some such, for he was driving the carriage that they all came in, and yet he dressed so well, and thought so much of himself, and seemed to be on easy terms with the other two gentlemen. Anyways, that’s when he met Agnes, that evening, in the yard by the ice-house. Oh, he was a sly one. He wheedled and cooed, and she, poor fool, took it all in, and thought he was such a great man, taking notice of such as she. But he was no better than her – no, he was a lot worse. We were decent folk, well brought up. But he’d come from nothing, and made his money, Lord knows how. Why Mr Phoebus took up with him, who could say? He came back a week later, but not with Mr Phoebus, nor to see him neither. And then – what do you think? Agnes comes down the next day and says, “Well, congratulate me, Mary, for I’m to be married, and here’s the proof,” and she holds out her hand to show me the ring he’d given her. After a week! There was nothing anyone could say. She just shut her ears and shook her head. And off she went, poor lamb. And, if you’ll believe me, sir, that was the last I saw of her. My poor dear sister, who’d been my closest and dearest friend in the whole world.’

‘What happened then, Mary?’ I asked, feeling increasingly certain that I knew where her story was leading.

‘Well, sir, I had a letter from her a month later to say he’d been as good as his word and had married her, and that she was set up in fine style in London. And so of course my mind was eased a little, though I still couldn’t see how this was to end in anything but trouble for her, being tied to such as he. I waited and waited, longing to hear from her again, but no letter came. Six months passed, sir, six whole months, and I was going quite mad with worry – you ask Mrs Rowthorn if I weren’t. So John Brine, to set my troubled mind at rest, says he would go down to London and find her and send word back. Oh, sir, how I trembled when his letter came – and weren’t I right to tremble! I couldn’t open it, so I gave it to Mrs Rowthorn and she read it to me.

‘It was the worst news that there could be: my poor sister had been murdered by that brute – savagely beaten, so bad, they said, that you could hardly recognize her darling face. But he had been taken, and would stand trial, and so I took some comfort that he would be hanged for his evil deed, though that was too good for him. But even that comfort was denied me, for some villainous lawyer got the jury to find another man guilty. They said that this other man had been her lover! My Agnes! She’d never do such a thing, never. So her husband was set free to murder again, and the other man was hanged – though Lord knows he was as innocent as my poor dear sister.’

She ceased, tears beginning to well up in her pretty brown eyes. I laid my hand on hers, to offer some comfort before asking my final question.

‘What was the name of your sister’s husband, Mary?’

‘Pluckrose, sir. Josiah Pluckrose.’

*[‘The written word remains’. Ed. ]

*[‘HENRY by the grace of God King of England Lord of Ireland Duke of Aquitaine to his well-beloved liegeman Maldwin Duport of Tansor, knight, Greeting.’ The writ, which is of great historical interest, is now in the Northampton Record Office. The Latin text was printed in full in Northamptonshire History , vol. xiv (July 1974), with a translation and commentary by Professor J. F. Burton. Ed. ]

25

In limine *

Pluckrose.

I remembered the cynical smile of contempt he had given the jury when he was acquitted of the murder of his wife, Mary Baker’s sister, Agnes. ‘You fools,’ he seemed to be saying. ‘You know I did it, but we’ve been too clever for you.’ And he had me to thank – me! – for escaping the noose.

He was a beast of a man, tall and heavy, though quick on his feet, with shoulders even broader than Le Grice’s, and huge hands – one of which, the right, was lacking an index finger, amputated accidentally during his butchering career. Now, I am afraid of no man; but there was something about Josiah Pluckrose that I did not care to confront: an intimation in those narrow eyes of a raw, unbridled capacity for purposeless and terrible violence, rendered all the more unsettling by the suavity of his dress and manner. If you met him casually in the street, by his appearance you would almost think him a gentleman – almost. He had long ago scrubbed the gore of Smithfield from his fingers, but the butcher was in him still.