The Lake of Wine

The Lake of Wine by Bernard Capes

Bernard Capes's "The Lake of Wine" opens at Whitelaw's Club in London in June 1800, where four gamblers—the fop Mr. Ladislaw, Lord Dunlone, Sir Robert Linne, and Major Dalrymple—play faro through the night until quarrels erupt: Dalrymple challenges Dunlone over the actress Mademoiselle Carminelle, then dies of apoplexy mid-outburst, while Sir Robert, ruined, flings his cards at Ladislaw and provokes a duel the timid winner tries to buy off. Resolved to die, Sir Robert hires a wherry to drift downriver and shoot himself, but a lawyer named Creel secretly boards the boat and talks him out of suicide with an argument that self-destruction is vanity and cowardice. Creel then reveals a bequest from Sir Robert's late father: the Hampshire estate of Delsrop, willed to Robert on condition that if ever bankrupt he take it up under the name Robert Tuke, abandoning his baronetcy. Renamed Tuke, Robert rides to Delsrop through desolate downs, meeting Betty Pollack, an innkeeper's granddaughter at Stockbridge, and a sinister earless angler named Brander before reaching the neglected, half-ruined manor. There he meets caretakers Dennis Whimple, a nervous, deferential man, and his simple-minded sister Darda, who shows Tuke her grim museum of curiosities, including a skull she took from a gibbet—the remains, it later emerges, of Turk, the estate's mysterious previous tenant, found stabbed and hanged on the downs in 1779 without inquest or identified killer. Tuke orders the skull destroyed, provoking Darda's hysteria and Dennis's collapse; the skull later reappears on a windowsill, deepening Tuke's distrust of Whimple. Tuke rescues Angela Royston, sister of the young Sir David Blythewood of Chatters, when she nearly falls into a disused well on the Delsrop grounds, and is drawn into the Blythewoods' social circle, flirting with Angela while also growing attached to Betty Pollack. At a party he meets the embittered Captain Luvaine, obsessed with a stolen ruby called "the Lake of Wine," lost by his father decades earlier—the same phrase Tuke has heard used cryptically by a rogue named Joseph Corby pressing Darda for information. Tuke grows convinced that shady figures lodging at the "Dog and Duck" tavern (Fern, Brander, and Corby, sheltered by landlord Breeds) are conspiring around some secret tied to his house, especially after Whimple is caught in secret exchanges with a gipsy-like woman and after an iron grating over the hidden "Priest's Hole" beneath the house shows signs of tampering. Confronting Breeds at the tavern, Tuke is drugged and wakes disoriented near Stockbridge, where Betty tends him. Returning home, he finds Darda holding a stone inscribed with an offer of "half the profits" if Whimple leads the conspirators to the Lake of Wine. Enraged, believing he has proof of Whimple's treachery, Tuke assaults him, locks Darda out of the house, and thrusts the terrified Whimple down into the Priest's Hole, sealing him in.

By Bernard Capes · First published 1896 · Genre: Mystery, Adventure, Historical Fiction · 55 chapters · 145,905 words

First lines

Some time in June of the year 1800 (as privately chronicled) there came a famous evening at Whitelaw's Club in St. James's Street, off Piccadilly, London. There and then -- according to the unattested evidence of an eyewitness -- Mr. Ladislaw lost his head, Lord Dunlone his mistress, Sir Robert Linne his fortune, and Major Dalrymple his life. Thus it appears these four were all losers, and each of a material property, save the first, who, alone of the quartette, commuted his self-possession for a very real equivalent in hard cash.

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Fantasy · Adventure · Magic · Mystery · Lake · Wine · Supernatural · Paranormal · Romance · Fiction · Novel · Literature

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