The Governess (5 page)

Mr Thackerton had not stirred at Miss Unwin’s entrance from his deep easy chair within comfortable reach of a corner of the wide table where there rested his glass of whisky, its bubbles lazily rising.

‘I am sorry to trouble you at this hour, sir,’ Miss Unwin said, hearing with inner pleasure that her voice was steady and quiet. ‘But there is a certain matter which I think it my duty to bring to your attention.’

‘Indeed?’

Mr Thackerton spoke without removing the glowing cigar from between his lips. Its scent came, heavy and aromatic, to Miss Unwin’s nostrils.

‘It is a matter concerning one of the servants, sir,’ Miss Unwin said, steadily pursuing her object.

‘One of the servants? Surely if it is a matter concerning a servant Mrs Arthur will deal with it.’

Miss Unwin hesitated now for an instant. Here, before she had at all paved the way for what she was going to have to say, she was confronted by her dilemma at its sharpest. To tell Mr Thackerton bluntly that his daughter-in-law had declined to do what she ought to have done would very likely antagonise him at once. But not to speak would clearly involve her in half-truths that were almost bound to be shown-up. Then what little credibility she had would be blown away in an instant.

She hesitated. And plunged. For the truth, however dangerous.

‘I am sorry to say, Mr Thackerton, that I have already brought the matter to Mrs Arthur’s notice but that she has not pursued it.’

She saw the dark colour come flooding up in Mr Thackerton’s already reddened cheeks. But another emotion than anger was plainly in his mind, an emotion she had pinned her hopes on. Curiosity.

Curiosity won.

‘Tray, what is this matter that you seem to consider so serious, Miss Unwin?’

There was a good deal of contempt in the ‘you’ but Miss Unwin had been determined before she had even entered the room not to let anything of that kind affect her.

‘I am sure you will agree,’ she said, ‘that theft, even of trifling objects, is a serious matter, especially when it is repeated more than once.’

Had she appealed sufficiently to her employer’s pride in his property? In every single item of it?

She had.

‘One of the servants is stealing?’ Mr Thackerton replied, bringing his legs rapidly up to crash down on the rich Turkey carpet under him. ‘Who is this? Man or woman, neither shall remain a day longer under this roof.’

‘Yes, I am sorry to say that one of the servants has been stealing. It is Joseph.’

Once more Miss Unwin recounted the history of the missing sugar-mice, and again, thanks to the concise manner of her telling, it appeared to make its full impact.

Mr Thackerton, when her recital was over, pushed himself to his feet and went striding up and down the length of the long central table.

‘Well, ma’am,’ he said at last, ‘I have not heard anything to Joseph’s detriment before this.’

‘There may have been nothing to hear,’ Miss Unwin answered, a little surprised at the calmly judicial tone Mr Thackerton had fallen into. ‘But, I can assure you that he has been responsible for taking Master Pelham’s treats night after night.’

‘Will Pelham verify that?’

‘He would, of course. But, let me say, I do not think he ought to be questioned about the matter. Already, I am afraid, he is not a little disturbed over it.’

‘I dare say. I dare say. So, we shall have to take your word for it then.’

Miss Unwin pushed back a sharp retort about her word being as good as anybody’s. She stood looking at Mr Thackerton in nun-like silence.

He sighed heavily and pushed his thumbs into the pockets of his waistcoat. But for once the characteristic gesture seemed to lack its customary air of abounding confidence.

‘Very well,’ he said at last. ‘I shall see the fellow tomorrow, and take whatever steps I think necessary. Believe me. And now, good night, Miss Unwin.’

‘Good night, sir.’

Miss Unwin, lying a little later in her narrow and uncomfortable lumpy bed, admitted to herself that the interview with her employer had not somehow gone quite as she had hoped. Mr Thackerton’s first fire seemed to have become dampened in the course of listening to her recital of the facts concerning Joseph’s thefts. Could she have presented that recital in a better way? Have taken less time to set out what had happened? But to have done that would have meant omitting links in her chain of proof. It might have made the whole business look like the invention of an hysterical young woman. Would Mr Thackerton even come to regard it as such now, when he saw it in the cold light of morning? Then all the risks she had taken would become worthless.

Uneasily she let sleep overtake her.

Next day, however, her fears seemed groundless. As soon as Morning Prayers were over – Joseph had again intoned the words of the Lord’s Prayer in a way that sounded much more triumphant than humble – Mr Thackerton announced in a single barked sentence that he wished to see Joseph in the library immediately.

Miss Unwin took care not to look at the fellow as he made his way out of the dining-room in advance of the family. But, to her
surprise, scarcely had Henry begun to serve the breakfast when Joseph appeared in the breakfast-room to assist him, apparently in no way downcast.

Had he not been dismissed then? It certainly seemed as if he had not: It looked even as if he had not been threatened with dismissal. He had nothing of the air of someone who five minutes before had been faced with the loss of his livelihood.

But if he had escaped Mr Thackerton’s wrath in some unaccountable manner, what did that portend for her own future in the house? If Joseph felt he had got away with those tricks of his, would he not eventually tell the tale in the servants’ hall? And then her own foot would be on the slippery slope.

She must discover what Mr Thackerton had said to Joseph. But to find that out from him himself was, of course, an impossibility. She could not question her employer.

So she must tackle Joseph. It was not a pleasant prospect. She would have liked not ever to have had to hold converse with him again, beyond perhaps to give him what orders might be necessary when Henry had his half day off and he was the sole footman in the house.

Henry, and his half day off. An idea sprang into her mind. This was the very day that Henry was off duty in the evening. So it would be Joseph who took to Mr Thackerton in the library his whisky nightcap, and when Joseph left that room he would be alone and in a place where she could speak to him without any chance of interruption. She would tackle him then. A few sharp questions: that might be all that was needed. Then at least he would know quite clearly that it had been herself who had been the cause of his being spoken to by the Master. Perhaps then he would think twice before tittle-tattling to his fellow servants.

She feared at first, that evening, that she might miss her opportunity. It had proved to be one of the occasions when Ephraim Brattle was to be in the house prior to going to Lancashire with orders for the factory. The young, determined-looking confidential clerk had arrived shortly after the family had finished eating dinner – no guests tonight, but Mr Arthur had sat for once at his own table – and Miss Unwin, waiting with the schoolroom door wide open as she read a French story-book to improve her
knowledge of that language, had known Ephraim Brattle had entered the library when she had heard the sound of his voice floating up the stairs from below. She had gone across then and opened the baize-covered door to the servants’ stairs just a crack. She felt confident that when the dour young clerk made his way up to the attic bedroom he used on these occasions she would hear him.

Nor did his interview with Mr Thackerton last so long that the hour of the whisky and seltzer had to be postponed. Just before the clock of St Stephen’s Church struck ten Miss Unwin detected the sound of the clerk’s steps tramping heavily up towards the attics.

She sat on in the schoolroom in the growing darkness of the summer evening, her book abandoned. When St Stephen’s clock chimed the half hour she waited for what she judged to be ten minutes more and then went and stationed herself on the stairs where she could be sure of hearing Joseph on his way to the library with the tray of whisky and be ready to intercept him when he came out.

She experienced a moment of alarm when she thought she had failed to hear the library door opened for Joseph to go in. But hardly had she begun to wonder whether she had misjudged the time and was venturing to creep further down the stairs to a point where she could see the library door when it was opened and Joseph came out.

She hurried down the remaining stairs to intercept him.

‘Joseph,’ she called. ‘I want a word with you.’

Joseph wheeled round towards her. His long, bold-featured face seemed drained to an extraordinary whiteness.

A sheet, she thought. Why, he’s white as a sheet. I cannot have startled him so much as that.

‘Joseph,’ she said. ‘What is it?’

Joseph’s mouth opened once or twice on his long yellow teeth but no words emerged.

‘Joseph?’

‘The Master. Miss. Miss. The Master, he’s dead. Murdered, miss. Stabbed. Murdered.’

Miss Unwin was entirely unable to believe what she had heard. In her earliest days down in the harsh world of the workhouse she had been acquainted well enough with brutal violence, and sudden death. Men she knew of had died in brawls. Many others, men and women, had died before their time from drink or disease. Plain starvation had carried off more. But, as she had hauled herself part of the way up the long, long ladder from those depths to the place where she now clung, a lady, she had shaken off much that had once seemed to be an engrained part of her life.

So now the shock of Joseph’s stark announcement had struck at her devastatingly.

‘Joseph,’ she said, hearing the words as if another person was speaking them, someone else at some different time, ‘Joseph, tell me: what did the Master say to you when he saw you this morning?’

‘Say to me?’ Joseph echoed her, his dead-white face contorting in a sudden grimace. ‘Say to me? What do you mean: say to me?’

‘This morning. This morning. What did Mr Thackerton say to you when he summoned you to see him before breakfast?’

Afterwards Miss Unwin was to demand of herself again and again why she had asked this extraordinary question at that moment. What was it that had come over her? Why, in face of the fearful news she had just been told, had she been able to do nothing but repeat mechanically the question she had come down the stairs to put to Joseph? How could such an absurdly silly business as the theft of the sugar-mice have stayed stuck fast in her mind, confronted as she was by the appalling calamity?

But her insistent demand did at least bring Joseph out of his apparent state of numbed shock.

‘Oh, this morning, miss. This morning.’ He almost smiled at her suddenly, in a flash of long incurved teeth. ‘Why, this morning
the Master just gave me a good wigging. That’s all. Told me if he ever heard the like again I’d catch it. That’s all, miss. That’s all.’

They stood looking at each other then in silence. Miss Unwin still had not really taken in the terrible words Joseph had blurted out when he had turned at the library door and seen her. Joseph himself seemed caught now in a curious state of embarrassment. He stood there, twisting the silver salver which he still held in front of himself round and round in his sweaty hands leaving the imprint of his fingers smudged all over its rim, as if he was the statue of a footman at some exhibition of automata.

The silence in fact lasted only a few seconds, though to Miss Unwin, looking back on it, it seemed far longer. But, quickly enough, the shock had worn off in her mind.

‘Stabbed?’ she said. ‘Did you tell me that Mr Thackerton has been stabbed? That he is dead?’

She still could not entirely believe Joseph the liar.

‘Yes, miss,’ he repeated. ‘Stabbed. With one of the library paper-knives, miss. Stabbed.’

At last the words released something in Miss Unwin. She turned at once to the library door and, without hesitation, swept it open.

She had, as she moved, prepared herself against a shock, and the sight that met her eyes did not therefore discompose her. Mr Thackerton lay sprawled back in the same armchair he had been sitting in when, at almost this hour the night before, she had gone to tell him the ridiculous tale of the missing sugar-mice. But at his throat one of the Italian-work paper-knives from the wide writing-table was deeply embedded. From the wound it had made blood had gouted out in a wide stream down the pure starched white of his shirt front below. There could be no question that the Master of No 3 Northumberland Gardens was dead.

Murdered.

Miss Unwin repeated in her mind the word Joseph had used to her. She could well understand how he had come to blurt it out. There was every sign that Mr Thackerton had indeed been foully murdered.

At once she looked all round the long, book-lined room. Who had done this appalling thing? Where had he come from? Where had he gone?

Both the two tall windows were open at top and bottom with their curtains left undrawn on this sultry summer night and Miss Unwin hurried over towards them. In her mind’s eye she saw some dark, indistinct crouching figure entering through one of them, striking that one deadly blow and then retreating the way he had come still in an ominous, dark crouch.

But even before she had reached the nearer window she realised that this imaginary scene could not possibly have taken place. She had failed to remember, picturing it, that the windows on the first floor of the house were all entirely inaccessible from below. There was not even a stout creeper up which a desperate burglar might have climbed. There was not so much surely – Miss Unwin halted and closed her eyes for an instant the better to recall the familiar house front – as a waterspout anywhere near either of these two library windows.

She stepped forward, knelt and thrust her head outside to make sure. A quick glance to either side confirmed her memories. The cream-painted stucco of the house fell away immediately below, and to either side its blank expanse was as obviously unclimbable. Even the dark mass of the laurels in the garden underneath was too far down to make it in any way possible for anyone escaping to have jumped into them without breaking a limb.