The China Governess (6 page)

‘I've been thinking about you all the time I've been working about the house this morning, and I do hope you'll understand what I'm going to say,' she began. ‘It's very easy to take offence at such time I know, but, miss, why don't you have a betrothal? I know Mr. Timmy and I think I'm beginning to know you. You'd both be much happier. You want to be happy on a performance like this because there's a lot of little things to worry about.'

There was no doubt at all about what she meant or the genuineness of her concern.

‘Mr. Lingley, the parson, the Rev-Ben they call him, has known Mr. Timmy for fifteen years and I know he'd like to help.'

Julia was sitting on the table again, her black eyes narrowed and her intelligent face looking so young that its defencelessness was a responsibility.

‘I don't quite know what you mean by “a betrothal”,' she said. at last. ‘It sounds perfect but what is it? Some sort of ceremony?'

‘Oh, I think so, miss. You'd have to leave all that to the parson, of course, but you read about it in all the stories don't you? There's an exchange of rings I know. You've got your engagement ring and I can find one for Timmy. There's a lovely big one
in the cabinet in the drawing-room – it came from Pompeii, I believe.' It was only the faint upward note, on the final word, an infinitesimal lack of decision in the enthusiastic rush, which conveyed to Julia that there was no real guarantee that Mrs. Broome had any clear idea what she was talking about. In many ways it was a pathetic situation, the treasures at stake priceless and delicate and both women aware of all the facts without comprehending them.

Mrs. Broome was hovering, her eyes hopeful and inquiring.

‘I think it's done in church and it's just a prayer and a promise, but the papers aren't signed because you have to have a licence if they are and you're under age, aren't you, miss? What I feel is that it would be a good thing to do because, although it wouldn't be legally binding in a court of law, it
would
be to you two, you being the kind of children you are, and that would make you both much more comfortable. Let me ring up Mr. Lingley and ask him if he'd slip round. I won't tell him why but I know he'll come. He's a very good man. Very kind and conscientious.' She was within a hair's breadth of being convincing in her nursery authority, but at her next step the thin ice cracked. ‘Long, long ago the man knelt praying before a sword all night and nowadays they just call it a wedding rehearsal in the newspapers,' she said devastatingly.

Julia caught her breath and laughed until the tears in her eyes were reasonable.

‘You're thinking of a
vigil
,' she said. ‘I'm afraid that's something quite different. No I don't think I'll talk to Mr. Lingley. Thank you for thinking of it.'

‘But he's a good man, miss. A homely practical chap too, even if he does wear a cassock all day. He'd help if he could.'

‘I'm sure he would. I did meet him you know, at Christmas. No, let's leave it to Timothy. I'll tell him what you suggest.'

‘Ah!' said Mrs. Broome. ‘Now I
know
you'll make Timmy a good wife because he's very proud and headstrong and has to be led. I shall hold you to that, miss. You tell him. I'll have a nice supper for him and then you tell him to telephone the Rev-Ben and I'll be bridesmaid.' A sizzling noise from the gravel outside silenced her in mid-stream and they both looked out of the window. A Jaguar had just driven through the arch on to the drive
and two men were dismounting almost under the window in front of them.

Nanny Broome took one look at the shorter and darker of the two and flushed scarlet with vexation.

‘Oh heck!' she said unexpectedly and managed to make the absurd word shocking. ‘Mr. Basil! That's torn it. He
would
come rolling in just when nobody wants him! It's Mr. Basil Toberman. I expect you've heard of him. He's the other side of the business, the black sheep if you ask me. He drinks like a sponge and thinks he's something an angel's brought in. I don't know who that is he's got with him.'

‘I do.' Julia was looking apprehensively at a tall thin man who was climbing out of the passenger seat. ‘That's Albert Campion. I don't think he
could
be looking for me already, but I think I'd better get out of the way.'

‘What is he? A lawyer?' Nanny Broome had drawn the girl back but was still craning her own neck.

‘I don't think so. People tell you all sorts of things about him, what he is and what he isn't. You call him in when you're in a flap. Go and head them off while I get under cover.'

THE BRASS LOCK
on the drawing-room door was easy enough to negotiate once one knew its secret and Julia had the satisfaction of hearing the catch spring home as she closed it behind her and entered an immensely tall, gracious room with a polished wood floor dotted with fine, well-worn rugs.

Here the stripped panelling was warmly gold and the pictures, mostly of the English school, were mellow and gentle in the afternoon light. Sepia Delft tiles surrounded the fireplace, their crudely drawn Biblical scenes in faded cyclamen blending with the pinkish pine, while above them, instead of a mantelshelf, there was an archway high enough to form a balcony with slender balusters and a tapestry-hung wall behind. As usual Nanny Broome's pet name for it was extremely apt; there were treasures everywhere including a pair of cabinets in Italian marquetry, huge and splendid things, whose long serpentine glass shelves were covered with porcelain. The general effect was elegant and informed. Glass-topped specimen tables of various periods were scattered among velvet chairs and needlework covered settees and here and there a collector's item, a tiny walnut harpsichord as graceful as a skiff, or a box in stumpwork old as the building itself. The whole place smelled of cedar, probably furniture polish, but pleasant and peppery and very evocative in the slightly airless silence. Through the windows the leaves dancing in the sunlight looked as if they must be making a noise, it was so quiet and still indoors.

The tiles attracted Julia, who had just reached them when she heard the door catch move again and recollected with a shock that at least one of the visitors must know the house quite as well as did Mrs. Broome. There was only one hiding-place and she took it promptly, mounting the enclosed stairs which led up behind the panelling to the balcony. A curtain hung over the arched entrance, hiding her, and she sat down on the second step to wait until they left.

‘But the Victorians were tough and very interested in crime.'

She did not recognize the voice and presumed that it was Toberman's. ‘Here you are. These are the Staffordshire Murder Cottages and their incumbents. All this collection on the centre shelf.' The aggressive, thrusting voice was not so much loud as penetrating. It reached her so clearly that the hidden girl assumed he must be within a few feet of her. Yet Mr. Campion's laugh, which she recognized at once, seemed much farther away and she guessed that the two men were standing before the china cabinet on the far side of the room.

‘Extraordinary,' Mr. Campion said and sounded sincere. She could imagine his expression of innocent bewilderment, his pale eyes smiling lazily. He was not a particularly handsome man as she recalled him but a very attractive one with a strong streak of sensitive interest in his fellow men.

‘When you first mentioned the Murder Houses to me the other day I looked them up. It seemed such a macabre idea that I didn't believe you,' he went on frankly. ‘To my amazement there they were, illustrated in the text-books; pottery figures representing famous criminals of the nineteenth century and the houses they lived in. I was rather startled in my old-ladyish way. My hat! Imagine looking up from one's fireside to see a replica of George Christie and Rillington Place on the mantelshelf.'

Toberman laughed. ‘Perhaps not. But you'd rather like to see Maigret and his pipe, Poirot with a forefinger to his grey cells, or Nero Wolf with an orchid. Taste is swinging that way again. You ought to study this collection, Campion. Eustace will never part with it while he's alive but one day it'll be famous. There's every Staffordshire crime-piece ever made in this cabinet, and that's unique. The Van Hoyer Museum in New York hasn't that very rare second version of Maria Marten's Red Barn over there, nor the little Frederick George Manning – he was the criminal Dickens saw hanged on the roof of the gaol in Horsemonger Lane, by the way —'

‘Yet they have Miss Thyrza and her chair?'

‘That's right.' He seemed rather pleased about it. ‘The only other copy in the world. Eustace's great grandfather, Terence
Kinnit, bought up the moulds and destroyed the whole edition to prevent the perpetuation of the scandal of his murdering governess, but he couldn't resist saving two copies, one for his own collection and one to grow into money to recover what the suppression cost him. As usual his judgement was sound. Miss Thyrza was forgotten and his grandson, that was the present Eustace's father, sold the second copy to the Van Hoyer for the highest price ever paid for a single piece of Stafford.'

‘Really?' The quiet man was gratifyingly impressed. ‘And the crime happened in this house, did it?'

‘The murder? Oh no. Terence moved here
because
of the murder. His restoration of this house took the minds of his neighbours off the other smaller building at the back of the village where the trouble took place. It was pulled down later. Here the lady is, Campion. Drooping over the fatal chair back. How do you like her?'

Tucked away behind the curtain on the staircase, Julia could not see the speaker but she heard the faint twang of the thin glass as the cabinet's doors were opened.

On the other side of the room Mr. Campion was looking over Toberman's shoulder as he took the portrait group from the shelf. It was a typical product of the factory, heavily glazed, brightly coloured and sincerely but ingenuously modelled, so that the overall effect was slightly comic. The chair was a cosy half-cylinder, quilted inside and coloured a fierce pink. The lady, in a long royal blue gown very tight in the waist and low over the shoulders, was draped beside it, her long black hair hanging across her face and breast. At her feet, two indeterminate shapes, possibly children, huddled together on a footstool.

‘It has very few flaws and that's unusual for Stafford to begin with,' Toberman said, turning the piece over in his short hands. He was a blue-chinned man in the thirties with wet eyes and a very full, dark-red mouth which suggested somehow that he was on the verge of tears. ‘It has a refreshingly direct, modern feeling, don't you think? See the packing needle?'

He pointed to a spot inside the chair's curve where there was a small protuberance. Mr. Campion had taken it for a fault in the
glazing but now that he came to examine it he saw the grey blade painted upon it. He glanced up in startled astonishment.

‘A packing needle! Was that the weapon? What a horribly practical and homely item. She simply wedged it, sticking out of the upholstery, I suppose? How very nasty.'

‘It worked,' said Toberman cheerfully.

‘I imagine it would.' Mr. Campion spoke dryly. ‘The chair must have become a Victorian version of the medieval “maiden”.'

‘You could call it that. But the “maiden” was an iron coffin lined with spikes, wasn't it? The victim was pushed inside and the lid shut on him. In this instance there was only one spike, arranged to catch a man just below the left shoulderblade. The needle would be slightly thicker than a hatpin but made of steel and as strong as a stiletto. Either she pushed the fellow on to it from the front, or she went round the back of the chair as he was about to sit down, put her arms round his neck and pulled hard. That was what the prosecution suggested, as a matter of fact.'

‘When
was
this fruity little crime?' Mr. Campion continued to be astonished. ‘I can't think how but I seem to have missed it altogether.'

‘You don't surprise me.' Toberman was disparaging without being actually offensive. ‘Experts always develop pockets of ignorance. I notice it all the time. You've got an excuse here, though, because Terence Kinnit was an influential man and was able to hush the business up. There were two or three other sensational crimes in the same year – 1849 – also the young woman wasn't hanged. The jury acquitted her but she committed suicide, so it was assumed that she was guilty after all and the public lost interest.'

Mr. Campion made no comment and there was silence for a moment in the cedar-scented room. Presently Toberman put the group back and his guest stood looking at it through the glass.

‘Who are the little creatures in the foreground?' he inquired.

‘Those are the cousins. Miss Haidée, Terence's daughter, and Miss Emma, his sister's child. Thyrza was their governess. They were much older than they're shown there; the artist made them small to emphasize their unimportance. Emma was the eldest; she
was just on sixteen. Haidée was a year or so younger. Thyrza herself was only twenty. The victim was the music master. He used to ride out from the town once a week and there was an affair. Little Haidée found some letters, nosey little beast. She showed them to her cousin Emma who gave them back to Thyrza. Thyrza got the wind up in case the kid told her mother and tried to get the chap sacked, but without success. All this came out at the trial. The music master had fancied himself as a rural Don Juan and had talked about his conquests, so Miss Thyrza was practically forced to get rid of him or lose both her job and any hope of marrying well. Being an ingenious young woman she set about repairing the upholstery in the visitors' chair with a nine-inch packing needle.'

‘Why did the jury acquit her?' Mr. Campion appeared to be fascinated by the far-off crime.