Death at Dawn (17 page)

‘Oh.’

‘So I hope you have those papers well wrapped up. It would be a pity if they were spoilt, after all your careful copying.’

‘Oh.’

I was numb, expecting instant dismissal or even arrest.

‘So you had better hurry, hadn’t you?’ she said.

‘Umm?’

She gave a sliver of a smile at my astonishment.

‘May I ask for whom you are spying? Is it the Prime Minister? I wrote to him and to the Home Secretary. I was afraid that they’d taken no notice of me, but it seems one of them has after all.’ Then, when I didn’t answer. ‘Well, it’s no matter and I’m sure it is your duty not to tell me. I did not know that they used women. Very sensible of them.’

‘You mean …?’

‘Only I must impress on you, and you must pass this on to whoever is employing you, action must be taken at once. This nonsense has gone quite far enough, and it must stop before somebody dies.’

No smile now. Her hand had closed round the top of her cane, as if she were trying to squeeze sap out of the long-dead ebony.

‘Somebody has already died,’ I said.

‘All the more reason to stop it then. What are you waiting for? Hurry.’

I went. When I looked back from a bend in the road there was only the oak tree, no sign of her.

There was a letter for Celia at the stables that Monday morning, but nothing from Mr Blackstone. On Tuesday, when Mrs Beedle came up to see the children at their
lessons, she gave not the slightest sign that she regarded me as anything but the governess.

‘I notice that you haven’t been coming down with the children, Miss Lock.’

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but there is a great deal to do for Mrs Quivering.’

In fact, the place cards were all written and she probably knew that, but she gave me a nod and corrected a spelling mistake on James’s slate that I’d missed.

‘Sharp eyes, Miss Lock. Sharp brains are all very well, but there’s nothing like sharp eyes.’

On Wednesday morning I made my usual journey to the livery stables, but the crows were sitting on the dead oak tree as usual and there was no sign of her. There were two letters that day, a thin one for Celia and a thinner one for me. I opened it on the journey back.

I crumpled it in my hand, furious. So Blackstone thought I could be dismissed with a pat on the head, like an unwanted hound. He had a debt to me – everything he knew about my father’s death. I intended to collect that debt, however long it took me.

Just one phrase of his note interested me:
when this
affair is over
… It added to the sense I had of things
moving towards a crisis. It increased all through the day as house guests began arriving in advance of the weekend. Every hour brought another grand carriage trotting up the drive and the children wouldn’t settle and kept jumping up to look at them. It was a relief when Mrs Quivering summoned me downstairs again.

‘Miss Lock, do you understand music?’

She had a new pile of papers on her desk and a more than usually worried expression.

‘Understand?’

‘There are musicians arriving tomorrow who, it seems, must have parts copied for them.’

‘Will they not bring their own music?’

‘It is something newly written. Sir Herbert ordered it from some great composer in London and is in a terrible passion … I mean, is seriously inconvenienced because the person delivered it late and with the individual parts not written out.’

‘I’ll do it gladly,’ I said, meaning it.

It was just the excuse I needed for keeping behind the scenes on the servants’ side of the house for the next two evenings. I’d often done the same service for my father’s friends, so it was a link too with my old life.

She dumped the score on my desk and left me to look at it. A few minutes were enough to show that Sir Herbert’s ‘great’ composer was a competent hack at best. The piece was headed
Welcome Home
and came in three parts: a long instrumental introduction, rather military in style, scored for woodwind, two trumpets and a side
drum. Then a vocal section for woodwind, strings, baritone and high tenor, with pinchbeck words about past glories and future triumphs, followed by an instrumental coda with so much work for the trumpets that I hoped they’d demand an extra fee.

I wondered if Mrs Beedle had proposed me for the copying work and, if so, what I was expected to gain from it. As the afternoon went on, I guessed that it had nothing to do with the music, but very much to do with keeping me in a convenient place for spying. Everything in a household, from kitchen maids with hysterics to guests mislaying their toothbrushes, came to the housekeeper’s room.

There was one particular incident that afternoon. The assistant housekeeper came into the room and whispered something to Mrs Quivering, who followed her out to the corridor. She left the door half open and I saw one of the under footmen leaning against the wall, pale-faced, with tears running down his cheeks. I knew him slightly because he sometimes brought coal and lamp oil to the nursery kitchen. His name was Simon and he was fourteen years old, tall for his age but childish in his ways. I believe he owed his promotion from kitchen boy to under footman to the fact that his shoulders were broad enough to fill out the livery jacket. Mrs Quivering gave him a handkerchief to mop his eyes and listened with bent head to what he was saying. I couldn’t hear him, but her voice carried better.

‘It is not your fault, Simon, but you must not talk
about it. While he is here, you will go back to working in the kitchen, then we’ll see. But if you talk about it, you will be in very serious trouble.’

Her assistant led the boy away and she came back into the room, heaving a sigh and not looking very pleased with herself. Soon after that, the butler came in, a sad-faced man named Mr Hall. They carried on a conversation in low voices, heads close together, with Mrs Quivering doing most of the talking.

‘I will not tolerate it, Mr Hall. The servants are under our protection. A word must be said.’

‘He won’t take it well.’

‘I am almost past caring how he takes it. I had Abigail in tears this morning too. She said Lord Kilkeel swore at her most vilely when he found her in his room. She’d gone in there to clean and make the bed, and he told her nobody was to set foot in there, for any reason, without his express permission. The poor girl was so terrified she’s been quite useless since. And now the other one and Simon. If you won’t speak to him about the two of them, then I shall. And if I lose my position through it, there are others.’

The butler said yes, he’d speak to him as soon as he had the opportunity. I could see Mrs Quivering didn’t quite believe him, but they parted on civil terms and she went back to her lists.

Towards the end of the afternoon, I grew tired of having to draw musical staves with Mrs Quivering’s
knobble-edged ruler and went up to the schoolroom for a better one. I found Charles and James arguing, Henrietta sulking and Betty so worn out with having to cope with them on her own that it was the least I could do to give her an hour’s relief by taking them for a walk in the grounds. We went out by a side entrance because they were in their plain schoolroom clothes and not fit for being seen by company. With that in mind, I guided them quickly towards the flower garden, for the protection of its high beech hedges.

‘Celia? Celia, where are you?’

Stephen’s voice came from the other side of the hedge. Henrietta stopped. I whispered to her to go on, but she put her eye to the hedge.

‘He’s with Mr Brighton,’ she said in a loud whisper.

I caught Henrietta by the arm and fairly dragged her along a gravel path to the safety of a little ornamental orchard behind the flower garden, with the boys following. It was a pleasant acre of old apple and pear trees with a thatched wooden summerhouse in the middle, too far from the house to be much used by adults. Once we were safely there, I helped Henrietta tuck her skirts up to the knee and encouraged them to play hide and seek. Soon they were absorbed in their game and I sat on the bench in the summerhouse, still uneasy at having come so close to Mr Brighton, even more so in case Kilkeel came to join him.

‘Elizabeth.’

Celia’s whisper, from behind me. I spun round but couldn’t see her until she hissed my name again. One alarmed eye and a swathe of red-gold hair showed in a gap between the planks that made up the back wall of the summerhouse.

‘Miss Mandeville, what in the world are you doing there? Your brother’s looking for you.’

‘I know. Would you please keep the children here long enough for them to get tired of looking for me.’

‘Why?’

‘Because my stepfather wants me to be pleasant to Mr Brighton.’

She said the name with such scorn and anger that I half expected it to scorch the planks between us.

‘But why should you be …?’

I was puzzled. She had no reason, as far as I knew, to share my abhorrence of the man.

‘Haven’t you understood anything? He’s the reason why Philip must take me away.’

‘You mean your stepfather wants you to marry that …’

‘Shh. Yes.’

My voice must have risen in surprise. Luckily, it was masked by Henrietta’s shriek of triumph as she discovered James hiding behind a pear tree.

‘My turn to hide. My turn to hide.’

The boys closed their eyes. Charles started counting.

‘One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight …’

‘I’ve been trying to keep away from him all afternoon,’ Celia whispered. ‘He must surely get tired soon.’

‘Eighty-seven, seventy-nine …’

‘You’re not counting properly,’ Henrietta protested.

She was plunging round among the trees, looking for a hiding place. Then she changed direction and came running towards the summerhouse.

‘No, don’t let her,’ Celia hissed through the planks.

I stood up, but too late to intercept Henrietta as she ran behind the summerhouse.

‘I’ve found Celia. I’ve found Celia.’

‘Go away you little pest.’

But Henrietta’s voice must have carried over the hedges. Stephen called from some way off in the flower garden, ‘Celia?’ Two pairs of footsteps sounded on the gravel path, one quick, one slow and heavy.

‘Go to them,’ Celia said to me. From her voice, she was near to tears. ‘Tell them she’s lying and I’m not here.’

By then I was in a fair panic myself.

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Mr Brighton saw me at the stables dressed as a boy. Supposing he guesses?’

A gasp from behind the planks, then silence apart from Henrietta’s capering steps on the grass. Stephen appeared at the gap in the hedge. I sat down again, curling into the darkest corner of the summerhouse. As he came striding in our direction I stayed where I was, determined that Celia must solve her own problem for once.

‘Celia, are you there?’ he called.

Celia came out from behind the summerhouse looking far cooler than I’d expected, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear.

‘You’re too hot, Henrietta. You’ll make yourself ill.’

Her voice was cool too, but she threw me a glance of pure terror. As far as I could tell, Stephen hadn’t noticed me in the summerhouse.

‘Celia, where have you been? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

‘Here, with the children,’ Celia said. ‘But Henrietta’s made herself over-excited running about. I’m taking her back to the house to lie down.’

‘Can’t Betty or Miss Lock see to them?’ Stephen protested.

But Celia took a firm grip of her half-sister’s hand and began walking towards the hedge. She was almost there when Mr Brighton arrived, flushed of face but gorgeously dressed in pale green cut-away coat with green-and-pink striped waistcoat. He stood staring at Celia like an actor unsure of his cue. Anything less like an ardent suitor I’d never seen.

‘Charles, James, come here,’ Celia said, ignoring him entirely.

She collected the boys and shepherded the three children straight past Mr Brighton as if he were no more than another apple tree. When they’d disappeared, he prodded his walking cane into the grass a few times with a vacant look, then his hand went to the pocket in his
coat-tail, the gold box came out and his little finger carefully applied pink balm to his full lower lip. He seemed lost. Stephen had to escort him away in the end, much as Celia had done with the children.

I stayed in the summerhouse, surprised by her resourcefulness and weak with relief at not having come face to face with Mr Brighton. Something about him was nagging at my mind – something apart from what had happened in the stables. When I saw the vacant expression on his face, a kind of half-recognition had come to me, as if I’d seen that look before a long time ago, though where and when I couldn’t say. I remained there for some time. It was cool and restful and I was in no hurry to return to all the complications inside the house. I think I must have fallen into a half doze, because I didn’t hear the footsteps coming back on the gravel path until they were almost at the hedge. They were male steps, but rather uncertain, as if the person didn’t know what he’d find on the other side. I hoped it was simply a guest taking a stroll and started to stand up, intending to say a polite good afternoon and leave. But it wasn’t a guest. Stephen Mandeville was standing in front of me.

‘Miss Lock, I was hoping you’d still be here. No, please, sit down.’

So he’d seen me after all. He seemed weary, dark hair disordered, shadows under his eyes. There was nothing for it but to sit down again. He settled himself on the far side of the bench, with a respectable distance between
us. I waited, heart thumping. It was in my mind that Mr Brighton might have told him about seeing me at the stables.

‘I’m very glad to find you on good terms with my sister,’ he said. ‘I was right to think she’d find you sympathetic.’

His voice was low and gentle, no hint of accusation in it.

‘Miss Mandeville is very kind. I fear I’m not as much help as I should like to be with her sketching.’