Theft of Life (22 page)

‘
You
don’t know!’ She stood up and threw Mr Christopher’s card into the grate. ‘You don’t
know
!’ Then she turned on her heel and went back into the second chamber, slamming the door behind her.

Harriet found she was shaking. She picked up the card and set it on the mantelpiece in case Martha changed her mind. It was becoming clear to her that she didn’t know very much at all. With that uncomfortable thought in mind, she left the room.

T
HE HOME OF SIR
Charles Jennings looked elegant rather than magnificent from the Square, but when the footman bowed her into the hallway and then retreated with her card, Harriet had the chance to look about her and was astonished. The lobby was twice the size of the one in Berkeley Square, and painted canary yellow. She saw marble stairs, wrought-iron and polished railings, a white plaster ceiling decorated in geometric patterns with Greek key borders. Around the walls hung an array of Italian landscapes in curling gilded frames, so that it seemed on every side vistas opened into antique harbours scattered with butter-coloured ruins.

The footman returned and bowed again, then invited Harriet to follow him up the marble staircase to the first floor. At the end of its first flight, and below an enormous oil of some tropical view, the staircase folded back on itself in tight but gracious curves. Above her, the spring sun fell through a domed skylight patterned with iron tracery, and on each side the steady progression of paintings continued, each showing some new view of tropical shores. She felt as if she were climbing some tower set magically on the earth in such a way that all the great sights of the globe could be enjoyed at once.

Mrs Trimnell was in the Green Salon with Mrs Jennings, the footman explained in low tones, as they reached the landing on the first floor. He pushed open a set of double doors, announced her name and left her to walk in.

It was a room that would make most of the crowned heads of Europe ashamed of their palaces. Much of the south wall was taken up with huge windows, dressed with swathes of green and gold fabric. The room was so large that Harriet would have struggled to see her hosts, except that an elderly lady on the eastern side of the room got to her feet and approached. Harriet recognised her from church and from the Coroner’s Court. In the distance behind her Harriet could make out the black shadow of Mrs Trimnell, also rising to curtsey, and in the south-eastern corner stood the tall, white-headed figure of her father, Mr Sawbridge. The contrast between these surroundings and those of the shabby little rooms in Cheapside was dizzying. Mrs Jennings put her hand out to Harriet with a warm smile.

‘My dear Mrs Westerman, I am delighted to meet you! I shall not stand on ceremony. We saw each other in church yesterday, after all – and was not Fischer in good voice? I am such an admirer of yours, I feel I know you already. Indeed, if I had known you were in town I would have sent you cards for our little party last week.’

Her face was deeply lined, and Harriet thought she could not be under eighty, but her expression was lively and her step firm and easy. She was a small woman, dressed in stiff green silks that gossiped as she moved, and her hair was dressed very high. Harriet could do no more than murmur her thanks before Mrs Jennings leaned her narrow body closer to her and spoke in a lower tone. ‘If you manage to get that designing trollop and her goat of a father out of my house as soon as possible, I shall be
most
grateful. Sir Charles is far too good to them. To invite
her
here! But of course, one’s children can do no wrong, can they? The best of us turn blind and deaf. If they are here a whole week together, I shall have to burn down the house, which would be a great shame, as the paint is only just dry.’

She put her arm through Harriet’s and began leading her towards the others. Her voice became louder. ‘I know Mr Graves may not feel he would find many friends here, but he is quite wrong. So much more unites us than drives us apart. Music, for instance.’ Then in her lower tone. ‘Sir Charles is foolishly generous. She has been sniffing after Randolph for weeks – it’s barely decent – and now she seems to think she is part of the family. I dare not let any acquaintance of mine into the house while she is here – dear God, I’d rather expect them to take tea with my footman. I know people mix more freely in the Indies, but this is beyond endurance.’

As soon as this last was out, her face was transformed by a charming smile and the parties were joined. The ladies shook hands.

‘Mrs Westerman, you have met my father, Mr Sawbridge,’ Mrs Trimnell said, and the gentleman bowed. Even at his age he was an imposing presence, broad without being fat, with large hands, the strong lines of his chin and forehead unsoftened by age. Mrs Jennings did not sit down again.

‘Well, I must leave you, my
dear
friends. The cook is threatening to leave again and Sir Charles cannot possibly be in London without him.’ Under the guise of an affectionate farewell, she murmured to Harriet: ‘Do try and make sure they don’t steal anything.’

Harriet was given a place beside Mrs Trimnell. Black suited her, emphasising her slender figure and the whiteness of her skin. She looked very lovely. Her father, after making a slightly awkward bow, remained by the window. He was sipping his tea rather noisily. The saucer balanced on his right hand, he carried the cup to his mouth with his left.

‘The black boy is in Bridewell until the next sessions at the Old Bailey,’ Mrs Trimnell said as soon as Harriet had her own tea-cup in her hand. ‘I am greatly indebted to the constables that they managed to find him so quickly. Everyone has been so kind.’

‘I wished to come and offer you my sympathies again. You must have been looking forward to your husband’s retirement to England. What a cruel blow, to have it cut short so quickly.’

‘My homecoming was not as I expected,’ she said. ‘That is certainly true.’ As she offered Harriet a plate of dainties, her movements were stiff, very unlike the grace she had shown when Harriet first saw her. The sleeves of her jacket were long and tight, fringed with black lace, but as she moved, Harriet thought she saw a garnet bracelet just hidden under it. She looked more carefully out of the corner of her eye. It
was
a bracelet – but then Harriet saw something else: yellow bruising on the soft white underside of Mrs Trimnell’s wrist.

‘Your husband was ill?’ Harriet said. Mrs Trimnell looked up at her sharply. ‘The weakness of his heart …’

‘Oh yes, before we came home. He was out on the estate and was overcome by the heat. Such reverses we had out there in recent years. He wore himself out trying to make the land profitable again.’

Mr Sawbridge had been staring out of the window at the mature trees in Sir Charles’s garden, the horse chestnuts’ white candles of blossom. He turned back into the room. ‘He was addle-brained when he came home,’ he said. ‘Should have been locked up weeks ago.’

Harriet was surprised. Mrs Trimnell blushed. ‘He was not quite recovered from his illness,’ she said. ‘But he was a most excellent man, Father.’ The older man did not seem in any way abashed, but rather let out a bark of contemptuous laughter.

‘I heard that he had become very religious in his final weeks,’ Harriet said.

Mrs Trimnell put down her cup. ‘You heard that, Mrs Westerman? Well, it is true. I do not think my husband had picked up a Bible any day in our married life until after his illness. I am afraid he then fell in with people who took advantage of him.’

‘You shouldn’t have protected him, Lucy. Saying he was working at his papers when he was off trying to ingratiate himself with Negroes. He was never good enough for you. Never.’

Mrs Trimnell closed her eyes briefly, but if she was trying to conceal grief or rage, Harriet could not tell. ‘It was my duty.’

‘Duty be damned. You were ashamed of him, and rightly so, while you were trying to make friends here and begging for a shilling to put in your pocket.’

Harriet had thought that some years sailing the world with her husband, and the various adventures she had survived with Crowther at her side had made her difficult to shock, but to hear Mr Sawbridge speak so among the beauties of the house in Portman Square rendered her speechless.

‘Father! If you cannot conduct yourself like a gentleman, please leave.’

‘Gentleman? I’d rather be a plain man than a gentleman like your husband! Still, you’re where you should be now. The rest is just words.’

‘Go Father.’

He put down his cup and saucer and stalked from the room without taking his leave. Mrs Trimnell did not try to speak at once, but stared hard at the polished veneer of the table in front of her.

‘My husband tried to sell our home for the price of a horse a few weeks before he died,’ Harriet said at last. ‘He was injured – a blow to his head that almost killed him – and though he seemed to recover, he was not the man he had been. More like a child in some ways. A child with a violent temper.’

Mrs Trimnell lifted a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘What happened to him?’

Harriet could see James in front of her again. He had been such a handsome man. ‘My friends feared for my safety and that of our children. He lived his last months in the care of a doctor in Hampstead.’

‘My father has the manners of a butcher, but I think he is only sorry. He should have sent me back to England to find a husband, but he wished to keep me with him. There are not many eligible men in Jamaica.’ She sighed. ‘I did try to be a good wife to Jacob.’

‘You have no brother or sister, Mrs Trimnell? My sister was a great comfort after my husband died.’

The young woman shook her head. ‘I was my mother’s only surviving child. She died when I was six, finally exhausted by the climate of the islands. There is no rivalry then, between your sister and yourself? Your money comes from your husband, does it not? Does your sister not mind that you have so much while she has less through no fault of her own?’

Harriet wondered if Mrs Trimnell was thinking of the relative fortunes of her husband and her current hosts. ‘My sister is married to a man she loves. I am certain she would rather have his love, than my money.’

‘Ah, love,’ Mrs Trimnell said. ‘It can work miracles, can it not?’

‘Did you know Mr Randolph Jennings before you returned to these shores, Mrs Trimnell?’

Even after the indiscretions of her father, it was a dangerous question, but Mrs Trimnell gave no sign of offence. ‘We knew each other in Jamaica as little children. Then after his mother died he was sent to school in England. We saw each other next when he was seventeen, and I a year or two older. We thought he was going to settle among us and learn the business of the estate from his father.’ She sighed. ‘But Sir Charles changed his mind. Randolph was sent back to England and later went to university. I married my husband. When Sir Charles came back to London permanently and my father retired, Sir Charles sent out another man to manage his plantation. Oh, those last years I spent in Jamaica were difficult. My husband working so hard, nothing to listen to but the savage music of the slaves in their huts. No one to speak to, and the fear of being murdered in our beds every night. Our home was isolated. Almost a prison in those years.’

‘So Mr Randolph Jennings takes no part in running his father’s business concerns?’ Harriet said, hoping that Mrs Trimnell could not see the expression in her eyes.

Mrs Trimnell sipped at her tea again. ‘He is a gentleman. He plans to go into Parliament in due course.’ Her eyes misted over slightly. ‘Naturally Randolph and I met in London, given the close connection between our families. It was as if those last terrible years simply disappeared. Some people do not understand the true sympathy that can arise between friends. But I know
you
understand it, Mrs Westerman. You and Mr Crowther have had many adventures together, have you not?’

Harriet could almost feel the blade sliding clean in between her ribs. ‘Such sympathy
can
indeed be misunderstood,’ she said coolly. ‘And can occasionally lead to unpleasantness from the ignorant or cruel. Did anything of that nature occur on Thursday evening, at Sir Charles’s musical party here?’

Mrs Trimnell flushed; the counterblow had struck home. ‘It was a charming evening. Mrs Westerman, you ask a great many strange questions. The boy who killed my husband is in custody. Mr Trimnell took some strange fancies before he died, but he was always a respectable man before that. My relations with the Jennings family are intimate, born of deep friendship – and no concern of yours. Your curiosity verges on the indecent.’

The fiction of good behaviour between them weakened to such thinness Harriet felt even the slightest breath could tear it. She thought of William, of what Trimnell had been when he was respectable. ‘I am sure the last few days must have been very tiring for you, Mrs Trimnell, and to show you I mean you no ill, perhaps I can give you a friendly word of advice. Go carefully. Mrs Jennings seems to dislike you intensely.’

She gasped. ‘Mrs Jennings took me to Astley’s Ampitheatre on Friday evening! We saw the Dancing Dogs.’

‘Perhaps she had instructions to keep you away from Randolph for an evening,’ Harriet said, standing and picking up her gloves.

‘I am certain Randolph cares for me very much. You are very wrong to speak to me in this way. I have the protection of this family!’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Harriet said. ‘It seems to me that whatever Randolph Jennings wanted from you he has already got,’ her eyes drifted to the bracelets on her wrists, ‘and paid for. Your husband was a monster, and you are wearing your lover’s tokens with your widow’s weeds. Take this warning from a sympathetic friend then: you can have nothing that will make Sir Charles tolerate you for long, so do not talk to me of indecency.’

The satisfaction of having spoken her mind carried Harriet on her walk back to the double doors, while Mrs Trimnell remained seated, white-faced and silent. She pushed the doors open to find a footman standing to attention outside. Harriet was not aware of having raised her voice, but there was a glint in the servant’s eye which suggested that she may have done so, and perhaps also that the servants thought of Mrs Trimnell much as Mrs Jennings did. The footman made his bow and closed the doors behind her while she stood horrified at herself, on the landing. It was inexcusable that she had said such things, and worse that they had come to her lips with such fluency and pleasure. If the footman had not been at her side, ready to escort her back down to the hallway, she would have groaned aloud.