The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (15 page)

Another silence. Lettice drew herself up. ‘I can do nothing more with you. Someone else must try. I have failed.’

‘What do you mean, someone else?’

Lettice hesitated. ‘There is a gentleman,’ she said. ‘A churchman. Your grandfather’s adopted son. You must apply to him for guidance.’

‘My
grandfather
—’

‘Did you hear what I said? This man is a churchman. He may be able to save you. If it is not already too late.’ She turned to mount the stairs, but Madeleine moved round and blocked her way.

‘My grandfather? What grandfather? Why didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘Because he doesn’t want you!’ spat Lettice. ‘He never wanted you!’ Her bony breast rose and fell. Her sallow cheeks were blotched with red. ‘Ten years ago,’ she said more quietly, ‘I felt it my duty to break a long silence. I wrote to him. Jocelyn Monroe. Your father’s father. Yes, you see, you and I are related after all. To my lasting shame.’ She paused for breath. ‘I thought it my duty’, she went on, ‘to inform him of your existence. He replied that he never wanted to hear of you again. He wished to know nothing about you. Nothing. Save only in the event of your death.’

It was Madeleine’s turn to sit on the stairs.

Lettice stood looking down at her. ‘His adopted son is a churchman. The Reverend Sinclair Lawe. You must go to him and confess all. I can do nothing more with you.’

Madeleine struggled to take it all in. ‘Where does he live?’

‘I understand that he has an address in Fitzroy Square.’

‘Fitzroy Square? But – that’s practically round the corner! Why haven’t you ever spoken of him? Called on him. Why hasn’t he ever visited us?’

‘Because it was my duty to keep you separate!’ snapped Lettice. ‘The head of the family
commanded
me to keep you separate. And that I have done.’ Her hand tightened on the banister. ‘Besides, I myself have never met the Reverend Lawe. Indeed I doubt that he even knows I exist.’ She paused. ‘As you very well know, my contact with my family was all but ended by my marriage.’

Madeleine was silent for a moment. Then she added, ‘This Reverend Lawe. What makes you think that he’ll see me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If my own grandfather won’t see me, why should his adopted son?’ She paused, then added with a curl of her lip, ‘Or are you suggesting that I should put on some sort of disguise?’

Lettice leaned over her, and Madeleine smelt her sour breath and the musty odour of crape. ‘Sinclair Lawe is a
churchman
,’ she hissed. ‘A man of
God
. Have you any conception of what that means?’

‘But Lettice, I can’t just—’

‘Go to him. Throw yourself on his mercy. I can do nothing more with you.’

Chapter Eleven

What does God
want
from me? wondered Sinclair Lawe in despair.

He took the nailbrush from the washstand and scrubbed his fingers till the water turned pink.

Why had he succumbed, when he had sworn that he never would again? Why had God allowed him to pollute himself?

As he reached for a napkin to dry his hands, his eye was caught by a flash of colour outside the window. He froze. The bathroom was three floors up, and not overlooked – and yet there, on the neighbouring roof, crouched a chimney sweep’s boy.

Breathlessly Sinclair took in the inhuman stick limbs and the vivid copper hair; the grotesquely blackened face. The creature had seen everything. Everything. How could he have forgotten to draw the blinds?

He shut his eyes, and when he looked again the creature was gone. And that was worse. Already evil gossip might be spreading about the Reverend Lawe.

He willed himself to be calm. He replaced the napkin on the rail and straightened his smoking jacket. He checked the bathroom to make sure it was in order, then went slowly downstairs to his study, and rang for Mary, and ordered a glass of hot milk. But he could not forget the apparition on the roof.

Perhaps it was some sort of sign? Perhaps God intended some great change in his fortunes? Oh, let it be so. His life had become intolerable.

Everyone was urging him to do the one thing that he never could. Even the Dean was becoming impatient. ‘Now that you have turned thirty,’ he had said at their last encounter, ‘I presume that you will shortly be delighting us with news of your engagement to an appropriate young lady.’

Then there were the constant invitations to dinners and receptions, where flocks of meek and marriageable young females did battle for his attention. And last but most powerful of all, the letter from Great-Aunt May.
You must marry at once
, she had told him with her formidable singularity of purpose.
There must be no more delay. You are of excellent pedigree and ample means, with a promising career in the Church. Many eligible young females will compete for your attentions. Marry at once. If you do not, I cannot answer for the consequences.

She had no need to elaborate.
If you do not marry and produce a son
, ran the unwritten message,
Fever Hill will never be yours. Your brother will find some means of worming his way back into the old man’s affections, and you will be disinherited. Do not delude yourself that it could never happen. Cameron may be an outcast and a recluse, but he lives in Jamaica. You do not.

Sinclair went to the window and drew back the curtain and gazed down into the street. The heatwave had broken the night before, and a fine rain was greasing the pavements and making the passers-by hunch beneath their umbrellas.

There was no answer to his dilemma. There could
be
no answer. To gain his inheritance he must marry – and yet he could never marry, for then he would be found out.

With a sense of weary compulsion he returned to his desk. On bad days, he might unlock the secret compartment ten times or more, and take out the little grey booklet and reread the familiar page. It was not that he needed to be reminded of the text, but that he needed to see the words. It was as if he still clung to some hope that this time he might derive a meaning less absolute than he ever had before.

Of course he never did.
Plain Words to Young Men on an Avoided Subject
was exactly that.
If once a young man succumbs to the imbruted cravings of lust, and wastes his substance in solitary indulgence, the fatal habit is acquired. The clammy hand, the stinking foot, and the haggard countenance are all marks of that vice which – in extreme cases – must end in insanity and death.

Moreover
– and here came the passage which had haunted him for years –
should such a man be wicked enough to marry, he risks passing the dreadful malady to his wife. His progeny are born dead, or else exist only in brief suffering: not born into this world so much as damned into it by the wretch who gave them being.

He passed a shaky hand over his face. With such a secret, how could he marry? How risk exposure and ruin? He pictured the scene when the truth was laid bare. The outraged father-in-law summoning doctors and lawyers. Jocelyn’s face as he cut him out of his will.

At that moment he heard footsteps on the porch. A rap at the door. He sucked in his breath. The chimney sweep? He pictured the creature waiting on the doorstep, rubbing its blackened claws as it plotted blackmail.

When Mary announced ‘a lady’, Sinclair shuddered with relief.

‘A Miss Finlay,’ muttered the elderly parlourmaid, her tight lips betraying what she thought of idle young parishioners who couldn’t leave the poor young Reverend in peace.

But the girl whom Mary showed in was no parishioner. Sinclair would have remembered her, for she was handsome – although her features were too decided for truly feminine beauty.

Normally, he would have told her to make an appointment and sent her away, but there was something about her that intrigued him. She was in trouble; he could tell that at once. He wondered why.

He offered her a chair by the fireplace and took the one opposite, and ordered tea. He noticed that her manners were ladylike, but that when she drew off her gloves to pour, her fingers were reddened at the tips. Ah. A lady in reduced circumstances. He could always tell.

And she was hiding something. He stopped listening to her commonplace tale of misfortune. ‘Forgive me for interrupting,’ he said, leaning back and steepling his fingers, ‘but I have many demands on my time, and I confess to being surprised that you should come to me for assistance, while concealing the truth.’

A hit, a palpable hit. Her colour fled, her dark eyes widened with shock.

He gave her a brief, reassuring smile. ‘I am sorry if I startled you, but my calling has made me expert in these matters. You see, Miss Finlay, you come to me with a tale of a bankrupt guardian and an invalid sister, and an urgent need for guidance, which’ – he forestalled her protest with an upheld palm – ‘I assure you I do believe. But you make no reference to what prevents you from seeking the obvious solution.’

She looked perplexed.

‘Why, marriage, of course. I need hardly point out that a young lady with – permit me – your advantages should not find it difficult to secure a match.’

‘Oh no, that’s out of the question,’ she replied in a forthright, almost masculine tone. ‘I can never marry.’

He sensed that they were nearing the secret, and his pulse quickened. ‘And why is that?’ he said.

She glanced at her lap and frowned.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, ‘I was too direct. It is a failing of mine. But remember, I am a man of God. Whatever passes between us shall be in confidence.’

Some of the tension left her features.

‘I suspect’, he probed, ‘that your concern over marriage derives from some – inherited weakness in your family?’

She did not reply.

Again he sensed that he was nearing the truth. He swallowed. ‘Permit to guess. There is some defect in the physical constitution – perhaps of a malignant nature? Or a nervous indisposition?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘Perhaps – some flaw in the circumstances of your birth?’

She went still.

So that was it. And as he studied her reserved, almost sullen features, he was overwhelmed by a tremendous elation. It came from nowhere, and it shook him profoundly. It was as if he stood on the verge of a great revelation – a revelation which in some mysterious way would alter his destiny. But what could it be? And why should it matter to him if this unknown girl was illegitimate?

He couldn’t work it out. And he was gripped by a fear that she would leave before he had discovered the answer.

‘Mr Lawe,’ she began in her curiously direct yet ladlylike way, ‘I regret having to ask you this when you’ve been so kind – but . . .’ She bit her lip. ‘You see, I need ten pounds. I need it today. If I don’t get it, I don’t know what I shall do.’ She coloured, and he guessed that she knew exactly what she would do.

Money. Of course! Why hadn’t he thought of it before?

‘My dear Miss Finlay,’ he said. ‘God has indeed brought you to the right place. I happen to be the trustee of a small charity conceived to help just such unfortunates as yourself – to keep them from the vice to which they are predisposed by birth.’

She took that in silence, but regarded him coolly, as if too proud to accept such a judgement on herself, yet too intelligent to dispute its truth.

That irritated him, so he made her go the final step. ‘Ought I to take it from your silence that you do not wish for my aid?’

Her colour deepened. ‘I should of course be most grateful for whatever you feel able to do.’

How she hates having to ask, he thought. His excitement was painful. But
why
did he have this sense that she held the key?

Forcing himself to appear calm, he went to his desk and unlocked the money drawer and withdrew four five-pound notes, which he placed on the blotter. ‘Will that suit? I have doubled the amount, to avoid your having to remove to those inferior lodgings you mentioned.’

To his astonishment, she was no longer listening. She was gazing at the photograph on his desk: the portrait of Jocelyn, which he kept as a reminder of the inheritance that was rightfully his.

‘Miss Finlay,’ he said sharply.

Her gaze swung back to him. ‘I – I’m sorry,’ she stammered. ‘I believe I’m a little distracted.’

‘To be sure. I was merely enquiring whether twenty pounds would suit.’

She looked at the money on the blotter. ‘You are very generous,’ she muttered.

He tapped the desk with his fingertips. ‘However. I feel it my duty to impose one condition.’

She raised her eyes to his.

‘You must return tomorrow, and every day thereafter until such time as I release you. That we might pray together for your salvation.’

She looked from him to the money, then back again.

‘Have I your word’, he said, ‘that you will return?’

She rose to her feet. ‘You have my word.’

When Mary had shown her out, he stood at the window and watched her walk away down the street. Now that he had secured her return, he was glad that she was gone. He needed to be alone, to ponder what this meant.

What was the cause of this extraordinary elation? This sense that she held the key to his destiny? He knew it had nothing to do with the hell of carnal attraction. How she looked or talked or behaved was immaterial to him. But God had sent her for a purpose. What was it?

He was turning away from the window when a flash of red on the pavement caught his eye. He forgot to breathe. It was the chimney sweep.

The creature stood on the other side of the road, openly watching the house. It had found time to shed its brushes, and scrub the soot from its evil little face – but its red hair was unmistakeable. And beside it loitered an associate: taller, thinner, with dark hair and sharp, malevolent features.

Slowly, as in a dream, the dark-haired urchin turned its head and looked Sinclair in the eye.

He gripped the curtain.

There could be only one interpretation of that look. The red-haired imp had told his evil associate what he had witnessed on the roof. And now they meant to tell the world.