The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  Biddy found herself alone, knowing what she needed to accomplish as the next step in her plan, but unsure of any means at her disposal to achieve it. She discovered the dimly lit passage to another platform and from there found the station master’s residence. But a sign on the door said ‘Asleep’, which was cruelty as far as Biddy considered, because she’d only just seen him before. But she didn’t risk knocking for fear of creating a scene.

  Biddy settled down to wait until daylight, hoping, though she couldn’t be sure, that a coach might present itself, which would allow her to complete the journey she’d started. It was just on dawn when her opportunity came. The gentle calls of magpies awoke her first, though she had no memory of falling asleep on the railway bench, and then she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels on gravel. It was a Cobb & Co coach pulling in to the station’s forecourt, lit up with swinging kerosene lamps, like little suns in the breaking daylight. Buoyed by the sight, Biddy stood and beamed, waiting for the transport to halt. Some passengers emerged from the interior, and another climbed down from the roof. Biddy told the coachman her destination as the horses ate their grain.

  ‘That’s a very nice place to be going to, miss,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ Biddy replied, airily. ‘One of the prettiest places there is. It wouldn’t surprise me one little bit if someone had penned a poem about it since last I called in.’

  The coachman thought she was funny. ‘And on my way it is, too. Hop on.’

  Biddy still had change enough from the sovereign to take an inside seat, but contemplated the pleasure of perching high on the roof, behind the coachman’s spot. The air was already warm, the dawn was making the dew drenched bush glisten; it smelled lovely. Riding atop the coach would be a romantic way to arrive at her brand new adventure, Biddy thought, until she reconsidered it. Perhaps well-mannered girls didn’t ride upon a roof when they had a choice in the matter. Biddy paid her fare and stepped inside, the only passenger. Appearances should be adhered to, she told herself, settling in for the ride, even if they were only that.

  • • •

  Biddy almost let those same appearances slip as soon as she got her first, unobstructed view of Summersby House. She’d caught glimpses of it through trees as the Cobb & Co coach entered the long, sweeping drive, through a wrought-iron gateway and Osage orange hedge, and while Biddy could tell that the mansion beyond was impressive, she couldn’t quite fathom just how impressive, and so had managed to contain herself. But when the coach fully emerged into sunlight again, having traversed the densely canopied park of Dutch elms and kurrajongs, the great house suddenly presented itself in its breathtaking entirety and Biddy nearly forgot the story she’d told the driver about how she’d been here many times before. Summersby was two long wings that met at a right angle; some three storeys tall and graced with an imposing tower, placed so that it rose from the middle of the eastern wing. The tower was a further two storeys tall again, with elegant, rounded windows, and topped with a pole flying the new flag of the Australian nation. The ground level of the house was graced by a loggia that ran the full perimeter and sheltered the interior reception rooms from the sun. The roof of the loggia formed an encircling balcony for the floor above, offering views of the park and beyond. French windows abounded everywhere, giving Biddy peeks into the sumptuousness within. The windows of the third floor were smaller and were likely those belonging to the rooms of the thousands upon thousands of servants who must surely be required to run such an establishment, Biddy imagined. Yet there wasn’t one other person to be seen at the present moment, which was just as well, because it allowed Biddy to gawp at the house unashamedly. The grand entrance to Summersby was situated where the two wings met.

  ‘Knock me over,’ she gasped, as she stepped from the coach.

  ‘No place like home, eh?’ said the coachman.

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  The coachman raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I mean, I’ve never seen anything like it this week,’ said Biddy, correcting herself for the story’s’s sake.

  The coachman gave a chuckle. ‘Biggest house in the region is Summersby,’ he said. ‘Course it has its rivals. Chirnside Park is a very good copy they tell me, down Geelong way, and Rupertswood over at Sunbury is also very grand, but neither comes close to what Summersby has, but that’s just my opinion.’

  ‘Mine, too,’ claimed Biddy. ‘Rupertswood’s fallen to very low standards I think you’ll find should you ever have the misfortune to visit there.’

  ‘Is that right, miss?’

  ‘You couldn’t pay me to return,’ said Biddy.

  The coachman just chuckled at her again before stirring his horses to depart. Biddy stood aside, the portmanteau in her hand, as the coach turned in a circle on the drive. Then, so that he wouldn’t think of her as someone beneath his own lowly station, she gave the appearance of setting off toward the grand entrance, her dusty boots crunching on the gravel but not with any great speed. When satisfied that she was no longer in the coachman’s view, Biddy set off in the opposite direction, making for the rear of the house and the likely entrance for would-be servants.

  • • •

  Biddy’s gawping didn’t abate as she stood at an open rear door that gave entrance directly to the Summersby kitchen. ‘If Mrs Rattray could see me now,’ she muttered aloud, before clapping her hand across her mouth. She soon realised that she needn’t have feared anyone overhearing her. The kitchen was as deserted as the grounds. There wasn’t a soul to be found anywhere. Dazzled by all she could see, Biddy stepped inside the bright, airy room to give herself an even closer look while enjoying the good fortune of being unobserved.

  The kitchen was remarkably free of odours, Biddy thought, even though a morning meal had clearly been cooked and consumed there. Biddy put this down to the abundance of windows and the size of the chimney. ‘Good drawing power,’ she said of it. A large, two-fire iron ‘colonial oven’, as Biddy knew it was termed, stood under the chimney, with impressive capacity to roast joints, bake bread and do whatever else was needed all at the same time. To the side of it was an equally large boiler with a tap from which, Biddy guessed with amazement, hot water could be drawn when required. ‘Pots of tea, washing up, dirty laundry and bathing all made instantaneous,’ Biddy marvelled, running her hand over the spout. She didn’t quite dare to try it out, however.

  Biddy wandered further into the room, taking in the polished slate floor, the French enamelled sink, the dressers full of crockery, the long, scrubbed pine table and eight bentwood chairs, the copper pots and pans suspended from ceiling hooks. Several household storerooms opened from the far end of the kitchen and Biddy realised with a thrill that at least one was unlocked. Pushing the door to it gently to one side, Biddy saw a wall of metal bins protecting bulk supplies of flour, raisins, tea and sugar from the damp. She stopped and listened, but still she was wholly alone, so she lifted the lid of the raisin bin and took a fistful of the sweet, dried fruit, inhaling the delicious scent of them before cramming the whole lot into her mouth. She’d not eaten anything since yesterday’s midday dinner. The sound of her own laboured chewing succeeded in blocking her ears to a scratching noise until she had finally swallowed. Only then did she hear the strange commotion coming from the storeroom next door.

  Panicking, Biddy darted into the kitchen proper, where the scratching grew louder. Someone – or something – was behind the door to the second of the three storerooms, scratching at the wooden panels furiously.

  ‘Hello? Is someone in there?’ Biddy asked as loudly as she dared. She tried the door handle; it was firmly locked. ‘Hello?’ she asked again.

  A plump, mousey, middle-aged woman appeared at a different door, a door padded with dark green baize that Biddy would have noticed properly had she made it further than the storerooms. Carrying a brown paper wrapped parcel, the woman responded to the sight of Biddy with shock, dropping the parcel to the floor.

 
; ‘Good morning!’ Biddy exclaimed, springing at once from where she’d been listening at the storeroom, picking up the dropped parcel, and presenting it along with an outstretched, gloved hand to the woman. ‘And isn’t it a lovely morning? I hope you don’t mind that I’m waiting here. I knocked but nobody answered.’

  The woman took the parcel from her, examined it, and then gave Biddy a startled once over before shaking her hand. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked, coolly. Biddy saw the quick, anxious glance she gave to the locked storeroom door and decided to pretend she’d heard nothing amiss.

  ‘Let’s start off on exactly the right footing, shall we?’ Biddy beamed. ‘I’m Mrs Rattray. Mrs Bridget Rattray.’

  ‘Mrs?’

  ‘Widowed,’ Biddy nodded in defiance of the truth that she looked far too young to have landed a husband, let alone lost one. ‘Married less than a week before the Good Lord gathered him, and all that was left behind for me was his name, sadly. But it hurts me to speak of it now.’

  The woman didn’t know what to make of this story. ‘Why are you here, Mrs Rattray?’

  ‘Please, the right footing. What was your name, if you don’t mind me enquiring it of you?’

  The woman made a point of looking her sceptically up and down. ‘I’m Mrs Agatha Marshall, the housekeeper here,’ the woman replied, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘Mrs?’ said Biddy. In her experience, housekeepers with ‘Mrs’ in their title were always just plain old ‘miss’ in reality. There’d certainly been no husband in the real Mrs Rattray’s spotless history.

  The older woman’s eyes flashed as she placed the brown paper parcel on a dresser.

  ‘Of course you are,’ said Biddy. ‘Oh, we shall be firm friends, I sense it already!’

  Mrs Marshall now squinted at Biddy, deep suspicion clearly forming. ‘We don’t get any casual callers here and my days are extremely full. Is there some matter I can help you with before I bid you good day?’

  ‘Help me?’ Biddy laughed. ‘Well, isn’t that kind, but it’s not about helping me, Mrs Marshall, it’s about helping you!’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Of course.’ Biddy could sense the older woman’s temper being tested and decided a more extravagant gesture was needed. ‘You see, I’m the very answer to your prayers!’

  Mrs Marshall took another long, blank look at Biddy, and then propelled her across the polished slate floor towards the door and made to close it in Biddy’s face. But Biddy was quicker than that and slipped her left boot in the doorjamb.

  ‘Really!’ exclaimed the Summersby housekeeper.

  Biddy backpedalled. ‘Please. I’m so sorry. Will you let me begin again?’

  ‘You appear to be a time waster, young woman,’ Mrs Marshall told her.

  ‘But I’m not, I’m not at all,’ said Biddy through the gap in the door, trying to reassure her while keeping her boot where it was.

  ‘Tell me why you are here immediately or leave.’

  ‘I’ve come about the position,’ Biddy blurted.

  The housekeeper was pulled up short. ‘The position?’

  ‘I understand the need to keep my mouth shut about it,’ Biddy added, ‘I really do, and of course no decent household ever wants to advertise because of all the riff-raff you get, so I’m here, Mrs Marshall, to save you any of that by not having to advertise at all. And I’m not riff-raff, I swear it.’ She looked at her wedged boot. ‘Despite my travelling clothes being soiled from the journey, I grant you—’

  Mrs Marshall flushed pink, staring at Biddy in dismay. ‘You cannot possibly mean the cook’s position?’

  ‘Well, that’s exactly what I mean,’ cried Biddy, triumphant. ‘I’m your new cook!’

  The housekeeper looked a picture of mortification. ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘Why, from Melbourne, of course,’ said Biddy. ‘I’ve been cooking and keeping house for a Hawthorn Reverend. A very honourable, God-fearing gentleman he is, too, or he was until he died. A dreadful tragedy it was, Mrs Marshall, taken too soon. Sulphur poisoning; it’s the deplorable water – and the last thing my poor heart needed after already suffering widowhood.’ Biddy contemplated adding tears, but opted against it. ‘Still, he’s gone to his reward now, just like my husband, and what a reward it must surely be for both of them. But those of us left behind must somehow carry on, don’t you agree?’

  The door fell abruptly back and Mrs Marshall pulled Biddy inside, knocking her off her balance. When Biddy righted herself, the housekeeper had a warning finger jabbed under her nose. ‘Now, you listen here, young woman . . .’

  ‘I have references, naturally,’ said Biddy, telling stories hopelessly now.

  ‘I have no interest in references or anything else.’

  ‘But I’m an excellent cook. You’d be amazed by what I can achieve with very little.’

  ‘You’ve impressed that upon me already, I think.’

  Biddy drew herself upright. ‘I do hope this isn’t your means of telling me there is no position,’ she said with dignity. ‘Not when I’ve come all this way on a promise.’

  Mrs Marshall’s eyes nearly popped. ‘What promise? How can you possibly know about the cook’s position at all?’

  Biddy took a gamble she’d been reluctant to resort to, given the potential it had for backfiring, but she could see little other option with things going the way they presently were. ‘My very good friend told me about it,’ she claimed, adding with a whisper, ‘and about the Chinaman . . .’

  Mrs Marshall flushed pink for a second time in as many minutes.

  ‘But I haven’t told another soul, of course,’ Biddy hastened to amend, ‘well, it’s not the sort of thing that wants repeating, is it, and I know for a fact that my friend hasn’t breathed a word either.’

  ‘What friend is this?’ Mrs Marshall demanded.

  Biddy cleared her throat a little, reminded of nothing so much as the feeling that comes when preparing to leap headlong from a pier into the sea. ‘My wonderful friend,’ she began, knowing at this moment that the only friend she had in the world was indeed this person. Biddy hoped only that she would prove worthy of the honour. ‘Her name’s Miss Garfield. She’s the governess here.’

  Further words failed Mrs Marshall as she grappled with news that had clearly astonished her.

  Biddy noted the short, stout woman’s expression darken in a manner that wasn’t easily read, before the look seemed to depart her face just as quickly, leaving her strangely calm in its wake.

  ‘The governess, you say?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Biddy, feeling a little more hopeful now, ‘Miss Garfield told me all about it – in confidence of course – and did so knowing only that I was in such a fine situation to help you.’

  Mrs Marshall was briefly silent again and Biddy was at a loss as to how she might further fill the void, so said nothing, only smiling at the older woman, encouragingly.

  ‘Will you excuse me for a moment?’ the housekeeper asked.

  Biddy didn’t even reply before Mrs Marshall departed the well-appointed Summersby kitchen through the green baize door, headed, Biddy presumed, to the formal rooms of the house. The housekeeper’s voice echoed from a distant location, sounding as if she was calling up the stairs. ‘Oh, Miss Garfield? Could I trouble you to see me in the kitchen for a moment . . .?’

  If there was a reply, it wasn’t audible from where Biddy waited on the cool slate floor. Mrs Marshall reappeared shortly and the look she gave Biddy was again somewhat difficult to read. Biddy decided only to take hope from it, and was heartened further when she heard the clip-clop of a woman’s heels upon the staircase somewhere above.

  Biddy prayed her only friend would see her desperate need without her having to demean herself by even mentioning it. Surely Miss Garfield would remember the fun they had had at snooty Alston & Brown before Gordon had put the moz on it? And surely, although astonished at Biddy turning up like this, Miss Garfield would follow Biddy’s lead in what was an inspired story and a
ll would prove wonderfully well?

  The governess appeared at the door, the sun from the kitchen windows at that moment striking her in the eyes, so that Biddy was able to see her fully before Miss Garfield even realised there was someone other than Mrs Marshall in the room. Biddy noted with pleasure that the tall, slender woman was dressed in the five-gored flared skirt Biddy had suggested for her and that she looked quite transformed by it, her figure flattered to perfection.

  ‘I’m so sorry for troubling you when you’re not long home from your Melbourne excursion, Miss Garfield,’ the housekeeper began in a neutral tone, ‘but I have here a Mrs . . .’

  ‘Rattray,’ said Biddy.

  ‘Yes. Who says you are her friend.’

  Miss Garfield shifted so that the sun left her eyes. She saw chestnut-haired Biddy standing upon the floor in dusty, unpolished boots, a wrinkled, sun-bleached shirtwaist and a battered little portmanteau next to her. The recognition that she did indeed know Biddy did not quite come to Miss Garfield for a moment. Clearly she could place Biddy’s pleasing face and the less than pleasing clothes, but could not quite recall what the setting had been when last she had encountered Biddy, and so, accordingly, she lacked the vital piece of the puzzle. Then it came to Miss Garfield with a noticeable jolt.

  ‘My goodness, you’re Biddy.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Biddy, beaming with relief. ‘My friends call me Biddy, although I was christened Bridget, of course,’ she said, turning to explain to Mrs Marshall.

  But the housekeeper showed no sign of relief of her own. ‘Your friend has come about the cook’s position,’ she said to the governess.

  Miss Garfield gave a sharp intake of breath.

  ‘Yes. That’s right,’ said Mrs Marshall, ‘The Chinaman cook.’

  Biddy was thrown to see the eyes of her friend suddenly prick with guilty tears and Mrs Marshall’s jaw set into a hard, grim line.