The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  ‘Where are you going, Mrs Marshall?’

  The housekeeper turned with a start to find Biddy watching her from the garden gate. She had followed the housekeeper when she’d seen her making her way down the stairs. Just like Mrs Marshall, Biddy had no intention of remaining in bed if she was feeling better.

  ‘To the groundsmen’s cottage,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘There is a fellow in there I haven’t seen in some time. I like to check on him when I can.’

  ‘Do you mind if I join you for the stroll?’ Biddy wondered. ‘I’m feeling that much better for having a little rest.’

  Mrs Marshall looked as if she would have liked to say no, so Biddy started walking through the grass anyway before she could get the chance. Mrs Marshall frowned but didn’t object. Biddy’s near miss with the rotten rye seemed to have tempered the housekeeper’s sternness towards her to a degree.

  They reached the cottage, seeing ample evidence of those who lived inside from the kicked-off boots and spat-out cigarette ends. It was an inescapably male domain.

  ‘Who lives here then?’ Biddy wondered. She’d never gone to this part of the grounds before.

  ‘Lewis and his cousin,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘And their uncle.’

  Biddy caught at the name. ‘Lewis?’

  ‘He works in the grounds.’

  Biddy tried not to look as keenly interested as she was. ‘I don’t think I’ve met him before. He’s the one who found Joey the first time, isn’t he? Is he an old bloke then?’

  ‘No,’ said Mrs Marshall. ‘He’s the same age as his cousin – twenty-one, I believe.’ She seemed to brace herself, composing her face as she took her bare knuckles to the cottage door.

  Biddy braced herself, too. Would handsome Lewis Fitzwater come to the door and see her standing there on the doorstep and get the surprise of his life? She hoped in her heart that he would, and that it would be a surprise, too – a nice one.

  The knock went unanswered. They waited, Mrs Marshall thinking in silence for a moment, not bothering to knock a second time. Without saying a word to Biddy, she walked around to the side of the cottage, her eyes fixed hard on one of the high windows.

  Biddy followed her. ‘I don’t think anyone’s home, Mrs Marshall.’

  Halting beneath the window, the housekeeper stood on her toes to peer through the glass, but wasn’t tall enough. An old candle box caught her attention. ‘Help me, will you, Biddy?’

  Dragging it from where it had been left, Biddy helped Mrs Marshall place it where she could climb on top and achieve her desired view. Face pressed to the grimy glass, Mrs Marshall cupped her hands to her eyes, the better to see in with.

  ‘What’s inside?’ Biddy asked.

  Mrs Marshall stepped down from the box, satisfied.

  ‘What did you see?’

  Mrs Marshall started striding in the direction of the great house again. ‘I saw that deja vu is only that and nothing more, Biddy,’ she replied over her shoulder, ‘and I was a silly woman for ever fearing otherwise.’

  Biddy was set to follow when an impulse seized her. With one eye on the retreating housekeeper, she jumped onto the box and peered where Mrs Marshall had peered.

  Little was clear in the gloom at first, until the shocking form of a grey, cadaverous man rose and gaped at her from a narrow iron bed. What struck Biddy most were his eyes: as cold and black as jet; piercing out from beneath a net of greying hair. They were eyes that could see right through her; hateful eyes; windows to an ugly, misshapen soul. A pair of battered crutches leant against the wall. This was the ‘fellow’, as Mrs Marshall had called him. He was plainly crippled and sick. Shuddering, Biddy leapt down from the box, and ran after Mrs Marshall, ashamed for acting like some Peeping Tom.

  • • •

  When Mrs Marshall returned to her kitchen, she went to a large dresser drawer labelled ‘castor oil’ and opened it. No castor oil was inside; rather, she kept in the drawer a number of homely items she had made with her own hands: a display of pressed violas arranged in a pretty frame; a little Australian coat of arms done in needlepoint; a pair of knitted mittens; a collage of pretty girls clipped from ladies’ journals; a doll made from the Japanese silk of a torn cushion cover. The drawer was deliberately, misleadingly labelled so that no one would ever wish to open it but her.

  Mrs Marshall selected the pressed violas in the frame just as Biddy came inside. Mrs Marshall looked up at her once and then returned to her task.

  ‘Was that the uncle?’ Biddy asked. ‘Alone in the bed? He didn’t look very well, did he?’

  Mrs Marshall didn’t admonish her for looking in the window. Biddy didn’t think she would anyway, given she’d done the same thing. ‘Mr Barker has reaped what he has sown,’ she told her by way of reply. Nothing else was forthcoming.

  Mrs Marshall wrapped the frame in a length of linen, and then added a layer of plain brown paper. Before tying the paper with string, she slipped inside a little card, on which she wrote in ink some brief words.

  Mrs Marshall tied the package tight and then turned her pen to inking an address she clearly knew by heart. When that was done she placed the package in her wicker shopping basket. The entire process, taking no more than five minutes, had plainly made Mrs Marshall feel somewhat better in her heart and mind, Biddy thought, because she became more cheerful.

  ‘Why don’t we make one of your delicious brown soups, Biddy?’ she suggested.

  • • •

  The importance and significance of telegraph messages at Summersby did not occur to Biddy at first. The warm summer days stretched into mid January, which was when she casually noted the wire that stretched from a connecting box. The box was perched high on the house’s outer eastern wall; the wire that ran from it was supported by poles that stretched across a section of the grounds and disappeared into the distant paddocks. Biddy didn’t consider the wire again for several days, presuming it to be the bearer of electricity, just like the wires she knew in Melbourne. But it was only after she had experienced playing cards by the light of kerosene lamps that it struck her that electricity wasn’t present in the great house. Then she looked at the wire anew and wondered if it was the means of sending telegraph messages. This intrigued Biddy. She pondered on what a place Summersby was to possess a private means of communication enjoyed by no other house she had known. She studied the direction the wire came from and guessed it began at Castlemaine.

  Biddy decided then to determine which room it was that housed the telegraph machine. By gauging the exact position of the connecting box outside, Biddy surmised that the corresponding room lay somewhere in the Summersby attics. These were servants’ rooms, but with Summersby’s indoor staff being countable on one hand, there were far more rooms than staff to sleep in them. It made sense to put the telegraph machine somewhere up there, too.

  Biddy ascended the servants’ stairs to reach the third storey. On her mission to find the room that met the connecting box, Biddy located the most likely by deductive reasoning. There was a door she had noted in passing for its unusual appearance; a door half disguised to look more like the wall that supported it. This door was locked, which was also unusual. Biddy could think of no other door in the house to which entry was barred. Peering through the keyhole gave Biddy nothing.

  The importance and significance of Jim Skews’ role at Summersby did not occur to Biddy to begin with, either. She noticed the tall, lean and quite attractive young man appear very early one morning in Mrs Marshall’s kitchen before the housekeeper ushered him through the baize door to another part of the house. With the glare of the morning sun in her eyes as he’d come inside, Biddy’s heart had almost leapt to her mouth when he’d greeted Mrs Marshall. The young man bore a resemblance to Lewis Fitzwater, being very similar in voice and frame. He was certainly handsome, but in a sign that good looks are never quite all, there was something about his manner that Biddy was unsure about. Somehow more guarded than Lewis, Jim tipped his bowler hat at Biddy as he passed without a
word. She didn’t see him leave.

  Biddy didn’t think of Jim Skews again until his second appearance, one week later, when she was sitting in the kitchen garden with Joey by her side for company. She was blacking Sybil’s boots for want of something better to do, all while keeping an eye out for Mrs Marshall in the process. Jim appeared loping along the path from the direction of the stables.

  ‘Hello again,’ he called to her, tipping his bowler. He carried nothing else with him and stooped to give Joey a pat.

  ‘Hello,’ said Biddy, having no idea who he was or what he did for the household.

  Later, when Biddy was returning Sybil’s shining boots to her room she encountered Jim on the servants’ stairs descending from the third floor.

  ‘You again,’ he said. The hat stayed on his head, but he flashed his toothy smile at her. Joey was close by her heels and Jim stooped to pat him again.

  ‘Me again,’ said Biddy, smiling back for politeness’s sake.

  ‘Just off for my dinner,’ said Jim. ‘Mrs Marshall’s pasties make it worthwhile.’ He winked at her as he passed and continued heading down.

  ‘They are nice, aren’t they?’ said Biddy after him.

  It was only once she had returned the boots to Sybil’s bedroom that it occurred to her that she could think of no other purpose for Jim being on the third floor except one. Darting up the stairs again to the landing, Biddy made sure that all was quiet before she ducked along the hallway to the room she imagined the telegraph machine resided in.

  She tried the unusual, half-disguised door. ‘Still locked, Joey,’ she said to the little dog.

  ‘Mrs Marshall’s not ready for me yet,’ said a voice behind her.

  Biddy leapt out of her skin.

  ‘It’s only me,’ said Jim. ‘Did I give you a scare?’

  Glad now that he’d already seen her when she was blacking Sybil’s shoes, Biddy felt a story forming. ‘Should this door be locked?’ she asked, recovering.

  He frowned. ‘Shouldn’t it?’

  ‘Not if I’m supposed to clean inside it,’ said Biddy.

  Jim’s smile flashed again, in what was clearly an automatic response to things that required his consideration. ‘I didn’t notice it was dirty.’

  ‘Well, Mrs Marshall did . . .’

  The smile flashed again. ‘We’ve met but we haven’t met, Miss—’

  ‘Biddy,’ said Biddy. ‘I work here, you know.’

  ‘As do I,’ said Jim.

  ‘Not often,’ said Biddy. ‘I’ve only seen you here twice.’

  ‘I’m in here as needed,’ said Jim. ‘Once or twice a week, sometimes more.’

  Biddy just waited. The door stayed locked. Joey the pup looked up at her expectantly.

  ‘Fair enough then,’ said Biddy. ‘We might as well go downstairs together for a pasty. I’ll tell Mrs Marshall you didn’t think the room needed cleaning then, shall I?’

  He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket. ‘Don’t go getting her all upset. She might think she can find another lightning squirter in this district but I can tell you now there isn’t another one for fifty miles.’

  ‘A what?’

  He produced a key that Biddy recognised, if not for the key itself, but for the little bit of string used to mark it. She realised that it normally lived on Mrs Marshall’s big brass key ring.

  ‘Lightning squirter,’ said Jim. ‘Just put a cork in it and let me enjoy my pasty, eh?’ He said with a wink. He unlocked the door and opened it. Biddy felt a draught of air upon her face, unexpectedly cool. ‘Where’s your cleaning things?’ Jim asked her.

  Biddy thought on her feet. ‘In the cupboard, where they’re supposed to be.’

  He nodded and left her to it. ‘I’ll go back down. Maybe there’ll be a copy of the Mail I can read while my dinner does its last in the oven.’

  Biddy nodded at him and ducked inside the door, Joey following her. She stood a moment listening to Jim’s footsteps recede down the hall. When she was certain he was gone, she turned and was surprised to discover what was inside.

  It wasn’t a room so much as a staircase. Narrow and wooden, it wound in a spiral to an unseen floor above. It was gloomy and close, but the room above was light-filled, spilling sunshine on to the uppermost stairs.

  ‘It’s the tower,’ Biddy realised. ‘What a twit I am for not guessing it. Stay here, Joey,’ she whispered.

  The dog ignored the command and followed, sniffing every stair he mounted with particularly keen interest. The sound of his claws on the boards seemed to become magnified by the unusual dimensions of the room. The effect of it was very strange.

  When Biddy reached the space above she was pleased to find confirmation of her powers of deduction. The light and airy upper room was filled with sunshine from four round windows that afforded a lovely view of the grounds. It would have made a very charming bedroom, Biddy thought, and she wondered if anyone had ever lived up here in the past. The room itself contained a banker’s swivelling chair fronting a sturdy oak table, upon which rested a telegraphic machine. A relatively compact device, similar in size to a lady’s largest hatbox, it was handsomely made and looked well cared for. A second machine, less impressive and lacking the tortoiseshell keys and glass valves of the first, sat alongside. Biddy guessed this was the means of empowerment; some kind of chemical battery. A ladder and trap door in the corner of the room led to the tower roof.

  Pleased with herself for having solved a puzzle, Biddy would have left the room following a cursory wipe of the dust had it not been for the papers laid in a wire desk basket labelled ‘Out’.

  Biddy recognised Miss Garfield’s penmanship on the uppermost sheet, and before she knew quite what she was doing, she read what it said.

  . . . progress with the translations of Tacitus has afforded me the greatest pride of all in Sybil’s achievements this week, a pride I have little doubt you will echo tenfold when you learn of it . . .

  Biddy felt her heart race. It was a letter penned to one or more of Sybil’s relatives. It was clearly not to be entrusted to His Majesty’s Mail, but rather was to be laboriously keyed and transmitted using Morse code. Biddy boggled at the effort and likely cost. As far as she knew, telegrams cost six pence to send six words within Victoria. She had never known of a single person to send a message any longer than that.

  Biddy glanced at the sheets underneath. Miss Garfield’s neat penmanship continued before it gave way to another hand, less expertly wrought, on a fresh letter.

  Sybil has continued to partake of well-prepared meals this week, made by my own hands and using the finest ingredients Summersby provides. We are still to find a new cook to relieve me of the burden, but it is not really a burden when my reward is Sybil’s good health and robust constitution. On Monday luncheon Sybil enjoyed a spiced kedgeree made with egg and ham, and a strawberry fool for her sweet. On Monday tea-time she partook of some apricot jam and cream-filled crepes . . .

  It was a letter from Mrs Marshall. Biddy read it to the end. She then returned to Miss Garfield’s letter and read that in its entirety, too. Half of it lay outside the basket, writing side down on the desk. This suggested to Biddy that much of it had already been sent in code. What remained in the basket would follow once Jim Skews had eaten his dinner.

  Neither letter made any mention of Biddy.

  She was seized by an impulse to tell a story so provocative it almost made her laugh. Biddy peered at the two letters. Miss Garfield’s script was a lady’s hand. Mrs Marshall’s writing was almost entirely made up of capitals, full of crossings out and underlining, one page done in pencil and the other done in ink.

  Biddy opened the desk drawers to see what they contained and was pleased to find a pencil there. Of the two letters, Biddy hoped that Mrs Marshall’s hand presented the lesser challenge. There was just enough space between the housekeeper’s final sentence and “Your Faithful Servant” to insert, if lucky, two additional lines.

  Biddy took several seconds to compose her
words before she carefully wrote them on the sheet, using capitals and being sure to cross out and underline. She squinted at her handiwork when done.

  The girl Biddy has joined us. She is honest, hardworking and of good character; a companion to Sybil, a sister. What should I tell her of your rules?

  It looked like an afterthought. If there was a difference in style, perhaps it might be explained by Mrs Marshall being overworked.

  The dusting Biddy gave to the room was thorough. She wanted Jim Skews to notice it. If she was lucky, Biddy told herself, he wouldn’t notice anything else.

  • • •

  Jim did not reappear at Summersby until seven days had passed, and then, when he did, Biddy only saw him arrive from a distance while she was walking with Sybil in the grounds. Intrigued to know what, if anything, Sybil knew of Jim’s strange role at Summersby, Biddy tested the waters. ‘There’s that funny man again,’ she said, pointing in the lightning squirter’s direction.

  Sybil turned to see him in the act of doffing his hat to Mrs Marshall at the kitchen door, before the housekeeper admitted him inside. Sybil’s face held no expression at all.

  ‘I saw him here a week ago,’ said Biddy, ‘and a week before that. He’s got teeth on him like a hare.’

  ‘That’s not true at all. He has quite a handsome face.’

  This surprised Biddy. ‘If you like that sort of thing,’ she said, airily. ‘What sort of tradesman is he, then? He comes here without any tools.’

  But it was already apparent that Sybil intended dismissing all lines of enquiry. ‘It is much cooler today,’ she said, pulling a light shawl across her shoulders. ‘I should think that autumn is getting nearer, Biddy.’

  Biddy looked at Sybil carefully, but didn’t ask another thing about Jim. Sybil’s evasion was all the answer she’d sought anyway. The well-to-do girl knew exactly what task the young man did at Summersby. ‘Shall we go in?’ Biddy said.