The Suspicion at Sanditon (Or, the Disappearance of Lady Denham) Page 26

  “So you separated—and then what?”

  “Miss Heywood headed back to the portrait room, while I tried to catch up with Mr. Hollis. We had witnessed him entering your apartment and stealing something from Archibald Hollis’s clothing trunk—a miniature portrait, of whom I know not. He then took it to the long gallery and examined it beside a portrait of Archibald. For what purpose, I have no idea.”

  Darcy and Elizabeth exchanged glances. They knew whom the miniature depicted. Did Josiah Hollis know of—or suspect—the affair between Archibald and Ivy Woodcock? If he did, of what interest was it to him?

  Darcy gestured toward Josiah’s unconscious form. “Obviously, you managed to ‘catch up’ with him.”

  “Not immediately. First, I went to the portrait room, expecting to find you, Miss Heywood, Miss Brereton, Mr. Granville, and perhaps even Mr. Hollis or the returned Sir Edward. When I instead found the room vacant, I came up here hoping someone had returned to his or her bedchamber—and discovered Mr. Hollis, as you see him now, only a few minutes before you appeared.”

  Upon the last mention of his name, Mr. Hollis stirred and emitted a powerful snore. Darcy took it as a positive sign that he was drifting closer to consciousness.

  Elizabeth shook him by the shoulder. “Mr. Hollis? Mr. Hollis, wake up.”

  “Yes, Mr. Hollis, do wake up,” Darcy echoed, hoping his more forceful tone would penetrate the gentleman’s inebriation. It seemed to help; Hollis stirred again, like a child who does not want to awaken. Darcy went to him and gave him a firm shake.

  “I cannot believe Sir Edward was so careless as to bring the wrong watch, with so much depending on it,” Elizabeth said. “How soon do you think we can anticipate his return?”

  Sidney shifted uncomfortably. “We might not see him at all again tonight. But if we do, he will not have Sir Harry’s watch in his possession.”

  “Why not?”

  He hesitated. “Because I do.”

  He withdrew the watch he carried in his own fob pocket and gave it to Darcy for inspection. Elizabeth rose and came forward to examine it as well. Sure enough, it was the gold timepiece from Sir Harry’s portrait, inscribed with the late baronet’s name and date of ascension to the title.

  Darcy, who had just begun to relax his guard with Sidney, regarded him warily as he handed the watch back to him. “How did you come to possess this?”

  “I possess other information that I have been withholding—again, in confidence for someone else.” He returned the watch to his pocket. “However, for the safety of all the missing ladies, I believe myself obligated to divulge it now.” He paused, appearing uncertain as to the reception his news was about to meet.

  “I know who is responsible for Lady Denham’s disappearance.”

  Thirty-one

  “I have been a very liberal friend to Sir Edward.… For though I am only the Dowager my Dear, and he is the Heir, things do not stand between us in the way they commonly do between those two parties. Not a shilling do I receive from the Denham Estate. Sir Edward has no Payments to make me.… It is I that help him.”

  —Lady Denham, Sanditon

  Elizabeth regarded Sidney in astonishment. “Who?”

  “Lady Denham herself.”

  It was the answer she had least expected. What could he possibly mean by that statement—that some action on the dowager’s part had provided the catalyst for her kidnapping? Darcy appeared equally surprised.

  “I happened upon her when she was in London last Michaelmas,” Sidney continued. “I had business in Gracechurch Street, and as I passed a pawnbroker’s shop, she came out its door in such a state of agitation that she did not even recognize me. I stopped her and enquired whether she was in need of assistance. Glad for the sight of an old friend, she asked me to hail her a hackney-cab, admitting she was too distraught to walk on public streets. I offered to see her safely to her lodgings, and she gratefully accepted, sending her maid ahead by foot. Once inside the cab, however, Lady Denham said she did not want to return to her cousins’ house immediately, and asked if we could go to a park and simply drive until she collected herself.

  “In the course of our drive, she revealed that she had visited the pawnshop in hopes of reclaiming some articles she had taken there many years ago following Archibald Hollis’s death, but had come to regret parting with. Though prepared for the likelihood that they had been sold, she was upset to discover that the pawnbroker himself was no longer at that address, and that a new broker now conducted business there. He had no information about the disposal of any of her items, but invited her to take a look at the finer goods he had on display—perhaps she could acquire suitable replacements? She declined, but as she turned to go, she spied an item in his case that she had not pawned, but immediately recognized: Sir Harry’s watch.

  “She asked the broker when he had acquired it, and from whom. He maintained his client’s anonymity, but offered enough details—thinking to cultivate a sale—that Lady Denham knew without doubt that Sir Edward could not claim the watch had been stolen or had otherwise found its way to the pawnshop without his knowledge—the baronet had pawned the timepiece himself.”

  Elizabeth wondered why Sir Edward would do such a thing. A baronet presently building a cottage ornée on his estate could not be in such desperate circumstances that the income from a pawned watch would make a difference. But then, she wondered at many of the behaviors she had observed in him.

  “You can imagine Lady Denham’s outrage at Sir Edward’s having sold for coin what ought to have been priceless in sentiment,” Sidney continued. “She also took the sale as a slight against herself, for Sir Harry had not specifically bequeathed the watch to his nephew—it had been a gift she chose to give. After all she had done for him and Miss Denham, to be thus treated wounded both her pride and her heart. She questioned the affection he and Miss Denham had shown her through the years, and wondered whether it had been purely mercenary in motive. With no children of her own, she had intended to leave him her estate, but now reconsidered.”

  “If he valued a personal remembrance so lightly, what would he do with the whole fortune?” Elizabeth said.

  “Precisely. Yet, who else was there to whom she could bequeath it? After decades of spurning her Brereton cousins’ overtures of friendship out of the belief that they were financially inspired, she was discovering during her present visit that they were rather good people after all, but she still did not know any of them very well. And her Hollis relations from her first marriage had given her such trouble in the past that she did not want to bequeath anything to them. ‘I have half a mind to just leave my fortune to your brother to invest in Sanditon,’ she said. ‘He could name a building or two after me, and at least I would be remembered and appreciated by the strangers who come to visit.’

  “‘Now, Lady Denham,’ I replied, ‘there are people among your acquaintance who appreciate you—I, for one, and I have no need of your estate to motivate my friendship. You simply have to determine who your true friends are, and you will know what to do.’

  “This set her thinking, and she calmed down, and by the time I escorted her to the door of her cousins’ house, her spirits had improved. I left believing that I had done a good service by her, and thought no more of it.

  “She, however, thought very much about it, for when I next saw her—at the hotel here in Sanditon, just before I met you with Tom—she told me she had devised a plan by which she could determine who among her friends and relations held genuine affection for her. She would host a dinner party, stage her own disappearance, then observe the guests’ reactions to see who applied themselves toward efforts to find her, and who used her absence as an opportunity to achieve their own ends. When I pointed out that her true friends would be put to considerable distress over her welfare, she said their anxiety would be of short duration and meet with great reward. ‘Besides,’ she said to me, ‘you of all people cannot criticize the plan—it was your suggestion in the first pla
ce.’

  “I countered that I had suggested nothing so specific, but she was decided. That very morning, from a window in the long gallery, she had witnessed a clandestine meeting between Sir Edward and Miss Brereton that caused her to doubt even Miss Brereton’s loyalty toward her, and she could not rest until she determined the young lady’s allegiance along with everyone else’s. Further, she insisted that I assist the scheme by observing from within the company and reporting to her at least once before she deemed it time to reveal herself. She also entrusted Sir Harry’s watch to my care, with instructions to produce it when Sir Edward admitted he could not. It was her intention to appear at that time, to confront him and any others who had shown themselves to be less than sympathetic regarding her disappearance. Not wanting to provoke her displeasure, or cause her to doubt my own sympathy toward her, I reluctantly agreed.”

  “So you have known all along that Lady Denham was in no danger, and allowed this hoax to continue unimpeded.” Darcy’s tone revealed his disdain.

  “Not quite—it has progressed in directions I did not anticipate.”

  “What of the other missing ladies?” Elizabeth asked. Beside her, Mr. Hollis rolled onto his side but remained asleep. “How do they fit into Lady Denham’s plan?”

  “Well, that is just it—they do not,” Sidney replied. “There was never any mention of other people disappearing. When Susan vanished, I was as surprised as the rest of you, and thought it must be a coincidence—that she had indeed wandered down to the stillroom or some other place, and would reappear shortly. Either that, or perhaps Lady Denham had also tapped my sister to aid her design.

  “When Diana disappeared, I became more concerned—she is not by nature one to quietly follow somebody else’s plan without trying to take control of it herself. Nor would she countenance her brothers being put to distress over both herself and Susan missing. For that matter, even given Lady Denham’s motive for the scheme, I questioned whether she would go so far as to generate that much anxiety within our family, when it was the Denhams, Hollises, and Breretons whose loyalty she wanted to test.”

  “Why did you not divulge all to me then?” Darcy asked.

  “Because that is also when the note about Sir Harry’s watch appeared—which was the signal for me to meet Lady Denham within the hour. I resolved to question her about Susan’s and Diana’s disappearances and, regardless of her answer, tell her that I was done with the scheme and that it was time to reveal herself.”

  “How did she respond?” Elizabeth asked.

  “She did not respond at all—though I went to our designated meeting spot, she never appeared. I went back again after Miss Heywood and I parted ways, and still saw no sign of her having been there.”

  “So Lady Denham is indeed missing?” Elizabeth said. Mr. Hollis stirred again. He seemed to be responding to their voices—hers most particularly, as she was in closest proximity.

  “Or she is somewhere in the house continuing to spy on us,” Darcy replied. “As you and I saw for ourselves, there are places specifically designed for that purpose. She could be in any room of this house—perhaps even listening to us right now.”

  “What sort of places?” Sidney asked.

  “Hidden observatories behind the walls of various rooms,” Elizabeth explained. “We discovered one with a spy hole into the study and suspect there are many more, connected within the house by interior passages, and to points outside the house through old postern tunnels.”

  “I suspected the house might hold spy holes or something of that nature,” Sidney said. “When I asked Lady Denham how she planned to conduct her observation, she was rather vague, so I figured she had some means she did not want to reveal. But of tunnels, I had no inkling they existed.”

  “We believe Mr. Hollis might be familiar with them.” Though Darcy lowered his voice, Mr. Hollis stirred at the mention of his name.

  “He did live in this house as its heir for a time.” Sidney paused. “The presence of tunnels is disturbing news—it means that even if Lady Denham is still in the house, the other missing ladies could be anywhere.”

  “So you do not believe their absence is related to Lady Denham’s plan?”

  “Since Susan disappeared, I have been trying to think of what possible end the abductions could serve for Lady Denham, and have found none. I do not believe their absences are her doing, but rather, the work of another party. Further, if Lady Denham herself is indeed now truly missing, I believe the same individual is responsible for all their disappearances—especially now that you tell me of tunnels.” He looked pointedly at Josiah Hollis and continued at a muted volume. “First Granville, then later Miss Heywood and I, followed Hollis as he moved through the house behaving suspiciously. If he is not the perpetrator himself, he is surely in collusion with the villain.”

  “I think it is time we forced him to wake and asked him some direct questions,” Darcy said.

  Doing so proved no easy matter. Mr. Hollis resisted coming to consciousness, and even when propped into an upright position, remained half asleep. His speech was slow, and he seemed to require much effort to find the words in his brain and operate his tongue to form them. He leaned his head against the wall behind him and opened his eyes but halfway, when he opened them at all.

  “How much wine did he drink?” Darcy asked.

  Sidney thought a moment. “Three, perhaps four glasses.”

  “That is not much, compared to what I have seen many gentlemen consume of an evening.”

  “True,” Sidney said, “and he strikes me as a man who can hold his share of wine.”

  On the positive side, along with Hollis’s person, his obstinacy was also sedated, rendering him less abrasive—compliant, even. His responses were simple and free of acrimony, if slow and slurred. He denied knowledge of the kidnappings, but did admit familiarity with the house’s architectural secrets.

  “Of course I know about the hidden corridors,” he said, his s’s stretching into hisses. “Discovered them myself when I was a boy, and used them to create mischief for the servants—until Uncle Archibald caught me at it. Didn’t use them again until the night she returned.”

  “By ‘she,’ you refer to Lady Denham?” Darcy asked.

  “No—the other one. But Lady Denham knew of the spy holes, too, and used them that night. As for the tunnels—” He released something like a chuckle, but in his somnolent state it came out more like a hiccup.

  “Do you know where they lead?”

  “One of them led to her becoming Lady Denham.”

  Darcy released an exasperated sigh and glanced to Elizabeth. “He is making no sense.”

  “Then it is up to us to make sense of it,” Elizabeth replied. She looked at Mr. Hollis and addressed him as if she were attempting to extract information from Lily-Anne. “Mr. Hollis, what have the tunnels to do with Lady Denham’s acquiring her title?”

  “They are how she acquired Sir Harry.” Mr. Hollis sat up a bit straighter and rubbed his temple. “One of the tunnels leads to Denham Park. She and the baronet wed so soon after her mourning ended, that I have always believed they must have been carrying on during it—perhaps even before Uncle Archibald died. The tunnel would have made it easy for her to go to him, or he to her, unseen.”

  “Denham Park?” Elizabeth said. “Does Sir Edward know of the tunnel?”

  “Ask him. And if he tells you no, ask him how he managed to return here dry as dust from our search of the grounds, when all the rest of us got caught in the rain. Or did none of you notice that?”

  Elizabeth, Darcy, and Sidney all looked at each other. “He also was dry when he returned with the false watch,” Sidney recalled.

  “I found a cobweb on him earlier in the evening,” Elizabeth said.

  “When was this?” Darcy asked.

  “After Susan disappeared—when we thought she had merely wandered off. He claimed to have been searching for her in the attics.”

  Sidney frowned. “Why did he think m
y sister might have gone there?”

  “He thought the Hollis ghost might have taken her. Or perhaps Ivy Woodcock.”

  Darcy released a sound of exasperation. “He and those ghosts! Every time a lady has disappeared tonight, he has tried to convince us that—”

  He stopped. An unsettling thought occurred to all of them at once.

  “That ghosts were responsible,” Elizabeth finished. She mused a moment. “Was Sir Edward in someone else’s company during any of the disappearances—someone who could vouch for his whereabouts?”

  “I do not believe he was,” said Sidney.

  “Sir Edward—the kidnapper?” Darcy shook his head. “He is not that clever. And Miss Denham is among the missing women. Why would he abduct his own sister?”

  “That little crosspatch is more likely to be an accessory to kidnapping than a victim of it,” said Mr. Hollis. “Trying to pare down her competition for that poor Granville fellow she’s been trying to reel in all night.”

  “Competition such as Lady Denham?” Darcy asked. “That is absurd.”

  “So is Sir Edward most of the time,” said Sidney. “All I know is that five ladies are missing, including my sisters and Miss Heywood. And that I am tired of wandering around this house in the dark, looking for answers.”

  So was Darcy. Especially if the baronet could provide them.

  “Mr. Hollis, where is that tunnel?”

  * * *

  Josiah Hollis remained too groggy to walk all the way to Denham Park; indeed, he had difficulty even reaching his bed.

  “That is the last time I drink elderberry wine,” he said as Darcy and Sidney assisted him into his chamber, where he could sleep off both the wine and its lingering influence. Elizabeth waited within earshot just outside the door. “I cannot recall its ever affecting me like this before,” he mumbled.