Broken Threads

by Tessa Barclay

  Ned went a slow, painful red. ‘I saw the jewel box left standing empty. So I looked for a few things of my own ‒ oh, nothing much, but you know I kept Father’s gold watch, and there were some pearl shirt studs and a seal ring.’

  Jenny and Ronald looked at him. ‘They’ve gone,’ Jenny said, as a statement and not a question.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We’ll have to tell the police. If she sells them it may help in tracing her.’

  ‘Jenny, how could she? How could she? And why? We were always so happy …’

  He turned away, and to the utter dismay of his sister and brother-in-law, began to weep. Next moment he had fled to the sanctuary of the bedroom he had shared with his wife.

  Jenny and her husband stayed up very late but no further news came. At length they went to bed, and such was Jenny’s state of exhaustion that she slept soundly, only waking when Baird came in at seven-thirty to say that Major Wishart had come.

  Ronald was already downstairs. Jenny dressed hastily and descended. Wishart was pacing about the drawing room with his heavy step. He waited for Jenny to seat herself before beginning.

  ‘I got a long telegraph message this morning. Inspector Dancy went first thing to Mrs Massiter. It seems she repeated the same story as yesterday until Dancy mentioned Mrs Corvill. Then I regret to say she went into a tirade, the gist of which Dancy gives, although a written report is coming on the next.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘It appears that after the first visit from the police she looked about, and it’s quite clear that Massiter has cleared out, taking with him his wife’s diamonds and a fair sum in cash, and leaving a great many debts.’

  ‘My God,’ groaned Ronald.

  While Wishart was speaking, Ned had come in, looking wan and red-eyed. He said now, ‘Why are we speaking of Mrs Massiter? She’s only a casual London acquaintance of ours.’

  All heads turned to him. Wishart darted a glance at Jenny, who sighed and by a slight shrug told him that as yet Ned hadn’t learned about Massiter. There was a silence. Then Wishart, who needed to be able to get information and could never do it if there wasn’t total openness, took the initiative.

  ‘There is reason to believe that Mrs Corvill left this house to go to Mr Massiter, I understand.’

  ‘What?’ Ned cried.

  ‘You didn’t know of this relationship?’

  ‘What relationship? Are you out of your mind? Lucy scarcely knows Massiter.’

  ‘I infer from what I have heard from Mrs Armstrong that Mrs Corvill and Mr Massiter were more than slightly acquainted.’

  ‘Jenny! What have you been saying?’

  Ronald sprang up. ‘Don’t shout at Jenny! If you had had the brains you were born with you’d have known that Lucy was bored to death with you and ready for a romance with anybody that would smile at her.’

  ‘Don’t you dare ‒’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is no help at all,’ Wishart said, in the tone that had rebuked rowdy messrooms.

  When Ronald had sat down again and Ned looked ready to listen, Wishart resumed. ‘It seems more than a coincidence that your wife should run away from home and that at the same time a man with whom she had a close … er … friendship should cut and run. Is that an unreasonable idea?’

  ‘Of course it is! You don’t know Lucy! What you’re suggesting is impossible.’

  Major Wishart had in fact met Lucy, but only at social events. He recalled her as an angelic creature, all milk and roses. Yet experience had taught him that even with angelic creatures nothing was impossible. And the evidence was inescapable.

  ‘Can you suggest any other possibility, Corvill? Any other reason why she would have gone from home without warning, without any message?’

  Ned was silent.

  ‘Can you suggest anywhere she might have gone?’

  A shake of the head.

  ‘You hadn’t quarrelled?’

  ‘With Lucy?’ Ned murmured, as if the idea were ludicrous. ‘Lucy isn’t quarrelsome. She’s shy, reticent …’

  The major felt in his breast pocket for a slip of paper, examined it, then said, ‘When the idea of the missing little girl was broached to Mrs Massiter she found it ‒’ he glanced at the paper ‒ ‘I quote, “laughable”.’ He looked at Jenny.

  ‘Yes,’ she said in a stifled voice. ‘I would say he’s not a man who cares for children.’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ Ned broke out. ‘That means Lucy never intended to go to Massiter!’

  ‘No, it only means she stole our little girl and injured your mother,’ Ronald snarled.

  Wishart frowned at him, but couldn’t find it in his heart to rebuke him. ‘It’s very puzzling.’

  ‘Where can she be?’ Jenny moaned. ‘Heather, oh, my little lass …’

  ‘Lucy loves Heather,’ Ned insisted. ‘Lucy will look after her, don’t be afraid, Jenny ‒’

  ‘Look after her! My God, brother, she doesn’t know the first thing about looking after a child! She only ever played with Heather and spoiled her. She doesn’t know how to give her her breakfast or wash her face for her. If Heather got a speck on her dress, Lucy handed her to Wilmot to tidy up. Look after her!’

  And to her own dismay Jenny burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands, turned in among the sofa cushions, and leaned there, weeping as if the flood gates had opened for ever.

  Wishart hesitated, nodded in understanding, then moved out into the hall, beckoning the men to follow him. ‘My wife would say it’s best for her to have her cry out. Is there someone who can look after her? Another woman?’

  ‘Her mother ‒ but her mother is lying injured in bed,’ Ronald said. He shook his head despairingly. ‘I’ll get Baird for her.’ He rang the bell.

  ‘Tell me,’ the major resumed, ‘is there anything more to be told? Have you found a note ‒ because ladies usually leave a note, you see.’

  Ronald hesitated, then looked at Ned. His brother-in-law, very unwilling, said, ‘I discovered that … that one or two of my belongings have gone, as well as the jewellery.’ He gave Wishart a description. As he spoke, the major pursed up his lips and sighed inwardly. A selfish girl, Mrs Corvill. A bad lot, it seemed.

  After he had gone, the normal day began. Slowly, inevitably, the household of Gatesmuir began to recover a little from the shock of Lucy’s actions. Friends began to call, and though they were turned back by the policeman at the gates they left messages of goodwill and hope.

  Ronald dismissed Wilmot that morning. ‘I can’t have her in the house,’ he said.

  Jenny was too dazed and confused to defend the nursemaid, even if there was much defence to make. Perhaps the girl’s only crime had been that she had drunk too large a glass of port with Cook before going to bed and, always a heavy sleeper, had snored through the kidnapping.

  Wilmot left in tears, knowing full well she could never get another post after this shameful event, and not daring to beg Jenny for a character reference ‒ though had she but known, she might have got it. Through her haze of misery Jenny might have admitted she had nothing against Wilmot’s character. It was Lucy who was to blame ‒ how could any nursemaid have been expected to stand guard against Lucy?

  For that day and the next Ronald stayed at home, trying to comfort Jenny, avoiding Ned, staring out of the window in hopes of a messenger to say his little daughter had been found. Anger and frustration mounted in him. He wanted to smash something, to hurt someone ‒ but none of that would do any good.

  At length he went back to the mill. At least there was something to do there. He couldn’t concentrate on the work, not even on the problem of how to get a vermilion dye to fix for a new lightweight tweed. His normal wry good humour had deserted him. His workforce found him short-tempered, over-critical ‒ but they forgave him everything.

  ‘Poor soul,’ they murmured to each other, ‘look how thin he’s getting ‒ and he never had much flesh on him. And think what it must be like for the mistress …�
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  Jenny promised she would send a message the moment any news came to Gatesmuir. For her part, she spent most of her time in her mother’s bedroom.

  Millicent Corvill wasn’t making a good recovery from the shock of the attack nor from the broken limb. She was in pain all the time, although Dr Lauder kept it subdued with laudanum drops.

  Jenny began to worry about that treatment. ‘It seems to make her so listless, doctor. And she hardly eats a morsel.’

  ‘Time, my dear lady, time ‒ it takes time at Mrs Corvill’s age to recover from such a stramash. Let you be thinking of the end of February before much will improve.’

  Ned tried to share in the task of watching in the sickroom. He was silent most of the time, white with strain. Once Jenny passed the open door of his bedroom, and saw him standing with one of Lucy’s favourite fans in his hand, holding it closed against his face, almost as if by this he could conjure her up in the flesh. Jenny must have made some sound, for Ned looked up, then darted to the door and slammed it in her face. He didn’t want even his sister, who loved him, to see his pain.

  The one thing that Jenny could be thankful for was that Ned hadn’t turned to the bottle for consolation. Or at least, not so far …

  When ten days had gone by Major Wishart came flurrying up the drive in a fly. He almost fell out of it in his eagerness to speak as Thirley threw open the door to him. Jenny ran downstairs, hearing his voice in the hall.

  ‘Major Wishart! There’s news?’

  ‘My dear Mrs Armstrong! I believe we have found her!’

  The daylight suddenly blazed, then dimmed. Jenny felt herself falling. She grasped the banister. ‘Oh, thank God! Is she well ‒ safe and well?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite well ‒’

  ‘Where is she? Oh, God, my baby ‒’

  All the animation went out of Major Wishart. ‘Wishart, you fool!’ he said, smiting himself on the forehead. He was red with shame. ‘I only meant ‒ we’ve found Mrs Corvill.’

  ‘But Heather is with her?’

  She watched in horror as he shook his head.

  Chapter Eight

  Dr Lauder happened to be in the house. He came downstairs at Wishart’s exclamation of alarm, and restoratives brought Jenny out of the momentary faintness.

  ‘Tell me ‒ quickly ‒ Major Wishart ‒’

  The little that could be told in a telegraphic message from another police force was soon conveyed. ‘Mrs Corvill has been found in Dover ‒’

  ‘Dover!’

  ‘A pawnbroker recognised her from the description ‒’

  ‘She was trying to sell her jewellery?’ Jenny broke in.

  ‘No, that’s the strange thing. She was trying to sell a piece of fine lace ‒ a collar, I believe.’

  ‘A piece of lace? I don’t understand it. And Heather ‒?’

  ‘Is not with her, I very much regret to say.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Jenny whispered. ‘What has that she-devil done with my baby?’

  ‘They don’t say anything about that in the message. Their phrase is, “Suspect does not respond to questions”.’

  ‘Massiter?’

  ‘No word of him.’

  Jenny pulled her hair back from her face, as if to pare away anything that might distract her. ‘She’s alone. She’s without money ‒ or else why was she trying to sell her lace collar?’

  ‘That seems to be the case.’

  ‘She won’t say what’s happened?’

  ‘They can get nothing out of her. But she was in a small hotel by the harbour, and the proprietor was pressing her to pay her bill.’

  ‘We must go there at once,’ Jenny said, getting up from her chair.

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, I advise against it,’ Dr Lauder said. ‘These perpetual anxieties ‒ your husband would be more suited ‒’

  ‘Dr Lauder, if you think these “perpetual anxieties” will be eased by staying at home while the woman who took my baby is in Dover ‒!’

  Jenny’s brother came slowly into the drawing room. When Dr Lauder quitted the sick room at the alarm on the stairs, he had come out to the landing. There he had stood, hidden from view, but listening.

  ‘I told you she wasn’t with Massiter,’ he said, in a kind of resentful triumph.

  Major Wishart looked at him. There was pity in his glance, to see the man so diminished. He said as kindly as he could, ‘The innkeeper told the police, as far as I can gather from the report, that there had been a gentleman with her but he had left.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Sir,’ the major said, still kind but firm, ‘open your eyes. Your wife ran away with another man. And he, it seems, has abandoned her.’

  Ned put his hands over his ears. ‘I refuse to listen to lies like that!’

  ‘You can’t refuse to accept the truth. And the truth is that your wife is in Dover, destitute.’

  ‘Lucy, my poor little Lucy.’ Ned turned to the door. ‘I’m going to her.’

  ‘No ‒’ cried Jenny.

  But the major put his hand on her arm. ‘He has the right to go. In fact, it is his duty. But God knows how he’ll acquit himself.’

  The gardener’s boy was sent with a message to Ronald. He came home at once. Jenny was already packing. Within an hour they were off to the station, leaving Baird in charge of Jenny’s mother.

  Lucy was being kept under the charge of a police constable at the little inn on the road above the harbour. The detective sergeant who met them at the railway station took them there at once.

  ‘We thought it best to keep her there. We’ve no facilities for keeping a lady in the police lock up.’

  When they arrived at the White Boar, Ned insisted on being shown up to the room alone. Jenny didn’t know what to say, and while she was still trying to think of a way to prevent it, he had gone up the wooden staircase with the sergeant.

  In a moment there was an outcry, screams and protests, Ned’s voice trying to calm Lucy down. After a minute or two the two men came back, Ned white and very shaken. The sergeant said, ‘The lady’s hysterical, ma’am. I wonder if you …’

  ‘My God, are you asking my wife to look after that little trollop?’ Ronald cried.

  ‘She needs a woman to handle her, sir,’ the sergeant said. ‘We don’t have no women on the police force, so she’s been all alone for three days now, and very distressed.’

  ‘I don’t give a damn if she’s broken in pieces! My wife isn’t ‒’

  ‘Ronald, she and I have got to meet some time. I’m going up.’

  ‘No, Jenny ‒’

  ‘I think it would be best, sir. We can’t get not a word out of her, y’see.’

  On limbs that trembled Jenny went up the stairs. The constable opened the door for her.

  Lucy was sitting in a wooden armchair with a handkerchief up to her face. Her head was thrown back. Her pretty blond hair was in a tangle, hairpins falling out, the decorative ribbon reduced to a rat’s tail. Her travelling gown of soft lilac wool was stained at the hem with mud. There was a tear in her sleeve. Her shoes had not been cleaned for many a day.

  The room was in disorder, the few articles of clothing scattered about, a cup overturned in a saucer on the table, the washbasin unemptied.

  ‘Lucy,’ Jenny said.

  The figure in the wooden chair stiffened.

  ‘Lucy, look at me.’

  Lucy turned away her head.

  Jenny went to her, took hold of her hands, and pulled them from her face. The wet and dirty handkerchief revealed red-rimmed eyes, a quivering mouth.

  Lucy began to wail, a wordless, meaningless cry of misery.

  ‘Stop that. You’re only making things worse, Lucy.’ And, since there seemed nothing else to do, Jenny hit her hard on the cheek with the palm of her hand.

  Lucy stopped wailing. She gasped, choked, went into a spluttering paroxysm. The constable hurried forward. But by the time he had got close enough to intervene between, as he imagined, two fighting women, she had recovered enough to draw a
quieter breath. She sat up straight.

  ‘I don’t want you here!’ she cried to Jenny.

  ‘What have you done with Heather?’

  ‘Go away, I don’t want you here. Nobody must see me like this.’

  ‘Tell me where Heather is!’

  Lucy shook her head from side to side. ‘Don’t talk to me like that! I know why you’ve come! You want to laugh at me ‒ that’s all it is, you want to see me brought low ‒’

  ‘Stop thinking about yourself for once, you empty-headed little fool, and tell me what you’ve done with my daughter!’

  ‘You shouldn’t have brought Ned! I don’t want to see Ned! He looks at me … I don’t want him to look at me like that!’

  Jenny took a grip on herself. Somehow she must get through to this unbalanced, self-centred girl. And the only way seemed to be through her vanity.

  She brought a chair opposite and sat down, so that she could take hold of Lucy’s hands. Lucy tried to withdraw them but she held firm.

  ‘Lucy, you have to tell us what has happened. You have a choice ‒ you can either speak to me, or you can be committed to an asylum, because the way you’re going on, you’re losing your wits.’

  ‘No!’ wailed Lucy.

  ‘You want to be looked after? You want proper clothes and a pretty room?’

  The other girl looked at her, her gaze vacant and yet with some intelligence beginning to return.

  ‘I sold my cape,’ she mourned. ‘It was new but I only got a few shillings for it. Did you bring my blue silk dress?’

  ‘I’ll send for it, Lucy. You’d like that.’

  ‘Yes. And stockings and shoes ‒ I’ve no clean stockings left.’

  ‘They’ll be here tomorrow. But only if you tell me what happened.’

  Lucy looked away. ‘You’ll be angry with me.’

  ‘No I won’t. Tell me, Lucy.’

  After a quavering start, out it all tumbled. Harvil had had a hard time with his wife, who wouldn’t put up the money to pay his debts. Harvil had decided that if she wouldn’t part with it willingly, he’d take it anyway. ‘It served her right, you know ‒ a wife’s property really belongs to her husband, doesn’t it?’