Florence and Giles

by John Harding

  Giles hopped me over to her. We reached her just as Miss Taylor came running down the stairs, her expression all alarmed. At that moment John and Meg, having heard Mrs Grouse crashing down the stairs, burst into the hallway.

  Miss Taylor looked around at us all. ‘She was all excited about something,’ she said, her eyes flicking from one to the other of us as though seeking acceptance for her words. ‘She was waving her hands about and, well, she was on the top step, with her back to the stairs and she must have overbalanced, for she went tumbling backwards. I – I tried to grab her, but it all happened so fast and…and, well, she was too far away.’ I noticed that in her hand she clutched Hadleigh’s letter and the steamship tickets.

  Meg was on her knees by the housekeeper. She laid her head upon the other woman’s breast. Straightening up, she took charge. ‘She’s still breathing and I don’t see any blood, so there’s hope. John, get out the horse and ride to Dr Bradley. Tell him to get here with all possible speed. Miss Taylor, this isn’t a sight for children. You must get them right away.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ Miss Taylor murmured. I saw her slip the papers into her pocket. ‘Come along, children!’ She made to walk around the stricken housekeeper, obviously intending for us to go up to the schoolroom, but then, realising we were not following, she turned and, seeing Giles struggling, his shoulder under my arm, remembered my ankle. She walked back to us. With John gone for the doctor there was no one to carry me upstairs. She motioned Giles aside and put her arm beneath mine. ‘Come, we will go to the library.’

  She helped me along the long corridor. Neither of us spoke. I too upsetted about Mrs Grouse to think of anything else. I had known the woman all my life, or at least as long as I had memory for. She was often a silly old fool, but she had a kind heart and always meant well.

  In the library Miss Taylor deposited me in a large armchair and began pacing up and down, her face, which I had only seen masked or false-smiling or angry, now contorted in an agony of anxiety. It pleasured me to twist the knife.

  ‘You have murdered her!’ I bolded.

  She stopped in her ambulation and faced me. ‘No! Don’t say such a thing. It was an accident. The poor woman got excited about something and overbalanced and fell. That is all.’

  ‘You pushed her, you fiend!’

  Giles alarmed a look from her to me. ‘Flo, you mustn’t talk like that. Why would Miss Taylor want to do that?’

  ‘Because she isn’t Miss Taylor,’ I said, glaring her one.

  She took a step backward, as if I had prodded her, like one schoolboy goading another to fight.

  ‘Not Miss Taylor?’ Giles puzzled, then started to laugh. ‘Why, sis, of course she’s Miss Taylor. Who else would she be?’

  ‘Miss Whitaker!’ I said.

  Our new governess stared at me a long moment, as I imagine a pugilist might stare at an opponent, weighing him up. At last she smiled and shook her head. ‘You mustn’t mind your sister, Giles. She has these strange fantasies.’ She walked over to the fire, pulled something from her pocket, which I knew must be Hadleigh’s letter, and thrust it into the flames. There was nothing I could do but watch it vanish into smoke, first flaring up and then the edges curling, so that it folded in upon itself and then turned black and crumpled to ash and disappeared as if it had never been. I totally unevidenced now.

  Giles looked from one to the other of us and then shrugged. ‘That was my idea, a long time ago, miss,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that now. Miss Whitaker was a real meanie. She wouldn’t let Flo come in here at all, or look at books. You’re not like her.’

  Miss Taylor beamed him a kindly one. ‘Thank you, Giles.’

  ‘And, miss, you want to know something else?’

  ‘What, my dear?’

  ‘We haven’t had our breakfast.’

  We walked and hopped back to the breakfast room. Mrs Grouse still lay at the foot of the stairs, the servants having been afraid to move her. Meg had comfortabled her by placing a pillow beneath her head and throwing a blanket over her. For a woman who often could appear angry or anxious when animated, the housekeeper looked strangely peaceful in repose. I could see the rhythmic rise and fall of her breast but she gave no other sign of life and certainly none of any awareness of what transpired around her.

  We had just finished breakfast, or rather Giles had, for I ate as little as the governess, which is to say nothing at all, when we heard the doctor arrive. Shortly after, Miss Taylor was sent for, and from the way Dr Bradley behaved toward her (for Giles and I watched and listened by cracking open the diningroom door) it seemed that, at least in his own mind, he had appointed her head of the household. He told her that Mrs Grouse had suffered a concussion and was presently unconscious. When Miss Taylor asked what exactly that might mean, Bradley shook his head and muttered, ‘I’m afraid I cannot rightly answer that. It may be like an after dinner’s sleep, as it were, from which she will awake unharmed and refreshed in the morning, or it could be that she will lapse into a coma, from which position the outcome could be more serious, much more serious. What I propose is that John and I carry her to her bed and make her comfortable there. I will visit again in the morning and, in two or three days, if there is no improvement, then I suggest we move her to the county hospital, where she can be kept under proper observation, just to be on the safe side.’

  All this was duly done, and once everything had settled down again, we repaired once more to the library. I found the constant hopping tiring, but the one ray of light in my shattered universe was that having put my ankle to the ground a few times now, I could tell the pain was lessened and felt to myself that by the morning I would be well enough to walk upon it once more, although I decided I would quiet this fact, for which I had my reasons.

  So there we were, the three of us in the library, me sullening a book, Giles at his lessons with Miss Taylor and billing and cooing with her as though nothing of any great moment had happened, as though his sister had never called her a murderess, as though none of us had ever heard of steamship tickets. There was but one big difference from the way things had been before, and that was that we were constantly broke in upon, for now, taking their cue from the doctor, all the servants deferred to Miss Taylor and constanted in and out to consult her on matters concerning the running of the house.

  The next morning Dr Bradley drove up in his carriage and brought someone with him. ‘I passed this young reprobate walking up the drive,’ he said.

  ‘Theo!’ I exclaimed. I couldn’t help myself, for never had I so happied to see my clumsy heron. With Hadleigh absent, Mrs Grouse here in body but definitely not in spirit, and Giles suborned from my side by the witch’s evil spells, he was all I could look to for assistance.

  Miss Taylor could hardly refuse Theo’s visit, not with the doctor standing there; although the medical man clucked about the boy ignoring his advice and coming out when he should have been resting up at home, he did it in such a kindly fashion you could tell he did not mean it too seriously. Theo hobbled me to the drawing room, where I instanted over to the mirror with his manly pocket handkerchief and covered the glass.

  I described to him what had occurred between Miss Taylor and Mrs Grouse, for he had had only the official version from the doctor.

  ‘It is a big thing to accuse a person of such a deliberate piece of violence as pushing someone downstairs,’ said Theo, looking down at his great hands. He stole me a sideways one without lifting his head, and I could tell that he was trying to weigh me up. I knew he wanted to see me as this pretty young girl he could be in love with, and yet in his mind that impression was fighting with one much darker, of a strange girl who made things up or had gothic fantasies induced in her by too much reading. ‘With Hadleigh’s letter gone, you have nothing in the way of motive to suggest.’

  ‘There’s the steamship tickets, I have those.’

  ‘Actually you don’t. She has them now.’

  ‘You have seen them.’

  �
��Yes, but –’

  ‘But what, Theo? Would you not support me in this?’

  ‘Of course, you know I’d do anything to help you, Florence. But be realistic. A couple of kids. Who would take our word against hers? Besides, who would we be appealing to? Hadleigh’s away, my folks are the other side of the Atlantic, my tutor is so unwordly he wouldn’t dream of challenging a woman such as that, or know where to take the information, and Mrs Grouse is completely out of this world.’

  ‘Let’s hope she recovers soon,’ I muttered. ‘For she was finally on my side and she’s our best hope.’

  ‘Your only hope,’ murmured Theo, which cruelled me quite, his putting it like that.

  27

  It was now but little more than a week until Miss Taylor’s evil plan would come to fruition and she and Giles would be gone. I brainracked for some plan of my own with which to counter hers, but was problemed in this by ignoranting exactly what her plan was. Oh, I knew its ultimate intention, but I did not know the mechanical details of how that aim was to be achieved.

  My most immediate fear was that if I did not do something soon, I would be too late, that any hour might be the one in which she whisked my brother away. But then I realised that she could not do this for one simple reason, namely me. For I knew about the steamship tickets and the date and time of the ship’s sailing, which was at midnight on the Friday at the end of the next week. Suppose she stole Giles away tomorrow, then? The servants would soon aware of this. I would tell John about the tickets and he would ride to town with this information and hand it to the police. They would telegraph to New York, where their colleagues would arrest Miss Taylor when she attempted to board the vessel.

  In fact, this situation would apply not just tomorrow, but right until the very final day, and even if she left it until the last possible moment to flee Blithe, by the time she and Giles offed the train in New York, the police would already be at the dockside.

  Indeed, I could not devise any plan for her that would work, but at least one thing obvioused me now. I quite safed until that last day. Unless, of course, she meant to somehow get me out of the way before then, as she had done Mrs Grouse, in which case she could steal Giles away and no one would know anything about the ship at all.

  Mrs Grouse was my one great hope; if she recovered consciousness then the game would be up for Miss Taylor. I tried to visit the housekeeper’s bedroom but our governess had appointed herself as her nurse. Each morning she set Giles some tasks to get on with in the schoolroom and then repaired to the housekeeper’s room. She guarded it from the servants, so that no one else entered, and had Mary bring her blankets so that at night she could bed herself down in an armchair beside the other woman’s bed.

  After two nights of Miss Taylor sleeping in Mrs Grouse’s bedroom, which was on the floor above where Giles and I slept, I felt safe enough to enter again the governess’s room. I cloaked her mirror, as I had on my first visit, lit my candle and set about making a more thorough search than I had before. I took the two valises from under her bed and found one empty as before but discovered the other was now heavier. I undid the clasps, looked within and found myself letting out a loud cry, a shriek that would frighten an owl. Inside was a complete set of my brother’s clothes, a smart jacket and pants, a clean shirt and enough linen for several days. It sured me quite of her intentions, the first real proof that she was going to kidnap Giles. My legs turned to water and I had to steady myself against the bedstead to keep from falling.

  It must have been some minutes until I came to my senses and remembered where I was. I remembered too the cry that had escaped me and immediately anxioused the fiend might have heard. I hurried the valise closed and slipped it back under the bed. After I had waited several minutes and no sound of discovery coming, I commenced a thorough search of the rest of room, and found…nothing. I had hoped to find the steamship tickets in the desk drawer still, so that I could take them and perhaps, even at this late hour, prevent her using them, but they were no longer there. She had once-bitten-twice-shyed and hidden them elsewhere.

  As I no-traced of them in the room I surmised she had wisely precautioned and was keeping them about her person. I looked again in the other drawer of the desk and found nothing save what had been there before, namely the bottle of medicine. I closed the drawer and was about to take my cloak and leave the room when I suddenly bethought me to open the drawer again. Perhaps the medicine had some significance after all, some part, although I could not imagine what, in her plot. I outed it and looked more closely at the label, which bore the single word: CHLOROFORM. I stood staring at it, not knowing at all what that meant, but then the owl hooted, which jarred me into sudden action. Without thinking, I slipped the bottle into my pocket, closed the drawer, blew out my candle and grabbed my cloak.

  My heart was pounding as I corridored it back to my room. I had no idea whether or not the bottle of medicine mattered, but I guessed that even if it did, she would not think to check for it, for I had not disturbed it last time I entered her room when I had taken the tickets. Those being safe, I pretty sured she would think everything else so too. Next morning, before anyone else abouted, I made my way up to my tower and left the bottle there.

  Three days after Mrs Grouse downstairsed, Theo called and I explained that there was no change in the housekeeper’s condition. We sat in the drawing room, having covered the mirror.

  First I told Theo about my significant find, of the set of Giles’s clothes in the governess’s suitcase. ‘There you have the definite proof that I have guessed her plans correct,’ I said.

  ‘By jiminy, yes!’ he said, leaping from his chair with a great smile of triumph, but then the smile faded and he sank back down again. ‘Florence, did you look closely at the clothes?’

  ‘Why yes, well, closely enough to know they were my brother’s. Why?’

  ‘Well – and I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, you understand, trying to see things the way a sceptical adult would if you told them – the clothes might be old ones, things Giles has outgrown. She might have taken them for a relative, perhaps. There could be an innocent explanation.’

  ‘Oh Theo!’ I exasperated. ‘Whose side are you on? What about all the other evidence?’

  ‘OK, OK! I was just saying what they’ll say.’ But his face still doubtfulled. I awared how he would agree anything to please me.

  After a moment or two’s uncomfortable silence I told him what I had deduced about Miss Taylor’s plans.

  ‘Then you have nothing to fear,’ he said, ‘for she hasn’t thought things through properly. No matter how she arranges things, you will be able to sound the alarm in time to prevent her. It’s as simple as that.’

  ‘Unless something happens to me before then,’ I said.

  We again sank back into silence and ruminated on this dread thought for some while. ‘Theo,’ I said, remembering the medicine bottle, ‘what is chloroform?’ For I had been able to find nothing on it in the library.

  ‘Why, it’s an anaesthetic. It’s used by dentists and surgeons to render patients unconscious so they won’t feel any pain during an operation. But Florence, what a strange thing to ask.’

  I told him I had found it in Miss Taylor’s room.

  ‘That’s a very peculiar thing for a governess to have,’ he said.

  ‘But Theo, don’t you see? Isn’t it obvious? She means to use it on me! That’s how she intends her plan to work. She will put me to sleep with it and steal away with Giles. By the time I wake up and give the alarm she will already be on the high seas.’

  ‘By God, I think you’ve got it!’ Leaping from his chair again, Theo began pacing the room. ‘That is how she means to do it.’

  ‘Then it’s easy,’ I said. ‘All I have to do is be careful about what I eat and drink and especially not to accept anything that may have been contaminated by her.’

  Theo stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘Why, don’t you know, Florence, you don’t give a person chloroform to
eat or drink!’

  ‘You don’t? Then how…?’

  ‘You soak a cloth with it and hold it over the person’s mouth and nose so they breathe in the fumes. They go out like a light. The beauty of it is that if they start to come to, you can just give them another dose the same way. Of course, you mustn’t give them too much or they could die.’

  I shuddered at this. ‘Theo, do you think she means to kill me?’

  Theo didn’t answer but resumed his pacing. His eye caught the mirror, covered with his handkerchief, and he gazed at it for a moment or two and then looked from it to me. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know whether she means to kill me?’

  ‘No, I mean, I don’t know about this whole thing. When you say things like that, about your governess killing you, it all seems, well, a bit fantastical, if you think about it.’ He laughed and waved a hand at the mirror. ‘I mean, a woman who can watch you through mirrors? After all, when I look into the mirrors here, all I see is myself. You know, Florence, maybe…maybe…’

  ‘Theo, she has steamship tickets.’

  ‘She could be planning a trip with someone else, not necessarily Giles. She may have a gentleman friend.’

  ‘Then why come and work here? And why sneak off without her pay? Besides, she asked especially for the post here and her references don’t exist.’

  ‘Well, maybe she thought the job would suit her and she’d get in before anyone else. And maybe she fabricated the references because she was down on her luck and desperate for a job and hadn’t worked as a governess before.’

  ‘She’s down on her luck and desperate but can afford to sail to Europe?’

  ‘Maybe the tickets aren’t for her. Maybe she bought them on behalf of someone else. Maybe an old flame sent them to her. There could be a hundred explanations.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe, maybe! As if any of those things were likely.’

  ‘Are they any more unlikely than a dead governess coming back in a different body and walking on water and living in mirrors?’ He was practically shouting now and this led to a coughing fit which lasted several minutes. He had trouble getting his spray out of the pocket of his jacket but finally managed it and gave himself a good dose, whereupon the coughing subsumed and he sank into a chair, sweating and exhausted, his breath coming once more in those sawing rasps.