“It was razed to the ground because of the corruption of the monks.”
“Well, that was the point of the Reformation.”
“I mean, it was a place of great cruelty,” Jessamine said. “Cruelty and secrets, presided over by evil men, until the peopleof Dartmoor tore it down because no such acts of darkness should be concealed in a house of God.”
“Gosh,” Zeb said, nonplussed by the sharp left turn into melodrama. “Odd site to pick for a house, then. Or not for Walter, I suppose. Actually, this sounds awfully likeThe Monastery. Dark deeds in the cloisters.”
“Like—?”
“The Monastery, by Walter Wyckham. You’ve not read our grandfather’s books?”
“No, none. There is one about a monastery? Oh, I must read it!” Jessamine clasped her hands enthusiastically. “Is it here?”
“There’s a shelf of Walter Wyckham books, but I’m not sure I’d start with that one. It’s a bit, uh—it caused something of a scandal at the time. Well, quite a large scandal. Actually, he never published another book, and became a social pariah.”
“Really? Why?”
The Monasterywas Walter Wyckham’s last and oddest work, written against the current of his increasingly proper era. It was stuffed with torture, distorted religion, and sexual depravity thinly veiled by the kind of allusion that made it, if anything, more disturbing. Zeb was bang alongside sexual depravity in his reading matter as a rule, butThe Monasteryfelt like an unpleasant intimacy with an unpleasant mind. He classified it (from experience) as the kind of book that led one to toss oneself off to heated imaginings and feel thoroughly ashamed afterwards.
“It’s honestly rather nasty,” he said. “And awfully long too. He wrote better ones. I’d tryClara Lackadayfirst to see if youlike his style. That’s his first, with a heroine trapped in a great walled Gothic house, and terrible things happen. OrColdstone Abbey. That one has a marvellous villain, a sinister secretary who secretly orchestrates a lot of murders.” He gave a moment’s thought to Gideon last night, his face cadaverous in the gaslight, and had to repress a grin. “Or there’sThe Stone Circle, about a pack of druids killing people. They’re all quite terrifying.”
“I like the sound ofThe Monastery.” Jessamine looked determined. Oh well, it would do her no harm. If she was as ignorant as she seemed, the dubious parts would go over her head; if not, the book wasn’t the issue.
“Just don’t read them before bed or you’ll have nightmares,” Zeb said. “The Stone Circlescared the absolute daylights out of me, and there’s a scene with spiders inColdstone Abbeythat gives me the horrors even to think of.”
“Spiders?”
“Don’t talk to me about spiders,” Zeb said wholeheartedly. He hated and feared the things with a passion that was frankly embarrassing in a grown man. One of Gideon’s most marvellous traits had been the nonchalance with which he’d removed the creeping horrors—
Gideon. Zeb was supposed to be leaving because of Gideon, not reading about Beckford or chatting to cousins. He stood before he could get distracted again. “I’m very pleased to have made your acquaintance, Jessamine, but I was actually looking for Wynn before I came in here. Could you point me in his direction?”
Four
The library was in the east wing; Wynn’s study turned out to be in the west. Jessamine escorted Zeb there and left him at the door.
His cousin was seated at a desk, with Gideon at a second smaller table. Behind him was another painting of a woman from the dining room, in a familiar style. “Is that Laura again?” Zeb asked.
Wynn looked behind him as though he had to check. “The portrait? Yes. I commissioned Alma-Tadema in, what, ’81.”
Zeb knew enough about the financial side of the art world to know what that meant: Alma-Tadema’s prices were sky-high. He had to applaud Wynn’s loyalty to his disgraced sister-aunt. “It’s very fine.”
“Thank you, Zebedee. Or rather, Zeb.” Wynn put a certain amount of relish on the single syllable and its ending. “Zeb-b. I see Jessamine brought you here; I hope you two are getting along?”
“We met in the library,” Zeb said. He could feel Gideon’s gaze, and tensed his muscles so as not to look. “She told me about the house. Was it really built on the site of a monastery?”
“So I understand. There are…certain legends associated with the site.”
“I bet there are, if Walter had anything to do with it,” Zeb said. “I’d call this a pretty inconvenient place for any sort of establishment, religious or domestic, but I dare say nefarious rites and perverse sexual crimes are best done in isolation. Where are the ruins?”
“Ruins?” Wynn said. He sounded slightly off-balance. Zeb’s conversational style could have that effect on people.
“There must be some, surely? It’s not as if anyone’s used the land for anything else, and Walter Wyckham wouldn’t have demolished a real medieval ruin when he could have held moonlit dinner parties in it, or wandered around looking plangent and melancholy. Do I mean plangent?”
Gideon coughed in a strangled sort of way. Zeb realised he was digressing. “Anyway, I didn’t come to ask about that. Actually, I came to say I’m going to leave.” He saw Gideon’s jolt out of the corner of his eye but didn’t look. “I’d like to go today if you can spare the motor.”
“Leave?” Wynn demanded. “But you have only just arrived. We have had no time to get to know each other.”
“No, well, that is a shame,” Zeb said. “But I think I should go because—”
