Castle of Secrets (6 page)

‘There is no
money to waste on large fires at Stormcrow.’

He appeared to
become lost in his thoughts, and she said no more.

He roused
himself.

‘Very well.
The fire will do now. You may return to your duties.’

‘Very good, my
lord.’

Helena
left the room, relieved
that she had escaped unscathed, and made her way to the housekeeper’s room,
where she hoped she might find a letter or a diary entry, perhaps,  that would
tell her something about her aunt’s decision to leave the castle, and her
intended destination.

As she opened the door, she breathed
in the scent of lavender, and it awakened memories in her. She remembered how,
as a little girl, she had helped her aunt to pick flowers and herbs, and how
her aunt had shown her how to plait lavender. Her aunt had always had a plait
of it attached to her belt. She remembered summer holidays when her father had
been alive, and, in her mind’s eye, she saw her mother and Aunt Hester cutting
flowers and herbs, whilst she and her father sat on a rug beneath the chestnut
tree with their books. She could remember the pulled thread on the rug, and she
could feel its softness beneath her fingers.

She went in,
thinking how lucky Aunt Hester was to have such an attractive room to work in.
It was newly decorated in cheerful colours, with flowered wall hangings echoing
the gold damask of the sofa. There were vases on the console tables, and
although they were empty, they were still decorative.

Diamond-paned
windows looked out on to the side of the castle. It was a bleak prospect at
present, but under a summer sky it would be attractive. Her own position as a
housekeeper had not been so grand, and her room had been a dingy room at the
back of the house, with a window looking on to a brick wall. She had almost
been glad to leave it when the
Hamiltons
had moved to
Wales
– almost, but not quite, as she had needed the position, and
without it she had been reduced to sharing a room with Caroline.

She went over
to the hearth, where there was a fire burning in the grate, noticing that the
shelves had been dusted and the furniture polished. She set down the coal
bucket and then let her eyes wander over the chintz sofa set beneath the window
and the matching chair that was placed by the fire. There were two console
tables, one by the chair and one by the sofa, and in the middle of the room was
a desk. She went over to the desk, which had a number of pigeon holes down the
side and across the top. On the desk was a large book, an inkstand, and a
shaker of sand. In front of it was an inlaid chair.

Helena
sat down and opened the
book. It was in the form of a diary, but it held nothing useful, simply details
of the work that needed to be done around the castle. The notes stopped just
over three weeks before.

She turned her
attention to the pigeon holes, but they revealed nothing more than sample
menus, letters to and from tradesmen, and other household items. Then she
opened the first drawer.

What did Effie
find when she looked for some string?
Helena
wondered.

But a search
of the drawers found nothing more than some household documents, some paper, a
quill pen and a large bunch of keys, which she took out and fastened to her
belt. There was nothing more of interest.

So what did
Effie see?
she asked herself.
Why did it upset her? And where has it gone?

But perhaps
Effie had seen nothing, and was simply nervous because she had looked through
the housekeeper’s desk.

As
Helena
looked round the room she
began to think that this must be the case.  The chintz upholstery and the
placid ticking of the clock were reassuring. Their very ordinariness reminded
her that her aunt had been an ordinary woman, and that there must be an
ordinary reason for her disappearance.

Maybe she
did, indeed, have a sister
, thought Helena,
or perhaps, a half sister she had never
mentioned. Maybe there was a reason for Aunt Hester not mentioning her. Perhaps
they had been estranged.

Perhaps
Aunt Hester wrote to me
, she thought,
but perhaps the letter was lost in the
post, or perhaps my aunt gave it to the footman to post, and he forgot about
it.

The more she
thought about it, the more likely it seemed. There were very few servants in
the castle, and with no one to keep them to their tasks, something like posting
a letter could easily be overlooked.

She saw a row
of bells on the wall by the fireplace, and rang the one labelled: ‘Footman’.
Soon afterwards the footman entered the room. He was wearing livery,  but some
of the braid was missing from his coat, and the buttons were dull. His person
reflected the same carelessness. His hair had been combed, but a tuft stuck up
at the back, and his nails were dirty.

He stood in
front of her with a strange expression. It was part insolence and part
insinuation, and there was a cunning look on his face. He rubbed his hands
together in an unpleasant manner and looked at her from the corner of his eye,
as though he was sizing her up.

She wondered
if he had looked that way at her aunt, or if he was simply doing it to her
because of her youth.

‘Your name?’
she asked him, injecting a note of authority into her voice: if he thought he
could patronise her, he would soon learn his mistake. She had dealt with difficult
footmen before, and would most probably have to do so again.

‘Dawkins,
Missus,’ he said.

‘Dawkins. I
have summoned you here to ask you how Mrs Carlisle went about sending her
letters. I will have my own letters to send, and I need to know the routine at
the castle. Do I leave them on my desk when they are ready to go?’

‘I don’t come
in the housekeeper’s room, not unless I’m sent for,’ he said.

There was
something self consciously virtuous about his reply, and Helena found herself
thinking that he probably did enter the housekeeper’s room uninvited, though
what he could want there she could not imagine, unless it was to snoop through
the desk, in order to see if there was anything of use to him.

‘What am I to
do with my letters, then?’ she asked.

‘You have to
leave them in the hall. There’s a pewter bowl on a table under the window at
the far end, in between two suits of armour. His lordship franks them, then I
takes them to the village.’

‘I see. And
when do they go? Every week? Every day?’

‘Whenever his
lordship sees fit,’ he said.

‘And what
happens to the letters until then? Do they remain in the bowl?’

‘Nowhere else
for them to go,’ he said with an insolent grin.

Helena
felt herself bridling.

‘Did that suit 
Mrs Carlisle?’ she asked.

‘What d’you
mean?’

‘I mean, did
she ever ask you to take one of her letters, even if his lordship had no
letters to send? Perhaps she had something that needed to go urgently, and
could not wait.’

‘What kind of
thing?’ he asked craftily.

‘I have no
idea,’ said
Helena
quellingly. ‘Anything
that might need to be sent in a hurry, and might perhaps require a speedy
answer.’

‘No, missus,
there were nothing like that.’

‘Did she send
letters often, then?’

A sly look
crept into his eye, and
Helena
was sure he knew something she didn’t. It seemed he could
say more if he wanted to.

‘No, missus. Once
a week, as a general rule. She weren’t a great letter writer.’

‘I see.’ She
paused, to give him a chance to say more, but he remained silent. ‘Very well,
thank you, Dawkins.’

‘Thank you, Missus.
Will that be all?’

‘No. Not
quite. I need to find out a little more about the castle, to help me with my
duties. Tell me, what other servants work here? There is a butler, I suppose?
And his lordship must have a valet.’

‘There’s no
butler. The last one died, and his lordship never replaced him. And his
lordship’s valet left when . . . he don’t have a valet any more. He likes to
see to himself. There’s not many as’ll work in the castle. Servants are hard to
come by.’

He puffed his
chest out, and she realized that he was taunting her, daring her to interfere
with him, and warning her that, if she did, he might decide not to work there
either.

‘Then what
other servants are there in the castle besides you, Mrs Beal, Effie and Miss
Parkins?’

‘There ain’t no
more.’

‘None? How did
Mrs Carlisle keep the castle clean without any maids to help her?’

‘It weren’t
always that way. There were two maids here when Mrs Carlisle worked here. Sally
and Martha, they were. But they wouldn’t stay in the castle.’

‘Oh? Why not?’
asked
Helena
, wondering if he would
tell her more than Mrs Beal had done.

‘It was the
stories, Missus. About his lordship.’

Helena
felt her pulse quicken,
but she gave no sign of it.

‘What kind of
stories?’ she asked.

‘People likes
to talk in a village,’ he said. ‘There’s always been things said about the
Stormcrows.’

‘A lot of
nonsense, I expect,’ said
Helena
encouragingly.

He gave
another sly smile.

‘You, at
least, do not seem to believe them, or you would not still be working here,’
she said, hoping to coax him into saying something further.

‘Oh, I’m safe
enough. Nothing’ll happen to me. There’s never anything happened to a man,’ he
said.

He was toying
with her, trying to unsettle her.

‘I’m glad to
hear it. But  surely there hasn’t been anything happening to women, either?’
she asked.

He said
nothing.

‘Why did the
maids leave?’ she prompted him.

‘It were on
account of  Mrs Carlisle,’ he said, his desire to talk overcoming his desire to
have her in his power. ‘Disappeared in the dead of night, she did, and Sally
said she heard crying from the east wing, up in the attic, and the following
day, Martha said she heard it, too. “It’s a cat,” I said to them, but they
wouldn’t listen. Gave in their notice and went home.’

Helena
felt a shiver run up her
spine.

‘Did you find
it?’ she asked. ‘The cat?’

‘Didn’t need
to. The crying stopped, so it must have got out. But it’s better not to go near
the attics, all the same.’

‘Oh? Why?’

‘Rotting
floorboards, Missus. Dangerous, they are. Could give way at any minute. Anyone
who goes up there could go crashing right through and break their necks.’

He gave her a
devious look, and the thought flashed through her mind that she would not like
to be alone with Dawkins in the attic.

She questioned
him further about his fellow servants, but he had nothing to say, other than
that Mrs Beal was a good cook and that Effie was a clumsy thing.

‘And Miss
Parkins?’ asked
Helena
.

He hesitated,
and she thought:
He is afraid of Miss Parkins, too
.

When he had
told her all he could, she dismissed him.

Once he had
left the room, she took her letter out of her pocket. She had not been going to
send it, thinking that she would see Caroline soon, but she changed her mind.
She wanted to see if a letter sent from the castle would arrive. If it never
reached its destination, then it was possible that Aunt Hester had written to
her, but that Aunt Hester’s letter had never reached its destination, either.

Finding
sealing wax in the drawer, she was about to apply it to her letter when she
paused. If Dawkins read it – and having met him, she would not put it past him
– she did not want him to discover that she was not Mrs Reynolds. She found
paper and a quill, and she rewrote the letter. As she began to write, she was
pleased with the pen’s smoothness, and was reminded of Aunt Hester, who had
prided herself on her quills. She had told
Helena
on more than one occasion that she
could not hope to write a neat hand with an ill-mended pen, advice that had
gone home, for
Helena
had always admired her aunt’s handwriting.

She thought
for a few minutes, composing the letter carefully in her head, and then began
to write.

My dearest
Caroline,

I have
arrived at the castle, and his lordship has given me the position as his new
housekeeper. I have not found what I was looking for, but I have not despaired
of finding it either, and mean to persevere. I am sure you will be pleased to
know that I am well. You will not have time to write me more than a line or
two, I don’t suppose, but let me know if you are well, and if you hear anything
of H, please let me know. You may send your reply to me here at the castle.
Address it to: