That Silent Night (4 page)

My husband closed his book. “I do, but I do not agree with you that it is of any consequence to us.”

“Mr. Leighton—“

“Reminded his wife of an appointment, yes, I heard the first six times you told me.”

“It was not six.”

“Mr. Leighton is wrong about her having a nervous disorder,” I said.

“I did not realize you had qualified as a physician,” Colin said. “You ought to have told me. We could have celebrated your degree.”

“Don't tease,” I said. “She must have seen the same woman I did—and given the close resemblance, she must have thought it to be her mother's ghost. Don't you agree?”

“I am afraid not.”

“I have seen the same woman—“

“And you admit she is not a ghost?” he asked.

I paused.

“Just as I thought,” he said. “Mrs. Leighton's condition is none of our business—“

“Her husband mentioned it to me. I am not meddling.”

“I do not believe he did so in the hope that you might offer a competing diagnosis. You have no reason to suspect she saw the woman anymore than I did. And, to be clear, I did not see her. If I had, however, I would not believe for even the briefest of instances that she was a ghost.”

“It is odd, don't you think, that she left no footprints?” I asked.

“No footprints that you saw in the midst of a snowstorm that included significant winds,” Colin said. “They may have been covered or blown away by the time you reached them.”

“Or I may have seen something else. I cannot be certain, and yet you do not think I suffer from a nervous disorder.”

“I think, my dear, that
I
may begin to suffer from a nervous disorder if we do not abandon this line of conversation.”

“Do you trust Mr. Leighton?”

“I hardly know the man, but he seems in every way a decent chap, as I have already told you. I do not believe that he is trying to convince his wife she is of unsound mind.”

“You need not put it so harshly,” I said.

“Emily, my love, you must admit that Mrs. Leighton is rather … odd. Her behavior at dinner here demonstrated that. Her husband, who dotes on her, should be lauded for getting her whatever help she may need.”

“He did take her to Switzerland in search of a cure,” I said, drawing my eyebrows together. “And she has no fortune he could be trying to control.”

“No, she does not.” Colin crossed his arms.

“I do believe his motives to be pure.”

“You are generosity itself.”

“Yet if part of this perceived disorder stems from her seeing something I, too, see—“

“You are not going to mention what you have seen to the Leightons or I shall summon Dr. Holton here to examine you. In lieu of his presence, however, I shall take matters into my own hands.” He moved next to me on the divan, but Davis entering the room stopped any further action he had planned.

“Mr. Hargreaves, Mr. Leighton to see you.”

“Bring him here, Davis.”

“He communicated that the matter about which he needs to speak to you is both urgent and delicate. I put him in the red drawing room.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And you will not let me follow, will you, Davis?”

“Most certainly not, madam.” He turned on his heel and opened the door for my husband.

Colin returned only a few minutes later, pulling on his heavy overcoat. “Leighton's wife is nowhere to be found. He asks for my assistance and wonders if you would be so good as to go to their house and wait for her, in case she returns before he does.”

“Of course,” I said. “What happened?”

“He does not know.”

I stood at the library window, pulling my shawl close around my shoulders, and watched him and Mr. Leighton, along with several footmen, scatter across Park Lane and disappear from sight. She could not have got far on foot, but she might have hired a hansom cab, and, hence, could be anywhere. Searching would be a necessary yet most likely fruitless endeavor, unless Mr. Leighton had some idea where his wife might have gone. Davis brought my coat and hat, and I set off for the Leightons' house, where the butler ushered me in and told me I was expected. His face, etched with lines of worry, revealed deep concern for his master's wife.

“You will be comfortable in the drawing room, Lady Emily,” he said. “May I send up some tea or coffee for you? Brandy, perhaps, to ward off the cold?”

“No, thank you,” I said. “Would it be possible for me to go to the sitting room where Mrs. Leighton and I took tea this afternoon? She told me it is her favorite spot.”

“Of course,” he said, and led me there. Once alone, I studied every detail of the space. It was not a large room, but occupied a space in the front of the house that included the tower. After determining there to be very little that conveyed anything deeply personal about Mrs. Leighton in the rest of the chamber, I focused on a small gilded desk from the Empire period that had been set at an angle against a corner. Searching through its drawers, I found writing paper with Mrs. Leighton's new initials monogrammed on the top, several pens in need of mending, a tattered address book, a slim volume of Emily Dickinson's maudlin American poetry, and a stack of old correspondence dating back to before Mrs. Leighton's wedding.

Ordinarily, I would not dream of impinging on a person's privacy by reading their letters, but in this case, I justified the action by the hope that I might find something suggestive of the location to which Mrs. Leighton had fled. I could see from the envelopes that they all had been addressed to Miss Penelope Hartford at what must be her aunt's house in Essex and bore postmarks dating from the previous winter. The girlish penmanship matched the tone of the writer, a young lady who signed herself
Minnie
and expressed her condolences over the arguments Penelope and her aunt were having over wedding plans. Minnie took Penelope's side, agreeing Westminster Abbey to be far more romantic than St. Margaret's, no matter what fashion decreed. The issue of Westminster being more appropriate for royal nuptials struck Minnie as elitist and unfair, and she passionately declared her support for Penelope's every desire for what, she wrote,
would be the greatest day of my dearest friend's life.
I rather liked Minnie's spirit, although I hoped she would find many days of her life at least as great as that of her wedding. A single ceremony ought not to be the culmination of one's desires.

After returning the letters to their envelopes and then to the drawer in which I had found them, I circled the room again, this time noticing a photograph in an elaborate pewter frame. Its placement almost behind a lamp on a side table had caused me to overlook it on my first perusal of the room. In it, two girls, the older standing next to the chair on which the younger sat, looked very serious, turned out in what must have been their best dresses. Their buttoned boots, polished to gleaming, showed signs of wear, and although I could not precisely date the image, I suspected it had been taken approximately ten years ago. The older girl had to be Mrs. Leighton—her face had changed very little as she aged—and I took the younger to be her sister. The resemblance between them was uncanny, the smaller girl almost a copy of the taller one.

A sudden chill passed through me. This must have been taken around the time of their mother's death, for Mrs. Leighton could not now be much older than twenty. She had told me she was ten when her mother died, and the figure I had seen outside my window wore a dress in a style a decade old. I felt more certain than ever I had witnessed the ghostly apparition of Penelope's mother, and that this same vision was the catalyst that sent the young bride's nerves spiraling.

I returned the photograph to its place on the table, rang for the butler, and asked him to summon a carriage. Although in general I objected to being driven a distance that I could easily walk, in this case, I could not spare the additional time, particularly as I felt not entirely confident in my choice of destination. If my suspicions proved incorrect, I would need to return to Park Lane in haste, lest I miss Mrs. Leighton's return.

The carriage's wheels crunched over the snow and ice as it passed Wellington Arch, continuing on through Green Park and in front of Buckingham Palace until we turned into Birdcage Walk and followed the edge of St. James's Park to Storey's Gate. Once we had reached the Royal Aquarium and Winter Garden, I wrapped my scarf more tightly around my neck and buried my hands more deeply into my muff. The carriage slowed to a stop, and I descended from it near the great doors of Westminster Abbey which, fortunately, were still open, as I had hoped would be the case, knowing there to be an evening prayer service on Wednesdays.

The service had already concluded, and no one remained in the abbey save a priest who appeared to be lecturing two boy choristers. From the expression on his face, I could surmise he had found them guilty of some misdemeanor, but he turned from them when he heard my heels click against the stone floor at the front of the nave.

“Good evening, madam,” he said. “I am afraid we are close to locking up. Our last service is—“

“I have not come for that,” I said.

“Yes, quite, well, hours for visiting the abbey, which, as I am sure you are aware is full of a multitude of objects fascinating to anyone with even a passing interest in the history of our great nation—“

“It is full of marvels,” I said, “but today I have come in search of a young lady who may have fled here in search of consolation.” I gave him a brief description of Mrs. Leighton, but he did not recall seeing anyone who met it. He did, however, give me permission to search the premises, offering any assistance I might need. I thanked him and asked if I might take the choristers with me.

“They are currently in disgrace, madam,” he said. “Fidgeting during my sermon.”

“They sound like just the sort of boys who might know every good hiding place in the abbey,” I said. Displeasure was writ on his face, but he agreed and introduced them to me before telling them to do whatever I asked. We set off in different directions. He insisted on going to the southern side of the building, I suspect because he was not entirely convinced as to my purpose and did not want to make it easy for me to get into Poet's Corner if I were actually here under false pretenses. The boys and I went through the choir, whose stalls and pews had been rebuilt fifty-odd years earlier, past the thirteenth-century tomb of the Earl of Lancaster. I could not resist a quick glance at the spectacular medieval pavement near the high altar before we exited the choir and turned toward the northern ambulatory, where I stopped the boys.

“I think you will agree that it is unlikely she is hiding either somewhere in the nave or the north transept. Both areas are too open. Surely you know somewhere better.”

The smaller of the two, called Percy, perked up. “She's a lady, so I say she's in with Elizabeth.”

“Or the Lady Chapel, more like,” said the taller, named Crispin, who looked very serious.

“There's nowhere good to hide in the Lady Chapel,” Percy said.

“We shall search both,” I said, taking them by the hand, remembering a time when I had caused a disturbance of my own in the Lady Chapel while engaged in attempting to solve a murder some years ago. I had to agree with Percy that it would not be the best place to hide, but we searched it nonetheless, to no avail, before entering the chamber in which the tombs of both Elizabeth and the ill-fated Mary Queen, of Scots stood and following the narrow path around them both, but found no sign of Mrs. Leighton.

“Perhaps we should call out to her,” Crispin said.

“It is an excellent idea, but I am afraid she would only try harder to hide from us,” I said.

“Edward the Confessor,” Percy said. “He's hidden away up in his chapel, and all those kings buried near him would protect a damsel in distress.”

I appreciated the boy's spirit of enthusiasm. We descended the stairs that went to the Lady Chapel and headed back to the west, to another set of stairs that would take us to the Confessor's chapel. Crispin tugged at my hand. “Henry the Fifth is much better.”

“You just say that on account of your name,” Percy said. “No one cares about St. Crispin, no matter what Shakespeare wrote.”

“Percy, that is very unkind,” I said. “Crispin, Henry the Fifth was an exemplary king, but isn't he buried in Edward's chapel?”

“Yes, he is, madam, but—“

“We shall be sure to take note of his tomb while we are there.” These boys were proving less useful than I had hoped and I began to wonder if I should have left them to the priest. Once at Edward's shrine, it took only a few moments to confirm that Mrs. Leighton was not there, and my frustration began to mount. Perhaps I had been wrong altogether about the abbey and ought to return to Park Lane. Crispin tugged at my hand again.

“Madam, please, Henry the Fifth—“

“Yes, his monument is very affecting,” I said, distracted by my thoughts.

“No, madam, please, his chantry chapel,” Crispin said, pointing to the archway above us. “No one ever goes up there—“

“Except on the feast of the Annunciation, you dolt,” Percy said. I looked at him severely and turned to the other boy.

“Take us there, Crispin. It is an excellent idea and I appreciate it greatly.”

We made our way back down to the north aisle and followed Crispin to a wooden door over which a stern stone saint stared down at us. I pulled on the door, and it gave way only after several hard tugs, revealing a set of narrow stone steps that spiraled to the small chapel above. There, on the stone floor in front of the Altar of the Annunciation, sat Mrs. Leighton, hugging her knees close to her chest, her cloak wrapped snugly around her. She was shivering, and a small puddle of water suggested there had been a quantity of snow on her shoes and her gown; she must have walked all the way from Park Lane.