EIGHT

M oran showed Patricia around the estate. The Dowager, he explained, and the grandchildren, Austin the chauffer, Doctor Moran, the housekeeper, the maid, and a butler lived in the private part of the house which was shut off from the public part, where visitors came by for public tours on weekdays. Guides took care of the public side, and there was an extensive cleaning and grounds staff, but it was for the most part separate except that Richard and Carla administered the public side.

The doctor showed her around the grounds surrounding the house. On all sides, the great mansion was bordered by a vast park of lawn and gardens, surrounded by the huge oak trees of Pemberley Woods. The house itself was a large stone building of several stories, peppered with tall windows, French doors leading to the portico which surrounded the building (or on higher levels to narrow balconies with wrought-iron railings), and cupolas and turrets. The original manor house, Moran told Patricia, was first built in the mid-1500s. Additions had been made over the ensuing centuries, and rebuilding had occurred when a fire had destroyed a portion of the house in the seventeenth century. Mary’s Tower, where Patricia had been taken last night, dated from the 1580s, shortly after the death of Bess of Pemberley. It was up on a hill behind Pemberley House, and it was said that Mary, Queen of Scots, had spent some time there.

Next Doctor Moran and Patricia crossed a small bridge over a stream and he took her in through the vast entrance hall, through rooms lined with priceless and superb works of art, including countless statues and paintings from different eras. Her father had emphasized art and music as well as the sciences in her education—in fact he was an accomplished violinist—and she recognized works by several great painters, among them Rembrandt, Hallward, Picasso, Scarletin, and the Frenchman Horace Vernet. Not for the first time, she wondered if her late husband Denis Verner was distantly related to the French painter. One of her father’s tutors in criminology—some said the world’s greatest detective—had been related to Vernet. Her father, and therefore she, had also been a distant relative of the Great Detective. Thus, perhaps she had been very distantly related to her husband. Not closely enough in degree to make their relationship incestuous, not like Richard and Carla, if Richard and Carla were actually having sex.

It didn’t matter anymore, anyway. Denis and her father and mother were all dead and she was alone.

Moran next showed Patricia the magnificent dining-parlour, a large, well-proportioned room with a pleasing aspect looking back out onto the park and a lake and Pemberley Woods. The rooms were lofty, the furnishings elegant, and Patricia felt relieved that overall the house was handsome and did not emulate the outré decoration of her guest room, but rather retained the graceful and tasteful spirit it must have had in the day when Mr. and Mrs. Fitzwilliam Darcy held the estate.

Then Moran took her down the Great Hall of Pemberley House. The side to their left was covered with a gallery of portraits, large and small, while the right side had massive windows that allowed the sunlight to flow in like golden honey. She imagined Lizzy Bennet touring the same hall almost 200 years ago with Mr. and Mrs. Gardiner, conducted by Pemberley’s housekeeper, and envisaging herself the mistress of Pemberley.

Moran steered her to one painting in particular. It was a handsome portrait of Fitzwilliam Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet themselves, painted shortly after their courtship and marriage. Happiness, integrity, and prosperity practically leaped off the canvas. A later portrait showed the Darcys with their son, Fitzwilliam Bennet Darcy. Moran described the next portrait as that of the son and his wife, Agatha Jansenius.

Next Moran led her to the picture of her great-grandfather. He was tall man with a red beard, a hooked nose, and piercing grey eyes.

“William Cecil Clayton, the sixth Duke of Greystoke. He died in 1909.” Patricia was startled. Richard had come up beside them without her noticing. Either she was so engrossed in the various depictions of her family that she wasn’t paying attention, or he was stealthier than she would have credited him. Or both. At any rate, his presence was not entirely welcome to Patricia, but he didn’t seem to notice. He carried on, sipping at the generous bourbon he carried in his right hand. The latter was un-English, but since bourbon was not easy to get in England, Patricia guessed he must have disliked Scotch.

“What a wonderful array of paintings, d’Arcys and Darcys and Claytons,” Richard said. “Of course, your grandfather and father are not amongst them.”

Patricia knew her grandfather and father were of a line considered illegitimate. She didn’t need Richard Deguy to tell her that. In an effort to change the subject and still remain pleasant, Patricia asked Doctor Moran, “How did the sixth Duke—my great-grandfather—come to possess Pemberley House after the Darcys? It’s my understanding that I count both the Darcys and the Claytons among my ancestors.”

“That’s true,” Moran replied. “Let’s move down a bit farther and I’ll show you some of the older paintings, the d’Arcys. This is William d’Arcy, the first Baron of Lambton.”

“The madman I told you about last night, coz,” Richard interjected, and Patricia had to admit, looking at the Baron’s cruel countenance framed between the coronet’s six silver balls and the Elizabethan collar, that the artist had captured the gleam of lunacy in the Baron’s eyes.

“Next to him is his wife Bess d’Arcy, or Bess of Pemberley,” Moran said. “It sounds like Richard here has already filled your head with ghost stories about Bess.”

“Yes,” Patricia said. She noticed Bess resembled Carla quite a bit.

“William murdered Bess in 1570, the day their daughter Jane d’Arcy was born. He later also slit Jane’s throat just as he had Bess’, on her twenty-second birthday, and was finally committed to the madhouse. Jane’s older brother, Christopher d’Arcy—here’s a picture of him—was left to carry on the line. One of his descendants, Ursula d’Arcy, married Ralph Arthur Caldwell-Grebson. There’s their family portrait. Your great-grandfather, the sixth Duke of Greystoke, was descended from Ralph and Ursula.”

“Then this so-called Pemberley Curse, which was enacted when Jane was murdered and passed on through Christopher and his descendants...” Patricia mused. “My great-grandfather was also subject to it?”

“If one believes the legend, yes,” Moran said. “But Richard, you mustn’t pester her with these ghost stories. We don’t want to scare her off.”

Richard shrugged.

“I’m not scared,” Patricia said.

“That’s the spirit,” Richard said, and he chuckled.

Moran shook his head, and took Patricia by the elbow. He led her farther down the Hall and indicated another portrait. “This is Sir Gawain Darcy. He purchased Pemberley from Fitzwilliam Bennet Darcy when the latter underwent a period of economic hardship. Later on, your great-grandfather purchased the estate from Sir Gawain, keeping it in the family, as it were.”

He took her back down to the end of the Great Hall near where they had entered. “This is Edith, Duchess of Greystoke. Now the Dowager Duchess,” he amended. The painting showed her as a woman of thirty. She was beautiful, with a straight mouth over a little chin, aquiline-nosed, dark-eyed, with dark eyebrows. A forceful character showed in her portrait. “She was originally Edith Jansenius, of a rich, Christianized Jewish family.”

At Patricia’s sharp look, Moran nodded. “Yes, very good. Edith Jansenius was the niece of Agatha Jansenius, who married Fitzwilliam Bennet Darcy. Fitzwilliam and Agatha’s daughters, Edith’s cousins, were Athena and Delhi Darcy. As I said, all in the family. Here we are, this is the wedding portrait of Athena and her husband, the fifth Duke of Greystoke. Their son, John Clayton, predeceased his father by a few months. 3 Thus, when the fifth Duke perished, the title passed to his younger brother, your great-grandfather.”

Patricia nodded and then moved back to the portrait of Edith, Duchess of Greystoke. “How do you and Carla fit in all this?” she asked Richard.

“The Duchess took in father years ago. She was traveling in Italy and became friends with a couple at a resort in Palermo. They were killed in an accident and she adopted their son, our father. She outlived him,” he said, and raised his glass to his lips once more. “Perhaps she’ll outlive us all.”

“I see,” Patricia said.

She also saw a strong resemblance between the Deguy twins and the Duchess’ portrait. Perhaps she imagined it. She took a long look at Richard Deguy again.

He smirked at her and said, “Enough dawdling amongst the ancestors, now, Patricia. She’s ready to see you.”