Death Below Stairs

by Jennifer Ashley

My eyes widened. Not only a swindler—a traitor? Was Rankin that much of a fool?

  I did not consider myself robustly devoted to crown and country, other than to feel relief that I’d been born a British subject and did not have to grub for my living in some squalid backstreet on the Continent. But a man had to be idiotic to finance a plot against the Queen or Parliament—if caught, he’d be reviled in all corners of the kingdom and executed in shame. Traitors used to be drawn and quartered. I was not certain what the penalty was these days, but it was certain to be dire. Lord Rankin’s family wouldn’t live it down for generations to come.

  Daniel continued. “Rankin defends himself by saying he had no idea what these gentlemen were doing with the money he made for them. He might be telling the truth.” Daniel’s look said his opinion was divided. “To prove his loyalty, Lord Rankin is continuing his tasks for these clients but reporting to me everything they say and do, and showing his ledgers every night to one of my colleagues. I don’t have much of a head for finance.”

  I wasn’t certain what shocked me more—Lord Rankin’s perfidy or discovering something at which Daniel wasn’t skilled.

  But how had Daniel convinced Lord Rankin to cooperate? And who were these colleagues he spoke of? Was Daniel truly of the police, as I’d speculated?

  My mouth was dry. “That’s why you visited Lord Rankin in your guise as City gent.”

  “And why he was not pleased at your intrusion.” Daniel’s eyes sparkled with amusement. “He did not know what to make of you. Rankin fears—ever he fears—that a person will discover he is helping men who blow up railways and other horrific acts and make him pay.”

  “You mean he thought I’d blackmail him?” I asked, astounded. “The very idea. I’d never stoop to anything so sordid.”

  Daniel’s look turned grim but he put a soothing hand on my arm. “I persuaded him he had nothing to fear from you.”

  I imagined the conversation—Lord Rankin with his piercing stare, Daniel facing him with the chilly hardness I’d seen him assume. Lord Rankin had obviously been the loser of the argument.

  I wet my lips and stepped back, which broke Daniel’s hold. “Thank you for telling me.”

  He let me go without comment. “I considered what you said to me in the pub last night and decided it was better you knew. I also know you are not a fool or a talkative woman. I only hope my telling you does not put you in danger.”

  “I am a talkative woman,” I told him. “But I can also keep tales like this to myself.”

  “I realize that.” He gave me a grateful look. “James doesn’t know, however. I want to keep him out of this as much as I can.” He shook his head, long-suffering. “Persuading him is sometimes more difficult than persuading you.”

  I forbore from comment. “James already knows you’re in some sort of intrigue. You have him roaming Mount Street for you.”

  Daniel’s expression turned pained. “Actually, I told him to stay well away. But as I say, the boy has a will that won’t be stopped.”

  “Rather like you.” I gave him a pointed glance. “James isn’t a boy anymore, is he? He’s sprung up a good foot since last year. He’ll be a man soon. What then? Shall you help him find a trade? At least let him live in rooms with you?”

  He did not admonish me for delving into his private life, but he did not answer either. “You do ask the most difficult questions,” he said. “I wish you were a featherhead sometimes. I’d win more arguments.”

  “If I were a featherhead, you never would have spoken to me twice,” I told him. “And we would not be here, musing over difficult questions.”

  “Again, she is wise,” Daniel said to the room. “You are a wonderful woman, Mrs. Holloway.”

  My face heated. “Don’t be daft,” I said, and waved him to the chair again, where I made him sit still while I finished ministering to his wounds.

  • • •

  Because we were so near Covent Garden, I insisted we walk to its markets before we found another hansom that would take us to Mayfair.

  The afternoon was getting on, so most of the best produce would be gone, but I’d shopped in this market for ages, and I knew who would hold things back for me, and who procured the things I liked especially. In this area, I was the expert, and Daniel only followed along.

  I bought a plump, shiny sole just brought in from the coast, which the fishmonger wrapped in paper for me. Daniel carried that while I piled my basket full of vegetables I’d picked over—brussels sprouts, endive, parsnip, potatoes, and fresh rosemary and parsley. James had brought me sugar when I’d sent him on his faux errand, so I did not need that, but I chose some peppercorns I particularly liked from a spice merchant. Last, I bought some bright oranges I’d use in a pastry cream for my sponge cake, and then was ready to return home.

  Daniel told the cabbie he flagged down to let us out on South Audley Street so no one would see us driving up in style in a hansom. We walked home from there, Daniel carrying both the large fish and my heavy basket.

  It was late afternoon, the shadows deep, the streets dim canyons where gaslight had not yet been lit. I had a few hours left in which to prepare supper, so I was not worried, but when Daniel and I entered the kitchen, Mr. Davis came charging in from the servants’ hall, glaring at me in fury.

  “Mrs. Holloway,” he snapped, his usually neat hair pushed awry. This gave me the chance to see he wore a switch of false hair on the crown of his head—it had fallen askew to reveal a bald patch. “I thought you’d gone as well. What the devil have you been playing at, woman? Good Lord.” Mr. Davis stopped as he caught sight of Daniel’s bruises, and his mouth sagged open. “What happened to you?”

  “Nothing to worry you,” Daniel said cheerfully. He set the basket of the vegetables and fruit on the table, and after I stripped off my gloves, hung up my coat, and rinsed my hands in the scullery, I moved to sort through them.

  “What did you mean you thought I’d gone as well?” I asked Mr. Davis as I chose the largest of the sprouts, the crispest endive, and most unblemished of the small white potatoes.

  Davis touched his hair, realized his hairpiece was askew, and pushed it right. He did it perfectly, which told me he’d worn the false hair for some time now.

  “Mrs. Bowen has given notice. We’re at sixes and sevens, you disappeared, and Mary ran to her room in hysterics thinking she’d have to do the cookery. The master is due home in two hours. Bloody hell.”

  “Mr. Davis!” I said through his rising voice. “I can certainly turn out a meal to satisfy even the master in such a time. It took quite a while to find the best produce, and your new man was slow.” I gave Daniel an admonishing look that slid easily from him as he carried the fish into the larder. “Send someone to fetch Mary. She will have to dry her tears and come down and help me. Then you can tell me about Mrs. Bowen.”

  A pity, I thought as Davis, galvanized, dashed into the servants’ hall and commanded a maid to run up to Mary. Mrs. Bowen had run this house very well, which made my job much easier. Plus, I’d liked her, despite my misgivings about her when I’d first met her. I knew she was grieving over Sinead and could only hope that when she felt better, she’d return.

  Two hours is a very short time to prepare even a simple meal, so I had to do everything correctly from the start. Fortunately, I had prepared well that morning, so I had buns baking in a trice, Mary had competently trussed the fowl as I’d showed her—though I rubbed it with herbs to be certain it would have good flavor—and I washed and chopped the vegetables to be strewn into the pan when it was time. My puff pastry made the base of a plum tart, and I whipped up an orange-flavored pastry cream to spread between layers of sponge cake.

  I had learned long ago that one does not need to prepare elaborately bizarre meals with strange ingredients from foreign lands to make a good meal. Most people, even aristocrats, appreciate good wholesome cooking withou
t dishes of long names no one can pronounce. A good taste is what they truly wish for.

  While I worked, Daniel vanished, to do whatever jobs Mr. Davis set him to. He’d take his meals with the men in the mews, not in the servants’ hall with the other staff. I tried to forget about him and concentrate on the meal, but all he’d said today danced in the back of my mind. I’d need time to sit still and think things over.

  I seemed to have recovered from my reluctance to go into the larder, for which I thanked Daniel. Though my heart fluttered the first time I approached it, I remembered his strong voice behind me, the comfort of his presence. He’d taken me out of myself today, renewed my strength with his confidence in me, though I would never tell him so.

  Having much to do and little time to do it in also helped a great deal. Such a thing tends to push fears aside, I have found, and one focuses on one’s task. That is why they say idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

  I grew more certain as I worked that it was Mr. Simms who had taken the dinner I’d put aside for myself last night. A valet should have no cause to go into the larder, less still to linger there, but I discovered him in its doorway twice in an hour.

  “If you need something from the larder, Mr. Simms, ask Mary or Paul,” I told him severely the second time. “Or me. Now, please excuse me. I need to get on.”

  Mr. Simms had given a guilty start when I’d come up behind him, but he resumed his arrogance as he moved out of my way. “I am only making certain all is well, Mrs. Holloway,” he said in his stuffy tones. “Since Mrs. Bowen has gone off.”

  “Leave the larder to me, Mr. Simms, if you please. I am well trained to look after it.”

  I gave him a stern look, which only made his nose rise higher into the air as he stalked off. He had been inside, I saw, because a crock of butter had been moved, and the bowl of grapes looked considerably emptier. Bloody man. A pompous valet stooping to steal food from his employer was a sad thing indeed. Worse, the blame for missing food would be laid at the cook’s door, and so I needed to keep a careful eye on him.

  Mary and I finished the meal and sent it up; then I prepared a repast of pork and potatoes to serve the staff when the family was finished. Mr. Davis, Mr. Simms, and I sat in Mrs. Bowen’s parlor, with the young footman, Paul, to wait on us. Mr. Simms carefully did not look at me, as he shoveled his meal into his mouth.

  “You should be housekeeper, Mrs. H.,” Mr. Davis told me as I set my feet on a footstool and sighed in weariness. “You’d take care of us right well.”

  “No, indeed,” I said in true horror. I couldn’t think of anything more dreadful. “I’d never be able to stay out of the kitchen, and I’d drive the new cook mad. No, I am happy where I am.”

  Mr. Davis shrugged. “Fair enough. We’ve been eating well the past few days, haven’t we, Simms? Mrs. Cowles—that was our old cook, Mrs. Holloway—she was a good body but absentminded. Apt to forget to put butter in the sauce or sugar in the cake.”

  Simms nodded without looking up. His fork screeched as it scraped across his plate.

  “All were as meek as you please at table tonight,” Mr. Davis went on. He paused to snuffle into a handkerchief then tucked the handkerchief into his coat pocket and cleared his throat. “Lady Rankin asked his lordship about his day, as per usual. He talked all about it and, as per usual, her ladyship and Lady Cynthia were sublimely uninterested.”

  Simms huffed a laugh and took another helping of plum tart.

  “His lordship did begin with the opinion that young ladies needed husbands,” Mr. Davis continued. “He told them he’d avoided a near disaster today when a young woman wanted to play the markets with money she’d inherited from a benefactor. She wished to invest heavily in African mines—ones proved to not exist, apparently. The young lady was most angry with his lordship when his lordship pointed this out, but he saved her some blunt, didn’t he? Lord Rankin declared that what this lady needed was a husband to tend to her money, and he looked most keenly at Lady Cynthia when he said it.”

  Simms swallowed a large bite of tart and tried to look superior. “Should take the back of his hand to Lady Cynthia, I’d say. His lordship has the right of it. No husband will tolerate a wife who likes to wear trousers. There’d be no more of that, no mistake.”

  True, a husband would likely put his foot down about the trousers, and Lady Cynthia wouldn’t have much choice but to obey.

  I grew indignant on her behalf. Lady Cynthia and her friend Bobby were a bit silly, but harmless, in my opinion. They simply longed for the freedom gentlemen had, to go where they wanted and do what they liked. I would also like that freedom, but at least, as I’d observed to Daniel, I could walk about town on my own and work at a job I enjoyed without it being scandalous. I didn’t have to be flattering, entertaining, and beautiful while pretending, like Lady Rankin, that I hadn’t the strength to lift my hand.

  Lady Cynthia, unfortunately, would have to marry or depend the rest of her life on Lord Rankin’s generosity. And if Lord Rankin were arrested for helping the horrible men Daniel had told me of, the entire family would be in dire straits. So would we, his staff, of course. We’d all be out a post.

  After supper the maids did the washing up, and I brought out my knives to sharpen. I laid them across the table in the servants’ hall, where I’d be out of the maids’ way—filet, cleaver, parers, two chef’s knives, and a brand-new carver I’d scraped the money together to purchase this winter. I’d lost the old carver in an unfortunate manner.

  These were my very own knives, which came and went with me, my property. The cook who’d trained me had taught me that I should never trust a household to have good ones. If the house’s mistress made economies in the kitchen, she’d very likely scrimp on the knives, which were expensive, not understanding how important they are. Good knives can make the difference between an easily prepared meal and endless labor.

  I allowed no one else to sharpen my knives but myself. I laid out my whetstone, dripped a bit of water onto it, and began.

  The rest of the staff faded away as I worked—perhaps the sight of all the blades made them nervous, especially as I barked a No! at Paul, who tried to pick one up. The maids doused lights in the outer rooms until I was left in the darkness with one small lamp I’d set on the table.

  I barely noticed them go, so absorbed I was. Sharpening could be soothing, no noise but the scratch of blade on stone, my gaze on the knife’s edge as it moved precisely across the whetstone, no hurrying.

  The even routine let my thoughts calm. The events of that day and the day before flowed through my head, all that I had learned, all that I had observed, my thoughts unwinding from their jumble. We had not heard back about Sinead and when we could have her funeral. If her mother was dead and Mrs. Bowen gone, it might fall to me to make the arrangements. No matter. I could do that for her at least.

  I thought about Mr. Timmons and why Daniel had set him to watching the house, as well as all Daniel had told me about Lord Rankin. Daniel had not seemed very surprised about the identity of the young man who’d struck him, and I wondered if Daniel had recognized him at the station, and his provocation had been deliberate. Perhaps he had his eye on this Minty fellow as well on Rankin. I would have to shake Daniel until he told me everything.

  Not until I raised my head to slide the carver back into its leather sheath did I realize how alone I was. The shadows pressed from the corners of the room, and all was black without.

  I had one more knife to sharpen, my cleaver, a large square knife with which I hacked apart chicken carcasses, cut up tough joints of meat, and chopped up beef bones.

  I was drawing it quietly across the stone when I heard a noise in the larder. At that same moment, the lamp flickered with the last of its kerosene and died, leaving me in darkness.

  12

  I went very still. The noise could have been made by Simms returning to have a go at more food
, but I was alone in a house where death had walked, with no light and no help. Simms or indeed any of the servants would have brought a light with them if they were going to raid the larder. It was quite solidly dark down here.

  A modicum of light must have filtered down from the street, however, because I saw, across the hall, a silhouette show briefly in the larder’s doorway before it disappeared.

  I rose as quietly as I could, laying the cleaver on the table. It would be foolish for me to go blundering about in the dark with a blade—I might hit an innocent who’d come down to the kitchen for a perfectly good reason, or I might trip and hurt myself.

  I could hear nothing for a moment, then there came a clinking noise from the larder followed by the sound of something being dragged across the flagstones.

  Then came a cry. So muffled it was, I could not tell if it came from a man or woman, but I became aware there were two people down here with me. The cry was not repeated, but I heard scuffling, fists on flesh.

  As I stepped into the passage, a body collided with mine, the breath leaving me as I folded in half. Footsteps pounded on the floor of the kitchen toward the scullery, and at the same time, hands caught my shoulders and pressed me smoothly aside.

  I stifled a shriek, recognizing the touch, but Daniel was gone a second later. He said nothing, made no noise, but he sprinted after the person who’d knocked me aside. Next I heard the bang of the scullery door and running feet on the stairs outside—the intruder’s, then Daniel’s.

  I straightened up, resting my hand on the wall to steady myself while I drew deep breaths. When my lungs eased, I tottered into the kitchen, lit a candle in a candlestick kept on a shelf near the door, and carried it with me to the larder.

  All was quiet, no one there. Whoever had rushed out of the house had left no accomplice behind.

  Nothing looked out of place. The drawers were closed, cupboards shut, copper pots and baskets that hung from the beams undisturbed. Even the items Mr. Simms had moved remained where I’d replaced them.