Chapter 9 The Death of Lord Jasper
For several minutes after the shadow vanished, Constance remained in the library doorway with the lamp held low and her breath kept uselessly quiet, as if quietness might persuade the house to repeat what it had done.
The corridor beyond the library did not oblige her.
It showed only its length of patterned carpet, the dark shine of polished wainscot, and the dim square of a window at the far turn where rain had silvered the glass.
No skirt whispered now. No footfall retreated.
The woman who had watched had become part of the house again, absorbed into wall, stair, and inherited silence.
Constance stepped into the corridor and lifted the lamp higher.
The flame threw her own shadow forward, long and wavering.
For one foolish moment she imagined herself as someone else might have seen her: a hired cataloguer wandering late in an aristocratic house, carrying private notes she had no right to possess, frightened by a figure she could not name.
If Lord Dacre chose to accuse her of curiosity, she would have no defense except the truth, and truth, she had learned, was not always admitted as evidence when it came from a woman without rank.
She walked as far as the bend. The carpet there was darker with old use near the wall, where servants might pass when they wished not to be seen from the stair.
A faint line of dust had been disturbed along the skirting, no more than a pale irregularity where a skirt might have brushed or a boot might have turned.
She knelt, holding the lamp low, and saw nothing that would persuade anyone who did not already believe the house had secrets.
She was angry at the insufficiency of it.
In books, clues waited with an almost theatrical patience.
In life, they hid themselves in dust, shadows, and the small cowardices of reasonable people.
A door opened somewhere above. Constance straightened at once.
The movement sent a small ache through her shoulders.
She listened. The sound came again, not a door this time but a step, then another, too light for a man's tread, too measured for a servant hurrying on ordinary business.
A woman descended the back stair beyond the turn.
Constance moved no farther. The lamp made retreat impossible.
Agnes Flint appeared at the bend carrying no tray, no linen, no obvious excuse. Her cap was pinned hastily, and a strand of hair had escaped against her cheek. When she saw Constance, her face changed not with surprise but with annoyance sharpened by fear.
"Miss Brown," she said. "You are very determined to be found where you cannot explain yourself.
That is a poor habit in any house, but in this one it may become fatal to your peace.
You should be in your room, or at your desk, or somewhere with enough paper around you to make your presence seem useful.
Corridors after dark belong to those who know how to lie about them. You are not yet practiced enough."
"I saw someone outside the library," Constance said.
"A woman, I think. She was watching the door and went before I could see her face.
I thought at first it might be Lady Dacre, but I believe she was upstairs.
I thought it might be Lady Marianne, but she had asked for a tray, and this figure moved as if she knew the servants' passage better than the main corridor. "
Agnes's mouth tightened. "Then you thought too much in too little time.
That is another habit which may harm you.
There are always women in houses, miss. Mistresses, sisters, maids, widows, ladies, cooks, girls with coal scuttles, girls with keys, women carrying letters, women carrying secrets, women going where they have been sent and women going where they should not.
If you turn every skirt into a mystery, you will never finish the shelves. "
"And if I turn every mystery into a skirt, I may miss a murderer."
Agnes glanced behind her. "Do not use that word in this corridor. Not yet. Not while he is breathing under the same roof and making the air unpleasant for everyone else. Some words call misfortune because they tell it where to come."
The answer made Constance colder than she had expected. "You speak as if a death has already begun."
"A death begins long before the body lies down," Agnes said.
"Sometimes it begins when a girl signs a register in a church and everyone praises the lace.
Sometimes it begins when a husband learns no one will ask how his wife received a mark under her sleeve.
Sometimes it begins when a house keeps too many keys and gives them all to the wrong people.
But that does not mean you should stand in the passage naming it. "
Constance lowered the lamp. "Is Lady Dacre alone?"
"Her ladyship is never alone in the way you mean.
The house is with her. His lordship's will is with her.
Her name, her duty, and the law are with her.
If you ask whether there is a person in the room who would stop a man from being what the world has permitted him to become, then no. She is alone."
The words were harsher than anything Agnes had said before, perhaps because they were not meant for Constance at all.
They seemed dragged from the maid by fatigue and fear.
Then Agnes drew herself back into discipline.
"Go to your room, Miss Brown. Hide whatever you found.
If Lord Dacre asks you why you lingered in the library, say the Dacre catalogue is large and poorly organized.
He will believe the insult if it is wrapped in professional language. "
"Did Lady Dacre send you?"
"Lady Dacre sends very little now. Sending requires hope that a message arrives as intended." Agnes stepped past her. "And if you hear voices later, you heard the rain. If you hear a door close, houses settle. If you hear your own conscience, make it speak quietly. Good night, miss."
Agnes disappeared toward the kitchen stair.
Constance stood until the lamp guttered, then returned to the library, locked her notes inside the lowest drawer of the worktable, and slid the scrap she had found from Jasper's ledger beneath the lining of her satchel.
It was a clumsy hiding place, but clumsiness sometimes passed unnoticed because clever people expected cleverness.
She extinguished all but one lamp and left the room with the ring of keys Jasper had reluctantly granted her two mornings before.
At the foot of the main stair, she found Helena.
Lady Dacre stood halfway down, one hand on the banister, the other folded against her bodice as if she had been arrested in the act of descending or retreating and had not yet decided which direction would be less dangerous.
She wore deep blue silk rather than black, the color so dark that the lamp made it almost liquid.
Her face was pale, and though her hair was arranged with its usual care, the stillness of her posture had a strain in it that no mirror could have corrected.
"Miss Brown," she said. "You are wandering."
"So are you."
"I live here. That grants me the right to appear in unsuitable places with unsuitable explanations. You are employed here. That grants you fewer privileges and more danger."
"I saw someone outside the library," Constance said, keeping her voice low. "Agnes tells me that in a house full of women I should not find that remarkable. I might accept that advice if the woman had behaved like a servant, but she did not. She watched, then vanished."
Helena looked toward the corridor without turning her head fully, as if even the direction of her gaze might be reported.
"There are many kinds of watching. Marianne watches to preserve.
Roland watches to profit. Agnes watches to prevent harm.
Jasper watches to learn where harm will be most efficient.
Perhaps you saw nothing more than a house continuing its habits. "
"And you? What kind of watching is yours?"
Helena's hand tightened slightly on the banister. "Mine is the kind one learns in rooms where escape would make more noise than endurance. Do not make me poetic, Constance. It is late, and poetry in this house tends to become evidence against the person who speaks it."
The use of her name, even quietly, struck Constance with an intimacy that had no right to exist in the open stair hall. She came one step nearer and stopped. "He sent for you. Earlier you said he had sent and withdrawn the message. Has he sent again?"
"Yes. No. Perhaps. His valet carried one instruction, then Mrs. Harrowby another, then nothing.
It is a little game. He likes to make obedience chase a moving object.
If I go, I have presumed. If I remain, I have refused.
If I ask, I am anxious. If I do not ask, I am indifferent.
Every answer proves the accusation already chosen. "
"Then let me stay near you. I do not need to enter the room. I can be in the passage, or in the library, or anywhere he cannot object to without admitting he fears a witness."
Helena looked at her then, and for a moment the careful lady vanished behind the tired woman.
"You think witness prevents cruelty because you are still innocent enough to believe cruelty is ashamed of being seen.
Jasper is ashamed only when the wrong people see and possess the courage to say what they have seen in a room where he cannot control the echo. You are not that room. Not yet."
"Then what am I?"
"A match struck in the dark, and I am foolish enough to be grateful for the light while fearing the fire." Helena descended one more step. "Go to your room. If I need you, I will not be allowed to send. If I do not need you, your presence will create the need."