The Seance (34 page)

Yes; she had
meant
to recover her journal, but by then the household was already stirring; Nell had been trapped in the Hall; and her accomplice had been obliged to drive away with the child.

I realised that I had forgotten about the diamonds; the jewel-case the police had found beneath the floorboard. I simply did not believe she would have gone looking for them – she did not even know of their existence – on that night of all nights.

But she might have taken them, for Clara’s sake, after that final confrontation with Magnus. Supposing Nell had hidden in the upper part of the house, somehow evading the searchers – perhaps by moving from room to room ahead of them – until they gave up. Then she had waited until the last of the carriages had left and made for the stairs – only to see Magnus on the landing below. He pursued her; she evaded him; but now she was effectively a prisoner again. And so, in desperation, she had confronted him with the pistol (had she been carrying it all along?) and ordered him into the armour. And fled, leaving Magnus to starve – but how could she be sure that he would not break free? More likely he had sprung at her as she was closing the panels, and she had shot him in self-defence and wedged the mechanism for fear of his revival – or of what, in death, he might become.

Then ... had she run to her room to collect her journal, only to find it gone? Surely her instinct would have been to flee, knowing that her own life was forfeit, thinking only of Clara. Perhaps he had tried to buy his life with the diamonds, when he saw that she meant to fire ... I still could not imagine her hiding the jewel-case under the floorboard, but in that necklace she might have seen Clara’s future beckoning, even as her own dissolved.

The fire was burning low. The rain had more or less ceased, but the wind was moaning faintly in the chimney. Shivering, I added the last of the coals.

Magnus had said, in his last letter to Mr Veitch, that daylight was
fading as he wrote. By the time of that terrible confrontation, it must have been almost dark. To remain another night at the Hall would have been unthinkable; but where could she have gone? Not to Clara; that would have made whoever was minding the child an accessory to murder.

What would I have done, in Nell’s place? I recalled, with a visceral pang, the sick feeling of horror that had consumed me after Mama’s death. For Nell it must have been infinitely worse, with the gallows looming over her, and knowing that if she were taken, Clara would be condemned to grow up as the daughter of a murderess, outcast from society.

But Nell had not been caught. The more I thought about it, the more likely it seemed that she had, as John Montague had feared, ended her life in some inaccessible part of Monks Wood. For how could she have escaped, with the whole country on the watch for her?

And if Clara had survived, she must have been brought up under another name, never even knowing, perhaps, that Nell had been her mother.

Some trusted friend – a woman, surely – had taken Clara away from the Hall, early on that fateful Saturday. And then waited in vain for five days, wondering what had become of Nell, before the news of John Montague’s grisly discovery had broken.

Or else Nell had lived; and had written saying, I am lost; I pray you ensure that Clara is raised knowing nothing of this; I will send money for her if I can – meaning, when I have disposed of the diamonds.

And supposing the friend had been unable to keep Clara herself, but had known that Nell had a distant cousin named Hester Langton, a childless woman of forty, from an estranged branch of the Lovell family, living with her husband near Cambridge ...

Preposterous, said the rational part of my mind. But John Montague had been shaken by the resemblance; and there were the two names, side by side on the chart, born in the same month of the same year, their Christian names beginning with the same initial letter. And a year or so
after Nell’s disappearance, Theophilus Langton had given up his fellowship at Cambridge and moved to London, as if he had suddenly acquired a private income.

They need not have been told that the orphaned girl in question was Clara Wraxford; only that she was a child with a tragic history and a mysterious benefactor, who desired them to raise the child as their own.

A wild fancy, yes; but it explained everything, and all of the pieces seemed to fit, even my being drawn to the séance room. And it explained, most of all, the affinity I had felt for Nell from the first pages of her narrative, as if the voice I had heard in those pages was already familiar to me.

I went downstairs the next morning still unsure of what I should reveal to my uncle, only to find that he had heard all about the Wraxford Mystery from his friends, and was eager to impart his knowledge to me.

‘You will be startled to learn, my dear, that this house of yours is notorious in the annals of crime. Mrs Wraxford puts Lady Macbeth quite in the shade; she murdered not only her patroness and her husband, but her infant daughter, and got clean away with a necklace worth ten thousand pounds—’

‘None of that was ever proven, uncle. I spent yesterday reading Mr Montague’s private account of the tragedy, and I do not believe she was guilty; except, perhaps of causing her husband’s death in self-defence.’

‘Rather a large exception,’ he replied. ‘Upon what evidence, may I ask, does Mr Montague base his conclusions? From Erskine’s account of the inquest into Magnus Wraxford’s murder – he has promised to look out the cuttings for me – it sounded like an open and shut case.’

‘It is my own conclusion, uncle, but – I fear I oughtn’t say too much, or show you Mr Montague’s narrative, without asking permission first.’

‘Well, if I am not even allowed to see the evidence,’ he said tartly,
‘you can scarcely blame me if I prefer the verdict of the coroner’s jury, the police, and the public at large.’

And with that he stalked off to his studio. For all his bohemian ways, I could see that my uncle’s pride had been wounded by Miss Wraxford’s leaving the estate to me rather than to him – her nearest surviving
male
relation – and indeed I could not blame him for feeling affronted. And so I wrote at once to Mr Montague, asking if I might show the papers to my uncle, and saying how much I should like to speak to him again, whenever he might next to be in London. But as the days passed without a reply, I began to wonder if I had offended him; or had my letter gone astray? My uncle studiously avoided any mention of Wraxfords, but the awkwardness between us remained until, ten days after I written to Mr Montague, a letter postmarked Aldeburgh arrived, addressed to me in an unfamiliar hand.

Dear Miss Langton,

It is with great regret that I write to inform you of the death of my esteemed colleague, John Montague E
sq
., on the 21
st
inst. Pray be assured of my devotion to your interest in the matter of the Wraxford estate; you may have seen the notice of the bequest which I placed in
The Times
on your behalf, as Mr Montague would, I am sure, have wished me to do; and believe me ever to be, Miss Langton,

Your most obedient serv
^t
,

Bartholomew Craik

P.S. Since your recent comm
n
to Mr Montague was marked ‘Personal and Confidential’, I return it to you unopened under separate cover, together with another comm
n
which has lately reached us concerning the Wraxford estate.

John Montague had died the day after posting his confession to me. But
how
had he died? My uncle, upon reading Mr Craik’s letter, volunteered to take a cab down to the British Museum and look through the Suffolk papers for the previous week, only to return with the news that John Montague had drowned.

‘It seems he was in the habit of sea-bathing, even in the most inclement weather, but on this occasion the cold – or so it is assumed – proved too much for him: his body was washed up on the strand the following morning. There was an inquest, of course: the coroner’s finding was death by misadventure, but he did append a warning about the dangers of sea-bathing in such extreme conditions.’

I recalled, with fearful vividness, John Montague’s words about ‘swimming out into the icy deep until my strength failed and I sank beneath the waves’.

‘But did no one suspect that – he might have drowned himself on purpose?’

‘No, my dear; why should you imagine it? Swimming in January may not be your idea of healthful exercise, but some people think it does wonders for the circulation.’

‘I do not believe it,’ I said wretchedly. The burden was suddenly too heavy to bear alone, and so I gave him the entire bundle of papers on a promise of secrecy, and endured another long and oppressive interval, wondering if I were to blame for John Montague’s death, before my uncle reappeared late in the afternoon, looking unwontedly sombre.

‘I see now,’ he said, ‘why you thought at once of suicide; I’m afraid it looks very much that way. The mystery to me is why he sent you these papers in the first place.’

‘He thought – he said I reminded him of Eleanor Wraxford.’

‘But there’s nothing surprising in that; you were related, after all.’

‘I meant – he wanted me to know that she was innocent, because—’

‘But how can you possibly think that?’ exclaimed my uncle. ‘If there was ever any doubt of her guilt, these papers set the seal on it.’

I looked at him in astonishment.

‘Don’t you see, uncle, that Nell could
never
have harmed Clara, or murdered Mrs Bryant? And as I said to you yesterday, if she did shut Magnus in the armour, she would only have done it in fear of her life – and Clara’s.’ And my existence may be proof of it, I wanted to add, but I was afraid he would laugh at me.

‘Is this simply feminine fellow-feeling, my dear? I don’t understand you.’

‘I suppose I feel ... an affinity for her,’ I said hesitantly. ‘More than that, I trust her. I feel I would recognise her voice if I heard it. Everything she did – even agreeing to go to that terrible place – was done for Clara’s sake. She did not invite Mrs Bryant to the Hall, Magnus Wraxford did, and he was an evil man ... can you not see it?’

‘No, my dear, I cannot. Mad people can be very plausible, you know, and yet impelled by grand delusions that they manage to conceal until it’s too late. She said herself she suffered from hallucinations—’

‘She called them visitations, uncle.’

‘It is the same thing. Understand me; she may sincerely have believed everything she wrote in those journals, but that does not mean that
we
should believe her. Even John Montague admits the possibility, and he was utterly infatuated – don’t frown, my dear, the point is undeniable – and you must remember that he greatly admired Magnus Wraxford, up until the day he went to visit Eleanor at the Hall.

‘Indeed I don’t see why you are so set against Magnus. If you consider the marriage from his point of view, she herself admits that he behaved with admirable restraint. He did not beat her, or threaten her, or force her; she says she is mortally afraid of him, but surely he was doing his best to placate a dangerously disturbed young woman. And then – as if any further proof were needed – he says in his last letter that he saw her on the stair.’

‘So you believe, then, uncle, that she murdered all three: her husband, her child, and Mrs Bryant?’

‘In Magnus’s case it is not a question of believing: the coroner’s jury
found as much, and if further proof is needed, you hold it in your hands. Mrs Bryant may well have died of fright, but is it not overwhelmingly likely that Nell was the occasion of it? And as for the child, who else could, or would, have made away with her?

‘You shake your head at me, my dear, but what of the diamonds? You don’t, I take it, dispute that Magnus bought them for her – or that she stole them? The most charitable supposition is that she made away with herself and the child in a fit of remorse – perhaps while Magnus himself was still alive, but entombed – and that their remains lie in some inaccessible pit at the heart of Monks Wood. How else can you explain the sequence of events?’

‘If Magnus truly cared for her,’ I said, ‘why did he allow Mrs Bryant to insult her, let alone insist that she be present at his séance – and at that evil house, of all places? We don’t know that she took the diamonds, and we have only Magnus’s word that he meant to give them to her; perhaps he bought them for Mrs Bryant. And when Magnus and Dr Rhys broke into her room that morning...’