The Seance (46 page)

‘May I ask what papers?’

‘I meant, papers I thought might interest Mr Craik,’ I said desperately. ‘I did not expect the coach to be more than an hour or two.’

‘And what did you and Mr Rhys do in the intervening hours – before the explosion, that is?’

Though his tone was studiously neutral, I blushed scarlet at the implication.

‘I – I spent most of the time in the library,’ I said at last, ‘trying to keep warm. After I had given up looking for papers, that is – I think I dozed for quite a while.’

‘I see,’ said the inspector in the same disbelieving tone. He flicked through the pages of his notebook for a small eternity.

‘Mr Rhys says,’ he resumed, ‘that he went down to the cellar at around five o’clock to fetch more coal. Will you tell us what happened after that?’

My mouth was so dry that I could scarcely speak.

‘I waited and waited – I don’t know how long, until it was dark – I was afraid – I was just going to go and look for him when I heard footsteps in the gallery—’

‘And where were you in the library when you heard them?’

‘I – I was looking for a lantern, near the door that leads in – to where the armour was ...’

‘And the footsteps – could you tell where they were?’

‘On the other side of that door.’

‘But you did not think they were Mr Rhys’s?’

‘No.’

‘And why not?’

‘Because – because they didn’t sound like his. He would have come up the stairs and straight into the library.’

‘And then?’

‘Then there was – a flash of light, I saw it under the door, and an explosion, and – and I started to run back through the library – and I must have tripped and hit my head—’

‘So you didn’t go into the gallery at all?’

I shook my head, not daring to speak.

‘Then how, Miss Langton, do you account for this?’

He opened a small leather case and drew out a ragged piece of material, charred and blackened along one side but perfectly recognisable as the one I had torn from my dress.

‘Sergeant Brewer remembers seeing a gown of just this pattern beneath your travelling-cloak when you and Mr Rhys called at Woodbridge police station to report the – accident. We found it caught between the armour and Dr Davenant’s body.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said faintly. ‘It must have got caught earlier in the day, when Mr Rhys and I were examining the armour.’

‘Surely you would have noticed.’

‘I – I – I do think I remember something catching at my dress, but I did not know it had torn – until after the explosion – and then I assumed it had happened when I went to look for Mr Rhys ...’

‘I see. Might we be able to examine this dress, Miss Langton?’

‘I told Dora – my maid – to throw it out. She may still have it.’

‘That would be very helpful to us. Perhaps you could also explain the footprints – they appear to be yours – on the surviving portion of the gallery floor?’

‘I – I went in after the explosion – after I had recovered from my faint – to see what had happened.’

‘
After
the explosion ... I see.’ The note of disbelief was stronger than ever. ‘But there is a scuffed area, as if someone had been lying there when the dust first settled, and then a series of handprints, and then footprints – the
same
footprints, Miss Langton, but leading only in one direction: out of the gallery.’

Two pairs of eyes watched me steadily while the incriminating seconds dragged by.

‘I can’t explain it,’ I said at last, ‘unless ... perhaps I was confused about where I woke – from my faint, I mean, after the chimney fell down. I must have run all the way into the gallery without realising it ... I’m afraid I can’t remember; it was such a shock. I’m afraid that’s all I can tell you.’

‘I see,’ said the inspector heavily. ‘Are you sure, Miss Langton, there is nothing you would like to add to your statement?’

I took a deep breath, thinking, it must be now, or never.

‘Yes, Inspector, there is. I found out this morning that Dr Davenant was actually Magnus Wraxford. He did not die at the Hall in 1868, as everyone supposed.’

The two men were staring at me with utter incredulity.

‘I said in front of him – before I realised who he was – that I had evidence to incriminate him – and then he must have concealed himself – he could not have found his way back through the fog – and shut Mr Rhys in the cellar. He meant to murder us both and destroy the evidence and blew himself up instead ...’

‘And what evidence might that be?’ asked the inspector with heavy sarcasm.

‘I did not have it then; it was just – intuition – but this morning I went to his house to – and when I found Mr Montague’s picture—’

‘Miss Langton,’ the inspector broke in, ‘you are plainly overwrought. I shan’t detain you any longer – for the moment. But I shall need to speak
to you again; and I must ask you not to leave London without letting us know exactly when and where you are going. Now if you could ask your maid about that dress ...’

Everything I had ever read about the horrors of incarceration came back to haunt me that night: the slamming of iron doors; the rattle of chains; darkness, cold, filth, unspeakable smells; the shrieks of my fellow prisoners; the roar of the mob as I was dragged, hooded, to the scaffold ... until I woke at last from terrible dreams, and lay waiting, as the dawn brightened into another perfect sunrise, for the police to come hammering on the door. I had promised to meet Edwin at midday, and realised I should write to him by the first post to tell him what I had done, and why I might not be there, but the right words would not come, and after I had torn up half a dozen attempts there seemed to be nothing left to do but try to will myself to sleep again, until Dora came up to tell me that a lady had called; she had refused to leave her name, but said she would like to speak to me privately and would wait for me by the seat at the top of Primrose Hill.

With my heart beating wildly, I crept downstairs, let myself out by the garden gate and walked up through the wet grass, the droplets glittering like diamonds in the sunlight, until I reached the brow of the hill and saw a woman in a dark blue dress, with a travelling-cloak draped over the seat beside her: the gaunt, strikingly featured woman who had answered the door of Ada Woodward’s house. She rose to her feet as I drew near, and I saw that she was very pale.

‘Miss Langton – we meet again. My name is – or was, until yesterday evening – Helen Northcote, but I think you might know me better as Eleanor Wraxford.’

I gazed at her, unable to speak, drinking in every detail of her appearance. Her eyes, I saw, were a delicate shade of hazel, flecked with green.
And there was something different about her voice, which sounded lower and more cultivated than I remembered: the Yorkshire intonation had gone.

‘When Ada told me what you had said – especially after we saw the reports in the newspapers – I knew that we could not abandon you, no matter what the cost. We came down to London yesterday, but the police would not allow Ada – she insisted upon going to Scotland Yard alone – to see the body until late in the afternoon, when Inspector Garret returned from his interview with you. And then she was obliged to wait several more hours until they managed to unearth an ancient gentleman called Mr Veitch, who had once been Magnus’s lawyer, to confirm the identification. Enough to say that the inspector has deduced – or so he told Ada – that Magnus intended to blow up the Hall, and was killed when the charge exploded prematurely.’

I could not help smiling at the inspector’s appropriation of a theory he had dismissed as lunacy only a few hours before.

‘And by then, Miss Langton,’ she continued, ‘it was far too late to call on you. Ada is sorry she could not be here; she was obliged to take the early train home.’

‘Please, you must call me Constance. Do the police now accept that you were entirely innocent?’

‘The warrant for Eleanor Wraxford’s arrest will be withdrawn, yes. It is a very strange feeling, after twenty years of preparing myself for the worst ... but before I say more, will you tell me your own story – since you are already so well acquainted with mine?’

And so, beginning with Alma’s death, I relived for her the journey that had brought me here, with the city at our feet and the shining thread of the river running through it, until I had come full circle, to yesterday’s visit to Hertford Street, my engagement to Edwin, and the horrors of the previous night, all now dispelled.

‘I do understand,’ she said at last, ‘why you thought you might be my daughter; and why you wanted to be. And if I had given Clara away, as you supposed, I would believe it too; not only because you remind me
so much of my younger self, but because of the affinity that led you to me. But, my dear Constance, you are not my daughter. She is alive and well; I think you caught a glimpse of her just before I shut you out, as I had to do, for her sake. Her name is Laura Woodward, and she believes that Ada is her mother – and that she lost her beloved father, George, ten years ago.’

Tears welled in my eyes, though I tried to blink them away. She took my hand in hers, gently caressing my fingers.

‘I had no choice, you see. Everything – almost everything – happened as you divined. When Lucy and I left Munster Square for the last time with Clara, Lucy didn’t come with me to Shoreditch, as I wrote in that diary; I put her in another cab to Paddington, while I drove with Clara to St Pancras, where Ada was waiting for me. It was all arranged; she used to write to me poste restante at a dingy little post office in Marylebone, where I was sure Magnus would not go. George wasn’t in Whitby then; he had a temporary living in Helmsley, thirty miles away, and that was where Ada took Clara, while I went on to Wraxford Hall.

‘I never did go to the gallery, the night Mrs Bryant died. I meant to, but my courage failed me at the last. All these years I have wondered how she died ... and now I know.’

I looked at her questioningly.

‘Magnus must have forged both of those notes. And I very nearly did what he assumed I would: conceal myself somewhere nearby. And then . . . Mrs Bryant was infatuated with him, and he was mesmerising her frequently. She need not even have read the note they found in her room; that was simply to incriminate me. He could have proposed an assignation; or implanted the suggestion in a trance: Dr Rhys said, I think, that she seemed to be walking in her sleep. And so she came to the gallery at midnight; and if I
had
been watching, I should certainly not have revealed myself to her, of all people. And then the lid of the tomb began to open, just as you saw that night. The shock of that alone might have been enough to kill her; or perhaps something sprang out –’

‘The ghost of the monk,’ I said, remembering John Montague’s story of the stonemason. ‘That was how Magnus disguised himself ... but I don’t understand. Why did he want you there? You would have denounced him – ’

‘Yes, and who would have believed me? By the time anyone else arrived, Magnus would have closed the tomb and disappeared into the tunnel – remember that he had gone out for a stroll in the moonlight, so he claimed, some time before midnight – and what would they have found? Mrs Bryant dead, and me beside her corpse, raving about the ghost of a monk. I should have been taken away in a strait-jacket, with Magnus playing the grieving husband ...’

She paused, breathing deeply.

‘Why did you marry him?’ I had not meant to ask so baldly, and wished, when she did not immediately reply, that I could call back the question; it had sounded like an accusation.

‘I believe,’ she said at last, ‘that on the one occasion he succeeded in mesmerising me, he did gain some hold over my mind; whenever I tried to muster the courage to tell him I could not marry him, an answering chorus would spring up in my head: “But he is so kind, so thoughtful, so intelligent, so charming; how could you not grow to love such a man? And what will become of you if you do not marry him? You will be utterly alone in the world.” It was not until the honeymoon,’ she said with a slight shudder, ‘that the scales fell from my eyes.’

She was silent for a little, gazing at the tranquil horizon.

‘I tried to persuade myself,’ she continued, ‘once it was too late, that he had married me for my gift, as he called it. I thought, you see, that his scepticism was merely another of his masks; I thought he truly believed in – supernatural powers – and sought to harness them for his own ends. Whereas in reality he saw
himself
as a god.