The Keeper of Secrets

by Judith Cutler

  I stroked my chin. ‘On the grounds that one day’s labour might save us many, might I make a suggestion? The attempt might be tedious in the extreme, and eventually fruitless.’

  ‘Spit it out, man.’ He did not need to remind me that Turner could not leave us till he was dismissed, and that Jem was even now probably awaiting his company. The balmy air had made me tired; how much more fatigued must our trusty retainers be, since it was to them that all the work had fallen?

  ‘To have left Bath on any of the major roads, Lady Elham must have passed a turnpike,’ I reflected. ‘Ten to one the keeper would recall an equipage such as hers as it passed?’

  Hansard shook his head. ‘As our friend the crossing-sweeper pointed out, there must be many such – Bath still attracts the beau monde, at least those fancying that they would benefit from the waters.’

  Turner coughed. ‘I fancy that the Master of Ceremonies in the Assembly Rooms might have some idea as to her movements, provided that she signed the subscription book.’

  ‘I cannot imagine my cousin neglecting any social protocol,’ I said.

  ‘Your cousin! I had forgotten you are related.’

  ‘It is a very distant connection, Edmund. She wanted a gentleman as her parson; I needed a benefice. It pleased us both to think ourselves as part of the same family, at least at the start of our acquaintance. She came to refer to me less as “Cousin” and more as “Parson”, so I fancy I displeased her in many ways.’

  ‘Not least in your benevolence to the poor,’ Edmund nodded. ‘But we digress. Turner, I agree that we should make best possible use of our time here, so that we do not set out on some wild goose chase. Pray ask Jem to join us here tomorrow morning so that we make the best disposal of our resources.’

  The following morning masters and men foregathered in our private parlour for an early breakfast of ham and cold beef, washed down by ale. The previous day’s rain had gone quite away, and the room was flooded with inspiring sunlight. For all Jem insisted that he should hire a horse and make all the enquiries himself, we were united in feeling that a division of our labour was fairest. Accordingly Jem and Turner set out to the nearest livery stables where they might both acquire hacks. Dr Hansard and I, more used to the pleasures of walking than our servants, strode south to cross the river at the Old Bath Bridge, turning first of all west, for the Bristol turnpike, then south to enquire on the Wells road, and finally – having had no joy so far – east for the Widcombe to Bathwick road. Fatigued, perspiring and disheartened, both by the lack of hard information and the readiness of grasping toll-gate keepers to haggle for such as they had, we turned back in silence, the spring sunshine by now really strong.

  Finding an agreeable coffee house as we trudged back to the centre of the city – were its roads really so very much harder than those we were used to? – we agreed to cut our losses, hoping that our servants had had better luck. To mask our disappointment, perhaps, we confined our conversation to the excellence of the landscape surrounding the city, and the elegance of the buildings within, truly a sublime blend. Refreshed, I was happy to acquiesce in Edmund’s request that we visit the Baths themselves, though he resolutely declined the hot spring water offered to him when we adjourned to the Pump Room. I confess I did but sip at mine, finding it brackish, indeed, unwholesome.

  ‘If you ask me,’ he growled, forgetting that he had once wished Lord Elham’s old nurse could have the luxury of treatment here, ‘the chief benefit of taking any spa’s waters is not the waters themselves, but the fact that you separate yourself from the temptation of the groaning table that caused your symptoms in the first place. As for the baths themselves, good God, have you seen the way that no distinction is made between diseases as patients are lowered into the waters? I should have thought you stood a better chance of taking someone else’s illness than getting rid of your own!’

  But he was in better mood after a late luncheon, taken in our private parlour. Of Turner and Jem there was no sign.

  We had not yet signed the subscription book at either of the Assembly Rooms. First we progressed down to the Lower Rooms, and then we made our way back up to the New – or Upper – Rooms, where we had the good fortune to meet Mr King, the Master of Ceremonies, in person. To my amazement, he recognised me immediately although it was nearly six years since I had visited the city with my parents, and at that time I was not in holy orders. It was the work of a moment to tell him my new title, which he received with a generous bow.

  I was delighted to present Dr Hansard to him. No one could have been more gentlemanlike in his greetings, or more concerned when we told him we had to take bad news to Lady Elham in person.

  ‘I have to say that I have seen very little of her this year,’ he said. ‘Her attendance at our entertainments has naturally been limited by her mourning, and one would not have expected her to play cards or attend balls. But even when she has promised to attend a concert, she has cried off at the last minute – she has been quite unlike herself.’

  ‘To what do you ascribe her behaviour?’ Dr Hansard asked. ‘I speak as her medical adviser, not as a common gossip.’ When Mr King hesitated, he added, ‘It is for reasons of her health that I am particularly resolved to break this bad news face to face, not through the unfeeling medium of a letter.’

  ‘Your kindness does you credit,’ Mr King said. Leaning closer, he continued, ‘All I have heard is that her son is unwell – some nervous disorder, I understand. But I do know that her housekeeper here has taken a new post with the Salcombes – perhaps she would know more. You will find them in Laura Place.’

  Dr Hansard made a note. ‘And her butler? No man knows more of the household, after all.’

  ‘I believe he has left the city. But if you furnish me with your address, I will make enquiries and wait upon you there.’

  ‘Pray – might I be so bold as to make one further enquiry?’ I asked. ‘Have you news of Lady Templemead? I believe she is a cousin of Lady Elham, and a conversation with her might spare us all time.’ For all I knew, of course, the connection between the two ladies might be as tenuous as that between Lady Elham and myself, but I did not share that doubt with Mr King.

  ‘I will make discreet enquiries. Dr Hansard, it has been a delight to make your acquaintance, and, Mr Campion, to renew yours.’

  We parted with bows and great satisfaction on our side.

  ‘There is one more matter, Edmund,’ I said, as we watched him out of sight. ‘John Coachman died here. Since we have time on our hands, I would like to pay my last respects at his graveside.’

  ‘And do you happen to know where he is buried?’ he asked, suddenly irascible. ‘I confess, Tobias, that all this uphill-downhill walking has brought a blister the size of a guinea on my heel. We still have to call on the Salcombes. We may need to visit every parish church in Bath, and I am too old and too tired!’

  ‘Let us ask the Salcombe’s new housekeeper,’ I suggested, understanding the problem of the blister all too well, having a very similar one of my own. ‘Surely she will know what befell a fellow servant, be he never so lowly. Would you wish me to summon a chair?’ I asked hopefully.

  He scowled. ‘Crippled I may be, but I am not infirm. We will walk, Tobias – we will walk!’

  As a matter of courtesy, we agreed to present our cards to the Salcombes, since any gentleman might be pernickety enough to object to two strangers, however respectable, calling on his housekeeper. Lady Salcombe, however, arrived at her house at the very moment we were admitted, and throwing etiquette to the four winds prettily insisted that we join her for refreshments. She could not have been more than two and twenty, a blue-eyed blonde doll of a creature standing not five feet tall. Her husband, a tall man twenty years her senior, with a dark complexion hardly enlivened by alarmingly saturnine eyebrows, soon sauntered into the room, nodding at us, but would rather have been reading his newspaper than even attempting desultory conversation.

  As we explained the reason for our call, e
asy tears filled her ladyship’s eyes. ‘But of course you will wish to say your farewells to an old acquaintance! Dear Dr Hansard, dear Dr Campion, pray – I have a houseful of servants to look after me—’

  ‘All getting fat doing nothing,’ Lord Salcombe observed.

  ‘—And I am sure they would welcome a breath of fresh air, especially in this lovely weather. If you will be kind enough to furnish me with your Bath address, I will ensure that you receive the information by this time tomorrow.’

  ‘A drop more Madeira, Hansard?’ her husband asked. Receiving an answer in the negative, he laid down his newspaper and took himself off, without so much as a ‘good day’.

  Lady Salcombe’s simple unaffected kindness, without a hint of the condescension that Edmund endured at Lady Elham’s hands, made for a very pleasant half-hour, at the end of which, as we punctiliously made our bows, she rang for a steward to take us to his lordship’s bookroom, whither the housekeeper was summoned.

  Mrs Prowle was the antithesis of dear Mrs Beckles. Nearer sixty than fifty, she was a lady much given to black bombazine and sour looks. However such a hide-bound woman had come into the employ of the free and easy Lady Salcombe I could not imagine. It would have been fair to say that obtaining information from her was like extracting teeth, had she had any such dental furniture left in her mouth.

  At last she conceded that she had never heard of John, but that was hardly surprising, since she had become Lady Elham’s housekeeper only in the middle of January. She understood that the previous incumbent had left under something of a cloud, an incident possibly involving the disappearance of certain silverware, but she had no idea of her current whereabouts, or that of her ladyship. A grim snap of the jaw intimated that she had no interest, either.

  We gave her more thanks than she deserved and left, rejoicing in the kindness of one woman, if not the other.

  ‘I confess, my young friend,’ Edmund said as we limped slowly back to the Pelican, ‘if only the Baths were not such a damned unhygienic place, I truly believe at would go and plunge this old body of mine into them!’

  And I might well have joined him. But I had another idea.

  ‘Edmund,’ I began, ‘when we asked the crossing-sweeper about the activities of Lady Elham, he narrowed his eyes, in a such way that I would like to pose him another question.’ In fact he had reminded me sharply of Jem, in his role of the gravedigger in our hayloft Hamlet, splitting hairs over who was to be buried. Had we asked him the wrong questions?

  My garbled explanation was enough for him to concede that he might accompany me, so off we set with footsteps that might have been slow and painful, but were nonetheless purposeful.

  The man might have been a statue, so little had he moved from his original site and indeed posture.

  ‘And when did you last see her ladyship, if not in her own carriage?’

  ‘Ah, that’d be two weeks ago. Maybe less.’

  Dr Hansard flashed another coin before his eyes. ‘Be precise, man!’

  But that he could not or would not be, so we turned away. I would not inflict further pain on my old friend’s feet, nor he, I suspect, on mine.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  It seemed that all Dr Hansard and I were now called on to do was to repair the damage to our feet and, casting vanity aside, return them to the comfort of the footwear temporarily laid aside as too unfashionable. There was no sign of Jem or Turner, and it would have been unreasonable to expect a speedy response from those offering to help us, so after literally tending our heels, now we were metaphorically kicking them. It being almost the hour for Evensong, I would have liked to attend the service in the abbey, but felt drawn to Christ Church, a modern building much closer to the Pelican. I admit that my feet were influential in this decision.

  To my amazement it had been built with the novel notion of providing pews for all worshippers – no payment was accepted for any of them. To be sure, none of the villagers was ever excluded from St Jude’s because almost all of the pews were in the hands of the Elhams, who graciously permitted any of the villagers to use any but their family pew. Others like Bulmer could and did afford a subscription.

  Divine Service concluded, I made myself known to the priest in charge, a man whose courtesy was only exceeded by his scholarship. He was kind enough to show me round, indicating items of interest. He assured me that though Christ Church would have been convenient for such as Lady Elham to worship, he had certainly never seen her. Nor had he buried poor John Sanderson, the coachman. Neither piece of information surprised me. I declined his kind offer of hospitality, and returned to the Pelican, to find Dr Hansard most audibly asleep.

  Turner and Jem were in the taproom. Turner, giving the clear impression that a man of his calibre rarely condescended to use such a place, was buried in a newspaper, and Jem engaged in affable discussion with a couple of other grooms, who presumably had not observed a copy of Pamela half concealed in his pocket. I had never known him with a taste for the sentimental before. Did he see in the heroine an equivalent of Lizzie, subject to the philanderings of a Mr B? And if so, whom did he suspect of being Mr B?

  There would, alas, be no Pamela-like happy ending for our Lizzie.

  Loath to disturb either man at his leisure, I slipped quietly back upstairs.

  However uncomfortable it made them at first, we invited Jem and Turner to join us as we dined in our private parlour. At last they conceded that since they had information to impart, and since it was a shame to waste the good food set before them, they would indeed sit down with us. It seemed, however, a tacit part of their bargain was that they would wait on us, but at last I could say Grace and our meal began.

  Turner took to the variety of dishes to the manner born, as if used to the leavings of Dr Hansard’s table. His housekeeper was as economical as any, hating waste and preferring to share any bounty with her fellow servants to passing it on to the poor. Jem, whose calling had placed him lower in the pecking order, stuck to dishes that he recognised; though conceding that the wine-roasted gammon was very well in its way, clearly he preferred the beefsteak pudding.

  We waited until the cloth had been removed and the dessert was on the table before we filled in the sketchy outlines of our day’s doings. Jem and Turner had had the advantage of being on horseback – an advantage for Jem, rather, since Turner had clearly found the unwonted exercise as fatiguing as we had found ours. But their endeavours had at least resulted in some success, and they were able to report several sightings by toll-gate keepers of Lady Elham’s carriage on the Lansdowne road. There were even more on the London road, far more than could be accounted for by journeys home to Moreton Priory.

  ‘But any lady would have acquaintance in the area she would want to visit, even if she were in mourning,’ I objected.

  ‘Indeed,’ Hansard agreed. ‘And we can ask Mr King about her ladyship’s particular friends. It would be no surprise if she were on calling terms with the Methuen family, whose home lies to the east, the Blathwayts to the north. And there are any number of less well-known families with smaller properties whom she might visit.’

  ‘Of course. And I am sure Mr King will point us to them. Yes, Jem?’

  ‘Begging your pardon, Dr Hansard, we also rode in several directions from both toll-houses—’

  ‘The charges for which I insist on reimbursing you—’

  ‘—And made a list of possible places she might have visited. But there was one in particular that caught our eye. It seems that one family, coming on hard times, as you might say, has let their home to medical men such as yourself, Dr Hansard, who have turned it into a private asylum – as we found when we happened to fall in with a local man at an inn. Lymbury Park, they call it.’ The casual way that Jem dropped the information did not deceive for an instant. The glance he cast at Turner confirmed that they were pleased with what they had found.

  Hansard beamed. ‘And did you gather information about any of the inmates that might have interested you?’<
br />
  He did not need to speak Lord Elham’s name aloud. All of us about the table nodded our tacit understanding.

  ‘Indeed, sir, we tried our best. But though the man failed to respond to our flattery and other blandishments, we suspect that though it might be higher than a couple of tankards of best home-brewed, the man might well have a price. With your permission, we might try to find him again.’

  ‘Whatever this venial man demands, he must be paid,’ I declared.

  ‘He must indeed,’ Hansard agreed. ‘Do you think that bribery would come best from you two, who managed, after all to scrape acquaintance with him, or from a humble clergyman, or even from a bullying justice of the peace?’

  Turner and Jem exchanged glances. ‘It is hard to tell, sir,’ the former said slowly. ‘Perhaps he might yield information to you or to Mr Campion, but his price would certainly be higher.’

  Hansard stroked his chin. ‘It may be that there is a fellow justice of whom I might make enquiry. Such a man would have power to insist that information were divulged.’

  Turner shook his head. ‘I might advise the indirect route, sir. Let the force of law be brought in later, if needs be. Should our interlocutor produce no information of note, then we might be wasting our time – and others’. But should a name be of interest, then the law might be involved.’

  And so it was concluded. Turner rang for the table to be cleared and for port.

  Jem cried off at this point, telling us that his cousins would be in hourly expectation of him, and Turner likewise declined.

  ‘I have no further need of you tonight, mind!’ Hansard said. Digging in his pocket, he produced several half-guineas, which he pushed across to the two men. ‘For the expenses incurred by today’s labours, gentlemen. No, no argument. I suggest we all meet here tomorrow morning at nine to make further dispositions.’