The Hanging Cage (The Northminster Mysteries Book 4) Read online

  The music stopped at last and they broke apart. Had it gone on a moment longer, he was certain he would have charged forward and broken them apart. Now he watched Holzknecht making an elaborate bow, and whispering over Sukey’s hand as she rose from her curtsey.

  “Delightful!” said Professor Holzknecht from the piano.

  “Rather exhausting, though,” said Sukey, fanning herself with her hand.

  “Yes, is it is a little,” said Holzknecht.

  Now Sukey saw him at the doorway. He wanted to stretch out his hand to her and claim her. All he managed was a nod of acknowledgement, which she mirrored.

  “Good evening, Mr Carswell,” she said. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said to the Holzknechts. “That was interesting. I didn’t expect to get a dancing lesson today.”

  “The polka, Mr Carswell,” said Holzknecht, snatching the music from the piano and holding it out to Felix. “It is all the rage in Vienna and Paris.”

  “I’m not really a dancing man,” Felix said. Sukey’s cheeks were so pink. Was it from exercise or embarrassment?

  “Mrs Connolly is an excellent pupil,” Holzknecht said. “I hope we will have the pleasure of dancing again, ma’am?”

  “I’d better go and see all is well in the kitchen. Dinner at eight as usual, gentlemen.”

  She walked swiftly past Felix and down the hall. But instead of going to the kitchen she went upstairs.

  “Excuse me,” Felix said and bolted.

  He followed her up the two flights and together they went into his bedroom. She went to the washstand where the usual jug of water was waiting for him.

  “This will be stone cold now,” she said. “I thought you’d be back earlier.”

  “I wanted to be. There was a lot to do,” Felix said, taking off his coat. He began to loosen his cravat.

  “Yes, the Major said you were busy. I’ll get you some more.”

  “This will do,” he said, catching her arm as she went towards the door.

  “As you like!” she said, wrestling free. “So?”

  “So?” he said.

  “Why were you looking like daggers just then?”

  “Can’t you guess? After that?”

  “What business of it is yours?”

  “Of course it’s my business!” he exclaimed, throwing his waistcoat down on the floor and tugging off his shirt.

  “You are an eejit,” she said. “If you think –”

  “He was making love to you.”

  “He was? I thought he was teaching me the polka.”

  “And why would he do that?”

  “Because he had just got the music. He came back from his work with it. And what was I to do? I couldn’t refuse, poor souls that they are.”

  “Poor souls!” exclaimed Felix. “What on earth makes you think that?”

  “Because they’re exiles! To be thrown out of your own country and your home because you dared to criticise the government? Doesn’t that deserve our pity?”

  “Yes, but he was taking advantage. The way he was holding you, looking at you.”

  “No, he wasn’t,” she said. “I know a leer and that wasn’t that. He’s just rather...” she shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know! Come on now, don’t scowl like that. I’m sorry if I upset you. I didn’t think you would care. You needn’t care, you know that.”

  He did not feel entirely convinced by this, and turned away from her and began to wash. In the looking glass he could see she was picking up his discarded clothes and laying them neatly on his bed. The wifely devotion of this made him feel ashamed.

  “I know,” he managed to say, as he scrubbed himself clean. “I just don’t like his manner. He ought not...” He turned back to her, the towel in his hands. “I wish that it could be made clear sometimes –”

  “But it can’t, can it?” she said going towards the door. “I’d better see to the dinner.”

  She was halfway out of the door before he had the wit to pull her back and into his arms. She struggled for a moment and then responded fiercely in kind, hooking her arms about his neck and kissing him passionately in return.

  “Forgive me,” Felix said. “I’ve been in the company of the dead too long today. This case, it’s a wretched one. It’s made me –”

  She pressed her finger to his lips.

  “Get yourself dressed and come downstairs. We can have our dinner by the fire in my room. It’s a rabbit pie. Your favourite.”

  -o-

  The excellent rabbit pie dispatched and a jug of beer with it, Felix threw some cushions onto the floor, and stretched himself out on the rug in front of the fire. Sukey lay down beside him, letting him cradle her in his arms.

  “The Major’s letter,” he said. “What exactly is it he wants you to do?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Not in any detail,” Felix said.

  “He wants me to get the confidence of a girl – a friend of the dead girl. The idea is that I should help in the house for a few days and see if I can get her to talk to me.”

  “Do you want to do it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s right in thinking I could manage that. It’s nice to be asked, but I don’t know. It might be difficult.”

  “And if he couldn’t get anything out of her, it will be,” said Felix said, “when he can get stones to talk.”

  “How does he do it, then?”

  “He has an instinct for the weakest point. Like a hunter can smell prey, he just seems to know where the weakness is. You know what it’s like – you must have felt it yourself. And even if you do succeed in lying to him, he makes one feel damned uncomfortable, as if he knows it’s a lie and it’s only a matter of time before the truth will come tumbling out.”

  Sukey laughed at that and said, “Then I should be flattered that he thinks I have such powers in me.”

  “He may be right,” said Felix, propping himself up on one elbow and looking down at her. Her features were half in firelight, half in shadow. “You make me uneasy enough.”

  “I don’t mean to,” she said.

  He brushed aside a lock of hair from her forehead and kissed her on the lips. That she was lying there, pressed against him, looking up at him with such tenderness and allowing him to kiss her, ought to have convinced him. But he never could entirely rid himself of the fear that she would, at any minute, slip from his grasp. He felt like a constantly hungry child who always expected his bread to be taken away.

  “Should I do it?” she said, after a moment. “What do you think?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Because you might not want me to. I don’t want to make you feel any more uneasy, do I? I know I touched a raw nerve with Mr Holzknecht, and I’m sorry for it.”

  He sat up and looked into the fire, anxious not to have her eyes on him. This submission was making him deeply ashamed.

  He had no right to expect such deference. She had made that clear enough the other day but now she was bending her neck to him in order not to hurt his pride.

  “You must do it if you think it is right,” he managed to say.

  “Then I won’t do it.”

  “No, that’s not what I meant!” he exclaimed. “You may offend me all you like. That side of it doesn’t matter – it’s neither right nor wrong. I meant, if you think it will help – and if Major Vernon thinks it will, then I should say you must do it! His genius in such matters is not something anyone can ignore.”

  “But you don’t want me to do it?”

  “I don’t know! Honestly I don’t! Even if you were my wife, I should be struggling with it – though perhaps he would never have asked it, if you were. I don’t know!”

  She got up and went to her writing desk.

  “You should read his letter,” she said, holding it out to him.

  He struggled to his feet, took it from her and scanned it quickly, as the Major’s precise, elegant hand allowed him to do.

  “This is not strictly speaking woman’s w
ork, but it is work only a woman can do, and necessary work, in a good cause. I do not hesitate to ask for your help in this, knowing that because of who you are, it cannot stain you, and that anyone who cares for your interest will see that is the case.”

  He exhaled heavily.

  “I will not do it if you do not wish it,” Sukey said.

  “You will have to do it,” he said, handing back the letter. “One cannot argue with this, can one? We have our orders! What did I say about his instinct for the weakest points? I should have signed on to that whaler!”

  “What are you talking about?” said Sukey.

  “Instead of coming to Northminster,” Felix said. “I almost signed as ship’s surgeon on a voyage to Alaska.”

  “I am glad you didn’t!”

  “It might have been simpler!”

  “You might be dead by now,” she said. “That I couldn’t care for.”

  “You wouldn’t have known me to care,” he said.

  “I should have felt it,” she said, taking a step closer to him and taking his hand. She laid it on her breast, pressing her own hand over it. “I would have felt a little crack in my heart, without knowing what it was. I’m sure of it.”

  “Specious nonsense,” Felix said, as lightly as he could but he was touched beyond measure. “Is it too early to go to bed?”

  Chapter Twelve

  The last time Giles had called on the Ampners, it had been only an hour or so after Gosforth had killed himself. On that occasion his nerve almost deserted him. He had sat in the carriage outside the house, his head raging, struggling to find the necessary composure to go in and tell them what had happened. He had kept it brief. The news was enough of a shock for them both, and he had made his excuses, anxious to get back to Northminster before the light went.

  Now he had to face them again, and his head was still aching.

  He found Mrs Ampner sitting huddled by the fire in a little upstairs sitting room, bundled in shawls, her hair falling out of her cap. She presented a shocking sight for one who clearly valued her handsome looks and ability to dress fashionably. She looked up from her study of the fire as Mr Ampner showed him in, and gazed at him for a long moment before her face creased up and she looked away, sobbing.

  At the same time, Giles glimpsed in her features those of her brother, and found himself remembering with too much precision the feeling of the boy gasping in his arms, resisting every effort to be saved, so intent on destruction. He swallowed down the nausea that came with it, and tried to master his nerves. The business had sliced into him like a sword. He felt, in some respects, as weak as the sobbing woman in front of him, whose every tear seemed to tell the miserable tale over and over again. There was a part of him that wanted to turn on his heel and leave the room, but somehow he managed to take his place opposite her. He sat for a few minutes in silence, collecting himself while Mr Ampner attempted to calm his wife.

  “I’m sorry to trouble you again, Mrs Ampner,” he said at length.

  “Yes, it is a trouble!” she spat out, “and I do not understand it! Why are you here, sir? What more needs to be said?”

  “The more we know, the easier this burden will be for you to bear.”

  “The more we know?” she said. “After what you said, after what you said he did, then – no, I don’t I want to know. I already know too much!”

  “I know this is painful –”

  “No, you do not. You do not know. George was like my own child. He was everything to me.”

  Giles glanced at her ravaged face. He had thought her quite young the first time he had seen her, but perhaps she had been affecting a youthful appearance. Now she seemed to be approaching middle age. Had she just told him a near truth in saying George was like her own child? George was only twenty. Had she made a mistake as a girl, and passed the child off as a baby brother? It was not an uncommon strategy in families, and it would explain her intense attachment to him. How much worse for a mother, especially one who had never been acknowledged, would be the betrayal and desertion implied by suicide?

  “I will keep it brief,” Giles said. “It will be to the point, but brief. And I must search his room.”

  She hesitated, giving a great sigh, and then nodded.

  “I also must ask if he and Bel were married, ma’am, and if you colluded in that?”

  “Who told you that?” she said.

  “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “And you had a hand in it?” She glanced at her husband.

  “Yes,” she said at length.

  “Dear Lord,” said Ampner. “You did what?”

  “It was what they wanted!” she exclaimed. “There would have been a terrible scandal if I had not done something about it. They were, well you know – and I had to make sure. Better to marry than burn, I thought.”

  “And how was it arranged?” Giles said.

  “I organised a special licence.”

  “But how could you, without my consent?” said Ampner. “How? When you knew what she meant to me? Married her to that good for nothing, wastrel, fool of a boy!”

  Mrs Ampner shrieked in horror at this description and buried her face in her hands, cringing in her corner.

  “Who married them?” Giles pressed on. “And where?”

  “By Mr Haxton. He used to be curate here. Now he is rector of St John’s out at Melthorpe. He was glad of the money, and he could see they were in love, and ought to be man and wife. He married young himself!” she added defiantly.

  “Oh, how could you?” said Ampner again. “How could you?” He got up and towered over her, looking as if he were about to strike her. But then he turned and left the room in a great hurry, banging the door behind him.

  “It was better it was done!” she said to Giles, in the same tone of defiance. “Far better! They were in love.”

  Giles wondered what sort of romance it might have been that led to such a path of destruction.Why would a happy young bride kill herself?

  “On the day I first came here, ma’am,” he said, “you were already concerned that George had gone missing.”

  “Yes, and why should I not have been?” she said.

  “Young men are often thoughtless. They come and go as they please, and forget to tell those who care for them what their plans are. Mr Ampner was quite sure that George would be back for dinner, but you were agitated – almost as if you knew why he had taken flight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You knew that they were married, and what George stood to inherit now his wife was dead. Men have killed their wives for far less.”

  “George did not kill her!”

  “But you thought he might have done, perhaps?”

  She did not answer, but looked down at her hands which were occupied in wringing her handkerchief.

  “No,” she said at at last. “No. He was not like that. It wasn’t for her money he married her.”

  “Would he have married her if she was penniless?” Giles said.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Given he seemed disinclined to work for his living and had expensive tastes and grand friends to impress?”

  “The money was not the reason,” she said. “It was splendid, of course, that they should have it, but I would not have encouraged them if I didn’t know there was real feeling on both sides. George told me how much he felt for her. It was not mercenary, I assure you.”

  “Did she ever speak of her feelings to you, ma’am?”

  “Not directly.”

  “Did she ever say anything that disturbed you or made you uneasy? That made you feel she was unhappy in some way?”

  “No. She seemed happy with the whole arrangement. I heard her make her vows, Major Vernon, and it was affecting.”

  Giles decided he would not press her further on that point, although he wondered if she was not clinging to a preconceived narrative. It was to her advantage that her brother married well, and she had obviously encourage
d the match as much as she could. For her to claim that the secret marriage was to prevent them from falling into sexual sin was somewhat disingenuous. Her words were saying one thing, her manner another. He sensed he had rattled her, and so he would leave her worrying while he searched George’s room.

  Here he found signs of the same medieval extravagance afflicting Lord Milburne, although on a smaller scale – a banner hanging on the wall, a piece of armour, and a sword. His writing desk was closed but not locked. It contained a ream or so of foolscap covered in scrawled handwriting, and several notebooks, carefully fastened up with herringbone tape and sealed with red wax. A glance through the loose papers revealed that Gosforth seemed to have had literary ambitions. Some of it had been copied out in a fair hand, and elaborately signed: George, the Knight of Gosforth.

  Giles gathered up the papers and notebooks, dreading working his way through sheets of doggerel in the pursuit of justice. At the back of the desk he found a pile of unpaid bills, accompanied by strongly worded requests for immediate payment from the tradesmen involved. Some were from the same establishments that Lord Milburne had patronised, but it seemed that Gosforth, without acreage and title behind him, was not given the grace of much credit.

  Perhaps his debts spurred him towards death, Giles speculated, mentally calculating the money owed. It was a painful amount. Giles speculated that Gosforth may have hoped to silence his creditors with news of his marriage, but now his wife was dead, his financial position could have been thrown into ambiguity, causing him to panic and precipitating his suicide.

  Gosforth had made a marriage with an under-age heiress without a settlement. That could mean that he inherited everything on his wife’s death, or nothing at all, according to the competence of her trustees and the terms of her inheritance. Perhaps he would only have become wealthy when Bel came of age, when control of the capital might pass to him, as her husband – and only then if he were lucky. For what set of trustees, even in the best circumstances, ever passed control so readily to a husband? The whole duty of the trustees in such cases was to protect the woman’s fortune when she married, since she could not hold it in her own right. Any settlement correctly drawn up would surely anticipate the dangers of a greedy, spendthrift husband and an under-age bride. Perhaps Gosforth, his head in the romantic, medieval clouds, had formed a false picture of what he stood to gain by his marriage? It was not likely that Mr Ampner would have confided such details to him, and probably Bel herself had an imperfect understanding of it. Mrs Ampner may have known a few tempting scraps which she had perhaps exaggerated in her mind in order to promote the romance.