‘There could never have been a more beloved sister,’ said Matilda, ‘anywhere . . . And there was nothing she would not do to express her deep and abiding love for me. She so often said it. Her every action reflected it.’
Samuel met eyes with Ida and looked awkward. ‘A beautiful resting place . . .’
Matilda nodded and then smiled, her face veiled against the buzzing insects. Ida had no veil and had to shoo them with her hands. Ancient eucalypts towered above, sparse branches swaying in the breeze. The grassy hills surrounding were a golden yellow, baked dry by the sun. Matilda nodded again and echoed Samuel’s words. ‘A truly beautiful resting place, indeed, brother,’ she agreed.
He seemed to search her face again but still found nothing of what he sought there.
Two young boys came through the cemetery gate with a man whose face was shielded by the broad brim of his hat.
‘Would you like to visit the other graves?’ Samuel asked Matilda, with one eye upon the new arrivals.
Matilda knelt again to brush her fingers against the petals of the flowers she had left at Margaret’s stone. ‘How did she die, brother?’
There was a sense that Samuel had given this answer already. ‘It was a sudden turn,’ he told her – or reminded her, Ida suspected. ‘Her constitution had been very weak.’ He cleared his throat, as if preparing to say something that was difficult for him. ‘It is my belief, however, that it was the weight of conscience that led her to succumb.’ Flies crusted about his eyes and he shooed them as Ida did.
Matilda stood once more, looking up at him. ‘What things?’
He was gentle with her. ‘Matilda, your sister was a very untruthful person. She told some quite shameful lies.’
‘Such things are enough to take a person?’
Samuel nodded. The flies were determined to harass him.
Matilda looked shamefaced. ‘I am sure I have asked you the question already, and that you have answered it too, brother. You must forgive me.’ Her hands fluttered at her side. ‘My memory is . . . never as it might be.’
Ida squinted a little, wondering at this. Had she also forgotten what she did last night or was she merely pretending so?
‘You must apologise for nothing,’ Samuel told her. He held his arm out for her and she took it, as naturally and unquestioningly as she had taken it when he had led her from Constantine Hall. ‘Shall we see your father’s grave?’ he suggested.
Matilda nodded.
A child’s cry from somewhere behind made them turn. One of the small boys who had entered through the gate now stood a little way off, staring at Matilda with his mouth open; sticking his hand out in a point. ‘She’s a ghost!’
Matilda flushed beneath her veil netting.
‘She’s a ghost!’ the boy yelled, alerting the other boy as well as the man he had come with. Ida thought she recognised the man from town.
Startled, Matilda clutched at Samuel’s arm.
Samuel raised his walking cane, as if to strike at the child. ‘You ill-mannered brat – is this how you behave before a lady?’
The boy spluttered, his eyes wide with shock. ‘But she was dead,’ he insisted, ‘and now she’s here at the graveyard – she’s a ghost!’
The man now came up behind the boy, the other child with him, and Ida confirmed to herself that this was Mr Skews, a somewhat skittish man of Samuel’s age, if not quite his blond good looks. Ida knew of him as the young apothecary from doddery Dr Foal’s surgery in Castlemaine. She glanced at Samuel and thought that he looked discomforted at seeing him.
‘I’m very sorry, Mr Hackett,’ said Skews. ‘My word, Jim, where’s your manners?’ He seemed to rake Matilda’s features beneath her veil, just as the boy had done. He scratched at his arms.
‘This is Miss Gregory,’ said Samuel, very aware of Skews studying her. ‘She has returned to Summersby with the passing of her sister.’
Skews lifted his hat, embarrassed, drawing closer the child that had been shocked. ‘Please forgive me, miss. My son, Jim, he knew your poor sister by sight – we all did, my word, yes.’ He scratched at himself again and gave a brief, fearful look to Samuel, before whatever meaning was behind it vanished.
It was as if the boy still couldn’t believe what he was seeing. ‘You’re not the same Miss Gregory?’
‘I am Miss Gregory . . .’ Matilda started to say.
‘She is the poor lady’s sister, son, see?’ said Skews. ‘She is her twin.’
Matilda nodded and on an impulse lifted her veil, letting them see her fully. The boy’s eyes popped anew. Hiding behind Skews, the second boy, unidentified, stared too, but with a clear note of scepticism in his face, as if he believed what he saw but somehow doubted whatever it was that had brought it to pass.
‘We’re visiting the boy’s late mother, God rest her soul,’ said Skews, indicating another, less decorated grave nearer the enclosure’s far side.
The reminder of this seemed to sober the first boy. ‘Mum died of the diffthery,’ he offered, ‘just like Lew’s ma.’
The other boy screwed up his mouth. Nervous Skews tipped his hat again, making to leave with the boys.
‘My mother died, too,’ said Matilda. This made them stop short. It seemed she would say no more, however, and Skews was about to pull the boys away again when Matilda found further words. ‘It was typhus,’ she added, ‘when Summersby was newly built. I was very small, I think.’ She paused again, and they waited. ‘My memory plays tricks,’ she said apologetically, ‘but I remember this, her death, I remember it. I do . . .’
Skews spoke first. ‘I’m sorry to hear it, miss, my word, yes.’
Matilda acknowledged this, perhaps seeing sympathy in his watery eyes. He rubbed at his nostrils as Ida watched him, enthralled.
Matilda then looked to the two boys, and kneeled down again to be level with their faces. ‘To lose a loved one is a very cruel thing,’ she told them, ‘yet I believe we never really lose them. They remain with us, you see, and not just in our hearts, but right there beside us.’ Her eyes were shining. ‘We simply need to look – or learn how to look – and then we will see those who have gone.’ As if to illustrate what she meant, she looked to her other side, the side opposite to where Samuel stood, and there she seemed to focus on something that perhaps was clear to her but invisible to everyone else. She looked back to the boys again. ‘Do you see?’
Their expressions were awed.
Ida couldn’t pull her eyes from Matilda either. ‘What is it you see there, miss?’ she asked.
Samuel looked acutely uncomfortable. ‘Shall we return to the house now, Matilda?’ He made to help her rise and lead her away.
The boy Jim spoke. ‘You were right, miss.’
Matilda turned. ‘Yes?’
‘You’re not the same Miss Gregory.’
‘My word, Jim . . .’ Skews started to say, a warning in his voice, but the little boy was sincere.
‘Well, she’s not,’ he said. He looked to Matilda again. ‘You’re different from the other one.’ He turned back to his father. ‘You see it, Pa? She’s a very nice lady, not just pretty, but nice.’ He gave a final smile to Matilda before his father managed to get him moving. ‘The other Miss Gregory wasn’t nice at all, remember?’ he said, with his awkward father leading him away. ‘Hardly no one liked her.’
On the walk across the paddocks to the great house, following respectfully behind Matilda and Samuel, Ida found herself asking questions in her head. She couldn’t stop herself. Seeing the late Miss Gregory’s grave had done it; the last resting place of the woman who had liked Ida for her inquisitiveness.
One. Apart from herself and the never-there Mrs Jack, Summersby had lost the rest of its servants. Why was it that Barker was untroubled by the lack of fellow staff?
Two. Why did Samuel and Barker accept the inadequate explanation that Margaret had died of a ‘turn’?
Three. Less pressing, but interesting all the same. How did the nervous Mr Skews know Marga
ret Gregory intimately enough for his own son to have formed an opinion of her character?
• • •
‘I must ask you to turn your apron pocket out,’ said Aggie in exasperation, when she found Ida in an upstairs hall after luncheon.
Ida felt neither astonishment nor resentment at the request, and produced from her apron a tortoiseshell hairbrush – and the blue glass vial. ‘Oh, I almost forgot I had this,’ she declared.
Aggie took the hairbrush from her, thin lipped. ‘I must ask you not to touch Miss Gregory’s things again.’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that,’ said Ida, dismissing the brush, ‘I was only taking it to dip in the vinegar for nits. No, I meant this.’ She waved the vial.
Aggie seemed offended by the suggestion that Matilda’s hairbrush held vermin and turned on her heel for the stairs.
‘What should I do with it?’ Ida called after her.
‘Do with what?’ replied Aggie, not bothering to stop.
‘The pretty blue glass.’
Aggie gave the vial another glance over her shoulder. ‘It doesn’t belong to my mistress.’
‘I know that. I think it belonged to her dead sister.’
Aggie stopped, her foot on the first descending stair. Ida trotted up to her, still waving the vial. Aggie seemed to be doing her best to stay patient. ‘I’m not sure what the problem is, Ida.’
‘Well, I found it again, you see? Just like the first time,’ Ida tried to make clear.
‘Yes?’
‘In the death room.’
Aggie looked pained at the choice of words. ‘Then you should put it back there.’
‘I don’t think it belongs. Not from the two spots I found it in, anyway – first under the curtains and then under the settee. Seemed very odd.’
Aggie waited.
Ida waited, too. ‘So, what do you think?’ she asked, finally.
‘I find you confusing today, Ida,’ said Aggie.
‘Oh.’ Ida gawped at her, a little dismayed. She popped the vial into her apron pocket again and chose to beam her brightest smile instead. Aggie just shook her head and began her descent to the floor below.
Ida kept close by her heels. ‘I supposed you’ve noticed I do bloomin’ everything around here?’ she remarked, by way of a fresh conversation starter. She could tell that Aggie had most definitely noticed this, although she was disappointed that Aggie didn’t now say that she did everything well.
‘Summersby is extremely understaffed,’ Aggie replied instead.
‘Is it what,’ said Ida.
Aggie stopped on the stair. ‘When I asked Mr Barker the reason for this he was most short with me about it,’ she said. ‘Quite rude, in fact.’
‘Oh, him,’ said Ida, dismissively. ‘Did you ask him why he keeps a poker up his bum?’
Aggie frowned. ‘Ida, really.’ She continued the descent again.
‘Servants hand in notices here like they’re scared they’ll catch something off the doorknobs,’ Ida remarked, keeping pace.
‘Your common mouth does not become you,’ said Aggie.
‘Sorry,’ said Ida, remembering herself. ‘I’ve not met many polite people before, miss. Sometimes I’m a bit at sea.’
Aggie turned and saw that Ida was genuine.
‘I just don’t think many things through before I say them,’ said Ida, ‘I never have much. I forget I’m not at home.’ The sudden thought of this made Ida’s face crease up as she was struck by the obvious truth that she was homesick.
‘You must be lonely,’ said Aggie, gentler now.
Ida scrubbed a tear from her eye, before pulling herself together again. ‘That’s why it’s just so nice having the company,’ she said. She beamed her smile again and realised then that Aggie’s heart had gone out to her.
‘Who is giving you training?’ Aggie asked. They began descending the stairs again, slower now.
‘No one,’ said Ida. ‘Well, that’s not true. Mum taught me chores. I’m used to doing them.’
‘But no one’s training you properly here?’ Aggie wondered.
Ida shook her head. ‘I make it up as I go along.’
She wasn’t surprised that this struck Aggie as peculiar. ‘But Mr Hackett is a very refined gentleman,’ said Aggie. ‘I know he doesn’t own Summersby, but he was engaged to the late Miss Gregory and, for the moment at least, he continues to live here. He has his standards, doesn’t he?’
Ida didn’t have an answer for that.
Aggie stopped on the stairs again. ‘Why did the other servants hand in their notices?’
Ida had come up with a theory, but as a girl who little thought before she spoke, she felt it best to think carefully now.
‘What is it?’ Aggie asked.
Ida felt very conflicted.
Aggie let the matter go. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘It’s none of my business, anyway.’
‘If I tell you what I think it might wreck it all for Evie,’ Ida said, worried.
‘Who’s Evie?’
‘My sister, Evangeline, the only one of us born with any brains. She’s thirteen and being kept at school. Mum and all my aunties have high hopes. My wages pay for her books.’
‘I see,’ said Aggie, even though she didn’t seem to see really.
‘Those who talked got the flick,’ whispered Ida, pained. ‘I didn’t guess it to begin with, but that’s what it was, they talked, you see, and when poker-bum Barker heard he told ’em they were through.’ She paused to let the significance of this be felt. ‘“Handing in their notice” was all bunkum!’ she declared. ‘They were sacked! Course it only made things worse. Soon as they were out they talked to anyone who’d listen. Now the whole world must know. If I speak another word then it’s Evie who’ll suffer the most.’
Digesting this information, Aggie proceeded with care. ‘Then you shouldn’t tell me anything of it at all, Ida. I mean it,’ she said. ‘If that’s the way things are here then I must respect that, just as you do.’
Ida struggled another moment, before succumbing to acceptance. She nodded her profound gratitude to Aggie, tears once more in her eyes.
‘There now,’ said Aggie, maternally, patting Ida’s hand.
‘I think Miss Gregory killed herself!’ Ida blurted out.
‘What?’
‘I think she did it from shame for what she’d done to her sister! I’ve been thinking and thinking about it and it all makes sense. It’s why no one speaks of it. It’s why everyone says she had a “turn”. She couldn’t live with herself for what she’d done. She killed herself.’
Aggie was horribly shocked.
‘People have said she was ill before she died,’ Ida went on, ‘ill in her mind . . . It was the guilt making her ill. I think she couldn’t bear it.’
‘Oh, Ida,’ Aggie said, putting her hands to mouth. ‘You mustn’t say another word about this.’
‘I won’t.’
‘I mean it. If what you say is true, well . . .’ Aggie was pale.
‘It’s a terrible sin, I know.’
‘It’s far worse than that,’ said Aggie. ‘It’s a terrible scandal.’
• • •
Later, when the hushed conversation was done, Ida felt so vastly better about getting it all off her chest that she attacked her endless cleaning round with real energy. She had a friend in Aggie, she knew, a genuine friend, and if she was lucky she’d gain another one in Aggie’s strange yet lovely mistress, who was also her mistress now, too, Ida had to remind herself. It was to Matilda’s room – the Chinese room – that Ida applied herself, cleaning not “tidying”, with a fervour and commitment she’d little felt at Summersby before.
It was only when she came to dust the surfaces that she remembered the blue perfume vial. With no better idea coming to mind, she put it back where she had originally placed it upon the dressing table, mystified that it had ever found its way back to the dining room at all. Who on earth had moved it and why?
When the room was lo
oking as fine as Ida felt she could make it, she took herself to the room allotted to Aggie on the floor above, not far from the little nook that was her own bedroom. Ida attacked her new friend’s room with a vengeance, keen for it to mirror the Chinese Room in cleanliness as much as was possible. Once she felt it truly sparkled, a bolt of inspiration hit. Skipping down the servants’ stairs to the kitchen, Ida went through to the walled garden beyond where the household’s herbs and vegetables grew. Ida knew little about flowers, only that they were pretty. She looked for what might be in bloom, scared to go beyond the garden walls into the grounds proper where anything she snipped would surely be missed. Confining herself only to what grew among the kitchen produce, Ida took out her scissors and snipped some yellow marigolds, a few sprigs of salvia in lilac and blue, and some pretty, white, daisy-like blooms of feverfew.
On her way inside again Ida remembered a lovely lead crystal vase that belonged in the library. It was criminally wasted where it was, in Ida’s view, such a pretty thing should live in the rooms that ladies more often frequented, not gentlemen. She decided to borrow it. Carefully resting the snipped flowers upon a hall table, Ida twisted the handle of the library door and ducked inside, making straight for the cabinet that contained the vase. It was only when she’d retrieved it that she realised the room was occupied.
‘Miss Gregory!’ she gasped, and nearly dropped the thing.
Matilda was hunched over a writing desk, pen and paper before her. She looked up in surprise at Ida, blinking like a startled mouse.
‘I’m so sorry, miss, I didn’t realise you were in here,’ said Ida, curtseying with rare presence of mind.
Matilda regarded Ida as if she had never met her before.
‘It’s Ida,’ said Ida, feeling the need to remind her, and curtseying again.
Matilda seemed to look her up and down highly critically and Ida felt very conscious of the vase in her hands. She returned it to the cabinet without another word, as if her purpose in coming to the room had merely been to look at the thing.
‘Did you have a nice time at the graveyard, miss?’ she asked when she was done, in an effort to fill the silence.
The Secret Heiress Page 17
