Serpent in the Garden (8 page)

Joshua recalled the letters he had seen Herbert read in the drawing room. “Did the letters not reveal more? His name perhaps? Have you reached any conclusion about how the unfortunate fellow died?”

Herbert laughed and scratched his wig. He seemed far less interested in the incident than Joshua, and almost embarrassed to be talking about it. He didn’t recall the man’s name, “though I suppose it must have been written on the documents, which I have put somewhere or other. As to the cause of death—choking, I presume. The reason for his coming to Astley remains a mystery. None of the gardeners or servants appear to know anything about him.”

“If he came from Barbados, perhaps he was an acquaintance of Mrs. Mercier’s,” Joshua suggested.

“I fancy not, for she would have mentioned as much when she found him. You heard her as well as I declare she didn’t know him.” Herbert’s tone had sharpened. He wanted the subject dropped, but Joshua was afire with interest.

“Then perhaps word of Mrs. Mercier’s project circulated the island of Barbados, and hearing of Astley’s pinery, he came in search of employ,” Joshua said, quietly. He added, “What do the physician and justice make of the death?”

“Physician?” said Herbert. “Justice? The fellow’s dead. No one can help him now. I have given orders to have him interred as swiftly as possible. Furthermore, Pope, I can’t see the purpose in picking over the matter at dinner. It’s damaging to my appetite.” He took a forkful of boiled fowl and examined it closely before putting it in his mouth.

“Forgive me, sir,” said Joshua. “I didn’t mean to give offence.” But after a short pause, while Herbert was busy ordering the manservant to bring more wine, he turned to Francis and Caroline. “What d’you think on it? D’you recall seeing the fellow at all?”

To judge from the blankness of Caroline’s expression, she was not in the least interested in the mysterious death. Francis blinked rapidly several times and scratched an earlobe, yet he too affected ignorance. He had neither seen nor spoken to the dead man, he declared.

Herbert was by now showing signs of disquiet. His children’s glumness, his own efforts to coax them out of it, coupled with Joshua’s stubbornness in the matter of the corpse, had ripened his face from its usual placid rosiness to a less comfortable shade of plum. His chair creaked as he rocked back and forth and racked his brains for some more suitable subject to divert them. He ate his food halfheartedly, pushing a wedge of liver pudding round his plate with scarcely a taste.

As a last, desperate resort, Herbert turned to a topic that any normal young person would have found impossible to resist. There was to be a ball held at Astley, within a fortnight, on the sixth of June. The entertainment had been arranged in order that the local gentry might make the acquaintance of Sabine, the future mistress of Astley, and her daughter, Violet. One hundred guests were expected to attend.

Discussion of this forthcoming event did not, however, succeed in its aim. Francis and Caroline remained unwavering in their incivility. They volunteered nothing, responding to questions only with a mumbled “Yes” or “No,” or “Fancy that,” or “Whatever you choose, Father.”

Joshua found it remarkable that not once in all this did Herbert resort to anger. On the contrary, he looked curiously sad, like a chastened schoolboy who knows he has committed some misdemeanor that he cannot redress. He made no attempt to remonstrate with either of his children. It was as if he knew the reason, comprehended there was nothing to be done to alter it, and believed himself to be in some way culpable.

“Will Lizzie Manning attend the ball with her brother, or will her father chaperone her?” asked Herbert patiently of his stony-faced son.

“I do not recall Lizzie’s arrangements, Father.”

“Is her brother returned from overseas?” persisted Herbert.

“As far as I know he remains in Florence.”

“Well, then, if he remains in Italy, he cannot very well escort Lizzie, can he?”

“As you say, Father.”

“Perhaps, in that case, you might ask Lizzie if she wishes to stay here for the night?”

“Will Sabine permit it?”

As if he had been struck in the belly, Herbert flinched. “What possible objection could Sabine have to Lizzie staying here?”

“I merely thought that, as mistress of the house, she should be consulted.”

“Am I not master here?” replied his father.

Francis shrugged his shoulders and pushed a spoonful of jelly into his mouth.

Herbert forced a smile and in desperation turned to his daughter. “Have you settled upon your costume for the ball, Caroline?”

She shook her head. “No, Father, I have not.”

“Then is it not time you did so? The entertainment is only a fortnight away, dear girl. Do you not wish to look your best for it?”

“I have not given the matter much thought.”

Costume was a source of endless concern to Joshua Pope. “What color will you choose for your gown, Miss Bentnick?” he enquired with genuine interest. He pictured her in a dark jewel hue—deep red or blue, or green perhaps—that would bring out the warmth of her complexion and the richness of her eyes.

She flushed at his intrusion, but ignored him, declaring only, “Indeed, I misled you, Father. The reason I have not ordered a gown is that I thought I might wear one of my mother’s. The crimson brocade that she wore on the last occasion we dined together, before you took her to Barbados and her death, becomes me particularly well, I think. And perhaps it will serve as a reminder to us all, while we celebrate your new union, that she is scarcely cold in her grave.”

A hush fell over the room. Herbert’s eyes glistened. The muscles in his jaw contracted and twitched, but he didn’t appear surprised in the least. It was as if he had known all along what was coming and now wrestled with a response.

“Caroline! Dearest child! I beg you, restrain yourself. Surely you do not blame me for your dear mother’s death?” he managed to say at length. “She accompanied me to Barbados at her own request. I loved her as much as you did, and I mourn her as much as you do now. Her death from fever was a tragedy, but we cannot rewrite history any more than we may see into the future.”

Caroline’s fine cold eyes were now lit up with passion. “For someone who loved and mourns her so sincerely, it did not take you long to replace her!”

Herbert quivered with helpless emotion. His face gleamed with sweat, and the edge of his wig grew damp. His fingers played with his cutlery, as if he knew he had to say something to his daughter’s challenge, but that whatever he said would make matters worse.

“It was fate that brought Sabine and me together. She was kindness itself to your mother when she grew ill. Is it any wonder that afterward I visited her, warmed to her, and found her sympathetic?”

Caroline scowled. “How good of dear Sabine to be so solicitous to my poor sick mother, as she schemed all the while to steal her husband away from her!” she shouted. “Why, she is so clever it wouldn’t surprise me to learn she’d poisoned my poor mother!” With this, she threw down her napkin in a ferment of fury, whipped up her skirts, and rushed from the room. Herbert was left gaping and speechless.

Joshua glanced up and caught Francis’s eye. The earlier cool hostility had disappeared and the expression on Francis’s face was now one of unmistakable sadness. A similar emotion was etched upon Herbert’s face. The scene brought a sense of profound melancholy upon Joshua Pope. He had hoped that coming to Astley would rid him of his sense of gloomy, lonely despair. In Herbert’s betrothal to Sabine he had seen hope, light, the belief that his own sad plight might also one day be similarly happily resolved. But despite his longing to escape it, the cloud of despondency he had intended to leave in London had followed him to Astley.

A
FTER Caroline Bentnick’s outburst, dinner concluded swiftly and in awkward silence. Anxious for some respite from the taint of malevolence and wrath, Joshua decided to take advantage of the dwindling sunshine and spend an hour or two outdoors. Dinner had intrigued him more than a little, but it had also been profoundly fatiguing. Before Rachel died, Joshua had always been of sociable disposition. On occasion, after a bottle or two of claret, he might have appeared rather too full of bonhomie. Furthermore, Joshua’s marriage, though brief, had been a contented one. Now, confronted by such an excess of discord, he felt unsettled and unsteady and ill equipped to cope. He felt a twinge in his temple and a slight rise in his pulse. Immediately he began to fret a headache might be poised to smite him. He would make some sketches first and then seek out the gardener as Mrs. Mercier had asked. After donning a broad-brimmed velvet hat garnished with an extravagant plume and a woollen frock coat lined in purple silk—fine dress sometimes helped lift his spirits—Joshua took up his sketchbook, placed a box of watercolors under his arm, and went out in search of a view and tranquillity.

Joshua patrolled the walled garden at Astley in search of a suitable position, somewhere that would afford the requisite view and a sanctuary from the breeze and human distraction. At length he came upon a row of sunken terraces filled with formal parterres; each resembled a small verdant room, with its own arched entrance, clipped privet walls, and stone furnishings. In the second terrace, a sundial supported on the back of a plump cupid was set amid urns of crimson auriculas and shell-colored pinks. The beds were filled with tangled roses and campanulas in hues of crimson and deep blue. The place would suit his purpose very well. Settling himself on a stone bench, beneath a pergola draped in purple clematis, he took out his charcoal and began to draw.

Some minutes later, he heard the crunch of footsteps on the gravel path behind the hedge. Joshua wondered whether he should call out and make himself known. Before he could decide, a second set of steps approached and a conversation began.

Joshua’s heart plummeted. The voices were those of Francis and Caroline Bentnick. He sat there, taut and silent, sketching quietly as he waited for them to pass by. Then it dawned upon him that the brother and sister had arranged this meeting. Caroline had come to this spot expressly in order to converse with her brother unobserved. Joshua remembered Francis’s agitation at the mention of the dead man and Caroline’s animosity toward Sabine, and curiosity—that brief niggling itch he had felt earlier—became a burning rash.

“That was a creditable display you provided,” said Francis to his sister.

“I could not help myself. How can our father believe we could be as callous as he? Does he expect us to forget our mother and take Sabine to our hearts at the drop of a hat?”

“His gullibility is quite beyond me,” agreed her brother. “We will do him a great service if we persuade him to view her more critically, or more prudently at least.”

“How to achieve it, though, when he is so much in her thrall?”

From his listening post behind the hedge, Joshua could hear that Francis and Caroline had abandoned their earlier dismal tones. Their voices were tinged with bitterness and unmistakable fervor.

“Perhaps we have the means already,” continued Francis. “The corpse that Sabine found in the pinery: it was no coincidence. The man was acquainted with the Merciers.”