Spider Light(42)

She needed to give Maud a fictitious husband, an unknown man. The more Thomasina thought about it, the more she could see that the whole thing would work better without Simon. It should be possible to take Maud away for a few weeks, after which they could announce that there had been a private marriage ceremony in London–a long-standing but secret romance, they would say; people liked that kind of thing. Then a tragic honeymoon accident. Everyone would be sympathetic, and there would be no raised eyebrows at the child, no stigma surrounding his birth, because it simply would not occur to anyone in Amberwood that innocent little Maud Lincoln might have misbehaved before marriage.

She and Maud would choose a name for the man–even Maud would understand that she could not have a child outside marriage–and they would think up a few extra details to make it really plausible.

Maud’s father would have to be squared, but Thomasina could deal with George Lincoln. He could probably be paid to keep quiet; as well as being a social climber, he was greedy for money. Toft House, he often said proudly, was an expensive old place to maintain.

As she crossed the park, her brain busy with all these details, one other thing kept uncomfortably crossing Thomasina’s mind, and it was something she could not quite ignore. That faint fluttering heartbeat she had felt in Simon’s chest…had she felt it or hadn’t she? She relived the moment when she had bent over to examine him the first time. She had felt something, but when she tried again, there had been nothing, she was sure about that.

But as she went into the house, she had to make an effort to ignore the thought that Simon had not really been dead when she slammed the steel doors of the kiln room.



The last person Bryony Sullivan had expected to see loping along Quire’s carriageway was the Reverend Skandry, but as she returned from an evening stint of duty at Latchkill there he was, like a thin black spider capering through the twilight. He hailed her almost at once, which meant Bryony could not whisk along the path to the cottage and pretend she had not seen him.

The last time she had met Reverend Skandry had been the previous afternoon at Latchkill. A patient in Forrester Wing, annoyed with the meagre dinner, had prophesied various grisly fates for the Prout, which had included being consumed by swarms of locusts and immersion in burning lakes where chained devils roar. The Prout, recognizing these allusions as biblical, had sent Dora Scullion for Reverend Skandry. Scullion had run all the way to St Michael’s Church and back, but as Bryony could have told anyone, Skandry had been of no help at all, and so poor Scullion had then gone pelting along to Bracken House to get Dr Glass.

Walking home, Bryony smiled at the memory of how Dr Glass had called Reverend Skandry a canting old preacher unable to recognize plain hysteria when he saw it. He had unbuckled the restraints from the patient and thrown them into the corridor. After this he said that if ever he found restraints used again in Latchkill he would take the place apart brick by brick to find every buckle and strap, and would then make a bonfire of the whole lot in the town square.

Reverend Skandry had taken his leave, his dignity in tatters, and Bryony had hoped it would be the last she would see of him, but here he was in the park, calling out to her in his thin reedy voice.

‘Ah, Miss Sullivan. Late duty at Latchkill, was it? Dear me, there’s quite a flurry going on at Quire, I fear.’

Clearly there was to be no escaping the man, so Bryony asked what the flurry might be.

‘It’s Mr Simon Forrester,’ said Reverend Skandry. ‘He seems to have vanished from Quire House without a word of explanation. Miss Thomasina is very worried.’

‘Vanished?’ Bryony did not know Simon Forrester very well, but he was not someone you would associate with vanishing. ‘How peculiar. When did he vanish? I mean–when was he last seen?’

‘Not for two days, seemingly, and Miss Thomasina has asked me to make some inquiries–I am going along to the railway station in Chester first thing tomorrow morning. I am very glad to give my help, of course.’

He would be very glad indeed, the two-faced old hypocrite. Anything to ally himself with Quire House. By the end of the week, he would be making it seem as if he and Thomasina Forrester were bosom friends.

Bryony said, ‘I daresay he’ll turn up. Have you thought of asking at the post office? A telegram might have come for him, and he might have had to leave suddenly.’


Reverend Skandry conceded that this was a possibility, although he did not, it appeared, entirely approve of telegrams. He did not think the Lord had intended messages to be sent whizzing across hundreds of miles by electric power. He had even been in a house recently where there was a telephone which he had thought shockingly intrusive.

‘Useful, though,’ said Bryony.

‘That’s as maybe, Miss Sullivan. And I make no doubt Mr Simon will be found safe and sound. Gentlemen do not simply vanish without trace.’



There was a single light burning in one of Quire’s windows until very late that night. If Bryony curled up on the windowsill of her bedroom she could see it shining through the trees. Was it Thomasina who was wakeful up there worrying about where her cousin might be? Byrony was not inclined to think so; she did not think Thomasina ever worried about anything very much.

Everyone said Quire was a beautiful house, but it was a bit too symmetrical for Bryony’s taste. That was probably because she could remember the sprawling old house on Ireland’s west coast, where sunshine poured in through the latticed windows and the gardens were a romantic wilderness of wild primroses and broken stone statues crusted with lichen.