‘She doesn’t take kindly to young men who think too much. She believes it’s a sign of idleness.’
The temperature is dropping quickly. What little colour was left to the day is fleeing the dark storm clouds bullying the sky.
‘Shall we go back to the house?’ says Grace, stamping her feet to warm up. ‘I dislike Blackheath as much as the next girl, but not so much that I’m willing to freeze to death to avoid going back inside it.’
I glance at the reflecting pool a little forlornly, but I can’t press my idea without speaking to Evelyn first, and she’s out walking with Bell. Whatever my mind’s got hold of – to use Grace’s phrase – it’ll have to keep until she returns in a couple of hours. Besides, the idea of spending time with somebody who isn’t mired in today’s many tragedies is appealing.
Our shoulders pressed together, we make our way back to the house, arriving in the entrance hall in time to see Charles Cunningham trotting down the steps. He’s frowning, lost in thought.
‘Are you quite all right, Charles?’ says Grace, drawing his attention. ‘Honestly, what is it with the men in this house, today? You’re all on a cloud.’
A grin cracks his face, his joy at seeing us quite at odds with the seriousness with which he normally greets me.
‘Ah, my two favourite people,’ he says grandly, leaping from the third step to clap us both on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’
Affection draws a huge smile on my face.
Until now the valet was simply somebody who flitted in and out of my day, occasionally helpful, but always pursuing some purpose of his own, making him impossible to trust. Seeing him through Rashton’s eyes is like watching a charcoal outline get coloured in.
Grace and Donald Davies summered at Blackheath, growing up side by side with Michael, Evelyn, Thomas and Cunningham. Despite being raised by the cook, Mrs Drudge, everybody believed he was Peter Hardcastle’s son by birth, and this elevated him beyond the kitchen. Encouraging this perception, Helena Hardcastle instructed the governess to educate Cunningham with the Hardcastle children. He may have become a servant, but neither Grace nor Donald would ever see him as such, no matter what their parents might say. The three of them are practically family, which is why Cunningham was one of the first people Donald Davies introduced Rashton to when they returned from the war. The three of them are as close as brothers.
‘Is Ravencourt being a nuisance?’ asks Grace. ‘You didn’t forget his second helping of eggs again, did you? You know how disagreeable that makes him.’
‘No, no, it’s not that.’ Cunningham shakes his head thoughtfully. ‘You know how sometimes your day starts as one thing, and then, just like that, it’s something else? Ravencourt told me something rather startling, and, to tell you the truth, I still haven’t wrapped my head around it.’
‘What did he say?’ asks Grace, cocking her head.
‘That he’s not...’ he trails off, pinching his nose. Thinking better of it, he sighs, dismissing the entire line of conversation. ‘Best I tell you this evening over a brandy, when everything’s shaken out. Not sure I have the words just yet.’
‘It’s always the same with you, Charles,’ she says, stamping her foot. ‘You enjoy starting juicy stories but you never finish them.’
‘Well, maybe this will improve your mood.’
From his pocket he produces a silver key, a cardboard tag identifying it as Sebastian Bell’s. The last time I saw that key it was in the vile Derby’s pocket, shortly before somebody coshed him over the head outside Stanwin’s bedroom and stole it.
I can feel myself being slotted into place, a cog in a massive ticking clock, propelling a mechanism I’m too small to understand.
‘You found it for me?’ says Grace, clapping her hands together.
He beams at me. ‘Grace asked me snatch a spare key to Bell’s bedroom from the kitchen so we could steal his drugs,’ he says, dangling the key from his finger. ‘I went one better, and found the key to his trunk.’
‘It’s childish, but I want Bell to suffer the way Donald is suffering,’ she says, her eyes glittering viciously.
‘And how did you come by the key?’ I ask Cunningham.
‘In the course of my duties,’ he says a little uneasily. ‘I’ve got his bedroom key in my pocket. All those little vials dropped in the lake, can you imagine?’
‘Not the lake,’ says Grace, making a face. ‘It’s bad enough coming back to Blackheath, but I won’t go anywhere near that awful place.’
‘There’s the well,’ I say, ‘out by the gatehouse. It’s old and deep. If we drop the drugs down there, nobody will ever find them.’
‘Perfect,’ says Cunningham, rubbing his hands together gleefully. ‘Well, the good doctor has gone for a walk with Miss Hardcastle, so I should say this is as good a time as any. Who’s up for a little daylight robbery?’
48
Grace keeps watch by the door as Cunningham and I slip into Bell’s bedroom, nostalgia painting everything in cheerful colours. After wrestling with the domineering natures of my other hosts, my attitude towards Bell has softened considerably. Unlike Derby, Ravencourt or Rashton, Sebastian Bell was a blank canvas, a man in retreat, even from himself. I poured into him, filling the empty spaces so completely I didn’t even realise he was the wrong shape.
In an odd way, he feels like an old friend.
‘Where do you think he keeps the stuff?’ Cunningham asks, closing the door behind us.
Though I know perfectly well where Bell’s trunk is, I feign ignorance, giving myself the opportunity to wade about in his absence for a little while, enjoying the sensation of walking back into a life I once inhabited.
Cunningham uncovers the trunk soon enough though, engaging my help to drag it out of the wardrobe, making a terrible racket as he scrapes it on the wooden floorboards. It’s as well everybody’s hunting as the noise could wake the dead.