The Suspicion at Sanditon (Or, the Disappearance of Lady Denham) Read online

  Elizabeth asked Miss Brereton which party she wished to be part of, and was unsurprised by her choice. “I would much rather go with you. I have tolerated enough of Sir Edward’s imprudence and folly for one day, and I am too anxious on Lady Denham’s behalf to sit idle.”

  Upon returning to Sanditon House, they looked for Mr. Granville in the portrait room, but did not find him. Elizabeth wished she knew what had prompted his removal in the first place; his prolonged absence made her uneasy.

  “His continued absence makes me uneasy as well,” Darcy said, “but we cannot continue to wander this house in the dark searching for people. We spent half the night looking in such a manner, and we cannot afford to lose more time. We are better off extracting additional information from Josiah Hollis and seeing where that leads us.”

  They found Josiah Hollis exactly where they had left him. He wakened more easily this time, and Darcy brought him to the portrait room so that the ladies might be present while he was questioned. Mr. Hollis glanced from Miss Heywood to Sidney with an inexplicable look of amusement, but said only, “Nice to see you both again.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Sidney replied evenly. “I would offer you more wine, but I am guessing you might decline.”

  Mr. Hollis winced. “I believe I have had enough for one night. I should have held out for port.” He settled into a chair. “I was sleeping soundly. What is this gathering about?”

  “Do you recall speaking with us earlier about the hidden corridors and spy holes within this house?” Darcy asked.

  “Vaguely.”

  “You said you had used them to cause mischief as a child, but upon being caught, never used them again until the night ‘she’ returned. To whom did you refer?”

  Hollis paused a long moment, as if deliberating whether to answer cooperatively or offer some smug remark.

  “Ivy Woodcock.”

  “Ivy Woodcock!” Darcy’s tone was sharp. “Do not tell me that you, too, insist on perpetuating the fantasy that the ghost of Ivy Woodcock haunts Sanditon?”

  “I said nothing about a ghost,” Hollis replied. “When I last saw her, Ivy Woodcock was very much alive.”

  “When was this?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Forty years ago—about a month after my uncle married. She was old, as old as he.”

  “How do you know it was she?”

  “Uncle Archibald and I were talking one evening as he walked to his apartment to retire for the night. When we reached his apartment, he invited me inside to continue our conversation. The new Mrs. Hollis was yet downstairs—my uncle, being so much older, maintained earlier habits than she, so there was no chance of our disturbing her in her adjacent rooms. We entered, and both of us were astonished to discover an elderly woman seated in his dressing room. A little girl—a wisp of a thing, perhaps six or seven—was with her.

  “He stared at the woman for a full minute at least, and she just looked back at him, neither of them speaking a word. She had an odd expression—sad and happy at the same time. Finally, he whispered, ‘Ivy?’ She lifted her hand, which held a folded piece of paper, and extended it toward him, saying, ‘I found your letter.’

  “My uncle pulled his gaze away from her long enough to ask me to leave him. He said that we would finish our discussion on the morrow, and added that no one else need know about the visitor.

  “Of course, that stoked my curiosity beyond anything. When I left the chamber, I went straight to a hidden room that looked into my uncle’s apartment.”

  “Surely he was aware of the room?” Darcy said.

  “In ordinary circumstances, he was perfectly aware of it. But that night, I do not think he was aware of anything but her.”

  Thirty-five

  He told her that he had never stopped hoping she was alive, and asked her where she had been all these years. She stepped out of their embrace and said, “That is what I have come to tell you.”

  The little girl became restless. Archibald found an old sketchbook and some pencils to occupy her, and Ivy seated her at the dressing table. He watched the child as she began to draw, then raised his gaze to Ivy. “She looks very much like you did on the day we first met. Is she your granddaughter?”

  “Ivy Rose is indeed my granddaughter,” she replied. “And yours.”

  At this, Archibald was overcome. “We…?” His voice broke; he could not even finish a sentence. Ivy took him by the hand and led him to the sofa.

  She told him that after he left for Trinity Term at Oxford, she realized she was with child. Somehow his father, Victor Hollis, learned of it, and appeared at the hermitage one day while Ebenezer Woodcock was out. He offered her a bargain: She could leave Sanditon voluntarily, with enough money to find some other man to help her raise her child; Victor would arrange transportation to some remote part of northern England and create evidence in Sanditon that would imply she had died. Her father would be allowed to live out his years in the hermitage, but she would never communicate with Archibald, her father, or anyone else in Sanditon again.

  If she refused Victor’s offer, he would see to it that her bastard was never born—in an “accident” that left no question as to whether she had died—and her father would be driven out to spend his final days as a homeless wanderer.

  Though it broke her heart, Ivy accepted the deal. “If I could never see you or my father again, at least I could bring your child into the world and raise him.”

  “‘Him—’” he repeated. “The baby was a boy? We have a son?”

  She smiled sadly. “We did. A beautiful boy who grew into a fine man and spent many years improving the family’s fortune before meeting and marrying Ivy Rose’s mother. He died two winters ago of pneumonia. Ivy Rose and her mother live with me now.”

  With the money Victor Hollis paid her, Ivy was able to pass herself off as a sailor’s widow, and married a decent man who raised her son as his own. They had a comfortable, content life together, and Ivy grew to love him—though never in the way she had loved Archibald. When he died, she mourned him—then decided it was time she put her own past to rest. Figuring Victor was long dead and a threat to her no more, she journeyed to Sanditon not knowing whether Archibald himself yet lived. Upon her arrival she learned that he was very much alive—and had just wed someone else.

  The news broke her heart a second time—if only she had come sooner. She would not begrudge him at last finding happiness; she had managed to snatch her share of it in the wake of Victor’s manipulation. Despite having come all this way, she decided she would not attempt to meet him; she would not interfere with the path his life had taken.

  However, she could not resist visiting the grotto once more—it would be where she made peace with her past, where she would finally have a chance to say good-bye to Archibald.

  At twilight, she and Ivy Rose sneaked onto the grounds and made their way to the grotto. Discovering the flowing fountain with the statue of herself, which Archibald had installed upon inheriting the estate two decades after her disappearance, almost proved her undoing. Every memory they shared passed through her mind, and her resolve to avoid him wavered. When she found the letter he had left for her all those years ago, she was indeed undone. She could not leave—the grotto, the village, this earth—without laying eyes on him one last time.

  She found the tunnel entrance as she remembered, and entered the house as he instructed. Once inside, she used the hidden corridors and spy holes to determine which suite was his. And waited.

  When she finished telling her story, they embraced again. Archibald continued to hold her, sharing what his own feelings had been at the time of their separation and in the many years since—how he had returned to Oxford a shadow of himself, and after completing his studies, returned home to a house that felt even colder than it had before. How he had resisted his father’s urging him to marry and produce an heir, because he could not imagine sharing his life and his home with anyone but her. How in his mature years, as the master of Sanditon House
, conscious of the weight of responsibility he bore, he had reconsidered marriage, but could find no woman exactly like her. It was not until he stopped trying to find Ivy in every woman he met, but looked instead for someone nothing like her, that he found Philadelphia Brereton. Theirs was a companionate marriage, one that he entered to assuage decades’ worth of loneliness in his golden years.

  “You understand that I cannot be disloyal to her,’ Archibald said. “Though I spent most of my life dreaming of a reunion with you, I have wed her, and I cannot betray those vows.”

  “I know,” she said. “If you could, I could not love you as I do.”

  They talked and wept and even laughed, as the perfect accord they had once known re-formed, until the hour grew late. Finally, both reluctantly acknowledged that it was time for Ivy to leave. Ivy Rose had abandoned the sketchbook and, after playing a while with and on the chamber horse, had fallen asleep on its seat. Archibald stroked the child’s fine, blond hair—the shade his had been in his youth. The gesture inspired Ivy to take up a penknife lying on the desk and cut off a single curl of Ivy Rose’s hair. “So part of her can be with you always,” she said.

  Archibald lifted the child, and she snuggled sleepily into his shoulder. He held her in silence, his eyes closed as he absorbed the sensation of holding his granddaughter in his arms. After several minutes, he opened his eyes once more and looked at Ivy.

  “I want to give you some money.”

  She shook her head. “I did not come here looking for money.”

  “For Ivy Rose,” he insisted. “For my grandchild. I could not provide for you and our son when you most needed me, but I can do something for her.”

  Again, she shook her head. “I took your father’s money, and hated myself every day for it. I felt as if I had sold what was priceless between us for pennies and pounds—as if I had sold myself.” Her voice wavered, and she wiped away tears. “He was so condescending as he handed it over—he made me feel mercenary and ashamed. I accepted it only to survive. Please, Archibald, do not let us part like this—quarreling over money.”

  Ivy Rose stirred, responding to the distress in her grandmother’s voice. Archibald nodded in resignation: He would respect Ivy’s wishes. When he spoke, his voice was fierce with emotion.

  “I would give you anything—anything in the world within my power to give … but I will not give you money.”

  He asked for her address, which she provided; though they would not correspond, he wanted to know where she was in the world. He kissed her good-bye, and they embraced once more—a long embrace, for it had to last till the end of their days.

  And then she was gone.

  Thirty-six

  Most grievously was she humbled.… She did not learn either to forget or defend the past; but she learned to hope that it would never transpire farther.

  —Northanger Abbey

  “That is quite a secret you witnessed,” Darcy said. “What did you do with it afterward?”

  “Nothing,” Josiah replied. “Even when my uncle allowed Lady Denham—excuse me, Mrs. Hollis—to oust me from the house and his will, I maintained his secret.”

  “In all the years you have harbored resentment toward Lady Denham, and given all the things that have been said on both sides, you never told her any of this—if only to injure her feelings or pride?”

  “I did not have to. She already knew, because she witnessed it herself. As I came out of the observation room, I entered another that offers a different view of the apartment—and found her inside. I have no idea how long she had been standing there—how much she overheard—but she was weeping. We both started in surprise—two spies, suddenly face-to-face. I did not say a word—merely quit the room. I never alluded to what had passed in my uncle’s apartment, nor our chance meeting afterward.”

  Elizabeth suspected that this surprise encounter was the reason Lady Denham resented Josiah Hollis so much. He not only knew that her husband loved another woman more than he would ever love her, but also had witnessed her grief and vulnerability at the moment she discovered that painful fact.

  “In the trunk of Archibald’s old clothing that many of us borrowed this evening,” Darcy said, “there was a miniature portrait of a young woman. Do I assume correctly that it depicts Ivy Woodcock?”

  “Yes.”

  “I understand there is also a miniature of Archibald from about the same time.” He gestured toward the case in the corner. “Is it among those in that case?”

  “No, that one depicts him at an older age. If there is one from his Oxford years, I have never seen it and do not know what has become of it.”

  “Ivy’s miniature has disappeared from the trunk. Is there anything you would like to tell me about that?”

  Josiah paused. “What makes you think I know something?”

  “The trunk is in Archibald’s former apartment, which you just admitted to knowing inside and out. What did you want with the miniature?”

  Again, he hesitated, looking at them all, apparently deliberating whether to cooperate or stonewall.

  What had Josiah wanted with it? Elizabeth wondered. Surely a likeness of Ivy Woodcock, while priceless to Archibald, held little sentimental value to Josiah. Sidney had said he observed Josiah holding it beside the gallery portrait of Archibald in his youth—which meant their affair had been on Josiah’s mind earlier tonight, enough that he entered the apartment to steal her miniature. Did it have some bearing on Lady Denham’s disappearance?

  “Mr. Hollis,” Elizabeth said gently, “not only is Lady Denham still missing, but now Mr. Granville is, as well. Whatever your feelings toward Lady Denham, can you not set them aside? If the miniature has anything to do with tonight’s events, please tell us.”

  “Mr. Granville has disappeared?” Josiah asked. “When did this happen?”

  “After you left the portrait room, Miss Heywood and I departed, as well,” Sidney said. For some reason, this elicited a smirk from Josiah. “We sought Mr. and Mrs. Darcy, but did not find them. When I returned, Granville and Miss Brereton were gone. As you can see, we have since found Miss Brereton, but she does not know where Mr. Granville went.”

  Josiah regarded Sidney with a long, contemplative look. “How well do you know Mr. Granville?” he finally said.

  “We have been friends for several years.”

  “Have you ever met his mother?”

  “I cannot say that I have. Why do you ask?”

  “Do you happen to know her Christian name?”

  “I barely knew my own mother’s Christian name—it is hardly something that comes up in conversation.”

  “Might it be Ivy Rose?”

  Elizabeth gasped.

  “From the moment Mr. Granville arrived, he looked familiar to me,” Josiah said. “When you drew our attention at dinner to the similarity he bore to the portrait of Archibald in the dining room, I wondered whether he might be a distant Hollis connection, or perhaps a relation through Archibald’s mother. But there was something else—or should I say someone else—familiar in him. With all the talk of Ivy Woodcock tonight, I finally realized who else Mr. Granville resembled: Ivy—and Ivy Rose, the little girl who accompanied Ivy here forty years ago … which would make Ivy Rose old enough now to be Mr. Granville’s mother. I took the miniature to hold beside my uncle’s portrait so that I could see both Archibald’s and Ivy’s features at once.”

  “And what did you determine?” Darcy asked.

  “There is no doubt in my mind that Mr. Granville carries their blood.”

  Darcy turned to Sidney. “Do you think Lady Denham knew Mr. Granville’s identity when she invited him to tonight’s dinner? Or that Granville himself knows of their connection?”

  “To my knowledge, they have never met, and she certainly gave no indication of familiarity with his name when she issued the invitation.” He paused. “Though—now that I think about it, when I told Granville I had accepted the invitation on our mutual behalf, he asked a great many questio
ns about Lady Denham. I ascribed them to natural curiosity about our hostess and the sort of evening he could anticipate, but in hindsight, an unusual number of his queries pertained to Archibald Hollis—more than one might expect regarding a hostess’s long-deceased first husband. He also was interested in the fact that the marriage produced no issue, and curious about who might inherit the Hollis holdings upon Lady Denham’s death.”

  “Regardless of Lady Denham’s knowledge or ignorance of Mr. Granville’s lineage,” Darcy said, “it sounds to me as if Mr. Granville is well aware of any connection that might exist between himself and the Hollis family. The question is whether he has acted on that information tonight, and if so, how and to what end. We need to determine, as best we can, where in this house Mr. Granville has been since his arrival, and what he has been doing—or has had the opportunity to do.”

  “Do you think he is involved with Lady Denham’s disappearance?” Sidney asked. “I cannot believe that of him.”

  “Whether we want to believe it or not, in the interest of Lady Denham’s welfare we must consider the possibility,” said Darcy.

  Miss Brereton sank down on the sofa, where Mr. Granville had sat beside her earlier. “But he seems like such a nice gentleman. He was so attentive—offering his aid, bringing me wine.…”

  “I don’t know about you,” Josiah said, “but if you ask me, the effects of that wine were no gift.”