Venable stared at him blankly, then at the dead woman, lying crumpled on the polished planks. At the unfired gun that had fallen from her hand.
“You saved my life,” he murmured, his face pale.
Charlie stared back at him. “Yes,” she said, sounding almost regretful. “Whether it was worth saving is quite another point. What had you done to her that she was prepared to kill you for it?”
Venable seemed not to hear. He couldn’t take his eyes off Layla’s body. Something about her was familiar, but he just couldn’t remember her face.
“I don’t know – nothing,” he said, cleared his throat of its hoarseness and tried again. “She’s a nobody. Just a waitress.” He took another look, just to be sure. “Just a woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dyer said, and his eyes were on Charlie Fox. “From where I’m standing, she’s a hell of a woman, wouldn’t you say?”
THE MYSTERY OF CANUTE VILLA by Martin Edwards
“Why should an innocent and respectable lady of good family and in her late middle years, never touched by a breath of scandal, be haunted by a mysterious stranger whose name is entirely unknown to her?”
The woman in the railway carriage nodded. “You have expressed the problem in a nutshell.”
Her companion tugged at his beard. “It is a tantalizing puzzle, I grant you, my dear Mrs Gaskell.”
As the train rattled round a bend, she said, “I only hope that I have not called you up to Cheshire on a wild goose chase.”
He gave a little bow. “Your summons was so intriguingly phrased, how could any man fail to hasten to your side?”
“Of course,” she said, “I am profoundly grateful to you for having agreed to spare me a little of your precious time. I realize that there are many calls upon it.”
More than you know, dear lady. Charles Dickens suppressed a sigh. It had been his intention to evaporate – as he liked to describe it – from London to spend a few pleasant days with Ellen Ternan. However, as no doubt she had calculated, Mrs Gaskell’s telegram had fascinated him. Within an hour of its receipt, he was on the train heading north to Manchester. He had an additional motive for racing to her side, being determined to seize an opportunity to improve relations between them. Once they had been on first class terms, but ever since their wrangles over the serialization of North and South, she had displayed a stubbornness unbecoming (if not, sadly, uncommon) in any woman, let alone the wife of a provincial clergyman.
He smiled. “Do you remember why I used to call you Scheherezade?”
She blushed. Not, he was sure, because her memory had failed, but rather from that becoming modesty that had entranced him in the early days of their acquaintance.
“You must recall my saying I was sure your powers of narrative can never be exhausted in a single night, but must be good for at least a thousand nights and one. Besides, your message was so teasing that no man with an ounce of curiosity in his blood could possibly resist.”
She permitted herself a smile. “You have not lost your gift for flattery, my dear Mr Dickens.”
“Charles, please.” He gave an impish grin. “Scheherezade.”
As if to cover her embarrassment, she looked out of the window at the fields and copses flying by. “We have reached Mobberley. Soon we shall be arriving.”
He clapped his hands. “I eagerly await my first sight of Cranford! Tell me, meanwhile, more about your friend Mrs Pettigrew.”
“Ah, dear Clarissa. It is difficult for me to think of her by the Major’s name. To me, she will always be Clarissa Woodward or, at a pinch, Mrs Clarissa Drinkwater.”
“You have met her second husband, Major Pettigrew?”
“Only once, at the wedding.”
“You do not care for the Major or his habit of bragging about his service in India?”
“I did not say that.”
“And I did not ask if it were true,” he said briskly. “I asserted it as a fact, inferred from your manner whenever you have mentioned the fellow’s name.”
Elizabeth cast her eyes to the heavens, but managed to suppress a sigh of irritation. “I suppose I can hardly complain if, having been enticed here by the invitation to conduct yourself as a detective, you start to play the part at every conceivable opportunity.”
He laughed. “We have that fascination for the work of a detective in common, do we not? I recall that splendid little piece you wrote for me on disappearances. Let me say, I am thankful I live in the days of the Detective Police. If I am murdered, or commit bigamy, at any rate my friends will have the comfort of knowing all about it.”
“Your memory is remarkable.”
“So is my inquisitiveness. Why have you not seen fit to inform the local constabulary of Mrs Pettigrew’s distress?”
“For no other reason than that, in her letter, she pleaded with me not to do so.”
“And why, pray, do you think she was so reluctant for the matter not to be investigated?”
“I suspect that her husband would not approve. She appears to be reluctant to do anything without his permission.”
Dickens peered out of the window. “The station approaches!”
His companion gazed out of the window. “The coming of the railway has made such a difference to Knutsford. The embankment divides our old chapel from the rest of the town.”
“The march of progress, my dear Scheherezade!”
They were to be conveyed to the Royal George Hotel, where Elizabeth had booked quarters at the rear overlooking the Assembly Rooms. The journey was short but, with his characteristic zest for exploration, Dickens insisted that they be taken the long way round, by way of Princess Street and the Heath, so that he could imbibe the air of a town he had known hitherto only from the pages of his companion’s novel.
“That is Clarissa’s home,” Elizabeth said, pointing towards a grey and forbidding double-fronted house standing in grounds that overlooked a large tract of open land. “Canute Villa takes its name from the ancient king who is supposed to have forded a river here. It is one of the finest houses in Knutsford.”
“A splendid situation. She and the Major can have scant need to practise the elegant economy which I associate with Cranford.”
“I prayed that she would be happy.” She spoke with such soft sadness that Dickens needed to strain to hear over the clatter of hooves on the cobbles. “But when she wrote to me, her terror was evident. I was appalled. Clarissa has known her share of tragedy, but her spirit has always been strong enough to enable her to face the vagaries of Fortune.”
Dickens nodded. “Merely to read the letter is to recognize the fear instilled in its author by the events she describes. You have known her since childhood?”
“She is seven years older than myself, but our families, the Woodwards and the Stevensons, lived a few doors apart from each other and were always on good terms. My brother John was friendly with her twin brother Edgar.”
Dickens knew a little of John. His death had been one of the tragedies of Elizabeth Gaskell’s life. He was a seaman who had sailed the Seven Seas but been lost when his sister was seventeen; some said he was drowned, some that he had been set upon by brigands in the sub-continent, and there was even a picturesque story that he had been killed by pirates. Elizabeth had drawn on her grief when writing; disappearances haunted much of her finest work.
“She married a man called Drinkwater, you say?”
“Thomas was a solicitor, a man fifteen years Clarissa’s senior. He was thought to be a confirmed bachelor, but on meeting my friend at a party, he was quite swept off his feet. Clarissa could have had taken her pick of men, but she saw in Thomas a steadfastness that she found admirable.”