‘Her apprentice says he heard nothing, saw nothing out of the ordinary,’ Glass said.
‘Some mornings I have to wake my apprentice by throwing the frying pan at the little bugger.’ The butcher stood up. ‘They won’t print bills though. I’ll ask about and you’d best do the same. Miller’s asking all the ladies for word of Penny. We’ve got a week and the hopes this Crowther fella will come along and be useful – leastways say a murder is a murder. Where’s Mrs Smith’s brother?’
‘Travelling in the north. I’ve been asked to manage the business until he returns.’
Scudder rolled his massive shoulders. ‘Poor sod. He’ll take it hard.’
Glass finished his beer and stood as well. ‘I need to get back to the shop. Thank you for the drink.’
Scudder hesitated then put out his hand. ‘Do right by her, Mr Glass.’
Francis shook it and left Scudder still staring thoughtfully after him.
Crowther waited in the tiled hallway of 24, Berkeley Square while Harriet changed. As he did so, the kitchen boy from his own home brought a note to the house, and in it he found Mr Bartholomew’s tightly worded request for a consultation on the body of another unfortunate. Crowther had refused the housekeeper’s offer of refreshment, but William appeared with bread and cheese anyway, and he ate it without noticing he did so. When Harriet came back down the stairs looking a great deal less muddied and windblown, he handed the note to her.
‘You must go, Crowther. I think perhaps it would be better for me to visit Mrs Trimnell alone, in any case. What bounty London bestows on you! Another body. I hope the clergy of St Paul’s have not been at this one too, redressing and washing it.’
William was removing Crowther’s plate from the side table as they spoke.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Westerman.’
‘Yes, William?’
‘When slaves are bound down for a whipping, their shirts are removed. Not their britches,’ he said. ‘Your mention of the clothing brought it to mind, ma’am.’
‘Thank you, William.’ She handed the note back to Crowther and he folded it into his pocket. ‘African or English, I thought whoever did this had intimate knowledge of slavery. Could someone have paid for the attack?’ She sighed. ‘You do not wish me to examine the body with you this time? Has your faith in my powers wavered?’
Crowther stood. ‘Not in the least, but fire does almost as much damage as the clergy of St Paul’s. You are better occupied visiting the widow before word reaches her that we have been asking about her husband. How shall you explain your visit?’
Harriet smiled. ‘I shall take her an improving book. James was hardly cold before someone thrust Marcus Aurelius into my hands with their earnest good wishes.’
The maid who opened the street door in Cheapside informed Harriet quite sharply that Mrs Trimnell was not at home.
‘Then I shall go and leave my gift for her in her rooms. Stand aside, if you please.’ And when the maid hesitated: ‘Good God, girl. Do you think I am going to rob the place?’ Harriet moved just enough so the maid could see the Earl of Sussex’s carriage and Philip, gorgeous in his blue and gold livery, beside it. The maid gave her a wary look, then stood aside.
‘First floor, first on your right, ma’am. The door is open.’
The rooms that Mr and Mrs Trimnell occupied were large but shabby. There was a good-sized parlour with armchairs by the fire and a lady’s desk under the window, but the whole room had an air of exhaustion. The furniture was scuffed, the cheap prints on the walls had worked loose in their frames, and the carpet that lay in front of the fire was bald in patches. No wonder Mrs Trimnell fled as often as she might. There were two doors leading out of the room. Harriet pushed one open. It made the main room look cheerful by comparison. A desk, a bed, a dresser and a wash-stand, all in poor repair, but it was the atmosphere of the room that Harriet felt like a cold rain. Misery seemed to have soaked into the walls. For a moment she believed she could hear weeping, then she heard a movement next door and realised the weeping was real. Her heart froze. Perhaps Mrs Trimnell was at home and grieving. She went quickly back into the main chamber then lifted her hand to knock gently at the second door, her volume of Marcus Aurelius held in her other hand feeling like a poor excuse. There was a flurry of movement and the door opened, but instead of Mrs Trimnell, Harriet found herself facing a young woman dressed in black. She looked at Harriet, astonished and afraid.
‘I am sorry to disturb you, my dear,’ Harriet said. ‘Are you Mrs Trimnell’s maid?’
The girl covered her face with her hands and began to cry again. Deep, terrified sobs. Harriet put her arm around the girl’s shoulders and led her to one of the armchairs, then crouched beside her.
‘My dear, please do not cry so. What is your name?’
‘Martha, madam,’ the girl said, and tried to control herself.
‘And are you Mrs Trimnell’s maid?’
‘I was. Ten years and now she means to turn me off. Master says I am to go free, but he left no paper for me! Now she will send me back, I know it. She says she must have a French maid now, and I’ve kept her so fine all these years with nothing but my own needle to do it with. French!’
Harriet patted her arm. ‘I am grieved to hear that. Was the dress Mrs Trimnell wore on Saturday your work?’ A nod. ‘It was very fine. No Frenchwoman could do half so well, I’m certain.’
Martha pulled out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. ‘She did look fine, didn’t she? I bought the silk for it only last week. The ribbons came from an old dress of hers, but I know how to hide the worn parts.’
‘I thought it very beautiful. And such lovely jewels. A present from Randolph Jennings, I believe?’
The maid nodded, all innocence. Harriet pulled up the other chair so she could sit close to her. ‘I came to see your mistress. She is not at home?’
‘Sir Charles bade her to stay at Portman Square, while I’m sent to pack up the last of her things. Oh, I don’t want to go back to Jamaica! But she’ll get good money for me. Oh, after all these years …’
‘She cannot send you back,’ Harriet said stoutly. ‘It is against English law to send you back against your will.’
Martha looked up at her, confused. Harriet began to search through her reticule until she found Mr Christopher’s card. ‘Pack up her things and send them to Portman Square, then go and see this gentleman. He will help you. You shall not go back, Martha. And a woman as clever as you are with a needle can earn good money in this town. Better than a Frenchwoman.’
The girl said dully, ‘She’ll give me no reference, and I have no friends here. I was born under Mr Trimnell’s roof.’ Harriet did not know what to say. ‘Though Mr Willoughby was kind to me.’
‘You went to the prayer meetings?’
‘Sometimes. When Mrs Lucy didn’t need me. They all speak very nicely to me there.’ She began to weep again, though quietly this time. ‘What shall happen to me?’
Harriet felt a bubble of rage burst in her chest. ‘Nothing that you do not wish to happen, Martha! You must only be brave.’ Martha looked up at her, on her face an expression of such disgust that Harriet’s blood went from hot to cold in a heartbeat.
‘You don’t know!’ She stood up and threw Mr Christopher’s card into the grate. ‘You don’t know!’ Then she turned on her heel and went back into the second chamber, slamming the door behind her.
Harriet found she was shaking. She picked up the card and set it on the mantelpiece in case Martha changed her mind. It was becoming clear to her that she didn’t know very much at all. With that uncomfortable thought in mind, she left the room.
III.10
THE HOME OF SIR Charles Jennings looked elegant rather than magnificent from the Square, but when the footman bowed her into the hallway and then retreated with her card, Harriet had the chance to look about her and was astonished. The lobby was twice the size of the one in Berkeley Square, and painted canary yellow. She saw marble stairs, wrought-iron and polished r
ailings, a white plaster ceiling decorated in geometric patterns with Greek key borders. Around the walls hung an array of Italian landscapes in curling gilded frames, so that it seemed on every side vistas opened into antique harbours scattered with butter-coloured ruins.
The footman returned and bowed again, then invited Harriet to follow him up the marble staircase to the first floor. At the end of its first flight, and below an enormous oil of some tropical view, the staircase folded back on itself in tight but gracious curves. Above her, the spring sun fell through a domed skylight patterned with iron tracery, and on each side the steady progression of paintings continued, each showing some new view of tropical shores. She felt as if she were climbing some tower set magically on the earth in such a way that all the great sights of the globe could be enjoyed at once.
Mrs Trimnell was in the Green Salon with Mrs Jennings, the footman explained in low tones, as they reached the landing on the first floor. He pushed open a set of double doors, announced her name and left her to walk in.
It was a room that would make most of the crowned heads of Europe ashamed of their palaces. Much of the south wall was taken up with huge windows, dressed with swathes of green and gold fabric. The room was so large that Harriet would have struggled to see her hosts, except that an elderly lady on the eastern side of the room got to her feet and approached. Harriet recognised her from church and from the Coroner’s Court. In the distance behind her Harriet could make out the black shadow of Mrs Trimnell, also rising to curtsey, and in the south-eastern corner stood the tall, white-headed figure of her father, Mr Sawbridge. The contrast between these surroundings and those of the shabby little rooms in Cheapside was dizzying. Mrs Jennings put her hand out to Harriet with a warm smile.
‘My dear Mrs Westerman, I am delighted to meet you! I shall not stand on ceremony. We saw each other in church yesterday, after all – and was not Fischer in good voice? I am such an admirer of yours, I feel I know you already. Indeed, if I had known you were in town I would have sent you cards for our little party last week.’
Her face was deeply lined, and Harriet thought she could not be under eighty, but her expression was lively and her step firm and easy. She was a small woman, dressed in stiff green silks that gossiped as she moved, and her hair was dressed very high. Harriet could do no more than murmur her thanks before Mrs Jennings leaned her narrow body closer to her and spoke in a lower tone. ‘If you manage to get that designing trollop and her goat of a father out of my house as soon as possible, I shall be most grateful. Sir Charles is far too good to them. To invite her here! But of course, one’s children can do no wrong, can they? The best of us turn blind and deaf. If they are here a whole week together, I shall have to burn down the house, which would be a great shame, as the paint is only just dry.’
She put her arm through Harriet’s and began leading her towards the others. Her voice became louder. ‘I know Mr Graves may not feel he would find many friends here, but he is quite wrong. So much more unites us than drives us apart. Music, for instance.’ Then in her lower tone. ‘Sir Charles is foolishly generous. She has been sniffing after Randolph for weeks – it’s barely decent – and now she seems to think she is part of the family. I dare not let any acquaintance of mine into the house while she is here – dear God, I’d rather expect them to take tea with my footman. I know people mix more freely in the Indies, but this is beyond endurance.’
As soon as this last was out, her face was transformed by a charming smile and the parties were joined. The ladies shook hands.
‘Mrs Westerman, you have met my father, Mr Sawbridge,’ Mrs Trimnell said, and the gentleman bowed. Even at his age he was an imposing presence, broad without being fat, with large hands, the strong lines of his chin and forehead unsoftened by age. Mrs Jennings did not sit down again.
‘Well, I must leave you, my dear friends. The cook is threatening to leave again and Sir Charles cannot possibly be in London without him.’ Under the guise of an affectionate farewell, she murmured to Harriet: ‘Do try and make sure they don’t steal anything.’
Harriet was given a place beside Mrs Trimnell. Black suited her, emphasising her slender figure and the whiteness of her skin. She looked very lovely. Her father, after making a slightly awkward bow, remained by the window. He was sipping his tea rather noisily. The saucer balanced on his right hand, he carried the cup to his mouth with his left.
‘The black boy is in Bridewell until the next sessions at the Old Bailey,’ Mrs Trimnell said as soon as Harriet had her own tea-cup in her hand. ‘I am greatly indebted to the constables that they managed to find him so quickly. Everyone has been so kind.’
‘I wished to come and offer you my sympathies again. You must have been looking forward to your husband’s retirement to England. What a cruel blow, to have it cut short so quickly.’
‘My homecoming was not as I expected,’ she said. ‘That is certainly true.’ As she offered Harriet a plate of dainties, her movements were stiff, very unlike the grace she had shown when Harriet first saw her. The sleeves of her jacket were long and tight, fringed with black lace, but as she moved, Harriet thought she saw a garnet bracelet just hidden under it. She looked more carefully out of the corner of her eye. It was a bracelet – but then Harriet saw something else: yellow bruising on the soft white underside of Mrs Trimnell’s wrist.
‘Your husband was ill?’ Harriet said. Mrs Trimnell looked up at her sharply. ‘The weakness of his heart …’
‘Oh yes, before we came home. He was out on the estate and was overcome by the heat. Such reverses we had out there in recent years. He wore himself out trying to make the land profitable again.’
Mr Sawbridge had been staring out of the window at the mature trees in Sir Charles’s garden, the horse chestnuts’ white candles of blossom. He turned back into the room. ‘He was addle-brained when he came home,’ he said. ‘Should have been locked up weeks ago.’
Harriet was surprised. Mrs Trimnell blushed. ‘He was not quite recovered from his illness,’ she said. ‘But he was a most excellent man, Father.’ The older man did not seem in any way abashed, but rather let out a bark of contemptuous laughter.
‘I heard that he had become very religious in his final weeks,’ Harriet said.
Mrs Trimnell put down her cup. ‘You heard that, Mrs Westerman? Well, it is true. I do not think my husband had picked up a Bible any day in our married life until after his illness. I am afraid he then fell in with people who took advantage of him.’
‘You shouldn’t have protected him, Lucy. Saying he was working at his papers when he was off trying to ingratiate himself with Negroes. He was never good enough for you. Never.’
Mrs Trimnell closed her eyes briefly, but if she was trying to conceal grief or rage, Harriet could not tell. ‘It was my duty.’
‘Duty be damned. You were ashamed of him, and rightly so, while you were trying to make friends here and begging for a shilling to put in your pocket.’
Harriet had thought that some years sailing the world with her husband, and the various adventures she had survived with Crowther at her side had made her difficult to shock, but to hear Mr Sawbridge speak so among the beauties of the house in Portman Square rendered her speechless.
‘Father! If you cannot conduct yourself like a gentleman, please leave.’
‘Gentleman? I’d rather be a plain man than a gentleman like your husband! Still, you’re where you should be now. The rest is just words.’
‘Go Father.’
He put down his cup and saucer and stalked from the room without taking his leave. Mrs Trimnell did not try to speak at once, but stared hard at the polished veneer of the table in front of her.
‘My husband tried to sell our home for the price of a horse a few weeks before he died,’ Harriet said at last. ‘He was injured – a blow to his head that almost killed him – and though he seemed to recover, he was not the man he had been. More like a child in some ways. A child with a violent temper.’
Mr
s Trimnell lifted a handkerchief to her eyes. ‘What happened to him?’
Harriet could see James in front of her again. He had been such a handsome man. ‘My friends feared for my safety and that of our children. He lived his last months in the care of a doctor in Hampstead.’
‘My father has the manners of a butcher, but I think he is only sorry. He should have sent me back to England to find a husband, but he wished to keep me with him. There are not many eligible men in Jamaica.’ She sighed. ‘I did try to be a good wife to Jacob.’
‘You have no brother or sister, Mrs Trimnell? My sister was a great comfort after my husband died.’
The young woman shook her head. ‘I was my mother’s only surviving child. She died when I was six, finally exhausted by the climate of the islands. There is no rivalry then, between your sister and yourself? Your money comes from your husband, does it not? Does your sister not mind that you have so much while she has less through no fault of her own?’
Harriet wondered if Mrs Trimnell was thinking of the relative fortunes of her husband and her current hosts. ‘My sister is married to a man she loves. I am certain she would rather have his love, than my money.’
‘Ah, love,’ Mrs Trimnell said. ‘It can work miracles, can it not?’
‘Did you know Mr Randolph Jennings before you returned to these shores, Mrs Trimnell?’
Even after the indiscretions of her father, it was a dangerous question, but Mrs Trimnell gave no sign of offence. ‘We knew each other in Jamaica as little children. Then after his mother died he was sent to school in England. We saw each other next when he was seventeen, and I a year or two older. We thought he was going to settle among us and learn the business of the estate from his father.’ She sighed. ‘But Sir Charles changed his mind. Randolph was sent back to England and later went to university. I married my husband. When Sir Charles came back to London permanently and my father retired, Sir Charles sent out another man to manage his plantation. Oh, those last years I spent in Jamaica were difficult. My husband working so hard, nothing to listen to but the savage music of the slaves in their huts. No one to speak to, and the fear of being murdered in our beds every night. Our home was isolated. Almost a prison in those years.’
Theft of Life Page 17
