He sighed. ‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Why don’t you go and find a car,’ she said after a few moments’ thought. ‘Then at least we’ll have the option of going to ask for his help.’
He looked up and rubbed his face hard with the palms of his hands. Surely she wasn’t serious? ‘Could do, I suppose.’ He stood up and looked at her bitterly. ‘I suppose you’ll be gone by the time I come back?’
She met his gaze squarely. ‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘Let me know when you have.’ He headed towards the door.
72
It was less than a week before Thomas found himself once more climbing the stairs in Stonecutters Court. This time there was no sign of anyone in the workshop below Sarah’s small sewing room. She was neatly attired in a grey woollen dress with a white lace-trimmed cap and apron. ‘Come in, my lord.’ Curtsying, she showed him to a chair which had been placed near the window.
Her note had been sent to his chambers, delivered by an urchin who had demanded sixpence from his clerk. He had been sent packing with a halfpenny for his cheek. It was only luck that Thomas had received the note at all. Had he not at that moment walked into the inner office it would have been consigned to the wastepaper bin in the corner. He scrutinised the neatly folded piece of paper, frowning.
My Lord, your wife has asked me to speak to you again. If you would be so good as to visit at your convenience, I have messages for you from beyond. Yours respectfully, Sarah Buck
Thomas sighed. He was no fool. He knew he had laid himself open to this, that she would exploit him and probably make a fool of him and maybe blackmail him into the bargain. But the woman had seemed sincere. She had not snatched at the coin he had left her; she had seemed to know what she was talking about. He would give her one more chance, just one, then he would call a halt.
She sat down opposite him and tucked her skirts neatly around her ankles – shapely ankles, he noted in spite of himself – then she gave him a sad smile. It was somehow complicit, drawing him into her confidence. ‘I am sorry to say your lady, Frances, is unhappy. She is concerned about your family, and anxious that I should pass on her worries. You have several grandchildren, I understand, and one of them is ill?’
Thomas frowned. ‘Not that I know of.’
She seemed flustered. ‘Then perhaps I have misunderstood. Perhaps a child has been exposed to infection. She is very concerned.’
‘As she would be,’ Thomas returned. ‘Children are always being exposed to infections, Miss Buck. This is hardly news.’ He was about to stand up when she interrupted. ‘Little Frances. She is called for her grandmother.’
Thomas froze in his chair. ‘What’s wrong with her?’
Sarah was silent, listening, her head to one side. ‘It is hard to make out, but she’s here now to speak to you. She’s trying to tell me. The little girl’s father is away from home. No, they are away, staying with an aunt in Ramsgate, so they are not at home?’ She looked at him almost fearfully. ‘Her papa would know what to do, but he may not be there in time. The child has a quinsy, no, a croup, perhaps,’ she hesitated, screwing up her face to hear something that Thomas could not, ‘perhaps the chin cough—’
‘Enough!’ He stood up abruptly. ‘If you are right then she is seriously ill and my sister will have sent for a doctor!’
‘Wait!’ Sarah raised her hand anxiously to catch at his arm. ‘Your lady says she had a receipt for a cure. Someone called Abigail always used it on the children. A remedy made from wild thyme on the hills, coltsfoot, honey—’
Thomas paused long enough only to toss a couple of coins onto the table and he was gone. Sarah sat staring at them sadly then she shivered. ‘I did my best, my lady,’ she said sadly to the empty room. ‘He will help if he can.’
He sent messages to Ramsgate and to Poynings by the fastest horses possible. And another to Abi who, nanny-in-chief to the whole family, was with his youngest, Esmé, a man of twenty-one now, and his wife, Eliza, to supervise the first months with their first child, yet another Thomas to add to the clutch. Fanny was right, Abi would know what to do.
It was several days before he heard back from Frances, whose note confirmed that little Frances had indeed contracted the whooping cough. At the first sign of illness they had bundled her into a chaise and taken her back to Poynings, where there was an old lady in the village who had nursed generations of children through the disease, using herbs picked on the Downs. Her recipe had been much like Abi’s and the child was on the mend. She gently chided her father for panicking and assuming she would not know what to do. She did not ask how he had heard of the illness.
He sent Sarah a purse containing three shillings, with a brusque note of thanks.
It was only two days later that she sent him another message:
My lord, I fear that too much bothering will make you angry, but my lady, your wife, keeps speaking to me in my head. She wants to tell you about her fall. Sometimes she is so clear, at others she speaks as though through the clouds. Please come when you can so that I may relay her words.
Thomas unfolded the note and, spreading it flat on his desk, sat staring at it, reciting the words to himself in a hoarse whisper. Why would this woman, this uneducated, almost illiterate woman, have been chosen to relay Fanny’s words? Why could Fanny not speak to him directly? His gaze fixed on the one sentence ‘She wants to tell you about her fall.’ How would Sarah know that was how Fanny died? But it was general knowledge surely. Perhaps they had even put it in one of the newspapers. He sighed.
‘My lord?’ His clerk had been hovering. ‘Is this woman pestering you? I could have her taken up—’
‘No!’ Thomas looked up. ‘No, thank you,’ he added more gently. ‘I need to see her. She has information on a subject that is of some importance to me.’
This time he did not sit down. He stood in the doorway to her work room, still holding his hat and cane and gloves. ‘Miss Buck, this cannot go on. You seem to feel that I am free to be summoned at your every whim—’
‘Not my whim, my lord,’ she interrupted angrily. ‘Are you saying that your grandchild was not ill? If so, that is not my fault. Perhaps Lady Erskine was mistaken—’
‘My wife was not Lady Erskine!’ he burst out. The fact that Fanny had died before he was given the title and had never been able to share the recognition it bestowed was a lasting misery for him. ‘You may call her the Honourable Mrs Erskine.’
She looked astonished but made no comment.
‘Very well. So, was the child not ill?’ she challenged crossly. ‘It’s not my message. I merely report what your wife tells me! Don’t imagine I’m making all this up.’ She had not risen from her seat this time, and she had not curtsied.
He found he was looking at her with more respect. ‘You were right,’ he said quietly. ‘The child was ill.’
‘And were you able to help it?’
‘The child’s mother already had everything in hand.’
She looked up at him, her chin set stubbornly. ‘I am pleased to hear it.’ She paused then gave an ostentatious sigh. ‘No, I’m sorry. There is too much negativity in this room. I cannot ask her to speak to me when I’m upset.’
‘Then I will leave.’ He turned to the door.
‘No, wait,’ she called. ‘I can at least tell you what it’s all about.’
He paused without turning round and waited.
‘She told me when she bade me call you back to speak to her again. She wants you to know she did not trip. She was pushed.’ She stared at his back, her lips pursed, defying him to leave now.
He turned slowly. ‘You are saying my wife was pushed down the stairs?’
Sarah hesitated. ‘Wait!’ She raised her hand. ‘Now she’s here. She is stamping her foot, insisting you listen. She is cross that you won’t believe me. It was,’ she hesitated, her head to one side, her eyes half closed. ‘It was Andrew,’ she finished in a rush. She opened her eyes triumphantly. ‘Andrew. And you must be car
eful because he wants to kill you too. There! Now you know. That’s all. She’s gone. And you have no need to give me more money. I see you think I am a fraud, but I have done no more than repeat what she told me.’
He was staring at her in silence and she met his gaze steadily. ‘Do you know an Andrew?’ she asked at last.
‘Indeed I do,’ he replied.
‘He’s not one of your sons?’
‘No, he most certainly isn’t.’ He frowned impatiently. ‘What made you say that?’
‘It sounded as though she knew him well. She was irritated, cross.’
‘She had reason to be cross if he killed her.’ Thomas put down his hat and cane and came to sit down in the chair opposite her. He leaned forward slightly. ‘Did she say anything else?’
‘No, she didn’t.’ She paused for a few seconds. ‘Will you have him arrested?’
Thomas shook his head.
‘Why not?’ She looked up in despair. ‘Of course. I’m no use as a witness. Who would believe a stupid woman like me?’
‘You are right. No one would believe a clairvoyant as a credible witness in a court of law,’ he said sadly, ‘but that is not the reason he can’t be arrested. The reason is, madam, that he’s already dead. He has already paid the ultimate price for his misdemeanours. I watched him hang.’
She stared at him and he saw disbelief, then horror then disgust play across her features. She shuddered. ‘So how …?’ She swallowed hard. ‘You mean he’s an evil spirit? A ghost? He pushed her as a ghost?’
Thomas closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. ‘You must tell my darling that I have her message, but I do not know what to do. I am the greatest lawyer in the land, and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to bring Andrew Farquhar to justice.’
‘Only God can do that, my lord,’ she said softly.
He smiled sadly. ‘You reproach me for my hubris, and you’re right. Only God can deal with this, so why doesn’t He?’ The last sentence was an anguished cry.
‘I don’t know what hubris is, my lord, but, I’m sure you will know what to do when the time comes.’ She cocked her head slightly at the sound of footsteps on the stairs.
Thomas didn’t move. He was lost in thought. Only when the door opened did he turn angrily to face it, to be confronted by a neatly dressed lady’s maid in a cloak and bonnet. The woman stared for a moment at the man seated in the chair then addressed Sarah haughtily. ‘I have come to collect my lady’s hat, if you please.’ She glared at Thomas again then glanced swiftly back at Sarah. ‘You may come to the house tomorrow to collect your money.’
Sarah stood up and went over to a side table. She picked up a hat box by the cords that fastened it closed and handed it to the woman. ‘I will come tomorrow to her ladyship to see that she is happy with my work,’ she said meekly.
‘Do so.’ With one final glance at Thomas the woman turned away and disappeared back down the stairs.
He stood up. ‘I must go. My thanks for your help. I doubt if my wife will want to speak to me again, so our business is done.’ He reached into his pocket for two shillings and sixpence and dropped the coins gently on the table in front of her then he turned away. It did not occur to him that the maid would have recognised him or that by the time he reached his office a cartoonist was already sketching out a depiction of him consulting a woman with a crystal ball.
The Tower House was very quiet without Malcolm there. Ruth stood in the kitchen, her arms folded tightly across her chest, staring out of the window. The larch trees on the hills were beginning to turn to gold and the sky was a brilliant blue behind them. The dogs had gone too, to the neighbour who always looked after them when Malcolm was away. Max and Fin had again offered to come and stay with her if she didn’t want to go to them, but again she had gently rebuffed their offer.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind being alone?’ Mal asked as he left.
‘Quite sure. I am perfectly safe here. I don’t even need to go out if I don’t want to.’ He had insisted they stock up the larder and freezer so she need never unlock the front door. ‘Max and Fin are only a phone call away if I change my mind, and I won’t have time to miss you.’
She did miss him. Within minutes of watching his car disappear down the long drive towards the road, she was feeling desolate. She brought her laptop down to the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine, then she turned on the radio. It was tuned as always to Malcolm’s favourite Radio 3 and she found herself listening to the joyful cadences of a harpsichord. She sat in front of her laptop without opening it, lost in the music, picturing a ball of the kind Thomas would have gone to, the room lit by hundreds of candles in candelabra, crowded with men in elegant evening dress and women in colourful gowns, all of them bewigged and hot, the huge chamber noisy and crowded, smelling of pomanders and flowers and the lavish food laid out in the next room, but above all smelling of sweat.
She shuddered. The smell was rancid in her nose as the music grew louder, filling the kitchen, bouncing off the walls, jangly, threatening, overwhelming.
‘No!’ She stood up abruptly and slammed both her hands down on the table. ‘I am not having this! Go away!’
The sound of the harpsichord stopped dead. The little red light on the radio went off. The room was completely silent. She wasn’t frightened, she realised. She was angry.
He had gone.
She ran upstairs to her bedroom, took the fetish doll out of its drawer and brought it back downstairs with her.
When she turned the radio back on there was a discussion programme in progress.
* * *
Timothy was laughing to himself as he climbed the stairs. He had told April to go if she wanted to. See if he cared. The presence in his head had disappeared. It had happened quite suddenly. The banging migraine above his eyes had vanished between one breath and the next and he was left with the most extraordinary feeling of peace. He went into his bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. Downstairs he heard the front door open and then close. April had gone out but he wasn’t worried. She had said she would go up to the store on the corner and buy some fresh food from the deli counter. Clearly she had money and for some reason she had started being nice to him. He smiled. He would find her stash, but just for now he was content to let everything go. He was himself again. He lay back on the pillow and stared up at the ceiling. The street lights outside threw strange square shapes on the walls of the room and he watched them grow brighter as the darkness outside deepened. Half an hour later he heard her footsteps on the pavement outside, that quick tap of her new shoes. She had found them in a charity shop, she had told him. They had heels and made her look quite different; she walked, she even stood, differently. They seemed to give her confidence. The footsteps paused at the front door and he heard the key in the lock. He had given her the key when she had said she was going out. Why not? He knew she would come back. The front door opened and then closed and he heard the tap of heels in the hall. She turned on the lights in the kitchen and he saw a narrow strip of brightness appear under his door. He wriggled down more comfortably on his bed and smiled to himself. Everything was going to be all right now she was back. He was safe.
The smell of cooking woke him. He identified frying onions and sausages; he could hear her humming to herself. She looked up when he appeared. ‘I thought the thought of food would bring you down.’
‘It smells good.’
‘I haven’t cooked for so long.’ She picked up a heavy saucepan and carried it, steaming, over to the sink. She drained potatoes and put the pan on the table. ‘Mash?’
‘Yes please.’ He sat down and watched her. ‘We could be really happy here.’
‘I suppose we could.’ She went over to the fridge and as she opened the door he saw there was milk in there now and one or two small packets. He hoped they were cheese. She brought out some butter and cut a slab into the spuds then reached for the masher she had found in a drawer.
It wasn’t until they had finished
the meal and were sitting over a cup of tea that his headache began to return. She noticed him put his hand to his forehead, frowning slightly. ‘What is it?’
‘Just a twinge.’ He reached for his cup and drained it then he put it down. His hand was shaking.
‘Why not have an early night.’ She was still happy, thinking about cooking again tomorrow. Secretly she had decided to go up to Princes Street and look for a bookshop and find one of Finlay Macdermott’s books. Tim needn’t see it. If he did, she would tell him that she had found it in the house.
He stood up and she saw him screw up his face as if he had felt a twinge of pain. Just for a moment he stood looking down at her and she felt a tremor of fear. It was as though someone else was looking out of his eyes, then he was himself again. ‘I will go up,’ he said. ‘Thanks for the meal, Sis, that was really nice.’
She heard his footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door banged. Minutes later it opened again and she heard him race into the bathroom. The sound of retching went on for ages; she put her hands over her ears, then sadly got up to do the washing up. The clank of pots and dishes drowned out the noise. When she had finished she went to the door and listened. Everything was quiet again.
Are you ready to go out? Let’s see what we can find. April will be asleep soon. You don’t want to wake her.
Tim sat on the bed shivering, his head in his hands. The bastard voice was back, insisting, pushing, going on and on.
We’ll find something a bit juicier this time. A girl with a bit more meat on her. A girl with a bit of fight, shall we? Think how good it will be to lie between her thighs, knowing how much she’s enjoying it, however much she squeals.
‘No!’ Tim cried out loud. He froze, looking at his door, but there was no sound from April who had finished tidying the kitchen and gone to bed. He had heard her door open and shut. He hoped she hadn’t heard him being sick. He had enjoyed the meal so much.
‘I’m not going out,’ he murmured. ‘Go away. I don’t want to do it again.’