‘Did they, indeed?’ Hester stepped briskly inside and closed the door. ‘What else did he say?’
Jethro took her heavy cloak and gloves, favouring his right side where the muscles were still paining him. ‘That Sir Lewis was a good actor, but Miss Nugent was even better and that she organised everything and made up the plays and Sir Lewis just does what she says.’
Hester went into the sitting room, calling the others after her. ‘Miss Nugent is our ghost; I saw the bruises from Lord Buckland’s knuckles plain on her cheek under that veil. And if Sarah is such an accomplished actor, no wonder she has been able to spin all these tales about ghosts and a curse and appear so distressed.’
‘Shall we start to search the house?’ Jethro was already rolling up his sleeves, only to be interrupted by a scandalised cluck from Miss Prudhome.
‘Not on a Sunday, Jethro!’
‘His lordship has been travelling on a Sunday,’ he muttered mutinously.
‘We can discuss how we are going to search and where,’ Hester suggested placatingly. ‘And we can think about our Christmas plans. I cannot recall when I have been so behindhand with that.’
An hour later, nibbling the tip of her quill before the sitting room fire, Hester thought back to Christmases past. English Yuletides with her parents were a distant memory; fresher were the colourful, often chaotic celebrations in Portugal with roast ribs of beef acquired by dubious means, the mix of uniforms adding to the festive scene and the sun shining in a way it never did in England in December.
Then, two years ago, returning to England, bereaved, desolate, shivering in an English winter, her only sanctuary the house of an old friend of her father, invalided out of the army two years previously. The house where she expected to spend her first English Christmas for many years.
Hester had found the address in Mount Street and handed the gaunt, crippled man who lived there her father’s letter addressed to him. Colonel Sir John Norton had read it while she had watched him, shaken that a contemporary of her father’s should look so much older. Major Lattimer had referred to a shoulder wound that would have soon healed, but the man before her was suffering from far worse than that.
But shaken as she was by the appearance of her host, she was even more confused by the letter he handed to her which had been contained within his own.
…as we have spoken of before now if you find yourself alone you will have gone to my good friend John Norton… he and I agreed… make provision for you… best for you to marry him, for there is no one else I can send you to…
She had had to read the letter twice before she could take it in. Her father and his old friend had hatched a plot for her protection, which involved her marrying the colonel if her father was killed.
She had looked up, startled, and had met the kind, tired eyes that were watching her.
‘I was not such a wreck when he and I parted,’ he explained wryly. ‘An operation went wrong, I contracted a rheumatic fever that affected my heart. The quacks give me a year.’
‘I am so sorry.’ She had tried to smile bravely. ‘I cannot possibly impose on you, that is obvious. Perhaps you can suggest a respectable hotel-’
She had got no further. Sir John pointed out with a forcefulness, which left him breathless, that if she married him she would have a home, the protection of his name and would, very shortly, become a wealthy widow.
Hester had refused point blank and the battle between the mortally ill man and the homeless young woman had raged for two days before she had agreed to stay and he had agreed to respect her determination not to marry him.
She soon realised that, as well as being ill, he was lonely. His servants were adequate, but no substitute for family or friends, and his relatives, with whom he had had little contact or sympathy while he was in good health, saw no need to
seek him out now. Hester settled into the role of companion-housekeeper within days and a strange, warm friendship grew up between the dying man and the bereaved girl.
When John had died she had felt bereaved all over again as though she had lost a second father. Facing the prospect of homelessness and genteel poverty on the small portion she had inherited, she had been touched and deeply grateful that at the reading of the will it transpired that the colonel had left her a respectable competence as well as his wine cellar. And with it the chance to remake her own life away from London.
Hester tossed down her quill and got to her feet to stare out of the window at the uncompromising red-brick wall on the other side of the road. Now, here in the Moon House, she was determined to build a future on what John and her father had given her. The past was behind her.
She turned back from the window with a shiver, the thin sunlight throwing her silhouette in front of her across the boards. It seemed like a warning, a reminder that what was behind you could cast a long shadow into the here and now.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The next morning Hester rallied her troops and set them searching.
‘Jethro, see what you can find in the kitchen and scullery. Somehow someone is getting in, so look from the outside first. The rest of us will search for this treasure. Susan, you take the ground floor, Maria, the bedrooms, and I will search the attics.’
She had to scrub a rag over the tiny windows in the eaves and light two lanterns, but at last Hester could see to explore the attics. Unfortunately it was also sufficient to reveal some very large spiders. The contents were disappointingly sparse, almost all broken and most had never been of any value at all. Nor could she see any possible hiding places, despite carefully tapping and pressing every piece of woodwork and prodding each loose brick or slate.
Straightening her back, she called downstairs to Maria and Susan, but they too reported not so much as a painted-over cupboard to give any hope. Hester eyed the dust-smeared floorboards. ‘I suppose you are the obvious place.’ she muttered at them resentfully. ‘What a good thing I never liked this gown overmuch.’
Lantern in one hand, she inched across the floor on her knees, trying to lift the boards at the ends, prodding the knot holes. Nothing. And then, in the furthest corner, her hand brushed against a change of level. She held up the lantern and revealed a painting, thick with dust. Hester pulled it out and lifted it, showering herself with dirt and what seemed to be a mass of ribbons. It was the canvas, sliced and torn into shreds, which still clung to the frame where the edges of the canvas remained intact.
Hester knelt there, her arms aching with the effort of supporting it and felt the cold horror of violence that had filled her when she first saw the ravaged dressing room. To have done this spoke of bitter anger and spite and a fanatical desire to despoil.