The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  Ida was the most bewildered she had been all night.

  ‘What did it say, Ida?’ Samuel’s composure had left him.

  Ida tried to tell him. ‘It was some kind of letter, Mr Hackett, about the twin Gregory girls, I think.’

  He was very shocked. ‘The handwriting – what did it look like?’

  Ida tried to describe. ‘Not very nice, there were ink stains all over it.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hackett, it was very messy.’

  He seemed incredibly relieved. ‘Help me find it, Ida, whatever it is. It may be important.’

  She joined him in the dirt, trying to find it again. ‘But what was she talking about – writing little messages on scraps?’

  Samuel paused. ‘Ida, are you truly my friend?’

  ‘Of course I am, Mr Hackett—’

  He shook his head, stopping her. ‘Friendship is so easily professed, anyone can claim it; it falls from the lips without thinking.’

  ‘I’m your friend,’ Ida implored him, ‘you know that I am. I’m your loyalest friend if you’ll put me to the test, but tell me what is happening here?’

  Emotion caught in his throat. ‘Ida . . .’ he began, ‘Margaret was very unwell, you realise that now.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Matilda is her sister, her twin sister . . . her identical twin.’

  ‘Of course, but what is it, Mr Hackett, what is this all about?’

  ‘Her mind, Ida, her memory – have you noticed how she changes, how her very manner of being can seem so different, so completely different, from one occasion to the next? Tell me I’m not the only one who has seen this in her, Ida?’

  Ida swallowed. ‘I have seen it, too, Mr Hackett.’

  He was helpless. ‘Thank God I’m not alone in this. So help me, Ida, I am starting to fear that perhaps she is identical to her late sister in more than just her appearance. I am starting to fear that Matilda, like her sister, is ill.’

  They did not find the letter that had been placed in the windowpane. Whatever it had been, it remained lost to them in the dark.

  • • •

  In the Chinese Room, well past midnight, Ida and Aggie picked and carried items, rehanging clothes, putting away hats and shoes, and rearranging things that did not need rearranging as a means to pass the time while they talked. Having returned from the ball, and with Matilda and Samuel taking refreshments downstairs in the drawing room, Ida gave Aggie her impressions of the night’s events. Aggie was trying her best to make any sense of it.

  ‘You say this Mr Skews found Miss Margaret’s body?’

  ‘That’s what was said,’ Ida told her, ‘although he seemed very nervous that it had been said at all. He was very nervous all round, scratching at himself and sniffing. And Mr Samuel didn’t like him talking to the mistress about it one little bit, but I think Miss Matilda was the one who started the conversation with Mr Skews in the first place. It was very strange.’

  Aggie clearly didn’t know what to think of this.

  In her mind Ida saw an image of Margaret dead on the floor, poisoned by her own hand. ‘Mr Samuel was very upset by it.’

  She thought of what had happened in the hut. ‘And then there was the letter, just popped inside a crack in the windowpane for someone to find it – and we did find it – right after the mistress remembered that she had once written some ‘message scraps’ she called them, when at the Hall. I hardly got to read it before she slapped my hands and I dropped it. We couldn’t find it again in the dark. It was something about twins changing places to trick people.’ The next part was very troubling to Ida because she knew it would feed Aggie’s growing unease about Samuel. ‘She said she had written the message scraps for Mr Hackett . . .’

  Aggie stopped folding clothes. ‘Written messages for him?’

  ‘She said he had once come to the Hall and asked her to write them.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it – Mr Samuel didn’t know what she was talking about. He really didn’t.’ She hesitated, thinking on what Samuel had said. ‘Aggie, what if she’s ill, really ill, just like Miss Margaret was ill – ill inside her mind?’

  Aggie studied her, frowning. ‘He did know her already, just like I thought, he knew who she really was. She just couldn’t remember it before.’

  ‘That’s not what’s important here – you’re not listening.’

  Aggie was disgusted. ‘Why wouldn’t he have mentioned any of that himself then, Ida? Why would he have pretended they were strangers that day?’

  Ida felt anxious. ‘Because they were strangers, don’t you see? He didn’t know what she meant by any of it!’

  ‘The mistress’s sister took her own life, don’t forget!’

  Ida remembered then what Matilda had said. ‘But that’s another thing, the mistress doesn’t think she did at all.’

  ‘She said something?’

  ‘She asked what Mr Skews thought about it, whether he thought her sister had killed herself – he didn’t know what to say in reply when she asked. Then she said that she didn’t think her sister killed herself anyway.’

  Aggie blinked at her.

  ‘It’s what she said,’ Ida was emphatic. ‘I heard her. She said she didn’t think that’s what happened.’

  ‘Then what did happen?’

  Ida just looked helplessly at her. ‘I think she might be ill . . . think about it, Aggie.’

  Aggie’s face set in determination. ‘No. Something’s going on with that Mr Hackett and it’s going on right under our very noses.’

  But Ida couldn’t agree. ‘It’s the mistress who is acting so strange,’ she insisted, ‘stranger than she normally is – ten times stranger. You weren’t there to see it. It’s the things she’s been coming out with all night that put him so on edge. I’ve never seen her like that before, Aggie. I know she’s always a bit odd, but tonight she was really odd.’

  ‘She’s just confused,’ defended Aggie, ‘she doesn’t see him as she should because he’s so nice to her. She can’t conceive of someone nice meaning her harm.’ She gave Ida a pointed look. ‘And she’s not the only one.’

  ‘But he is nice!’ Ida insisted. ‘If there is something going on he’s not part of it, I swear to you. More likely it’s disgusting Mr Barker! Or that sniffing Mr Skews! I think they’ve both got something over him—’ Ida’s attention was suddenly distracted by something. ‘Well, knock me down,’ She pointed to the Moorish box at the end of the bed where Matilda had opened and forgotten it. ‘That blessed thing’s got a mind of its own.’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’ said Aggie, reaching for the box. But Ida got there first. Pulling aside some folded writing paper on top, she uncovered the sapphire vial.

  ‘The pretty blue perfume bottle. It must have been the mistress who took it!’

  ‘Didn’t you say you found that in the dining room?’

  ‘Oh, I did,’ said Ida, cradling the glass, ‘I found it twice. I put it on the dressing table after the first time but then it went and disappeared. When it turned up in the dining room again I put it back on the dressing table. Then it took off a second time,’ Ida marvelled, ‘but I suppose I shouldn’t think anything odd when it comes to our mistress – if only you’d start believing me.’ She shook the contents of the vial. ‘She hasn’t felt a burning need for the stuff.’

  A sickening look came over Aggie. ‘Drop it . . .’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Drop it . . . drop it, Ida!’

  ‘But it’s so nice?’

  Aggie struck at the vial and it fell from Ida’s hand, landing upon the bed.

  ‘What the matter with you, for Gawd’s sake?’

  Aggie clutched at her. ‘It’s the poison.’

  ‘No, it’s not, it’s just scent. I opened it.’

  Aggie’s eye went to the folded letter Ida had scooped aside. On impulse, she picked it up, unfolding it. Her eyes widened.

  ‘Wha
t’s wrong now?’ said Ida, rubbing at her hands.

  Aggie showed her.

  Dear Margaret,

  This is for your Remember Box.

  At about the time of our father’s long illness he hired a private secretary. This young man was Samuel Hackett. Well turned out and extremely handsome, Mr Hackett was an arrival from England, where he had been born and raised in the very best of circles. He was also of reduced prospects. As the third son of gentry Mr Hackett could inherit nothing of his family’s fortune.

  Samuel Hackett was a profoundly indolent gentleman who attempted to better himself only by use of his looks and charm. Honest work and industry were unknown to him. Our father hired Mr Hackett because of his charm. It is also possible that he saw in his secretary a son-in-law. The Englishman was tall and well formed; ladies liked him. He was not especially bright. In the likelihood of love arising, perhaps our father guessed that I, his heiress, would be less likely to have my fortune wrested away in wedlock if my groom was beneath my intelligence. But if so, then our father underestimated both his secretary and his daughter. Samuel Hackett possessed a fine talent for low scheming – along with the patience to carry such things out – that was little hinted at by his good looks. I, on the other hand, possessed such utter unscrupulousness that our father, should he ever have guessed at the true extent, would only have been hastened to his end.

  Samuel may have believed he was first to uncover the clause pertaining to me inheriting the estate and you becoming confined, but I knew of it before he did, before Samuel was even hired by our father. Samuel’s arrival at Summersby was a pleasant happenstance for me, manna from the heavens. Samuel’s arrival gave me the very best means to carry out a plan that could only have been conceived by someone who is an identical twin.

  Some people fail to understand what it really means to be a twin. Our father, despite having sired twin girls, was one such person. In willing you, following his death, to be confined for your own protection to Constantine Hall he failed to grasp what separation feels like when born as one of two. The very notion of being kept apart from one’s ‘other self’ is too horrific to contemplate. It is like death.

  When I learned of what our father intended, despite being named as his heiress, I vowed one thing: you would not remain apart from me. But to achieve this required much cunning. The will’s clauses were cast iron. Any departure from our father’s instructions would have seen either of us cut off with nothing. I dearly loved you, but I loved the money, too. So, I intended to have both.

  Your sister who loves you,

  Matilda

  It was the same unattractive lettering, marred by spots of ink. Ida blinked in the lamplight. ‘It’s just like the one in the hut.’

  Aggie took the letter back from her. ‘But she didn’t write this.’

  ‘Yes, she did – there’s her name.’ Ida squinted at the displeasing lettering. ‘She put the first letter in the windowpane just before Mr Samuel and I followed her in there. She put this one inside the box.’

  Aggie went to the dressing table and took up the mounted photograph Matilda had placed against the looking glass. ‘I don’t dispute that it looks very much like she put the letters there, Ida,’ she told her, ‘but she certainly didn’t write them.’ She turned the photograph over, showing Ida the writing on the reverse. ‘Our mistress wrote her own name here, see, along with the date.’ She held this next to the wording on the letter. ‘The handwriting is very different.’ Indeed it was: the photograph back showed a smooth copperplate; a lady’s lovely hand.

  ‘That’s not her handwriting,’ said Ida.

  ‘Of course it is,’ said Aggie, ‘I’d know it anywhere.’

  Ida tried to recall the day she went into the library and found Matilda at the writing desk. Hadn’t she seen thick, uneven words like those on the letter, worthy of a knuckle rap? Or had she seen the same smooth, finely worked penmanship on the back of the photograph?

  Aggie was adamant. ‘That letter is not in her hand. It’s far too ugly. She’s very proud of her handwriting.’

  Ida thought of what shocked Samuel had asked her in the hut when they’d found the first letter – what had the handwriting looked like?

  Ida felt she had to accept what Aggie said. She still knew their mistress better, after all, ill or otherwise. ‘Yet she put it inside the thing that’s called the Remember Box,’ said Ida, ‘along with the blue glass and the photograph.’ She re-read the lines.

  Aggie seemed to guess where Ida’s mind was wandering. ‘Ida, Margaret Gregory is stone cold dead in her grave,’ she reminded her.

  ‘You don’t have to bloody tell me about it!’ Ida protested. ‘Our mistress is the one thinking there’s spooks in the night!’

  An awkward pause fell between them.

  ‘I hear that poor little dog sometimes . . .’ Ida confessed. ‘I heard it on the stairs.’

  Aggie blanched, as if stung by a memory of Yip left behind at the Hall.

  Ida’s eyes brimmed with tears. ‘Miss Margaret’s poor dog, it died when she died, in the dining room. I heard it in the night.’

  This was the first Aggie had learned of any dogs at Summersby, ghosts or otherwise. ‘Ida Garfield, you did not hear anything of the kind.’

  Ida bit at her bottom lip. ‘I know what I heard.’

  Aggie scoffed at her. ‘Now we’re just being silly and spooking ourselves.’

  ‘The ghosts of suicides wander the earth,’ Ida whispered. ‘That’s what they say.’

  ‘Didn’t you say you heard a dog? Pets don’t suicide.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what to think,’ Ida wailed. ‘I’m just trying to get to the bottom of things.’

  They each sat on the bed.

  Ida poked at the vial with a finger. ‘Rosemary oil, that’s all it is, harmless. Nothing like a poison at all. I’ll show you.’ She picked up the glass again and twisted at the stopper.

  ‘Ida, for goodness sake!’

  ‘Keep your hair on, I won’t bloomin’ drink it, will I?’ Ida struggled with the thing. The stopper was tight. ‘Cripes, it’s like it’s been glued shut.’

  ‘Please take a bit of care!’

  The stopper came loose with a pop.

  The unmistakable smell of rosemary reached their nostrils.

  Ida sniffed deeply. ‘See, it’s nice.’

  Aggie thought she heard a floorboard creak from the hallway. ‘It’s Barker,’ she hissed. She slid off the bed and crept to the door, listening.

  Ida placed her nose closer to the vial, inhaling the scent. ‘Odd . . .’

  Aggie pressed her ear to the door panel. ‘He’s not coming inside here,’ she vowed, ‘he’ll get the fight of his life if he tries, the disgusting man.’

  A louder creak from behind made Aggie turn around again with a start.

  Ida slumped senseless to the floor, the vial and its contents spilling from her fingers.

  BIDDY

  DECEMBER 1903

  4

  Biddy sensed she was sprawled upon the flagstone floor, her head cradled in Miss Garfield’s lap, a wet towel applied to her forehead. She was awake, yet somehow not. She felt her chest struggle to rise with each breath. She heard Sybil cry out in shock.

  ‘What is it? What has happened to Biddy?’

  Biddy sensed Mrs Marshall there, trying to speak but somehow not making herself lucid.

  ‘Biddy has had a turn,’ said Miss Garfield, sounding very strained. ‘I found her fallen in the stillroom. I managed to pull her out here but she is still unconscious.’

  Biddy sensed Sybil fly to her side and take her unresponsive hand. ‘Biddy, Biddy . . .’ Sybil rubbed her fingers and palms. ‘You must wake up, Biddy; you’re giving us a nasty fright.’

  But Biddy stayed still.

  ‘We must send for the doctor, Mrs Marshall,’ Sybil implored.

  Biddy sensed Mrs Marshall was shaking, still unable to speak, rooted to the floor.

  ‘I have sent a farmhand to town in the
trap to fetch him,’ said Miss Garfield.

  Sybil started to cry. ‘Oh, please wake up . . . This isn’t very fun of you at all.’

  Biddy’s eyes flickered.

  ‘Biddy!’ cried Mrs Marshall, finding her own tongue again. She took the towel from Miss Garfield’s hands and dabbed at Biddy’s cheeks with it. ‘There you are, come back to us now, that’s the way.’

  Biddy murmured and groaned. ‘My head . . .’ She opened her eyes and shut them again, the glare from the windows painful.

  ‘There, there,’ said Mrs Marshall, ‘you lie still.’

  ‘Rosemary . . . It was only rosemary . . .’

  The housekeeper’s voice caught in her throat. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘That’s all it was, just rosemary.’

  Biddy opened her eyes again to see the housekeeper looking as if she was experiencing a sickening deja vu.

  ‘Mrs Marshall, not you, too!’

  Biddy saw the housekeeper catch at Sybil’s arm and succumb to a faint of her own.

  • • •

  When the commotion was all over and the patients, both, examined by a doctor from town, Mrs Marshall nodded in assent that bed rest was essential for herself and Biddy, and of several days duration, if not a full week. Mrs Marshall had been meek in the face of medicine, blaming the cessation of her monthly bleeds for her fainting spell. The doctor was sympathetic and easily swayed, turning his attention back to Biddy, whose own collapse was viewed by him with rather more mystery and significantly less conclusion. ‘The onset of womanly maturity’ was the best he could do, which was likely a tactful avoidance of the most likely culprit, Mrs Marshall’s bread. Biddy knew it was by no means unknown for rye to go rotten before it was baked. People who ate it could end up with hallucinations, or worse. Mrs Marshall was far too respected for anyone to cast aspersions at her baking, but the unsaid was clear. She said she would take it upon herself to dispose of all the baking ingredients as a caution.

  Once the doctor had gone and Summersby returned to quietude, Mrs Marshall removed herself from her bedroom and descended the stairs. Reaching the deserted kitchen, she slipped out the rear door and entered the kitchen garden. She moved swiftly along the path that led to the far wall gate, which, when pushed aside, revealed a stretch of the Summersby grounds with the little stone cottage for the outdoors staff in the distance. Shielding her eyes in the late afternoon sun, the housekeeper began the short walk to get there, the hem of her dress snagging and catching at grass seeds.