Biddy harrumphed and followed Mrs Marshall, but when she snuck a look over her shoulder again, Lewis hadn’t moved and was only grinning more. ‘Thought so,’ he mouthed at her.
Although she made plenty of cakes and biscuits of her own at the great house, Mrs Marshall bought several on offer from the Presbyterian Ladies Committee, given that they were raising funds for the parish poor. Biddy suspected that the best of the cakes may have been purchased already and that these were the also-rans, but Mrs Marshall reacted to them as if they were worthy of a Buckingham Palace high tea. The three ladies in attendance were vocal in their gratitude.
‘And look at Miss Sybil?’ cried one, smiling at Biddy. ‘My, how lovely she’s becoming.’
‘This is Miss MacBryde,’ said the housekeeper, ‘Miss Sybil’s companion.’
The woman was evidently thrown, as were her colleagues. ‘But you look so like her,’ said the lady, ‘especially your beautiful hair. Please forgive me, dear.’ Biddy saw the ladies adjust their attitude towards her. Their respectfulness went down a notch, but by no means disappeared altogether.
‘You should eat more, child,’ said one of the other women to Biddy. ‘You mind you get some of that sponge into you before Mrs Marshall lets the farm boys have it.’
The other ladies laughed and Mrs Marshall led Biddy along the street towards the butcher’s shop.
• • •
‘Mr Taylor is always to be treated with politeness,’ said Mrs Marshall, once she and Biddy had exited the butcher’s shop, ‘but his gossip is really not to be encouraged, Biddy.’
‘Even when it’s interesting?’ Biddy asked, in apparent innocence.
Mrs Marshall pursed her lips by way of an answer and then looked towards the Railway Stores. Lewis had tethered the horse and surrey out front and was waiting in the shade of the veranda. ‘I need to use the postal service,’ said the housekeeper as they strolled towards him. ‘Wait with Lewis while I go inside, Biddy.’
Biddy did so, Lewis barely acknowledging her presence until Mrs Marshall had gone. ‘Got you a present,’ he grinned at her.
‘You what?’ said Biddy, taken aback.
‘A present,’ said Lewis. ‘I bought you something.’
For the second time that morning Biddy blushed at him. ‘You really shouldn’t have,’ she stammered, ‘you hardly know me.’
Lewis dismissed this. ‘It’s not an engagement ring,’ he retorted and Biddy rode the wave of a third blush.
A rolled-up journal was placed in her hand. ‘What’s this?’
‘You already told me you can read.’
Biddy unrolled it to reveal the cover of the Bulletin.
‘You ever read it?’ Lewis asked her. ‘Comes all the way from Sydney.’
Biddy shook her head.
Lewis tapped his temple. ‘Good stuff in there. Ideas. It’ll make you think about the times we live in.’
Biddy looked up at him in some amazement. ‘Think? Do I need a printed journal to let me do that?’
‘You might,’ said Lewis, ‘to think about certain things, anyway.’ He tapped his temple again. ‘I did.’
Biddy wasn’t sure what to make of it, but thanked him for it anyway. ‘I hope it wasn’t dear.’
‘Good ideas are worth paying something for.’
Biddy tucked the journal under the things in her basket just as Mrs Marshall emerged from the store, now minus her parcel and carrying a folded newspaper under her arm. She looked at Biddy warmly before placing the newspaper in her hands. ‘Just because you have no governess to tutor you, does not mean you must remain ignorant of the world about you, Biddy,’ she said. ‘I have bought you The Australasian, a respectable publication that I shall continue to purchase for you once a week. It is from Melbourne and therefore sound. New South Wales publications have found their way to our climes, and rabble rousing along with them.’
Biddy felt the Bulletin grow heavy in her basket.
‘Flamboyant publications,’ said Mrs Marshall, ‘and unsuitable for any young woman. The Australasian has never been anything less than trustworthy in my view and I look forward to discussing its issues with you.’
• • •
When the three of them returned to Summersby, Mrs Marshall alighted from the surrey before Lewis could even assist her. She hurried to the kitchens, claiming they’d taken too long at shopping and that the midday dinner would be delayed. Biddy offered assistance but the housekeeper was through the door and Biddy didn’t hear her reply.
Lewis helped her down from the surrey and neither rushed the process. She liked placing her hand on his arm for balance. ‘Thank you for your present,’ she told him. ‘I’ll read it cover to cover.’
‘Make sure you do,’ said Lewis. ‘You won’t regret an education.’
Biddy turned to go inside and then stopped, looking back at him, thoughtfully. She considered herself to be a resourceful girl, but a girl who knew when to seek assistance from those who were well disposed towards her was the most resourceful of all.
‘Something wrong?’ Lewis asked as she looked at him.
She wondered how she might phrase her words without risking the things Sybil most feared. ‘There’s a mystery . . .’ she started to say.
‘What’s that?’
Biddy cleared her throat. ‘A mystery,’ she began again. ‘There’s a puzzle I’d like to solve. Well, need to solve really.’
Lewis cocked his head at her, plainly not sure if she was pulling his leg. ‘Like the mystery of the Flannan Isle lighthouse keepers? I’ve got a theory on what happened to them.’
Biddy chose her words with care. ‘It’s a bit like that. I want to find something that’s gone missing, too. Something important.’
Lewis tipped his hat from his brow and scratched at his hairline. ‘Tell me.’
Biddy steeled herself. ‘It’s not even a something, it’s a someone.’
‘A person’s gone missing?’
Biddy nodded.
‘Got lost in the bush?’
‘Not like that. At least, I don’t think so. They’re missing in another way – a way that doesn’t make people worried.’
‘You look worried,’ said Lewis, giving his grin again.
She cleared her throat once more; aware she wasn’t doing this very well.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Lewis, ‘you’re fair dinkum, aren’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Biddy.
‘You’re looking for someone and you’d like me to help you?’
Biddy sighed in gratitude. ‘I like to think I’m canny about things,’ she told him, ‘but being canny means you can tell when someone else is canny, too. Two canny heads on a puzzle solves it in half the time.’
The horse was growing impatient, wanting its bag of oats. Lewis stroked its mane. ‘Come with me to the stables where we can talk properly, Biddy.’
She cast a glance towards the door to the kitchen and Mrs Marshall no doubt expecting her inside. ‘All right then . . .’
• • •
Glad to be detached from the surrey, the horse chewed its oats as Biddy and Lewis leant on the corral to talk.
‘So who is it that’s missing then?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know their name.’
‘Rightio. What do they do? Where are they from?’
‘I don’t know that either.’
Lewis creased his brow. ‘So, as mysteries go, I’m gunna have better luck with the lighthouse keepers? What do you know?’
‘It’s a girl,’ said Biddy.
That refreshed Lewis’s interest. ‘What’s happened to her?’
Biddy felt her anxiety rise as she wondered whether she’d bitten off more than she could chew. Sybil’s fear of her relatives was very real, and while Biddy had her doubts, they clearly posed something of a threat. ‘It’s not that anything’s happened,’ she explained, ‘but rather, all the evidence of who she is and where she lives and what she does with herself is being kept from view – if she’s even rea
l at all. There’s something very strange about it.’
‘Is any of this supposed to make sense?’ Lewis wondered.
Biddy deflated. ‘Maybe that’s part of what’s so strange about it . . .’
‘Well, this ain’t much to go on, Biddy.’
‘I know,’ she conceded.
‘Cooooo-ee!’ A piercing yell startled them. Jim appeared at the stable door. Biddy kept her face composed at the sight of him.
Lewis turned in his cousin’s direction. ‘What’s your damn racket about?’
‘You’re wanted at the cottage,’ Jim told him. ‘The old bastard’s awake.’
He disappeared and Biddy was relieved he hadn’t decided to join them.
Lewis turned back to Biddy, apologetic. ‘Can you tell me the rest of it quick? The old bugger’s sobered himself up and he’ll be waiting for me to bow to him.’
‘Is that your uncle?’
‘That’s him,’ Lewis rolled his eyes. ‘A misery.’
Biddy felt as if her plan had failed her. ‘I don’t think I should have said anything about it. Will you forget I did?’
He was plainly puzzled by her. ‘If you say so.’
Biddy made to take off. ‘Thanks for the present again.’
Lewis nodded and smiled.
A sudden thought hit her. ‘I’ve just thought of how to explain it!’
‘Cripes! You coming or going?’
Biddy returned to the corral. ‘This girl who’s missing, this girl I need to find,’ she whispered, ‘the only thing I know for certain is a big thing: she’s important. She has to be – she means too much to Summersby for her to be nobody. She’s somebody. She’s as important as Summersby itself in her own way. People know of her and they talk about her, too. Whoever she is.’
Lewis squinted at her. ‘Sounds like we’ve got more to go on than we thought we did.’
Biddy was pleased he’d said ‘we’. ‘She’s very important to me, Lewis. I know we don’t have much to go on to actually find this girl, but maybe we’ve got just enough to find a way to find her, if that makes any sense.’
Lewis nodded. ‘I suppose it does. Sort of.’ He mused for a moment.
Biddy was heading in the direction of the stable door again when he added, ‘Margaret Gregory.’
Biddy stopped. ‘Who?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You tell me. Margaret Gregory.’
Biddy returned to his side. ‘Who are you talking about?’
‘This missing girl, who’s so important – missing yet not missing, as you put it; missing in view – her name might be Margaret Gregory.’
Biddy stared at him. She remembered the name as the recipient of the letter from the hut, yet that had been written many years ago. ‘But who is she? How do you know this name?’
‘Mrs Marshall. Every week she sends a parcel, wrapped in brown paper – sometimes a small one, sometimes a bit bigger. They mean a lot to Mrs Marshall those parcels because she never lets ’em out of her sight until they’re safely posted at the Railway Stores. I know this because I’m the one who drives her into town.’ He watched Biddy digest this. ‘She’s very regular in her habits.’
With a start Biddy realised this was true. She had seen Mrs Marshall carefully cradling parcels on a number of occasions, but had never given further thought to it. ‘But who is Margaret Gregory?’
‘No idea,’ said Lewis, ‘but you might say she’s hidden in view. When today’s parcel jumped from Mrs Marshall’s basket and landed in my lap, I saw the name on it: Miss Margaret Gregory, care of Number One Hundred and Eight, Auburn Grove, Hawthorn. I reckon that’s in Melbourne.’
Biddy just stared at him. ‘Auburn Grove . . .’ she repeated, ‘Auburn Grove . . .’
‘Know of it?’ Lewis asked.
A tiny part of Biddy actually thought that she did know of it in some little way, but how?
‘Never heard of it,’ she said.
Jim reappeared at the door, rolling a cigarette. He took in Biddy and Lewis still talking together and apparently decided to make it a party. ‘Thought I told you the bastard’s awake?’ he offered. ‘He spent his morning kip dreaming up jobs for you to do.’
Biddy felt herself growing tense.
Lewis gave no regard to this, and when his cousin came into the corral he plucked the rolled cigarette from Jim’s hand and claimed it as his five-minute smoko. Jim blithely started on rolling another one.
‘Margaret Gregory,’ said Lewis, exhaling a cloud of blue-grey smoke once he’d lit it. ‘That name ever come up in your lightning squirts, Jim?’
Biddy stopped breathing.
Jim tapped his nose. ‘I owe my security of position to a healthy respect for discretion,’ he said, a twinkle in his eye.
‘A yes or a no,’ said Lewis. ‘Does that name sound familiar?’
‘Let me repeat myself on account of your small brain, Lew: I owe my security of position—’
Lewis cut him off. ‘We all know you’ve got tickets on yourself – no lead to labour it. Just tell me if you’ve seen the bloody name.’
Jim licked the edge of the rice paper into a tight, white tube. ‘What does it matter if I have?’
‘Matters to me,’ Lewis told him.
Jim grinned; an expression that would have perfectly matched his cousin had the latter been in a more jovial frame of mind. Lewis’s look stayed serious. ‘This about your little sweetheart?’ Jim teased.
Biddy wanted the ground to swallow her up with the embarrassment. Lewis looked like he might hit him.
‘Ah ha,’ said Jim, ‘that’s taken off a bit fast, hasn’t it?’
Lewis’s hands clenched into fists but the grin on Jim’s face only widened, good-natured laughter in his eyes. ‘All right, keep your hat on. Just having a lark.’
‘Biddy’s flesh and blood,’ said Lewis. ‘You like girls made out of ectoplasm, I reckon.’
Jim looked less amused. ‘My sweetheart’s real. You can take my word for it.’
‘So real I’ve never seen her yet,’ said Lewis, ‘despite you singing her praises for months. Not allowed to see her, not allowed to know one provable fact about her. Yeah, she’s a phantom sweetheart, I’d say. She’s set up shop inside your imagination.’
‘Margaret Gregory,’ said Jim.
Lewis stopped short, the half-smoked cigarette between his lips. ‘She’s not your bloody sweetheart?’
Jim savoured a lungful of smoke, releasing it slowly through his nostrils. ‘Nup,’ he said at last. Then he laughed at Lewis’s angry look. ‘Never heard of a Margaret, you dozy bugger, on the lightning squirts or otherwise. Who is she, anyway?’
Lewis looked to Biddy, apologetic. ‘None of your business,’ he said.
• • •
Lewis took off to find the bedridden uncle and the list of chores, leaving Jim to his own devices. Biddy left the stables to make her way back to the house, knowing Jim was watching her from the door. She didn’t rush. She knew that he knew something about Margaret Gregory. It was obvious. But Biddy knew something now, too, something she had not known before the conversation in the stable, but had certainly wondered at. It was about Jim’s sweetheart.
She was not surprised when Jim appeared by her side as she strolled towards the kitchen door. He had rolled himself another cigarette.
Biddy got a word in first. ‘Must be annoying,’ she told him.
‘What must?’ said Jim.
‘Having so little control of your own private life.’ She looked sympathetically at him. ‘What with Sybil dictating the times and places of all your secret trysting, you must wonder what the benefits are of having such a pretty girl at all?’
There was a long moment while he assessed her anew. Eventually he said, ‘I knew you’d work it out.’
‘Did you now?’
‘Told Sybil you would, too. You’re no drip, Biddy. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders.’
She took that as a compliment. ‘And yet I’m still just the smokescreen
, aren’t I? I’m only here to make sure everyone else looks in the wrong direction?’
For the first time since meeting him, Jim suddenly seemed contrite to Biddy. His face softened and she saw that there was real feeling behind all his apparent mirth. He seemed like a worried little boy. ‘It’s not like that,’ he began.
‘Isn’t it?’
‘Maybe to begin with . . .’ He stepped closer, appealing to her. ‘Sybil really loves you, Bid. Don’t think it’s otherwise. She hates having to lie and keep secrets, but that’s how things have to be, at least for the time being.’
‘How things have to be because she loves you?’
Tears pricked in his eyes. He was at her mercy, she realised. ‘Gunna tell anyone?’
Biddy made a show of considering. ‘When we’re on the same side? Why would I?’ she said. ‘Last thing I’d want to do is stand in the way of true love.’ She stopped to study him. The breeze rippled the long, dry grass at their feet as she thought of the words she had written at the end of Mrs Marshall’s letter, the words Jim had telegraphed that had told Sybil’s relatives of Biddy’s existence. ‘If you ask me, everyone has a few things they’d like left quiet,’ she mused.
His demeanour changed. The smile he now gave her was suddenly pally. He trusted her. ‘Syb’s got such fine prospects, too – and I can’t even brag in the open about her or squire her on me arm.’
‘Very unfair,’ said Biddy.
‘This whole business is unfair. Secret Heiress rubbish, relatives she’s not allowed to know.’
‘Do you really love her?’
Jim actually looked hurt. ‘Of course I do. She’s everything to me.’
Biddy took a long moment to regard him closely. She wanted to doubt him, wanted to call him a liar for such easily spoken sentiments, given how little he’d seemingly offered her before this moment to make her think of him as someone who might be capable of sincerity, let alone love. And yet as she looked into his eyes she saw with surprise that he was sincere and always had been, if only she’d realised it. The man she glimpsed was vulnerable, scared of the situation in which he had unwittingly found himself, scared of his complete lack of say in any of it, and scared of being forced to keep such an enormous thing to himself. He was scared because he was so in love with Sybil, deliriously and hopelessly. To Biddy’s final surprise she found that she pitied him for it. He mightn’t have been the most trustworthy of young men in her view, or for that matter the nicest, but even someone of Jim’s character could find themselves at the mercy of their hearts.
The Secret Heiress Page 29
