She paused and reached up her sleeve for a handkerchief to dab at her eyes.
“How extraordinary,” I said.
“Indeed. Of course, he did not know where he was, poor pet. So spent with fever and injury from an accident that it was some days before we even dared to hope he would recover.”
“Accident?” I asked, thinking of Sir Hugo’s explanation of a dockside brawl in Bristol.
“His conveyance overturned,” Lady Hathaway said. I flicked a glance to Effie, whose mouth thinned in impatience. Either Lady Hathaway had been told a more genteel version of events, or she had lied to me in order to make Jonathan Hathaway’s injuries sound more accidental than disreputable.
“And now he is home,” Lady Hathaway crowed. “He is still not himself entirely, you understand. But he gains in strength every day.”
“Will Mr. Jonathan Hathaway not have some objections to our assessing the collection without his approval?” I asked.
Charles Hathaway stopped instantly and whirled. “The collection, Miss Speedwell,” he said, bristling, “is mine to dispose of as I see fit.” He turned back and gestured towards a double door. “In here, if you please.”
CHAPTER
7
We followed him inside. Mrs. Desmond had taken down the shutters and kindled the fire as Charles Hathaway had indicated, but the room was a study in sadness. A chill born of long neglect seemed to have penetrated the very walls of the place. It was quite dark, being paneled in heavy Jacobean oak, and the only illumination came from the pale morning sun.
“I will tell Mrs. Desmond to bring lamps,” Lady Hathaway said. What she meant was that she intended to delegate the chore, for she gave a signal to Effie, who huffed out a tiny sigh and left, clearly annoyed at being left out of whatever grand discoveries she imagined we would make.
The room was full of figures shrouded in dust sheets, and Stoker circled them in anticipation.
“Sir Hugo mentioned there was a thylacine in the collection,” he ventured. His pupils were dilated and his breathing was uneven. Anyone who did not know him might imagine him in the throes of amatory anticipation, but I understood exactly what had roused his passions—the prospect of coming face-to-face with the elusive Tasmanian tiger.
Charles Hathaway plucked away one of the dust sheets to reveal a rather morbid-looking stuffed monkey. “A thylacine? That’s the big bird, isn’t it? The one with the devilish claw on its foot? Stands as tall as a man?”
“You are thinking of a cassowary,” Stoker corrected tightly. “Casuarius casuarius. I am referring to Thylacinus cynocephalus, the Tasmanian tiger. A distinctive-looking animal, stripes on the pelage. Perhaps four feet in length with another two for the tail. Standing just over two feet tall and weighing perhaps sixty pounds?” Stoker had been sketching the dimensions with his hands, but Charles gave him a shrug.
“I am afraid I cannot say,” he said. “It must be here somewhere, though,” he added brightly.
Lady Hathaway planted her walking stick and wrapped both hands around the ram’s head at the top. “My husband, Sir Geoffrey, was a distinguished collector,” she informed Stoker loftily. “He acquired all manner of specimens on his travels throughout Asia and the Antipodes. When we returned from India, many things were simply stored here and never completely unpacked. His priority was building his observatory,” she added, pointing upwards with the walking stick. “I daresay he would have got round to sorting the specimens eventually.”
Besides the trophies huddling under dust sheets, there were innumerable crates and boxes, pasted with shipping labels and clearly untouched since the Hathaways had resumed living at the Hall.
Stoker looked about him with a faint air of desperation.
“We will search them all,” I soothed.
“Certainly you will,” Lady Hathaway put in. “There are treasures to be found in these crates, no matter what Mary might say.” She spoke her granddaughter-in-law’s name as if it were a swear word, and Charles made the sort of soothing noises one might make to settle an upset cow.
“Now, Granna, you know Mary just wants the Hall to look its best. The sooner these dusty old things are cleared away, the sooner we can hang the new wallpaper and the paintings she has been buying.” He turned to us. “This is to be the picture gallery. We mean to commission a painting of Mary and the children to hang here with her collection of still lifes. Very fond of still lifes is my Mary.”
He turned away to help Stoker find a pry bar, and Lady Hathaway muttered under her breath, just loudly enough for me to hear. “One must question the taste if not the actual intelligence of a woman whose greatest interest is painted bowls of fruit.”
I turned to her. “You do not approve of Mrs. Hathaway’s planned changes to the Hall?”
She shrugged. “It is a matter of indifference to me. The Hall is nothing, nothing compared to our house in India. That was a palace,” she said. She leaned near and I could smell aniseed pastilles on her breath. “An actual palace. In my day, people knew how to treat their betters,” she said, her mouth turning down. “The Indians were grateful to us, you understand, Miss Speedwell. We brought roads and medicine and education. We showed them how to live.” I resisted the tart rebuttals that came to mind and began to count to one hundred as she carried on. “It is all quite different now, of course. The mutiny saw to that.” I realized with a start that she was speaking of the Sepoy Mutiny.
“But that was more than thirty years ago,” I pointed out. “Surely some things have changed for the better.”
“Well, India is firmly part of the empire now, so one must be pleased about that.”
No, one must not, I thought but did not say.
“But so much else has changed for the worse. I do not approve of these new practices, Miss Speedwell,” she said sternly. “It is bad enough that Mary wants a folly on the moor and a conservatory, but she intends to install flushing water closets,” she added in a furious whisper.
“I have one at home,” I told her. “It is far more convenient.”
“Convenient!” She sniffed. “What is convenience compared to decency? It is not at all nice to think of pipes and what may be in them. And do you know what else that means? Drains, Miss Speedwell. One cannot think of drains with equanimity.”
I made a noncommittal noise that I hoped might pass for something akin to sympathy.
She shook her head, the jet beads at her ears trembling in outrage. “No, these modern ideas are decidedly not in good taste, but what can you expect from a person not born to the station she now occupies? Mary has married up, you see. Her father was in trade.” The last word was a harsh whisper.