The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  As we girls grew towards our maturity our father grew ill. His decline was a protracted one; it gave him time to make plans for what our future would be without him. Of his two girls it was you, the twin with a broken mind, that our father adored the most. It perhaps seems dreadful that a father might prefer one of us above the other, but he had no doubt in his heart that I, the twin that was whole, would thrive. I am a clever and sparkling young woman. I am also cunning and calculating. You, on the other hand, with your inability to control so much of yourself, will always be at the mercy of those, like me, who are unscrupulous.

  And so, our father drew up a will. In this document he left the estate of Summersby and most of his fortune to me, the twin for whom he held no fear. But you were not to be abandoned. To ensure your welfare once he was gone, our father entrusted your care to a lunatic asylum in Hawthorn. You were not to leave that place. You were not to live at Summersby. These measures, our father hoped, would protect you.

  Your sister who loves you,

  Matilda

  Biddy was gripped by what the letter said. There was no date, but it had clearly been written a long time ago, and yet the people and events so coolly described felt almost as if they were happening now. The words themselves were sinister, as if written to worm their way inside a reader’s heart and convince them of something outrageous. The letter spoke of desperate times and fearful souls and scoundrels who knew no bounds.

  Something about it was almost, but not quite, familiar to Biddy, like a fairytale half-heard once, but only once, and then as good as forgotten.

  It was only as she went to sit down again that she realised Lewis had left the pup behind. The shock of suddenly seeing the little animal, fallen asleep again behind the log his master had been sitting on, made Biddy lose grip on the letter. A breeze had come up and before she could save it the paper was blown onto the fanned embers.

  It burst into flames and was gone.

  The little dog awoke to learn he had been abandoned and he came to Biddy and gently licked her hand.

  • • •

  The discovery of criminality in Summersby’s midst surely dismayed everyone inside the great house, Biddy imagined. Not that she brought attention to herself for it; she wasn’t that dim, although she was certainly ashamed that she had sunk to the level of thief. Reduced to pinching vegetables from the Summersby kitchen garden and eggs from the fowl house, Biddy was sure that such rare drama as food theft had resulted in fevered imaginations in everyone who was touched by the talons of her crime.

  What Biddy imagined was known of her actions was this: the usual culprits were not responsible. Foxes ate eggs occasionally, but not when there were chickens on offer first, and as none of the hens were missing, only their eggs, stray dogs and feral cats had to be ruled out for the same reason as the foxes, along with blue tongue lizards for the lack of tell-tale shells – the greedy things always ate at the scene of the crime. Biddy was convinced that the Summersby household would have quickly worked out that whatever was stealing the eggs wasn’t a ‘what’ at all but a ‘whom’.

  Biddy feared that a girl she’d seen who lived at Summersby – a girl who looked to be around Biddy’s own age – had become transfixed by the shadow of Biddy’s evil. The girl’s teacher was Miss Garfield, Biddy had seen that too, when pupil and teacher one day took themselves to sit on a rug beneath the shade of an expansive robinia tree, where the girl’s eyes stayed fixed on the distant kitchen garden, widening and blinking in rapt fascination while Biddy had tried to hide there, convinced she was caught in the act. Yet, no one had shouted and rushed to apprehend her.

  Biddy nevertheless feared she had been glimpsed, and she worried what sort of picture she had made. Surely she looked nothing like an arch-fiend, she hoped, at least as the girl would be able to tell from a distance. Biddy knew that apart from her dreary clothes and a manner of desperation, she would seem little different to the girl who saw her. If she had been glimpsed at all – and Biddy couldn’t be sure – she prayed that the girl saw only that they were of a similar age and much the same frame. Biddy’s long, dark hair, now worn down, not up, looked near identical to the girl’s own. There but for the grace of God.

  Biddy finally feared that if the girl now knew of her thieving then she would surely be thinking of her constantly; Biddy would have done the same in the situation. And if the girl was clever she might well work out that Biddy had knowledge of activity in the great house and understood well what time of day she was more likely to succeed in her thievery unobserved. Yet still there was risk and this beggared the question, why not steal at night when no one would be awake to see her? If the girl took a punt she would possibly guess that Biddy disliked the dark. Summersby was isolated; there were no immediate neighbours. To walk to the great house, which Biddy did every two days, involved travelling some distance through bushland with all its unseen nocturnal dangers.

  If the girl guessed Biddy had brains, then she might suspect that Biddy wouldn’t come back to Summersby at the same time of day as the girl had glimpsed her, through fear of being spotted again. The girl would guess that Biddy would choose another time of day, one that came with lessened risk, yet also precluded having to wander the bush in the dark. It was high summer. The days were long. The sun was up by five in the morning and stayed there until eight at night. To thieve at dawn required walking in darkness to get there, but a theft at dusk, or rather, a theft committed in the space of time immediately before dusk, would, if judged correctly, allow Biddy to make her way back to where she came from in the dying light of sunset. Biddy feared the girl was clever enough to work out all of this. She would have done the same. But it didn’t stop Biddy coming back to steal again anyway. She was starving.

  Hidden at the gate to the kitchen garden, peeking around the wall, Biddy watched as the Summersby girl placed a little sewing basket full of food upon a stone seat that backed against a wall along which apricot and peach trees had been espaliered. Then she seemed to think better of it and placed it beneath the seat, before thinking better again and placing the basket on top once more. Apparently satisfied, the girl then occupied herself with the vexed question of where to wait. Biddy observed, amused, as the girl chose to crouch behind one of the tall, wire pyramids that supported tomato vines. The foliage was so bountiful it would obscure her nicely, she clearly thought.

  Something always neglected in mind-imperilling novels where stealthy waiting was involved, Biddy thought, was the dullness of the task. The girl clearly hadn’t made allowance for this, perhaps anticipating only breathless excitement while the seconds ticked by. But Biddy allowed the seconds to soon become minutes, and before too long an hour, even though she was dying to scoff whatever the basket held, and so was the pup. The girl waited, her eyes on the basket across the way, but Biddy wouldn’t budge. The stone wall radiated heat from a day in the sun and now that the air was cooler and tinged with a breeze, the effect of crouching against the surface behind the tomato pyramid was not unpleasant. The girl fell into a doze.

  Carefully splitting the bounty between herself and the little white dog, Biddy was so intent on availing herself of the tasty morsels, that the question, when it came from somewhere in the tomato pyramid behind her, took her off guard.

  ‘Who are you and why have you been stealing from us?’ a voice inquired.

  Biddy spun round with a mouthful of sandwich to be greeted by – now that she could see her up close – a very welcome sight: the girl was indeed exceedingly pretty and much her own age, wearing quite the loveliest summer clothes Biddy had ever seen on an actual younger person’s back and not in a newspaper advertisement. Biddy’s eyes drank in the girl’s soft linen blouse in coral pink, trimmed with Cluny lace, with an elegant skirt to match, of a slightly darker shade, falling not half an inch from the ground and allowing the toes of the girl’s pink silken boots to be seen. Biddy stared, so impressed by this girl, living a life that she could only dream of living, in a Great House with gardens;
a life like those wonderful lives lived in ladies’ magazine articles and romantic novels and melodramas acted on the stage. ‘I’m Biddy – Biddy MacBryde, miss,’ she answered at last. ‘And I’m sorry for stealing, but I’m just so hungry. And so is the poor little pup.’

  The girl regarded her in a manner that was not unfriendly. ‘I am Miss Sybil Gregory.’

  • • •

  With food in her belly, Biddy’s cheeriness increased markedly, as did the little dog’s because he went soundly to sleep at her feet, contented and snoring, while Biddy engaged with her captor. By rights, the well to do Miss Sybil Gregory should have called the Law on Biddy, but the thought of doing anything like that clearly didn’t enter her mind, which was too filled up with questions.

  ‘How long have you been coming here?’ Sybil asked, wide-eyed, from where they sat together on the stone seat.

  Biddy had been right all along that she’d been seen. The girl had been dwelling on her crimes obsessively. ‘Near to a week and a half now,’ she said, ‘although I’ve lost count of the days a bit. Is it Wednesday?’

  ‘Thursday,’ said Sybil. ‘And why are you always so neat – patting down the soil around the potatoes and everything?’

  Biddy hadn’t even realised she’d been doing that. ‘Well, it’s such a lovely garden, miss. I would hate someone to think I’d been disrespectful of the gardener’s good work.’

  Sybil gave her a look at this apparently odd concept, but accepted the answer. ‘Do you like our food?’

  ‘Very much,’ said Biddy, nodding. ‘The fruit I eat fresh from the tree, but the vegetables go into my soup.’

  ‘You make soup? But where are you cooking it?’

  ‘In the little hut I’ve been living in,’ said Biddy. ‘I can’t call it my own; I’m only borrowing it for the time being.’ A dreadful thought occurred to her. ‘It’s not your hut is it, miss?’

  Sybil plainly had no idea. ‘Where is it?’

  Biddy told her, providing rough directions.

  Sybil shrugged her shoulders; she’d never heard of the hut and seemed little concerned by it anyway. ‘I suppose it’s on Summersby land, but nothing’s really mine yet.’

  Biddy didn’t understand what she meant by this and Sybil didn’t bother enlightening her. ‘I keep a billy fire going with a pot of soup on the go,’ said Biddy. ‘Anything I get goes into it, so there’s always something to eat. But when you spotted me the other day I was scared to come back here again.’

  Sybil nodded.

  ‘But I just got too hungry,’ said Biddy, ashamed. ‘I had no more soup and nowhere else to go to make more.’

  ‘You were so hungry it hurt you, didn’t it?’ Sybil marvelled.

  ‘Oh, miss, I intend returning everything I stole one day, I truly do – I’ve made a list, look.’ Biddy pulled a scrap of writing paper from her skirt pocket and unfolded it. On it she had written in pencil a detailed list of items purloined.

  Sybil was plainly amazed at the sheer volume of food recorded. Biddy had been far lighter-fingered than she knew.

  ‘They won’t be the same fruit and vegetables I give back, obviously,’ Biddy went on, ‘but they’ll be ones just like them. The eggs, too – I only stole those for the pup, of course. I’ll give back everything when I’m on my feet again, you’ll see.’

  ‘That sounds perfectly decent and honourable,’ said Sybil, folding up the list again and handing it back to Biddy. ‘Am I right that you dislike the dark?’

  ‘I’m not mad about it,’ said Biddy, before a look of respect crossed her face that Sybil had guessed this, too.

  ‘And you’ve studied the household’s movements?’ Sybil wondered. ‘You know when servants are likely to be in the garden and when they’re not?’

  ‘I know what chores have to be done and when in any household, if that’s what you mean, miss,’ said Biddy, respecting her still more.

  Sybil grinned, clearly delighted. ‘Let me see if I can guess some other things about you!’

  ‘Is this some sort of game?’

  ‘I suppose it is,’ said Sybil, ‘now don’t give me any hints . . .’ She stared at Biddy intently, moving from her face and hair, both a little grubby to Biddy’s regret, to her faded shirtwaist and skirt that had known better times. Biddy felt self-conscious under the scrutiny.

  ‘You’re not very old,’ said Sybil, at last.

  ‘All that staring at me just to come out with that?’ said Biddy.

  ‘No older than me, or if you are, not by very much.’

  ‘I’m sixteen.’

  Sybil held up a silencing hand. ‘No hints, I said.’ She studied her again. ‘I’d say you were roughly sixteen years.’

  Biddy laughed.

  Sybil held up her hand again. ‘Your clothes are poorly laundered.’

  ‘I thank the heavens they’re laundered at all. I only manage it because the hut’s got an old box bath and there’s a creek not far off. No soap flakes though,’ Biddy added, embarrassed by the stains.

  ‘You take pride in cleanliness, I can see that clearly now.’

  ‘Well, of course I do! What do you think I am, miss, a sewer rat?’

  ‘You like to clean things?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if cleaning’s a chore anyone likes, but we all have to do it, don’t we? Otherwise we’re no better than savages.’

  Sybil went back to studying her. ‘You live in the hut all by yourself.’

  ‘Is that a question?’

  ‘A statement. You only take enough to feed one person and a puppy, and then not very well. My suspicion is you have no family to care for – at least, none in the vicinity. No doubt your parents are dead.’

  Biddy’s eyebrows shot up.

  Sybil assessed this reaction, coolly. ‘Or if not dead, absent. Or perhaps you have abandoned them? That’s presuming you know who they are, of course.’

  Biddy’s expression may have suggested she was starting to dislike this game, because Sybil withdrew a little. ‘We shall speak no more of it then,’ she said. ‘Family is a painful thing for each of us, I think.’

  Biddy didn’t disagree and Sybil went on staring for another moment. ‘You’re definitely not a local girl,’ she continued. ‘If you were, your circumstances would be known. Someone would be looking out for you; local women would bring you food and dissuade you from stealing. That’s what happens, I believe. No, it’s quite clear that no one knows of you here at all. You’re completely alone and fallen upon difficult and degrading times.’

  A sob suddenly welled in Biddy’s throat. The girl had assessed her completely.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘At least I have a friend . . .’ Biddy said, but emotion strangled the rest of the words. She tried to hide her feelings, bending down to stroke the little dog, which awoke at her touch, looking up at her with loving eyes. ‘The pup’s my friend,’ said Biddy at last. ‘So, I’m not alone. He’s good company.’

  She looked up and was startled to see tears of sympathy in Sybil’s eyes.

  Sybil blinked them away and there was a moment’s silence as they looked at each other anew.

  ‘My turn,’ said Biddy. ‘Let me guess some things about you.’

  Sybil laughed. ‘You know Sherlock Holmes as well?’

  Biddy didn’t. ‘I know my own eyes,’ she said, enigmatically. ‘I reckon I’ve got the seer’s gift.’

  ‘The proof will be in the pudding,’ said Sybil, sceptical.

  Biddy placed her fingers to her temples, letting her eyelids flutter like a sideshow spiritualist. ‘You don’t get out much,’ she pronounced.

  ‘Nonsense, I come out into the garden all the time.’

  ‘Outside the garden gate, I mean. If this property was mine, miss, I’d know every last inch of it, garden and beyond, and you’d never even heard of the hut before I told you of it, so that says to me you’re as good as a shut in.’

  Sybil’s jaw dropped.

  ‘You also like the
fashions,’ Biddy went on, indicating Sybil’s dress, ‘but not the fashions exactly as they are in the shops. You do fashion differently – uniquely.’

  Sybil’s affront grew. ‘I most certainly do not!’

  Biddy just shrugged.

  ‘You mean you’ve never seen styles like these on another girl?’ Sybil demanded to know.

  ‘Well, certainly not in those shades of pink, or not in Alston & Brown this season, anyway, but then that’s something you should be proud of really, given the rotten standard of their staff.’

  Sybil just blinked at her.

  ‘But what you’re wearing looks lovely, miss, and very expensive,’ Biddy said. ‘You should let yourself be sketched for the ladies’ journals so that other girls might copy you.’

  Sybil’s face reflected further astonishment.

  ‘This is all more proof that you don’t get out much, by the way,’ Biddy added.

  ‘For a girl with no knowledge of Mr Holmes, your powers of deduction are quite remarkable,’ said Sybil with dignity.

  ‘And you don’t have any friends, either,’ said Biddy.

  It was like the pronouncement had slapped Sybil in the face, so taken by surprise was she by it. Then she seemed to realise too late that Biddy had caught a glimpse of what was clearly her deepest shame. It was her turn to catch at a sob in her throat. ‘I have someone . . .’ Sybil started to say.

  Biddy scooped the little pup from the ground and popped him into Sybil’s lap before the dog even knew that his snoozing spot had changed. He cocked an eye open, used it to look around himself, and then close it again, unconcerned.

  ‘So you do,’ said Biddy, ‘the same friend as me.’

  Sybil blinked at the little dog, before bursting into laughter.

  Biddy looked up at the red glow colouring the western sky. ‘Why don’t you mind him for a while?’ she suggested, standing up and brushing crumbs from her soiled skirt.