Death at Dawn (13 page)

Since childhood, I’d never felt so humiliated. When
she brought an envelope from under the ledger, I took it without looking at the writing on the envelope, thanked her and marched out.

At least dear Daniel had not failed me. It was sweet to have this link with my father so I carried it back upstairs to my attic room at last and turned the envelope over, expecting to see Daniel’s fine Italic hand. It was like running into a thorn hedge where you’d expected lilacs – not Daniel’s hand after all but the upright, spiky characters of Mr Blackstone.

That was all; no greeting, no signature. When I read it a second time I saw that it contained a small threat. I had not told him the mare’s name. He’d discovered that for himself and used it, I guessed, quite deliberately to show I could hide nothing from him. Well, I was being a good, obedient spy. In my first few days I’d found out something he wanted to know and had even seized a chance of getting it to him with the help of the daughter of the house.

As for Celia, I’d by no means made up my mind about her. Our talk kept coming back to my mind and sometimes I managed to convince myself that she was nothing
more than a spoiled young lady with a lively sense of drama. Then I’d remember the tone of her voice saying she might be in danger and at least half believe it. In any event, we had her brother’s approval of our friendship, though whether that would continue if he knew she wanted me to carry secret letters was another matter.

Celia paid a visit to the schoolroom just before the end of our morning session. The surprise on the faces of her half brothers and sister showed that this was not a usual event.

‘Miss Lock, may I steal you, please?’

As it was so close to their dinner time I told the children they could put their books away and joined her in the corridor. She was wearing a morning gown of cream mousseline, with a pale apricot sash.

‘It was so obliging of you to offer to help with my sketching. It’s driving me quite distracted.’

I realised that she’d said it loudly for the benefit of Betty, who’d come hurrying out of her room to see who the intruder was.

‘I can’t claim to be an expert,’ I said.

‘You’re being modest, I’m sure. I’m working on some
thing that simply won’t come right. Would you come and give me your opinion?’

‘Now?’

‘Why not? Betty can see to the children, can’t you, Betty?’

I followed her along the corridor and down the stairs to the first floor, where the family had their rooms. The pale green carpet was soft as moss underfoot, the doors deeply recessed into carved and gilded frames. Celia opened a door into a sunny room with a blue canopied bed, blue velvet window curtains, two chairs and a sofa upholstered to match. It was pleasantly untidy, a white dress thrown over one of the chairs, a novel upside down on the sofa, and a canary singing in an ornate Turkish-style cage by the window, seed scattered all round it on the carpet. A half-open doorway showed a dressing room with a screen and a full-length mirror.

‘Where’s your sketch?’ I said, humouring her.

‘Don’t worry, it’s quite safe to talk. I’ve sent Fanny down to the laundry to find my pleated silk collar. It will take her a long time because it’s at the bottom of my drawer in there. My letter’s ready.’

She brought it over to me from her desk. It was plump and scented, addressed to Philip Medlar Esq at an address in Surrey. She dropped a smaller packet on to my lap.

‘There’s some money in there for you to give whoever takes it to the post. I’ve tried to think of everything, you see.’

She was anxious to please me. Perhaps she’d caught
the look on my face when she gave me the letter. The smell and feel of it had convinced me that it was nothing more than a love letter after all and she’d not been truthful with me. Still, it suited my plans and I wasn’t being wholly truthful with her.

‘How soon can you take it? Tomorrow?’

‘Yes. If I leave at first light, I can be back by the time the children have to be got up.’

She knelt on the carpet and took my hand between both of hers.

‘Oh, I am so very grateful. I do believe you’ve saved my life.’

‘Not quite as dramatic as that, surely.’

‘Oh, you can’t know.’

I said, as gently as I could manage, ‘Are you so very scared of your stepfather?’

‘I am scared of him, yes, but that isn’t the worst of it. Miss Lock … Oh, I can’t go on “miss”-ing you. What’s your name?’

‘Lib—, Elizabeth.’

‘Elizabeth, there are things I mustn’t tell you. But do believe that I might be in the most terrible danger of being put in prison or … or killed even, for something that isn’t my fault at all.’

I wanted to say that there was no need for this drama because I’d carry her letter in any case, but I bit my tongue and slipped my hand from hers.

‘I’d better go back to the children.’

‘How shall I know you’ve sent it?’ she said.

‘That bench we sat on, in the flower garden – if I’m back safely, I’ll pick a flower and leave it there.’

‘Yes. I mustn’t be seen talking with you too much, specially now Stephen’s back. He notices more than Mama.’

‘Where has your brother been?’

‘He stays in London, mostly. He’s studying to be a lawyer.’

I wondered whether to tell her about my conversation with Stephen. It would have reassured her, of course, but I was still annoyed by her dramatics.

Or perhaps I was falling into the spy’s habit of secrecy.

I got back to the schoolroom just in time for my share of minced mutton and green peas. In the afternoon, as a treat for the children, we were allowed the use of the pony phaeton to take them over to the keeper’s cottage on the edge of the estate to see a litter of month-old puppies. Mrs Beedle had half-promised Charles he might have one for his own, if my reports on his progress in Latin and arithmetic were satisfactory. It was good to see them playing and laughing with the puppies, so much more at ease when they were away from the house.

‘I shall tell her he’s doing well, whether he does or not,’ I whispered to Betty.

‘Yes. Goodness knows, they don’t have an easy life, poor mites.’

Betty was watching Henrietta clutching a wriggling puppy and not caring about her dress for once. It seemed
an odd thing to say about three children who lived lives of such privilege, but that evening I had an illustration of what she meant. The bell rang as usual, and we escorted them downstairs. Only the immediate family were present, including Stephen. He was sitting on a chair beside his mother’s sofa, showing her something in a book. Lady Mandeville was smiling, more animated than I’d ever seen her, as if he were a lover instead of a son. When James went running to her, she hugged the boy as she usually did and spoke to him, but still with half her attention on Stephen. Celia was sitting by the square piano painted with swathes of roses and forget-me-nots, but didn’t look as if she’d been playing it. She said good evening, mostly to Betty rather than me. Mrs Beedle was by the window, sewing as usual, and Sir Herbert was standing by the fireplace, reading letters and paying no attention at all to the rest of his family. Henrietta, who hated to be ignored, went over and stood beside him.

‘Papa, may I have a puppy too?’

She said it in a wheedling lisp, so at first I wasn’t sorry when he ignored her and went on reading.

‘Papa, may I …?’

He gestured to her to be quiet. Lady Mandeville called across from the couch.

‘Henrietta, come here and stop bothering your father.’

Anybody could tell the letter was annoying him. His face was going red, his shoulders rigid. But the child wouldn’t budge.

‘Cowards. Miserable, temporising pack of damned cowards!’

He shouted it at the top of his voice, crumpled the letter and threw it into the empty fireplace. As he turned, his elbow caught Henrietta on the side of the face. He might not have intended it, but when she cried out and went sprawling on the carpet, he made no move to pick her up.

‘Herbert, the children …’ Lady Mandeville protested.

James had started to cry and was clinging to her, so she couldn’t get up and go to her daughter.

‘Damn you and damn the children.’

Betty and I ran to Henrietta. Sir Herbert cannoned into Betty and almost knocked her off her feet as he made for the door to the hall. As he went out, I heard him giving an order to the footman about hock and sandwiches in the library. By now Henrietta was howling and even Charles was biting his lip and looking scared. Mrs Beedle was the first of the family to recover.

‘Henrietta, please stop that noise. Celia, see to James. Betty, have you arnica ointment in your room?’

She wanted the children out of the drawing room, back to the safety of the schoolroom and, in spite of James’s reluctance to leave his mother, we managed it.

We calmed the children, fed them bread and milk and put them to bed. Henrietta had a bruise developing on her jaw where her father’s elbow had struck. Betty and I didn’t discuss what had happened until we were
sitting at the schoolroom table over a pot of tea.

‘Is he often as bad as that?’ I said.

‘He’s always had a black temper, but it’s been worse in the last few months. A lot worse.’

‘How does Lady Mandeville stand for it?’

‘What can she do?’

‘She could leave, couldn’t she? She must have family or friends.’

‘And lose the children? Children are a father’s property, remember. If she walks out of here, she’ll never see them again. So what choice has she got?’

‘Can’t anybody do anything? What about the son? He seems fond of his mother.’

Betty gave me a look. I had the impression that what had happened downstairs had made a bond between her and me.

‘Mr Stephen’s part of the trouble. If it weren’t for him, she might stand up for herself more than she does.’

‘Why?’

Betty took her time deciding whether to answer, finishing her cup of tea and swirling the dregs round to look at the pattern the tea leaves made.

‘After university, he took up with some bad company and got himself into debt.’

‘Gambling debts?’

‘Mostly. Other things as well. He doesn’t have any money of his own, of course, not a shilling. So …’ She hesitated, looking into her cup. ‘He got put into debtors’ prison.’

She whispered it, her eyes scared. I was perhaps not quite as shocked as she expected me to be. The fact was, some of my father’s friends had been put into debtors’ prison from time to time and seemed to regard it as no worse an inconvenience than an attack of fever or rheumatics.

‘Not even the gentlemen’s part of the prison,’ Betty insisted. ‘In there with the common criminals without even a blanket to cover himself and rats running over him. And Sir Herbert let him stay there for three whole weeks.’

I thought of Stephen’s elegant manners and quizzical eyebrows failing to impress the rats and did feel rather sorry for him.

‘Lady Mandeville was on her knees to Sir Herbert, literally down on her knees, begging him to have her son out,’ Betty said. ‘He could have settled the debts ten times over and hardly missed it, and everybody knew that. But he wouldn’t do it, not until Stephen had learned his lesson, he said. Ever since then, she’s been terrified. That was what started … you know.’

She tipped a hand towards her mouth, as if holding a glass. She might have said more, but Henrietta was crying out and we had to go to her. What with that and James wetting his bed, we had a hard night with them, and it was past one in the morning before they were all three sleeping. Betty said she’d listen out for them, so I could go upstairs.

I didn’t sleep because I was too scared about the
journey I must make in the morning. At first light, before even the earliest maid could have begun her cleaning duties, I crept down the back stairs to the drawing room and retrieved from the fireplace the crumpled letter that Sir Herbert had flung there. It was the kind of thing that spies did, after all. I took it back to my room to read. It had the address of a gentleman’s club at the top and was in small, cramped writing.

I added a postscript to the note I’d written to Blackstone and sealed up the letter along with it. Then I put the note and Celia’s letter into my reticule and went stocking-footed down the back stairs so as not to wake the maids.