Death Below Stairs

by Jennifer Ashley

  “But I can ask the police in Ireland,” the suited man said, giving me another sharp look. “You have not been cook here long, have you?”

  “One entire day,” I answered, refusing to be cowed. “Before that, I was in the home of Mr. Langford in Richmond. Mrs. Langford gave me excellent references, and I am on the books at the Weller Agency on the Strand, who are quite reputable.”

  “I have no doubt you’re a paragon, Mrs. Holloway,” the man in the suit said in a dry voice. “The coroner will take the body, but when he’s done, he’ll give it back to the family if he can find them. If not . . . well, it’s up to Lord Rankin.”

  Meaning Lord Rankin might be kind and pay for Sinead to have a proper burial or he might decide to turn her out to the parish and consign her to a pauper’s grave, shared with vagrants and the like who’d died around the same time.

  It was hardly Sinead’s fault someone killed her, I thought indignantly. She deserved to be laid to rest with care. I would simply have to find her family or persuade Lord Rankin to be charitable.

  The suited man asked me about Mr. Timmons—Mr. Davis must have mentioned him. I explained how Mr. Timmons had been tucked into the attic but now had gone home. The constable made note of the direction Timmons had given us, no doubt ready to rush around and question him.

  “May I see Sinead before you take her?” I asked as the suited man started to turn away, finished with us.

  He looked me up and down but flicked his fingers toward the scullery, where they’d carried Sinead for the coroner’s examination. Taking the gesture for approval, I strode from the servants’ hall and through the kitchen to the scullery.

  The coroner had laid Sinead out on the flagstone floor and rested her hands on her chest. Much of the blood on her face had been wiped away, presumably so the coroner could see the wound. I gazed down at the large gash that ran from her forehead to her cheek, and swallowed, bile rising in my throat.

  The coroner, a plump, cheerful-looking personage, was just washing his hands in the large sink in the corner.

  “Poor little thing,” he said. “He didn’t have to hit her that hard, now, did he? An innocent lass like her. A crying shame.” He wiped his hands on a thick towel, leaving streaks of blood behind.

  I knelt down to touch Sinead’s face. “I’m so sorry, my dear,” I whispered. Again I admonished myself for not being with her, too preoccupied with my own life to notice troubles in hers.

  I remained kneeling there while the coroner clinked instruments back into his bag. I tried to ignore the metallic clanking, refusing to speculate on what sort of instruments he’d been using.

  As I bowed my head over Sinead, I glimpsed a shadow on her throat. Leaning closer, I saw a black mark across her neck, which would have been hidden by the high collar of her dress, now opened by the coroner’s examination.

  “What is that?” I asked, pointing.

  The coroner came to me, leaning down and resting his hand on his knees. “Ah yes. Must have been a necklace there. Someone’s wrenched it off. Nothing to do with her death though. She was killed with that.” He waved his hand at a heavy marble bowl that rested on a towel, ready for the police to take. “Found it stashed away on the back of a shelf.”

  The bowl was a mortar, small and deep—a cook or cook’s assistant would grind spices or seeds in it with a pestle. The side of the bowl bore a dried rivulet of blood.

  The mortar and pestle had been sitting on a table in the larder—I’d seen it when I examined the room upon my arrival yesterday. Sinead’s attacker must have reached for the nearest thing he could find and struck her with it, then hidden it once Sinead was dead. He’d also pulled her into a corner, but that hadn’t concealed her for long.

  The murderer must have been in a hurry—too rushed to take Sinead’s body and the mortar away with him, perhaps to drop both into the river. That must mean he hadn’t come here deliberately to kill her. They’d quarreled, as I’d been speculating, he’d hit her, then panicked when he realized what he’d done. He’d hastily tried to hide what had happened and then fled.

  I creaked to my feet, my vision blurring with inconvenient tears. “What will you do with her?” I had only a vague notion of what happened to victims of murder.

  “She’ll come with me to the morgue.” The coroner wiped his hands again, dropped the towel on the edge of the sink, and reached for a frock coat he’d left dangling from a hook meant for hanging up clean pots. “I’ll take good care of her, don’t you worry. The dead do no harm to anyone, poor things. I’ll finish my examination in my morgue, though in this case the cause of her death is fairly obvious. You pack up her things and find a nice frock to lay her out in. Now, you might want to go, missus, while my assistants take her away.”

  I could not leave, I found, could not turn my back on Sinead and flee. I waited while two men came in with a litter, bundled Sinead onto it, covered her with a sheet, and carried her up the back stairs.

  A crowd had gathered in the street to watch while the coroner and his men slid Sinead into a van with open back doors, the horses twitching nervously in their harness. The doors closed with a final snap, the horses started, and the cart clopped away, the wheels rumbling hollowly on the pavement.

  • • •

  Back inside, the scullery maid, weeping, was already scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing the floor of the scullery, no doubt set to the task by Mr. Davis. Mrs. Bowen was nowhere in sight.

  I snatched up the bloody towel the coroner had left and carried it to the laundry room, dropping it into the tub where other towels from yesterday were soaking. I rinsed my hands there and went back to the kitchen with a heavy step.

  I needed to go on with the cooking for the day. I was firmly acquainted with upper-class households—the routine was so well established it ceased for nothing, not even death. We servants might be given a few hours to attend Sinead’s funeral on the day it happened, but likely not much more than that.

  I would need another assistant. Mrs. Bowen should help me procure one, but as she did not appear, I chose one of the downstairs maids, who’d come in for her bite of breakfast. Her name indeed was Mary, and she seemed eager to shuck dusting for shelling peas. I had her wash her hands after eating and set her down at the table with said bowl of peas, then I walked up the outside stairs and into the street, once more in search of James.

  The road was crowded with wheeled vehicles pulled by brisk horses, early risers heading out to their clubs or offices in the City, or wherever gentlemen in Mount Street took themselves to during the day. Drovers, carters, peddlers, and errand boys also swarmed the street.

  I did not see James at first, but lads like him, who hung about looking for odd jobs, began to approach me. They’d seen me emerge from a posh house in cook’s garb and knew I’d have the power to employ them on the spot, plus a master who likely had the means to pay. I started to dismiss the lads with a wave of my hand then thought better of it, dispensing farthings to them as I asked if they’d seen the boy I looked for.

  James was hardly a boy anymore. He’d grown at least a foot since the day I’d met him, and his voice was deepening. I worried for what he’d do once he became a man—a youth can get away with much, but a man must find true employment or starve. I did not think his father would let him go hungry and homeless, but I also knew nothing about Daniel’s plans for him.

  “You’re looking for me, Mrs. Holloway?” James sang out as he strode toward me, his wrists sticking out from his coat sleeves at least an inch.

  I drew James aside, not wanting to announce my business to the entire street. “It is your father I would like to speak to.” I handed him the rest of my farthings. “If he can possibly spare me the time.”

  James grinned. “He might do.” He touched his cap, and then grabbed my hand, dropped the farthings back into it, and closed my fist around them. “Don’t need your coin, Mrs. H. Be back soon
.” Another touch of his cap, another grin, and he was gone.

  The smile, the gesture, the amusement at my generosity—all reflected his father. The pair of them were charmers, that was for certain, and charm like that could lead a woman less careful than I straight into trouble.

  • • •

  I knew little about Daniel, but I was certain of one thing—he came and went on his own time. I took myself back to my kitchen, knowing I needed to continue meals for the family.

  There was no midday dinner—Lord Rankin had left for the Exchange while I’d searched for James, and Lady Rankin was still in her bedchamber. That left Lady Cynthia, but she too departed before noon—to see friends, Mr. Davis said. He opined that she gathered with other ladies who liked to dress in trousers to smoke cigars. Appalling, he finished, rolling his eyes, though it was clear he found Lady Cynthia very interesting.

  I made a simple repast of chops, potatoes, and greens for the staff’s dinner, and at the same time I cooked down the bones and any meat clinging to the carcass of last night’s hen. Leaving that to simmer, I turned my efforts to tea, a meal that, Mr. Davis assured me, the ladies of the house would take. I mixed up a special seedcake, putting in extra nutmeg and caraway seeds, and I had Mr. Davis fetch me a little brandy to add to the batter.

  I made this seedcake with Lady Cynthia in mind, as gratitude for her speaking up for me with Lord Rankin. I might not have riches with which to reward those good to me, but I could cook—my largesse came through my fingers and my knowledge of what ingredients to put with what. I thanked her as I knew how.

  As I removed the cake from the oven, the aroma heavenly, Mr. Davis’s voice floated into the room as he spoke in stentorian tones to someone behind him.

  “Cook might have some tasks for you from time to time, but for most of your day you will stay out from underfoot, especially in the kitchen, understand? Mrs. Holloway has a great deal of work to do, and so far she does it beautifully, so we do not want to get in her way, eh?”

  “Don’t you worry, guv,” came the answer. “None will even know I’m ’ere.”

  The words were tinged with the cant of London streets—South London, if I were any judge—but I knew the voice. He might be speaking like a lowborn deliveryman, but I would always recognize the smooth tone behind the words, the timbre that never failed to catch my attention.

  Daniel McAdam stood deferentially in the kitchen doorway, twisting his cloth cap in his hands. He glanced about in reverence, as though conscious of his privilege in being indoors in a house such as this.

  As I halted, dumbfounded, the cloths with which I held the cake pan slipped, and my beautiful seedcake went down, down, down, heading for the slates where it would be smashed into a heap of crumbs and crockery.

  6

  The cake pan halted two feet above the floor, caught on an outstretched towel spread taut in Daniel’s broad hands. He lifted the towel, cake pan and all, carefully, carefully, and deposited it safely on the table.

  “Whew.” Daniel released the ends of the towel, retrieved his cap from where he’d dropped it on the floor, and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Smells too good to be ruined, that does. Will you save a slice for old Danny?” He lifted his brows, mirth in his dark blue eyes, but nothing in his stance or voice let slip that we had ever met before.

  “The cake is for the mistress’s tea,” Mr. Davis said scornfully. “But if we’re kind to Mrs. Holloway, she might make one almost as nice for us.” He sent me an exasperated look behind Daniel’s back.

  “Beg yer pardon, missus,” Daniel said to me. “I meant no offense.” He tilted the corners of his mouth, the smile of a man who tried to get away with as much as he could in this world.

  I started to speak, but words lodged in my throat. I should either dismiss him with a shake of my head, or tell him not to worry himself and thank him for saving the cake, but nothing would emerge from my mouth but a strange sort of breathless sound.

  Daniel touched his hand to his forehead, half saluting me, and followed Mr. Davis out of the kitchen.

  I stood for a long time, watching the door through which Daniel and Mr. Davis had disappeared. Not until Paul the footman burst in with a load of clean crockery from the scullery and asked me what was the matter did I jerk myself from my immobile stance and turn back to the table. There, I stared at the cake Daniel had rescued, in a daze.

  He’d come. James had found him, and he’d answered my summons. But why he’d chosen to blatantly walk into the house itself, when he’d been seen upstairs as the master’s visitor the night before, I had no idea. I only knew that frustration would soon surge through my numbness, and when it did, I’d seize Daniel by the ear, and demand to know what he thought he was doing.

  As Daniel’s and Mr. Davis’s voices faded up the outside steps, I forced myself through the motions of preparing tea. I had done it often enough that I could finish like an automaton—slicing and toasting the bread I’d baked before dinner and cutting the seedcake, loading plates with pieces of fruit, adding to the tray a good-sized dish of clotted cream.

  I sent the entire repast up in the dumbwaiter and turned to take an inventory of the kitchen and larder, necessary if I were to plan more meals today. I went through this in sort of a fog, my feet and hands doing things, my eyes seeing without my mind registering much at all.

  The larder and spice drawers were well stocked, but I’d need fresh produce, another sack of flour, meat from the butcher for tomorrow, and fresh fish for tonight. I made up a list and gave it to Mary, telling her to take a footman with her to the market to help her carry the heavy items. Then I set the joint of beef that was the last bit of meat in the house to braising in its juices with onions and the stock I’d made from the hen. Only once that could be left simmering did I wipe my hands and go in search of Daniel.

  I found Mrs. Bowen instead. As I moved past the servants’ hall, the door to the housekeeper’s parlor opened, and Mrs. Bowen stood on the threshold. I had not spoken to her since I’d given her the news of Sinead’s death, and she’d not turned up for meals, but the household was so well-oiled that the footmen and maids had carried on without her.

  Mrs. Bowen’s eyes were red from weeping, and wisps of graying hair straggled from her cap to her wan face. I took her by the elbow, steered her firmly back inside the parlor, and shut the door.

  “Now, then, Mrs. Bowen.” I guided her toward the seat she favored, a velvet-upholstered Belter chair with a curved back, possibly a castoff from the floors above, and pushed her gently into it. “It is a horrible thing that’s happened, but there’s no use in giving way.”

  I said this to convince myself more than anything. My numbness was fading, and anger began to spread through my veins in slow heat.

  I took a seat on a plainer chair of dark walnut, its back decorated with metal studs to hold the upholstery in place. “You said she was ‘motherless,’” I went on as Mrs. Bowen sat motionlessly, staring straight in front of her. “What did you mean? Did you know Sinead’s family?”

  “Her name wasn’t Sinead.” Mrs. Bowen remained gazing into empty space. “Or Ellen either. It was Katie. Katie Doyle. Her mother was my dearest friend.”

  I started—I hadn’t realized Mrs. Bowen’s connection to Sinead was so close. “What happened to her mother?” I asked, softening my tone.

  “She died, didn’t she?” Mrs. Bowen looked at me at last, her eyes filled with rage and grief. “She was shot and killed on the street like an animal.”

  I started again, harder this time. I hadn’t expected that. I’d assumed the lady dead of a disease, taken too young, as consumption and other too-common maladies will do. “Shot?” I repeated in shock.

  “Fenians.” Mrs. Bowen spat the word. “Katie was only a girl when she and her mum were caught in a crowd near Waterloo Station, when a Fenian explosive went off. Not content with blowing up people, the bloody men s
tarted shooting as well. Katie’s mother was struck, though Katie was able to run away. Poor child. She was raised by her aunt, then I helped her get a place in a house where I worked, and we came together to this one. And now Katie has died by violence too. There are those who want to give the Irish home rule, but those people are not to be trusted—ever.”

  Sinead herself was Irish, as was her mother, I assumed. I said nothing of this, however. When violence grips a mob, they do not stop and take the particulars of the passersby before they massacre them. That such things could still happen in this day and age was monstrous.

  “Mrs. Bowen, I do not believe a stray Fenian wandered into the house and killed Sinead,” I said briskly, keeping to the name the lass had wanted to use. “She must have interrupted a burglar, as Mr. Davis speculates.” I knew that explanation was the wrong one, but I hoped to calm Mrs. Bowen’s stunned grief.

  Mrs. Bowen only gave me a dark look. “Not to be trusted,” she repeated. “The sooner we heave every Irishman out of England and pen them on their island home, the better every Englishman will be.” She rose, the frosty chill of the professional housekeeper returning. “Thank you for speaking with me, Mrs. Holloway. I have been most upset, as you can imagine. I will be better directly, and resume my duties.”

  “I think no one will mind if you rest awhile longer.” I stood up with her and laid a soothing hand on her shoulder. “Seeing what a good friend you were to Sinead, and to her mum.”

  Mrs. Bowen turned away, dislodging my hand, then brushed off her skirts and stepped to a mirror to smooth her hair. “No indeed, Mrs. Holloway,” she said. “As you stated, there is no use giving way. The police will find who did this dreadful deed, and then I shall visit him and tell him exactly what I think.”

  “I will go with you,” I said. We shared a look, two women who understood how to do the most with what limited power we had in this world. She gave me a terse nod, and we departed.