Chapter 8 The Missing Volume #4
"Do I? Dangerous lapse. I must repair it with cynicism before anyone reports me.
" His face hardened unexpectedly. "Helena came into this house like a candle brought into a mausoleum.
We all watched the air fail her. Some of us did nothing because doing nothing is the family profession.
Some of us did nothing because Jasper's punishments are never confined to the first target.
Some of us drank, joked, borrowed money, and called cowardice temperament.
You may assign those categories as you see fit. "
"And Marianne?"
"Marianne believes air itself should ask permission before moving through Dacre House. She did not watch Helena fail. She watched Helena become disorder and objected to the aesthetics."
The bitterness sounded real. So did the evasion. Constance asked, "Did you hate your brother?"
Roland's smile returned too quickly. "My dear Miss Brown, hatred requires discipline, and I have never been admired for that. I resent Jasper. I envy him. I fear him when sober and mock him when unwise. Hatred is perhaps too clean. Family feeling is usually mud with a crest stamped into it."
Before Constance could answer, Jasper's voice came from the doorway.
"How tenderly you describe us, Roland. One would think you had been practicing for an audience less acquainted with your debts."
Roland turned. For a moment, the brothers looked enough alike to make their differences crueler. Jasper's elegance seemed carved. Roland's charm seemed bruised.
"Miss Brown heard a sound from the gallery," Roland said. "I arrived heroically and discovered no ghost. You may reduce my allowance in gratitude."
"Gratitude is rarely improved by repetition. Miss Brown, why is that volume on the table?"
Constance kept her hand lightly on the back of the chair. "It stands in the place assigned to a missing book. I examined it as part of reconciliation."
"And did it confess?"
"Books usually wait longer than people before confessing."
"A pity. People would be more orderly if they learned from books." Jasper walked to the table and lifted the substitute volume. He did not open it. "This is not relevant."
"Its irrelevance has been very carefully arranged."
Roland looked down. Jasper looked at Constance.
"Leave us," Jasper said to his brother.
"But I was becoming useful."
"No. You were becoming visible. It is a different family failing."
Roland's jaw tightened. He gave Constance a shallow bow. "Miss Brown. Should the gallery ghost return, I advise negotiating before calling my brother. Ghosts are said to possess a sense of proportion."
He left. Jasper waited until his footsteps retreated.
"You attract weakness," he said. "My wife. My brother. Servants who mistake proximity to unhappiness for moral importance. It is an unattractive talent, though perhaps useful to a cataloguer. Weak things leave marks because they wish to be found."
"Or because strong things pressed them there."
"You are very fond of pressure." Jasper set the book down.
"Here is some. You will complete the west wall by tomorrow evening.
You will prepare no private duplicate notes beyond those required for my account.
You will not discuss missing volumes with Roland, Helena, servants, or anyone outside this house.
You will remember that Professor Sayer recommended you, and that recommendations can be withdrawn retrospectively when a person proves less stable than her reputation. "
"Professor Sayer's opinion of me is not yours to withdraw."
"No. But employment, payment, reference, and scandal are practical instruments. One does not need to own a woman's mind if one can disturb the conditions under which other people trust it."
There it was, plain enough to be useful and polished enough to be deniable. Constance felt fear then, clean and physical. Jasper saw it. His face softened with satisfaction.
"Better," he said. "Fear is not disgraceful when it teaches proportion."
"And when it teaches silence?"
"Then it has become wisdom."
"No, my lord. Then it has become your preferred form of authorship."
He stepped nearer. Not too near. Men like Jasper understood distance as well as touch. "Take care that you do not become a text corrected beyond recognition."
Then he left with the substitute volume in his hand.
Constance remained in the library after he had gone, staring at the empty space on the table. He had taken the wrong book because it was not wrong enough to leave. That told her almost as much as keeping it might have done.
She went to the shelf. The gap where Meditations for the Offices of the Dead should have stood now contained nothing. Jasper had not replaced the substitute. The empty space looked indecent, like an opened mouth.
At the back of the shelf, where the false volume had rested, a small scrap of paper had been trapped against the wood.
It might have fallen from the binding when she carried the book to the table.
It might have been placed there by accident years before.
It might have been left by someone who hoped accident would look after truth when courage could not.
Constance drew it out with tweezers.
The scrap was no larger than two fingers. One edge was cut cleanly, the other burned brown. Three words survived in the small angular hand.
not my husband
Below them, in another hand, later and darker, someone had written a single initial.
B.
Constance read the words again. Not my husband. They did not name Jasper. They did not name Beatrice. They did not prove anything the law could carry without dropping. Yet the phrase struck through the room like a bell.
Not my husband.
A denial? A correction? A refusal? A secret marriage?
An illegitimate claim? A woman rejecting a man who had been assigned to her by family record?
Or something stranger, something hidden beneath bookplates, legal quartos, devotional language, and Jasper's bright hatred of women who wrote in margins?
Constance folded the scrap into her notebook and wrote no interpretation beside it. Interpretation could wait. Preservation could not.
Evening gathered early because the sky had never fully cleared.
The library darkened from the upper corners inward.
A footman came to light lamps. Constance watched him closely enough that he became nervous and nearly dropped the taper.
She apologized, which made him more nervous, because apology from a person above or between stations disturbed the domestic order.
When the lamps were lit, she found one further mark. On the shelf label beneath the missing volume, under old varnish and dust, someone had scratched with a pin or knife a tiny cross followed by two letters: H.D.
Helena Dacre? Impossible, if the marking was old. Another H.D.? A previous Dacre woman? Or Jasper's later addition meant to implicate his wife if the shelf was ever examined? The letters were faint enough to make every answer possible and therefore none reliable.
She copied them anyway.
At seven, Mrs. Harrowby came to say dinner would be served without her attendance required. Lord Dacre had business. Lady Dacre remained indisposed. Lady Marianne preferred a tray. Lord Roland had gone out. Mr. Wroth had departed with correspondence.
"So everyone is absent," Constance said.
"Everyone is separately occupied," Mrs. Harrowby corrected. "Absence sounds accidental. Occupation sounds respectable."
"And Lord Dacre?"
"In his study. Or not. Men in their own houses are allowed to be imprecise."
Constance closed her notebook. "Mrs. Harrowby, if a volume were removed from the library, would it pass through household accounts? Cleaning, rebinding, repair, anything of that sort?"
"If removed honestly, yes. If removed by a gentleman, not necessarily. If removed by a servant, certainly, because honesty is demanded most loudly from those least permitted to survive without small thefts." The housekeeper looked at the shelf. "Which volume?"
"Meditations for the Offices of the Dead."
For the first time since Constance had met her, Mrs. Harrowby's composure failed. It lasted only a breath, but it was real.
"Do not say that title in corridors," she said.
"You know it."
"I know that some books are less dangerous when missing."
"Less dangerous to whom?"
"To those not yet accused of what the book remembers." Mrs. Harrowby moved toward the door, then stopped. "Miss Brown, if you have found anything small enough to hide, hide it somewhere no gentleman would think to look because he does not believe women have pockets in their minds."
"And if Lord Dacre asks?"
"Lord Dacre always asks before deciding that the answer displeases him."
When she was gone, Constance extinguished one lamp and left the others burning low.
She did not want the room bright. Brightness invited confidence, and confidence had become unsafe.
She checked her notebook, the scrap, the copied shelf marks, and the list Jasper had seen.
Then she made a second list from memory in cipher taught to her by Professor Sayer for private acquisition notes.
It was not a true cipher, only a scholar's shorthand of abbreviated Latin, reversed shelf marks, and false initials, but it would slow any casual reader.
Near eight, Helena appeared in the library doorway.
She should not have been there. Everything in her face said she knew it. She wore a dark wrapper over her gown, and her hair was less formal, pinned for privacy rather than company. The hand with the hidden bruise stayed within the fold of the wrapper.
"You came," Constance said, and heard too much relief in her own voice.
"I came because Agnes said Jasper took a book from this room with the expression he wears when he has not decided whether to destroy a thing or use it. She did not know which book. I hoped you would."
"The substitute volume from the missing shelf. Not the missing book itself. He has it now, or has moved it again."
"What did you find?"