“No. I ... I want to see what Williston’s given me.” She lifted the lid of the fruitwood box, peered into it, then looked up at me with such a queer expression that for a moment I thought we were in for another batch of butterscotch brownies. “I think it’s the deed, Lori. The deed to number three, Anne Elizabeth Court.”
“What?” I reached into the box and took from it a sheet of handmade, deckle-edged foolscap. It was covered with the scratchings of a quill pen and dated June 17, 1701. The spelling was eccentric and the handwriting antiquated, but I had no trouble reading the words. I mumbled through the main body of the legalistic text, but when I got to the bottom of the page, I quoted slowly and clearly. “ ‘We hereby assign the freehold of the aforementioned property to ...’ ” I hesitated, then looked at Nell. “ ‘... to Sybella Markham.’ ”
“The sleeping dog?” Nell asked.
“Woof,” I replied.
19.
Sir Poppet met us at the head of the main staircase. He looked ecstatic, stretching both hands out to Nell and beaming down at her as he approached. “Oh, Lady Nell,” he said, “you were brilliant, brilliant.”
Lady Nell regarded him distantly, a hurt expression on her face. “You planned it,” she said quietly. “You knew that I resembled Sybella. You knew he would mistake me for her.”
Sir Poppet had the grace to look guilty. “Lady Nell, I assure you—”
“You might have warned us,” I broke in reproachfully. “You might have told us about Sybella.”
“Sybella Markham is a figment of Williston’s imagination,” Sir Poppet declared. “A projection, a—”
“What’s this, then?” I demanded, holding the deed out for him to see. “ A special effect?”
He was unfazed. “I have a cartload of similar documents, Ms. Shepherd. Williston turns them out by the score.”
My excitement suffered a severe setback as a sound came back to haunt me, a sound I’d heard not an hour ago: the steady scritch-scritch of Uncle Williston’s quill pen as he sat writing at the kneehole desk. “Are you telling me that Williston made this deed?” I asked reluctantly.
“And many others like it,” Sir Poppet confirmed. “Each of them in the name of Sybella Markham. Please ...” He motioned for us to precede him down the stairs. “If you’ll come with me to my office, I’ll clarify matters for you.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “I think perhaps you should.”
The decor in Sir Poppet’s office was dark and strikingly contemporary—black leather chairs, an ebony desk, matte black torchères in the comers, and abstract paintings on the cobalt-blue walls. Despite my impatience, he’d refused to tell us anything until after we’d had something to eat. It was nearly noon, he pointed out, and Nell had been through a stressful experience.
Nell was subdued—oppressed, I thought, by the notion that an old friend like Sir Poppet would thrust her into such a demanding confrontation without confiding in her first. I was preoccupied with the deed. Sir Poppet’s bland dismissal of its authenticity niggled at me. I’d examined the document under the high-intensity lamp on his desk. If it was a fake, it was the best I’d ever seen.
When our light meal had been cleared away, Sir Poppet sat behind his desk, and Nell and I took our places in a pair of cushy leather chairs. He gazed down at his folded hands for a moment, then looked directly at Nell. “Before I begin, I must apologize for not putting you fully in the picture before you went in to see Williston. It may have been necessary, but it wasn’t very kind.”
“Why was it necessary?” Nell asked.
“I had no idea how Williston would react when he saw you—or if he’d react at all. If you’d gone in armed with preconceptions, you might have tried to manipulate the encounter.” Sir Poppet smiled wryly. “I’ve known you all of your life, Lady Nell. I’m well aware of your ... gifts. I knew you’d be capable of following Williston’s lead, if he gave you one.”
Nell acknowledged the compliment with a modest nod. “I hope you’ll tell us the truth now, Sir Poppet. Who is Sybella Markham? I don’t believe that she’s a figment of Williston’s imagination. She was too real.”
“Ah, but delusions can seem very real,” Sir Poppet pointed out, “especially when they’re based on someone well known to the patient. Sybella Markham, for example, is based on Williston’s wife, Sybil.”
“Sybil,” I said under my breath. Emma had failed to pass along this pertinent piece of information. I looked questioningly at Sir Poppet. “And the ‘he’ that Williston talked about, the man who sullied Sybella with his touch—that’s Douglas, right?”
“I would assume so.” Sir Poppet placed his elbows on the desk and tented his fingers. “Sybil was Williston’s second wife. She was much younger than he, blond, blue-eyed—you are, if you’ll permit me, Lady Nell, an idealized version of Sybil.”
“And when we showed up, you thought you’d put that resemblance to good use,” I ventured.
Sir Poppet nodded. “I hoped it would penetrate Williston’s defenses, help him to open up, force him to confront his feelings of guilt over Sybil’s tragic death.”