The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (148 page)

‘Men,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I shall expect you there for luncheon. Punctually, one o’clock.
Promise
you won’t think up some excuse not to come.’

Again he laughed. ‘Come hell or high water, I shall be there. I promise.’

Belle was pacing the gallery at Burntwood when she heard the dog cart in the carriageway.

‘They’re here,’ said Drum, who’d come up for the day to lend moral support. ‘Oh, look,’ he added with a grin. ‘She’s brought the boys. D’you want me to take them off your hands for a while?’

Belle nodded. ‘But not just yet.’

It was ridiculous to feel nervous, but she’d scarcely seen her mother for weeks. Every time she went to Eden to visit Papa, Mamma was either out, or busy with the twins. The constraint between them hadn’t lessened. It had grown.

Pressing her palms together, she was surprised to find them slippery with sweat. And this weather didn’t help. It had been oppressively hot all morning, but now a norther had started to blow, and clouds were beginning to darken the noonday sky.

‘Strong weather on the way,’ one of the nurses had told Belle as she was making her way downstairs. ‘Bees staying home, the rain go come. That true to the fact.’

Already the twins were jumping down from the dog cart.

Drum turned to Belle. ‘Ready?’

She nodded. Her hand sought the satchel hanging by her side. Although she felt a little foolish about it, she’d done as Sophie had suggested, and brought along some of her portrait photographs. ‘If things get sticky,’ Sophie had said, ‘just show her your pictures. She’d love to see them. You may not believe me, but she’s awfully proud of you.’

The satchel contained something else, too. Something that nobody knew about but Belle.

For days, the sky-blue envelope had lain hidden in her chest of drawers. Only yesterday, after her farewell talk with Margaret Cornwallis, had she felt brave enough to take it out.

‘Tell your sister everything,’ she had urged Margaret as they walked in the ruins of the old slave village at Fever Hill. ‘Dodo’s the kindest person I know. She’ll understand. Especially now that my letter has – prepared the ground.’

‘I will,’ said Margaret, staring at the ground. Then abruptly she’d raised her head and fixed Belle with a bright, intense stare. ‘It helps so much that you know. That you . . .’ she took a breath that turned into a gulp, ‘that you don’t mind.’

It had been all Belle could do not to break down. ‘Of course I don’t mind,’ she said, putting her arm round the girl’s shoulders and giving her a little shake. ‘Why should I mind? None of this is your fault. Remember that, Margaret. It wasn’t – it never was – your fault.’

Not your fault, she told herself now as she watched Drum helping her mother down from the dog cart. How strange that it had taken Margaret Cornwallis to make her truly understand that.

Her fingers tightened on the sky-blue envelope. Her proof. The means with which to bring down Cornelius Traherne.

Who knows, she thought. This might be the day on which I use it.

Sophie was annoyed to find that her hands were shaking as she pinned on her hat. If she didn’t hurry, she’d be late for her appointment. And she still hadn’t decided whether to tell Ben her news, or wait till afterwards, when she was sure.

She glanced at herself in the looking-glass, and decided against it. But as she ran down the steps to where Jericho was holding the door of the motor, she changed her mind.

To find Ben, they had to drive all the way down to the gates and then turn left, heading west up the Fever Hill Road to the fringes of Pinchgut Wood, where Ben had set up a schooling ground at the edge of the estate. He was in the paddock, schooling his new grey mare, who seemed to be giving him an unusual amount of trouble.

When he saw Sophie getting out of the motor, he cantered over to her. But he did not dismount, and was clearly preoccupied with the mare.

‘I can’t work out what’s got into her,’ he told Sophie, putting his hand on the mare’s shivering neck. ‘Yesterday she was mild as milk, and today she nearly threw me—’

‘Ben,’ cut in Sophie impatiently, ‘may I have a word?’

‘Course you can,’ he said. But he was looking at the horse.

‘A proper word,’ said Sophie.

‘Right,’ said Ben.

‘Oh, never mind,’ muttered Sophie. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

Turning on her heel, she stalked back to the motor. To her surprise she found herself blinking back tears. And it didn’t help that the wind was getting up, and whipping the dust into her eyes.

It’s just this wretched weather, she told herself as she asked Jericho to drive her into Town. I shouldn’t be surprised if we’re in for a storm.

‘Now what’s got into her?’ murmured Ben as he watched his wife driving off. ‘And what’s got into you too, my beauty? Hm?’ he said to the mare.

The mare sidestepped and tossed her head.

With a sigh, Ben jumped down and started walking her in circles, talking to her softly under his breath. Usually horses listened to him, but today the mare would not be soothed. She kept chewing the bit and showing the whites of her eyes.

When a horse was upset, Ben paid attention. He wondered what the mare had sensed that he could not. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

An old man in blue overalls was coming down Pinchgut Hill. When he saw Ben, he came over and leaned on the fence. ‘Bad weather on the way, Master Ben,’ he called.

Ben led the mare over to him. He knew old Eliphalet Tait from years back, when he’d holed up at his place in the Cockpits for a while. ‘How bad will it get, Father?’ he asked, using the proper form of address among country people.

Old Eliphalet sucked his teeth and watched a john crow flying towards the hills. ‘Well I goin tell you a ting, Master Ben,’ he began. ‘Down at Salt Wash, the people, they coming inland, like the john crow.’

Ben thought about that. He wished now that he’d listened to whatever it was Sophie had wanted to tell him, instead of letting her go. For a moment he considered riding after her. But he’d never catch up with the motor. Besides, if Eliphalet was right, and a storm blew up – or God forbid, something worse – she would know to take shelter in Town, where she’d have a better chance than he would out here.

Swiftly he made a mental review of his workers and the servants up at the house. All of them were capable people, who’d need minimal direction to get things battened down. But the horses –
Christ
, the horses. That morning they’d been brought in from pasture for the monthly farrier’s visit, and now they were all in the enclosure on the banks of Tom Spring. If a storm blew up, they might panic and trample each other. He had to get them into the stables, fast.

He turned back to Eliphalet. ‘What about you, Father? You want a ride up to the house? Take shelter with the rest of us in the cellars?’

The old man bared his toothless gums in a grin. ‘You don trouble bout me, Master Ben, from dis I can take care I self. But watch youself, sah. Don go losing that other eye.’

Ben returned his grin. ‘Thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.’ Swinging up into the saddle, he squinted at the faraway great house. One of the irritating things about losing an eye is that distances are so hard to judge. It had to be three miles; and when he got there, a fair amount to do, seeing everyone safe . . .

He’d better get moving.

Two hours earlier

‘You have chosen a singular time for a visit, Captain Palairet,’ said Miss May Monroe as she rearranged her grey-gloved talons on the head of her cane. ‘There is a hurricane on the way. Or did you not know?’

‘A
hurricane
?’ said Adam. ‘I was told it was only a storm.’

‘You were misinformed.’

Adam took that in silence. But he had no intention of being intimidated into leaving. He’d come for information, and, hurricane or no, he meant to get it. Even if it took all morning.

The old lady who sat before him on her hard mahogany chair had turned a hundred the previous month. She was so shrunken that it seemed inconceivable that there could be flesh and blood beneath the stiff folds of her pewter silk gown. She belonged to another time: a time when a lady never ventured out in daylight for fear of the tropical sun; a time when she never, ever, leaned back in her chair.

‘A hurricane,’ Miss Monroe said again, and there was a gleam of satisfaction in her inflamed blue eyes. ‘It is to be depended upon, Captain Palairet. The signs are all there.’ She paused for breath. ‘Since yestereve,’ she went on, ‘a swell has battered the Monroe quays; the quays that my father built. And a long swell, Captain Palairet, a swell which is out of all proportion to the strength of the wind, is an early sign of a hurricane. You shall soon find out that I am correct.’

‘I don’t doubt it, Miss Monroe,’ Adam replied.

And yet, sitting here in the dim, wood-panelled gallery, lit only by a glimmer of daylight seeping through the louvres, it seemed impossible. He could hardly even hear the sounds of the street below. A
hurricane
. . .

He thought of Max, whom he’d left chatting happily to Mrs Herapath in her little town house further down the street; Max whom he’d only brought to Jamaica at the last minute, when Maud had sprained her ankle.

‘There is no need for concern,’ said Miss Monroe with icy scorn. ‘The townspeople will take shelter in the church, as they always do. St Peter’s will see them through.’

‘What about you, Miss Monroe?’ said Adam. ‘Shall I help you to the church?’

With her cane, the old lady rapped the parquet. ‘I shall remain here, in my house, as I always have.’

‘But—’

‘Captain Palairet. I have seen more hurricanes than you have seen years. I intend to see one more.’ She paused, and her narrow corseted chest rose as she sucked in another breath. ‘Besides, it will not arrive for another few hours.’

Adam bit back a smile. ‘You’re remarkably well informed, Miss Monroe.’

‘I make it my business to be, Captain Palairet. Now, no more talk of the weather,’ she said, dismissing hurricanes as if they were April showers. ‘You arrived on the Northside only last night, no doubt eager to see your –
beloved
,’ she enunciated the word with disdain, and Adam felt himself reddening, ‘and
yet
,’ she went on, ‘I am the first person on whom you call. I find that singular.’

Adam opened his mouth to reply, but she silenced him with a stare.

‘Permit me to hazard a guess as to why, Captain Palairet. You seek information. You seek to know more about Cornelius Traherne.’

Adam was too astonished to reply. The old lady was right. On the steamer from Southampton he’d had plenty of time to think, and he’d realized that simply asking Belle to marry him wasn’t going to solve anything. There was something about Traherne – something that was getting in the way, at least in her mind. He had to find out what. So who better to ask than the old lady who knew all that went on in Trelawny?

He asked Miss Monroe how she knew.

‘That you wish to enquire about Traherne?’ The thin lips tightened with contempt. ‘Sir, you broadcast your intentions the moment you arrived, by asking after the whereabouts both of the gentleman in question, and of my great-great-grand-niece, Miss Isabelle Lawe. A singular enquiry, and one which put me in mind of a visit I received many years ago.’ Again the grey-gloved talons rearranged themselves on the head of the cane. ‘Miss Lawe was still a child at the time.’ She paused, remembering, then brought herself back to the present. ‘Such an evil man,’ she said to the room at large.

Adam felt a flicker of unease. What did she mean?

‘I have long known the worst of him,’ she went on. ‘But I have bided my time.’ The chill blue gaze returned to him. ‘So, Captain Palairet. We find ourselves in accord, do we not? For I, too, want something from you.’

Adam blinked. ‘What can I do?’ he said.

‘I have lived for precisely one century,’ began Miss Monroe, ‘and this year will be my last.’

Protestations of regret would have been hypocritical, so Adam remained silent. That earned him a wintry gleam of approval.

‘Before I die,’ the old lady went on, ‘I wish to attend to one final matter.’ She paused. ‘I had hoped to obtain assistance from my great-great-grand-niece, Miss Isabelle Lawe. She has not, however, seen fit to honour me with a visit.’ Again she broke off, and Adam realized with a flash of compassion how much this interview was costing her. ‘I have been – remiss,’ she continued. ‘I have left this almost too late. So your arrival, Captain Palairet, is fortunate. Except that I do not believe in chance.’

‘Miss Monroe—’

‘Do not interrupt.’ Another laboured breath. ‘You wish to marry my great-great-grand-niece. I wish to settle my matter. Our interests coincide. Cornelius Traherne must be brought down.’

Two hours later, Cornelius Traherne was sitting down to a solitary luncheon in the state dining room at Parnassus when a footman informed him that a parcel had arrived from Falmouth.

‘A parcel?’ said Traherne, glancing up from his saddle of mutton with a scowl. ‘Why the devil are you bothering me now?’

He was not in the best of tempers. His meal had been interrupted once already, when a stiffening norther had forced him in from the verandah. Interruptions played the very devil with his digestion, and this constant wind wasn’t helping in the least.

‘It from Town, Master Cornelius,’ said the footman, who was beginning to shake. ‘From Miss May Monroe.’

Traherne blinked. In seventy-three years he’d never received so much as a visiting card from Miss May Monroe. What was this about?

Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he watched the footman bring in a flat, oblong parcel slightly larger than a book, neatly wrapped in brown paper and string. It looked ordinary enough, but the footman seemed glad to be rid of it. Something about it made Traherne feel cold.

‘Out,’ he told the servants.

They fled.

His heart was pounding unpleasantly as he cut the string. The brown paper seemed to fall away of its own accord. Inside was a plain, unadorned box of polished Jamaican mahogany, with an envelope of thick ivory card lying on top. For reasons he chose not to acknowledge to himself, Traherne refrained from lifting the lid of the box, and decided to read the note first.