The Secret Heiress

by Luke Devenish

  ‘Miss?’ Ida knew her face must look raw with the tears.

  Margaret was plainly shocked to see her, given there’d been no sign of such grief when Ida had helped her dress earlier. ‘I’m sorry, Ida, has something upset you?’

  She made an effort to pull herself together. How could she tell her mistress what was wrong? How could she ever tell anyone? ‘Don’t mind me.’ She looked around for something to explain herself. ‘Bee sting,’ she said. ‘Why do they have to hurt so much?’ She gave no indication as to when or where a bee might have stung her.

  The Remember Box seemed to grow heavy in Margaret’s hands.

  ‘Did you want something?’ Ida asked.

  ‘No, it is nothing . . .’

  Barker entered the room behind her. ‘Madam,’ he said, by way of a greeting, before loping past. He moved to where Ida had laid out a meal on a tray. He picked up the plate and sniffed at it, disparagingly. ‘Call that your best do you?’

  Ida said nothing, eyes fixed to the flagstone floor. She wouldn’t let him see the shame in her face; the shame that never left her, that wouldn’t scrub clean.

  Barker dropped the meal onto the table, causing her to start at the sound. Gravy slopped over the sides of the plate. ‘That’s for Aggie,’ Ida somehow managed to say. ‘She’ll be getting hungry upstairs . . .’

  The valet glowered. ‘I said, is that your best?’

  Ida shrank in on herself. ‘Roast mutton. I only know a few dinners. I’m no trained cook.’

  He raised his hand as if to slap her for it.

  ‘Mr Barker!’ Margaret cried out.

  Barker only laughed. ‘Don’t worry yourself, madam, you’ll forget all you’ve seen in a minute, won’t she, Ida?’

  She cast a look at her mistress. Margaret was scared, bewildered by the scene, but Ida knew he was right. It would soon be rendered meaningless, as was everything else. It didn’t matter what she witnessed.

  He cocked his chin at Ida. ‘Lost all your cheek now, haven’t you, idiot?’

  She felt herself starting to cry again. ‘Yes, Mr Barker.’

  ‘Who would have known that’s all it’d take, eh? Getting noticed by a man?’

  She knew the disgrace and fear must be stark in her eyes. She could never hide it from him, he would always know.

  ‘All the same, you ugly ones,’ he told her. ‘Curse and sass like sailors until someone shows you what your parts are for. Then you’re as meek as little lambs.’ He lurched forward and she cringed from him, but he merely picked up the plate. ‘Nice to see a bit of feminine gratitude,’ he smirked.

  Ida somehow found a skerrick of courage. ‘I want to see Aggie,’ she told him. ‘I’ll take the meal up to her today.’

  Barker froze. ‘This again.’

  ‘She’ll be missing me,’ Ida pressed, ‘she’ll be worried, and she’s not getting any better with her flu.’

  Barker’s look was enough to see Ida’s courage retreat, but inside her, buried somewhere deep within, she felt a stirring of rage. Had he done something terrible to Aggie, just like he had done to her? Had he hurt Aggie?

  ‘And have you telling her your little lies about me?’ Barker asked. ‘You must think me as stupid as your mistress.’

  Margaret stood rooted to the spot.

  With a wink to her, he took the servants’ stairs and was gone from the room, the plate of roast mutton gripped tight in his long, hard hands.

  • • •

  It was still an hour before dawn when Aggie felt her way down the servants’ stairs, one step at a time, stopping still at every creak, pausing to pull air into her lungs.

  ‘Aggie?’ The sight of her friend slumped at the landing brought a cry of shock from Ida, coming down the stairs behind her. She was already dressed for the day ahead, unable to sleep. ‘Oh, heavens.’ She clamped a hand to her mouth and stood there staring, eyes filling with tears. ‘You look so ill.’

  ‘I am ill,’ Aggie managed. Every joint in her body seemed to be grinding in pain; her skull was throbbing. Her vision was falling in and out of focus, her hearing with it. She could barely hold her balance against the rail. Sounds from the night beyond the windows seemed to be lurching and magnifying around her. Aggie kept one hand pressed to her stomach; a sodden laundry bag swung from her waist where she’d tied it.

  Ida helped her reach the bottom of the stairs and Aggie fell panting against the banister. The rasp of her lungs seemed to echo against the walls. She tried to still the noise, struggling to compose herself, but feared falling to the floor and being unable to rise again if she didn’t give herself these minutes to rest and breathe.

  After a time she felt recovered enough to go on. Making her way into the kitchen proper, Aggie took the bag from her waist to the scraps bin near the sink. Opening the bag, the swollen joints in her hands struggled with the effort of emptying what was in there: a day’s worth of meals apparently consumed but in reality tipped inside the bag.

  Ida was white with horror.

  ‘I hoped you would look inside the bin in the morning and think it strange the uneaten food was in there,’ Aggie whispered. ‘Perhaps you would put two and two together . . .’

  ‘To make what? Why haven’t you been eating your food?’

  ‘Shhh,’ said Aggie, ‘I don’t want him to know.’

  She ran the canvas bag beneath the tap, and Ida prayed that the sound of the pipe knocking and banging inside the wall would not alert Barker to there being someone downstairs. When done, Aggie gestured for Ida to help her towards the door that led to the garden.

  ‘Tell me what’s going on,’ Ida pleaded. But Aggie put a hand to her lips.

  Once outside, shivering in the damp, Aggie took another long moment to breathe in the cool night air. Then moving silently, carefully, she began tearing off edible items – a leaf of silver beet here, a tuft of kale there. She fed on all that the garden could offer, silently rejoicing in food that was clean and fresh and untouched by anyone’s hand.

  • • •

  ‘I’m so sorry, Aggie,’ Ida whispered later, when they had come back inside. ‘I didn’t know how bad it was.’

  ‘Why didn’t you know?’ her friend looked at her carefully. ‘Why haven’t you come to see me?’

  Ida’s face creased in humiliation.

  ‘What has been happening down here?’ Aggie demanded. ‘Has he been frightening you?’

  Ida shook her head, unwilling to answer.

  ‘You must tell me.’

  ‘No, I can’t.’

  ‘Tell me!’

  But Ida wouldn’t say what had happened, what he’d done to her. She had told herself she’d never say it to anyone; she would never form the words. Yet the rage was there again, telling her to stop being so stupid.

  Aggie hugged her close. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘let’s not worry on it now.’ But Ida knew that it mattered to Aggie very much and her heart ached to think of it. Her friend would get the truth out of her and wouldn’t stop until she did. ‘You must help me, Ida. I need to see Dr Foal,’ Aggie whispered. ‘Help me get the trap from the stables.’

  ‘But Dr Foal has been to see you here each week?’ said Ida.

  ‘No, Ida, he hasn’t.’

  She stared at her friend in surprise for a moment, and then saw what the appalling reality was. Apart from the initial visit in the first days of Aggie’s illness just before the wedding, the doctor had not attended again, despite Barker telling Ida he had. The valet had been stopping Aggie from getting well.

  ‘I’m very ill, Ida.’

  She started shaking. The certainty in her friend’s face was terrible. ‘Barker will know if I leave . . . he’ll punish me,’ Ida started saying.

  Aggie looked imploringly at her. ‘Aren’t you doing all the cooking now? Aren’t you doing everything?’

  Ida nodded that she was.

  ‘How do you get the ingredients you need?’

  ‘Deliveries,’ said Ida, ‘the store boys bring things from
the village.’

  Aggie nodded to a wooden produce box on the dresser, where a boy had left it yesterday. ‘That food’s spoiled then. I can tell it from here.’

  Ida looked to the box, startled. ‘No, it isn’t.’

  ‘It’s all off,’ said Aggie. ‘Can’t you smell it? It all needs to go back to the store for exchange. Mr Barker would be the first to say so.’

  Ida’s face creased again. ‘No—’

  Aggie lost her temper. ‘I’m being poisoned!’

  Ida processed this in terrified silence.

  It was Barker. It was Samuel. It was either of them, it was both of them, the difference didn’t matter. All that did matter was that they were poisoning Aggie’s food. She felt the rage surge.

  The colour in Ida’s face changed. She bolted for the porcelain sink, where she proceeded to be violently, noisily sick. Aggie stood watching her in alarm. When Ida stood upright again, dabbing at her mouth with water cupped in her hands, Aggie was behind her, rubbing her back. ‘You’re ill, too,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not,’ said Ida, avoiding Aggie’s eye.

  ‘What do you call that, then? You’re green in the face.’

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Ida insisted. ‘I’m all right.’

  Aggie’s lips compressed themselves into a thin, grim line. ‘Ida, what is wrong with you?’

  She knew that abject shame was etched into her eyes. She wanted so badly to tell. ‘It’s nothing, I said. I’m just a bit off colour, that’s all.’

  Aggie gripped her by the wrist and started pulling her towards the door to the kitchen garden.

  ‘Stop it!’ Ida pleaded.

  ‘You’ll have to hit me to stop,’ said Aggie, ‘hit a woman who’s been dying in bed for weeks without a single friend to care about her. You’ll have to do that if you want me to let go of you, Ida Garfield.’ She pulled her through the doorway and back into the garden. ‘You’re coming with me to Dr Foal. You need to see him as much as I do.’

  Ida bit at her lips, her face looking greener still in the glow of the early sun. She remembered the girl she had been before, the girl who did anything to look out for a friend. She felt what that inquisitive girl had felt; her conviction, her certainty that truth only led to good. She started to softly cry.

  Aggie tried to smooth the stained and crumpled dress she’d pulled on when she’d crept from her bed. She clutched her shawl tighter around her shoulders. ‘Let’s get to the stables quickly.’

  With Aggie leaning on her for support as they stumbled into the grounds, Ida’s other hand strayed to her abdomen, rubbing herself there. Aggie had lost a lot of weight in her own illness, her face and neck had been made gaunt by it. But Ida had experienced the opposite reaction. Her figure was fuller, more womanly, the fabric at her belly and breasts stretched tight at the seams.

  • • •

  An inexpert driver, Ida tethered the horse in hilly Mostyn Street as best she could, pleased to be near a water trough at least, and hoping the beast would still be found waiting for her when she returned, and not wandered off with the trap. She helped Aggie get down, and Aggie said she felt at least slightly improved, even if she little looked it. The fresh food had done what it could for her. She was fit enough to put up a fight at least, if not yet her best one, she said. Dr Foal would help her.

  Ida supported Aggie as they headed up the hill against a chilly wind, Aggie’s shawl pulled around them both, their uncovered hair whipping at their faces. Dr Foal’s surgery and dispensing rooms sat at the summit in the little garden of pink pelargonium. Pushing open the low gate Ida ascended the five stone steps and pulled the cord of the bell. She stood there self-consciously a moment, very aware of her appearance. At least there was a real patient, this time, she told herself.

  Doctor Foal’s housekeeper opened the door. Ida couldn’t remember her name. ‘Please, we need to see Dr Foal,’ she told her.

  The woman gawped at Aggie at the foot of the steps and backed away, closing the door to a crack. ‘She’s too sick, go to the Benevolent Asylum.’

  ‘Please miss . . .’ said Aggie from below.

  The woman held the door fast.

  ‘Isn’t this a place where people get made well?’ Ida demanded, her rage surging hot inside her. ‘Let us in to see Dr Foal at once.’

  The woman was taken aback by Ida’s tone. ‘You’re far too early. He’s not even attending yet.’

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ said Ida.

  ‘How dare you!’ the woman started to say, but Ida threw her weight against the door, barrelling in.

  ‘You don’t understand, she’s been poisoned!’

  ‘If you don’t get out I shall run for the sergeant,’ said the shocked housekeeper, rubbing her arm where the door had hit her.

  ‘Do it, then,’ said Ida, desperation making her dangerous now, ‘and in the meantime we’ll speak with Dr Foal.’

  The other woman suddenly reacted with physical force of her own. Ida found herself picked up under the arms and about to be pushed out the door.

  ‘Please, we need help – have compassion!’

  ‘The Benevolent Asylum,’ the housekeeper spat, ‘we’re not a charity!’

  ‘Don’t you even remember me?’ Aggie begged.

  The woman stopped.

  ‘I’m Marshall, the lady’s maid to Miss Gregory.’

  The woman’s jaw dropped.

  ‘I’m very ill,’ Aggie said.

  Ida was confused. How did Aggie know this woman?

  ‘Please,’ the housekeeper told them, ‘I don’t want trouble. I left all that behind me.’

  ‘Let me see Dr Foal,’ Aggie pleaded, ‘We don’t want any trouble either.’

  The housekeeper froze with indecision. Aggie mounted the steps with difficulty and stood facing her on the doorstep. ‘You do remember me, don’t you, Miss Haines?’

  The housekeeper flushed with guilt. ‘I’ll take you in,’ she whispered. She pulled Aggie down the hallway towards the hallway curtain. Her face was full of fear. ‘Just be quick as you can.’

  They disappeared, leaving Ida all alone.

  Her eyes fell on a polished pine door on which was a sign: Apothecary.

  The rage Ida felt remained, aimed at nothing specific now that Aggie was with Dr Foal, but still there all the same, aimed at everything. She felt fury at Mr Skews. She had once assembled questions about the apothecary.

  One. Why had her mistress wanted Ida to accompany them to the ball that evening so many weeks ago? Her mistress had never mentioned it previously, even though she had claimed that she had. Why had she wanted her there at all?

  Two. Why had Barker told her to keep her eyes peeled when she went? He had told her to do the same thing when she accompanied Samuel and her mistress to the graveyard. Barker said she should keep an eye out, but for what? Had she seen whatever it was that she was supposed to see? And why was she meant to see it at all?

  Ida tapped at the apothecary’s door. ‘Mr Skews?’ she called.

  She waited.

  ‘Are you there, Mr Skews?’

  She heard a voice from somewhere within, distorted by the door. ‘It’s Ida, the maid from Summersby,’ she spoke into the doorjamb. ‘Do you have time for a word?’

  She turned the handle.

  She couldn’t see the apothecary anywhere in the dispensary. A smell like a sick room hit her. She held a hand to her nose. ‘Mr Skews . . .?’

  A weak moan came from the other side of the dispensing counter. Ida went towards it and found the apothecary slumped on the floor behind. He had collapsed and vomited, ruining his clothes; his hair was sodden, his skin like chalk. His eyes had rolled in their sockets. ‘Mr Skews!’ She tried to lift his head from the floor. ‘What has happened, Mr Skews!’

  There was a glass hypodermic syringe near his side. Ida realised he had injected himself with something.

  His eyes found focus. ‘Two . . .’ he rasped.

  ‘You need help, let me find you Dr Foal.’

&nb
sp; He clutched at her hands. ‘Still two.’ There was a bleak warning in his face.

  Ida looked about her wildly. ‘Help!’ She called for the housekeeper, Miss Haines. ‘Come in here please! It’s an emergency!’

  Skews’ fingers clawed at her, twisting at her own. ‘Stay with me,’ she begged him. ‘Please stay with me, Mr Skews.’

  The life was dimming in his eyes.

  ‘No!’ she pleaded.

  ‘Miss Garfield?’ The frightened housekeeper stood at the door. Ida arose from behind the counter, the look on her face enough to bring Miss Haines inside. She came around the counter and saw what was there.

  ‘He’s gone,’ said Ida, helplessly. ‘Dying when I found him, now he’s just gone.’

  The housekeeper was staggered.

  Ida shook her head. Her rage was all gone.‘He was trying to tell me something, something important, I think. Still two,’ she said. ‘It’s all he could speak. Still two.’ Her face fell into her hands.

  Miss Haines went very still.

  When Ida lifted her eyes again a change had overcome the housekeeper; her stern exterior had slipped away, along with her fear. A resolution had been reached and with it had come empathy for Ida. Miss Haines gently led her from the room, shutting the door behind them. ‘Dr Foal,’ Ida started to say, but Miss Haines hushed her, leading her into the front parlour, where she made her sit down.

  ‘The doctor is seeing your friend now.’

  A glass of water was found and handed to her. Ida gulped it, grateful, and put the glass down.

  ‘The devil,’ said Miss Haines, now that Ida was calmer, ‘he drove him to this.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘The devil,’ she repeated, ‘from Summersby – that foul man.’

  Ida caught her breath. ‘You mean Barker?’

  Miss Haines nodded, vehement at the memory. ‘He still makes us suffer him here – letting himself inside whenever he pleases as if he belongs in here.’

  ‘Barker knows Dr Foal?’

  Miss Haines shook her head, growing angrier. ‘Mr Skews. They’re brothers-in-law. Barker had a hold over him. Mr Skews was made desperate. And now he’s lying there dead.’

  Ida struggled to grasp what she was saying.

  ‘There are things in that dispensary, Miss Garfield,’ the housekeeper whispered, ‘things that entrap a person, make them vulnerable.’