Chapter 8 The Missing Volume #3
"She wrote in them. That was more offensive.
Ownership can be transferred. Writing remains insolent after death.
" Helena's gaze moved to the painted book.
"There was a private devotional volume connected to her.
I heard Jasper and Marianne argue about it before my marriage was a year old.
Marianne said the matter was settled. Jasper said nothing is settled while paper exists.
I did not know then what he meant. I was still young enough to think secrecy was exceptional. "
"Dacre Family Devotions?"
Helena's breath caught almost invisibly. "Where did you find that title?"
"In the old catalogue, crossed through. Jasper called it a duplicate error. Mr. Wroth reacted to it. The book itself is missing."
"Then you must forget it until you can afford to remember it safely."
"That is not how my mind works."
"Then teach it."
"Lady Dacre, there is also a missing volume called Meditations for the Offices of the Dead. It has manuscript additions and a Dacre bookplate. Another book has been put in its place. The shelf shows removal. Jasper knows. He reacted when he read the title."
Helena closed her eyes for one second, no more. "The dead offices. Of course."
"You know it?"
"I know that Jasper once called a certain volume the book of obedient endings. He said women who could not live sensibly should at least be recorded tidily when they died. I thought it one of his cruelties dressed as wit. Perhaps it was a reference."
The phrase chilled Constance. "Obedient endings."
"Yes."
"And Beatrice?"
"Do not ask me to guess aloud. Guesses become accusations when spoken in houses with listening walls."
A servant passed at the far end of the corridor carrying coal. Both women fell silent until he disappeared.
Helena spoke again more softly. "Jasper has asked me to dine in my rooms tonight.
He says my health requires quiet. It is punishment disguised as concern.
Marianne will approve because it removes me from the table without admitting removal.
Roland will notice and pretend he has not.
You will dine alone unless Jasper decides to display you again. "
"And you?"
"I will eat what Agnes brings, read nothing dangerous, and remember that walls are less cruel when one does not lean against them expecting doors."
"You say such things as if they are finished truths."
Helena looked at her then, and the passage seemed to empty of everything but the distance between them. "Because if I say them as finished truths, I am less tempted to beg someone to contradict me."
Constance wanted to answer with comfort.
She distrusted the impulse. Comfort could be another form of taking possession if offered too quickly, a way to make pain manageable for the listener.
Instead she said, "I cannot contradict what I do not know.
But I can say this: the books are not finished with him.
Whatever he has hidden, it has begun to show its edge. "
"Books do not protect women."
"No. But sometimes they outlive the men who thought they controlled them."
Helena's face changed again, not into hope, but toward it. The movement was slight and almost painful to see.
"You should return to the library," she said. "If Jasper finds us here, he will ask why women require portraits to talk about paper. I have no wish to improve his collection of insults."
"Will you send for me if you need help?"
"No."
"Because you will not need it?"
"Because needing help is not the same as being able to ask for it." Helena stepped back. "Miss Brown. Be careful of the substitute book. Jasper sometimes hides warnings inside false innocences."
Then she moved away, her gown whispering along the passage like dark water.
Back in the library, Constance returned to the shelf where the missing Meditations should have stood.
The substitute volume, A Manual for Household Prayer, waited in its wrong place.
She took it down and laid it on the table.
Its cover was plain, brown, and scuffed.
The title page bore no date. The prayers were ordinary enough, suitable for families who wished even grief to behave.
Yet the binding felt wrong. The boards were slightly newer than the text block.
The pastedown at the front had been lifted and replaced.
Jasper's bookplate sat upon it, smooth except for that one imperfect corner.
Constance took out a thin bone folder from her satchel. She held it for some time without using it.
You will not lift bookplates, Jasper had said.
Do not lift bookplates until you know who benefits, Helena had not quite said.
The difference mattered. Jasper's instruction aimed to prevent knowledge. Helena's warning aimed to preserve the knower. Constance set the bone folder down.
Instead, she examined the book under slanting light.
The edge beneath Jasper's bookplate showed another paper, older, creamier, perhaps bearing ink.
She could see only the tail of a letter.
Not enough to read. Enough to know the bookplate covered something.
The pastedown itself had a slight bulge, as if a folded scrap lay beneath it or as if glue had pooled around an inserted layer.
She turned the pages one by one. Near the back, after a prayer for households in affliction, a page had been cut close to the gutter.
Not torn. Cut. The remaining stub showed a watermark.
On the facing page, an indentation remained where someone had written heavily on the missing leaf before removing it.
Constance angled the page and tried to read the pressure marks.
Only a few shapes emerged: B, perhaps. A long descending letter. A date ending in 47.
1847. Beatrice's death year.
Constance wrote it down and underlined nothing. Underlining would have felt too much like alarm.
A sound came from the gallery above the library. The upper level ran around three walls, reached by a spiral stair near the north window. Constance looked up. No one was visible. The sound came again, a minute scrape, like leather against wood.
"Lord Dacre?" she called.
No answer.
She closed the substitute book and carried it to the stair.
Her foot touched the first step before sense returned.
A woman alone in a house full of people who preferred her ignorant should not climb toward unexplained sounds while holding a possible clue.
That was not courage. That was the sort of behavior that allowed other people to say later that misfortune had been invited.
She set the book down, crossed to the bell pull, and rang for a servant.
No servant came immediately. The house had many ways of delaying assistance without appearing to deny it.
Constance waited, listening. The gallery remained still. At last she heard footsteps below and turned, expecting a footman.
Roland Dacre entered instead.
"Ah," he said. "You rang? If so, I am almost certainly the wrong servant, but perhaps the more entertaining one."
"I heard a sound from the gallery."
Roland looked up with more interest than alarm. "Ghosts, creditors, or Marianne. The order reflects likelihood only at certain hours."
"Do you often hear sounds from above when no one is visible?"
"In this house? Constantly. Old wood, old guilt, old relatives. But if you are asking whether someone spies from the gallery, the answer is yes in principle and no in courtesy. Courtesy, however, is rarely enforced among blood relations."
"Were you passing?"
"I was avoiding my brother, which in a house owned by my brother requires movement through several rooms I do not wish to visit. I saw the library door open and thought scholarship might provide sanctuary." His eyes fell to the book on the table. "That is an ugly little volume. Valuable?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because poverty improves the eye. Rich men admire bindings; poor gentlemen assess them. One learns which objects might become money if sentiment were less heavily armed."
"Are you a poor gentleman, Lord Roland?"
"Compared with my brother, everyone is poor. Compared with honest men, I am a scandalous monument to waste. Compared with actual poverty, I am an insult. Choose the measure that best suits your opinion of me."
Constance almost liked him then, which made her more cautious. "Did you ever see the volume that should stand here? Meditations for the Offices of the Dead."
Roland's levity thinned. "Why?"
"Because it is missing."
"Many things are missing in Dacre House. Warmth. Forgiveness. Ready money. My mother's emerald brooch, though Jasper insists that was never mine to remember."
"The book, my lord."
He walked closer but did not touch the substitute volume.
"I remember a dark book on that shelf when I was a boy.
Jasper told me not to open it because it contained the names of the properly dead and the improperly remembered.
I thought he was trying to frighten me. Jasper enjoyed frightening children if he could call it moral instruction.
Later I thought it was a joke about family prayers.
Now, looking at your face, I suspect it was one of those jokes that only powerful people survive making. "
"Who else knew it?"
"Marianne. Wroth, perhaps. Dr. Bell's father, if memory serves, but he is long gone. There was an old nurse who crossed herself when the book was mentioned. She died too, inconveniently for your investigation and conveniently for family peace."
"Did Helena know?"
Roland's eyes moved to the door. "Helena knows more than she says and less than Jasper fears. That is her tragedy. Or his irritation. Sometimes the difference depends on who holds the decanter."
"You speak of her with sympathy."