Death at Dawn (22 page)

The hall was deserted. I ducked behind the orange tree and went through the door that Mrs Beedle had used. It led into a servants’ corridor that, after a few dozen yards, connected with a back staircase. Mrs Beedle must be familiar with the backstage world of the house. I went up another flight of stairs and into the schoolroom corridor. It felt like home. The schoolroom had come to represent the nearest thing to familiarity and safety I’d known at Mandeville Hall and, with so much bustle and activity downstairs, it was calming to see the glow of a candle lantern coming from Henrietta’s half-open door. In spite of her confidence by day, the child suffered from nightmares and feared the dark. Betty slept in the room next door to Henrietta’s, usually with her own door half-open, to hear and comfort her if she woke. Tonight the door to her room was closed, so she was presumably still acting as maid elsewhere.

Once past Henrietta’s light, the corridor was dim, the door to the schoolroom shut. I tapped on it, softly at first then more loudly, expecting to hear Mrs Beedle’s voice telling me to come in. When nothing happened I opened the door. The curtains were drawn across the window, with just enough evening light coming in round the edges to show the shape of the rocking horse, the three desks, the table. I went towards it and started feeling around for the lamp, intending to light it ready
for when Mrs Beedle arrived. She’d said she’d be waiting for me, but something must have detained her downstairs. I couldn’t find the lamp so I moved round the table. My foot caught on something and I fell to one knee, petticoats tangling round the heel of my shoe. A ruck in the carpet, I thought. But even as I thought it, I knew it wasn’t that. It was the smell that warned me. The schoolroom usually smelled of chalk dust, marigolds and custard. Now there was a harsh metallic reek that didn’t belong there.

My knee was nudging against something like a cushion or a bolster, but heavier. Scared now, I leaned forward and let my hand rest on it. A silk upholstered curve, slithery under my fingers. My hand moved along and it wasn’t silky any more, just bare and loose, yielding horribly to the fingertips. Trying to get away from it, I backed into the rocking horse and set it swaying and creaking. For a while I just crouched there under the rise and dip of the wooden head, but eventually managed to pull myself upright on the cabinet of birds’ eggs and stumble to the door. Without knowing it, I’d picked something off the schoolroom floor and had it clenched in my hand. It was quite small and mostly soft. In the dim light coming from Henrietta’s room I could make out what it was: a turban of black velvet trimmed with white lace and jet beads.

‘She was an old lady,’ Mrs Quivering said. ‘Her heart failed, that’s all.’

We were in the housekeeper’s room, just the two of us. Mrs Quivering was sitting behind her desk, I – at her invitation – in a chintz armchair. She was being kind to me, in that half-fearful way people have when they think you might fly apart from shock, like a glass vase shattering. It was just after one o’clock in the morning. The curtains were drawn over the windows, two candles burning on the mantelpiece. One was almost finished, the flame dropping right down below the candle-holder then rising in a blue splutter.

‘Yes.’

‘She must have gone upstairs to make sure the children were asleep. She knew Betty couldn’t be with them.’

‘Yes.’

I had not told her, and had no intention of telling her, that Mrs Beedle had gone to the schoolroom to meet me.

‘She was devoted to her grandchildren,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘It’s possible that she felt herself becoming faint and went to the schoolroom to sit down. Then she must have fallen and hit her head on something – the rocking horse, perhaps.’

The story was improving all the time. We both knew very well that she was talking nonsense. Mrs Quivering had organised the removal of the body from the schoolroom to Mrs Beedle’s bedroom. I’d heard her intake of breath when two footmen brought the body into the schoolroom corridor, and the lamp she was holding had swung wildly, sending waves of light all round us. Betty had been summoned and had hustled the children away somewhere, so, apart from the footmen, we were alone. It had looked for a moment as if the infallible Mrs Quivering would collapse like any ordinary woman. Hardly surprising. The grey hair above Mrs Beedle’s left ear was clotted with blood, the side of her silk dress soaked with it. Mrs Quivering had to run for towels from the nursery bathroom because blood was seeping on to the carpet. By then, she was in control again. She told the footmen to carry the body down the back stairs, so as not to alarm any guests who might be going to their rooms, and left me to hold the lamp for them. Then she disappeared for a while.

I was sure she’d gone to report to Sir Herbert. What else could she do? I imagined him called away from his port and his guests, some hurried consultation in an ante-room. At any rate, it can’t have lasted long because by the time we reached Mrs Beedle’s bedroom, Mrs Quivering was there to meet us. She told the footmen to lay the body on the bed then sent them to wait outside, lit candles and dispatched me to the kitchen for hot water, ordering me not to talk to anybody on the way. I came back with it to find that she’d stripped Mrs Beedle of her black silk and replaced it with a long nightdress. Mrs Beedle looked older and smaller in death, false teeth gone and mouth open. I thought of the immense effort of will it must have cost her to keep alive and protect her family, and was close to tears, knowing that I’d failed her after all.

Mrs Quivering told me sharply to come and hold the bowl while she sponged the worst of the blood off the long grey hair and dabbed it dry with a towel. She made me rummage in drawers for a white muslin scarf and a nightcap. We used the scarf to bind up the sagging jaw then put on the nightcap over the damp hair and injured head. When we left, she ordered one of the footmen to stay on guard by the closed door. By that time, the gentlemen guests had joined the ladies in the drawing room and were listening to music. I heard a snatch of a Vivaldi oboe and violin concerto as we came into the kitchen corridor with our bloodstained towels and water bowl, and imagined Daniel with his fiddle to his chin, just a few
rooms and a whole world away. I knew that I should never hear that concerto again without smelling blood.

‘It must have been most unpleasant for you, finding her,’ Mrs Quivering said.

I didn’t reply. How could I explain to her that it was doubly bad because it had catapulted me back to the room in Calais, and my father’s body? She came out from behind her desk, her face sharp with tiredness, and carefully refilled my teacup from the pot on the table beside me. A footman had brought it in ten minutes or so ago. His stockings were wrinkled, the shoulders of his jacket white from the powder that had fallen out of his wig, but she’d made no comment. He’d been one of the two footmen who’d carried Mrs Beedle’s body to her bedroom. If you listened carefully, you could hear the muffled voices and clink of plates as kitchen maids cleared up the remains of the dinner. Wafts of left-over fish and stale claret drifted in and mingled with the smell of the dying candle. Mrs Quivering walked over to it, lit a new one and set it upright in the hot wax.

‘It might be best if you didn’t talk about this to any of the servants, Miss Lock. These things are very unsettling for them.’

I promised. It would have been easy to assume, because Mrs Quivering was weaving such a hard-wearing lie, that she was responsible in some way for Mrs Beedle’s death. I didn’t believe that. Mrs Quivering was a very efficient housekeeper, and the centre of a housekeeper’s work is to deal with any unpleasantness before it trou
bles the life of the family. The death was nothing to do with Mrs Quivering and everything to do with me, and that first great lie about my father.

‘Does Lady Mandeville know?’ I said.

‘She went to her room as soon as the ladies left the table. I’m sure she’ll be sleeping now. It will wait until she wakes up.’

It was clear from the way she said it that Lady Mandeville had retired to bed worse for drink.

‘And Miss Mandeville?’ I asked. ‘She seemed fond of her grandmother.’

I could see from Mrs Quivering’s face that Sir Herbert had given no instructions about that.

‘Yes, it would be wrong for her to hear it from one of the servants. I should go to her, I suppose.’

Mrs Quivering began to stand up, so weary that she could hardly force her body out of the chair.

‘There’s her brother,’ I said.

‘He’s with some of the gentlemen in the billiard room.’

‘Does he know his grandmother’s dead?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’ll go and tell Miss Mandeville, if you’d like me to,’ I said.

She sank back in the chair.

‘Thank you, Miss Lock. You will do it as kindly as you can, won’t you? There is no need for Miss Mandeville to know … all the details.’

I promised to do it kindly. I went up the back stairs to the bedroom corridor and tapped on her door.

‘Come in.’

Celia was sitting in an armchair in a blue cashmere dressing gown, bare feet drawn up on to the chair. Two candles were burning on the dressing table. Her face was white and she’d been crying.

‘Fanny says my grandmother’s dead.’

‘I’m sorry to say it’s true.’

‘What happened?’

I thought that there were enough lies, without my telling more. So I told her how I’d found Mrs Beedle. She made a whimpering sound, like a hurt puppy. I went towards her and her cold and trembling hand came out of the dressing-gown sleeve and clasped mine.

‘You’re saying she was killed?’

‘I think she must have been.’

‘But who by, and why?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘My stepfather. He never liked her.’

‘It can’t have been. He was at the table in front of all his guests when it happened.’

‘He paid somebody to do it, then.’

‘Miss Mandeville … Celia, your grandmother spoke to me just as we were going in to dinner. She said something had occurred and I was to leave dinner early and meet her in the schoolroom. Have you any idea what she meant?’

‘No.’ I didn’t know whether she’d even understood my question. She seemed lost in her own thoughts. ‘Does my mother know she’s dead?’

‘Not yet, no.’

Her hand tightened on mine.

‘I think I want to see Grandma. Will you take me to her?’

The same footman was on duty outside Mrs Beedle’s room, sagging against the wall, half asleep. He woke suddenly and, seeing Celia, opened the door for us. Celia stood for a long time looking down at her grandmother, then, rather to my surprise, knelt on the rug beside the bed and bent her head in prayer. Finally she stood up and kissed her on the forehead, just below the cap. She was crying.

‘I was never good enough to her, never grateful enough.’

‘I don’t suppose anybody ever is.’

‘Why would someone do this to a poor old lady?’

‘I think she was more than a poor old lady. She didn’t like what was happening and was doing her best to stop it.’

‘But I don’t like it either. Does that mean somebody wants to kill me?’

‘I hope not. Just stay quietly in your room today and I’ll help you get away tonight, if that’s still what you want. They’ll have to cancel the ball, I suppose.’

‘They won’t. My stepfather’s been planning this for a long time. He won’t let the death of an old lady he hated prevent it.’

‘What about the coroner? Won’t he have to be told?’

‘Sir Herbert is deputy Lord Lieutenant of the county
and chairman of the bench of magistrates. If he says her heart failed, that’s what the verdict will be.’

She took a last look at the figure on the bed and turned away.

‘I must go to my mother.’

‘I think she may be asleep.’

Her look showed she knew exactly what I meant by that. She seemed to have grown up a lot in the last few minutes.

‘I’ll wait with her till she wakes up. I can’t leave him to tell her.’

We went out and I watched her walking heavily away along the corridor. There were several things I must attend to and the first of them was getting out of my ridiculous dinner dress back into proper clothes. The nursery corridor was deserted, Betty presumably elsewhere with the children. It took some resolution to go past the closed door of the schoolroom with the smell of wet wool in my nostrils where Mrs Beedle’s blood had been sponged from the carpet. The staircase up to the maids’ dormitory was dark and I hesitated there for some time. For all I knew, the killer might have escaped that way, into the maze of servants’ quarters. When I got to the landing by the maids’ room, a reassuring sound of snoring came from inside. I hesitated for a while, then continued up the narrower staircase to my room. At the door, I thought I heard a rustling noise above me.

‘What do you want?’ I said into the darkness.

No answer. Probably a rat or a pigeon in the roof timbers. I opened the door, hoping that if I had to scream at least it would wake the maids below.

‘Is anybody in there?’

The sound of my own voice bouncing back told me that the room was empty. It must be dawn in the world outside because a little grey light was coming through the window. I took a deep breath and lit the candle. It took three tries because my hand was shaking, but I felt better when its light flickered round the walls.

The dress, with its array of tiny buttons, had been intended for somebody with a lady’s maid and I tore some of them off as I struggled to get out of it. It was a small relief to turn to my own clothes, neatly folded on the bed. Then my heart lurched and I started trembling again because I hadn’t left them on the bed. I was quite certain that I’d left them as I always did, folded on the chair. And they’d been turned upside down. I’d left a shawl Betty had loaned me at the bottom, then the dress, petticoats, stockings and garters. Now the shawl had disappeared entirely, the dress was uppermost with the other things underneath it, and one garter was lying on the floor beside the bed.

There was something wrong with the wash bowl, too. I was sure I’d emptied it after washing, but now there were a few inches of dirty water in it and my small cake of soap had been moved. Somebody had come into my room and washed. Somebody who needed to wash blood
off his hands? I looked at the water. No blood that I could see or smell, just soap scum. I knelt to pick up the garter and stayed kneeling with my head on the bed, bludgeoned by fear and misery. Not even my room was safe. If somebody had come in and attacked me at that moment, I should hardly have resisted. The long trail that had started in Calais had ended here and I had not the strength or will to do anything about it.

In the end, it was anger that brought me back to my feet. I was sure that the person who’d killed my father was also the murderer of Mrs Beedle. I was under the same roof with him, breathing the same air that he breathed, quite possibly had breathed in this very room. Wasn’t that what I’d wanted all along? I put my own clothes on reluctantly, wondering what fingers had pawed them. After a while I went downstairs. It was after five o’clock and the routine of the day had started in the kitchen and scullery but the servants’ voices were hushed with the knowledge of the body lying upstairs.

The only idea in my mind was to speak to Daniel. I walked round the outside of the wall of the kitchen garden, on to a pathway that I’d sometimes taken with the children to the Greek Pavilion on its hillock in the park. It was a fine morning, the sky blue and cloudless. The musicians had been playing until late so I hardly expected to find anybody awake at that hour, but when I came up the last spiral of path somebody was sitting on a bench, looking out at the view over the heath. He turned when he heard my steps on the gravel.

‘Oh, Daniel.’

‘Child?’

He was still wearing his evening clothes. I ran to him and poured out the story as if I really were the child he called me.

‘She spoke to me, Daniel. It couldn’t have been much more than half an hour before it happened. She must have gone straight upstairs after that and … I think whoever did it may have been in my room.’

At some point in the story he must have taken my hand and kept hold of it.

‘Have you any idea what it was she wanted to tell you?’

‘Something to do with Mr Brighton, I’m sure. Beyond that, no idea at all.’

‘And she didn’t mention any names?’

‘No.’

He said nothing for a long time, holding my hand and looking out at the view.

‘Haven’t you slept?’ I asked.

He shook his head.

‘I wish I’d come to find you last night, Liberty. If I’d had the slightest idea what had happened, I should have. God knows I wanted to, but it seemed an intrusion.’