by Charles Todd
“What do you want?” Francesca repeated, recovering first. “My dog is under the bed, I have only to give him the signal—”
“Please—no! I’m not here to harm anyone—” Mrs. Passmore began to back out of the room. “I’m terrified of dogs—I’ll just go—”
“Move to leave again, and he’ll attack. Who are you?”
“But—I told you before—I was your nanny—” She was haggard.
“You’re a liar. The real Miss Weaver is in New Zealand. I have written to her.”
The woman’s face seemed to crumple, tears filling her eyes. “Truly—my name is Mrs. Passmore. I didn’t lie about that. And I did meet Miss Weaver once. Years ago. In Somerset. And truly my husband is dead . . .”
“Then why have you come here—twice!—under false pretenses!”
Mrs. Passmore fumbled for a handkerchief. “When my husband died in 1914—we had no children, you see. I always thought perhaps that was because of what I’d done years before—” Her voice trailed off, her eyes unable to move away from the shrouded foot of the bedstead.
“Go on!”
“I had had a child out of wedlock. Before I was married—by another man. I taught his children, I thought he lov—he cared for me. But I was wrong. I took my child to that house, The Swans, in Falworthy. Someone had told me— And I left my son there!”
She was crying in earnest now, the threat of the dog forgotten.
Francesca said impatiently, “Sit down and pull yourself together.”
The woman obeyed, creeping in and casting frightened glances at the bedclothes that hung to the floor, concealing whatever was underneath. She sat by the fire, perched on the edge of the chair that Leighton had used, and said, “I tried to put what I had done out of my mind. And when—when Mr. Passmore asked me to marry him, I never found the courage to tell him about my baby. I was afraid he would walk away.”
“And now your husband’s dead, you want to find this child of yours?”
“I have to know—don’t you see? They’re killing so many young men out there in France! I look at the casualty lists, thousands of names, and it’s no use, because I have no earthly idea what name they might have given my child in that home. And he could be dead—wounded—or alive—there’s no way of telling.”
“But why come to me? I know nothing—”
“Because your grandfather owned the house in Falworthy. That’s what Miss Weaver told me many years ago—she was teaching the little ones there when I—I was a client. And you must have inherited the responsibility, since he had no other survivors. I hoped you might know where the records are kept, and if I could look through them for my boy.”
“You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Gibbon. As far as I know she’s always had sole responsibility for the orphanage. Not my grandfather.”
“She appears to be avoiding me! I went there before Mr. Hatton’s funeral, and I was told she was occupied with an outbreak of measles in the house. I did manage to persuade a young girl to show me the public rooms, but that was all. When I called again, Mrs. Gibbon was reluctant to answer my questions. It did make me wonder if she was hiding something—that perhaps it was true your grandfather had adopted my son. I’ve heard the whispers, you know! If he found a child to his liking, he’d take it for himself and raise it as his own. There were five boys, and I thought the one they call Harry down in the village—I thought he might be the right age—”
CHAPTER 24
Francesca stared at Mrs. Passmore.
The woman could read disbelief in her face, and searched quickly in her handbag, bringing out the photograph of a woman and child she had shown Francesca before—the one she had most certainly taken from The Swans in Falworthy.
“Please! Look at this photograph! Was this Harry? I studied the collection on the table in the chapel, and the instant I saw this one, I knew it had to be my child! He looks just as my brother did at that age! I have this to prove it—”
She drew out another frame but wouldn’t approach the bed for fear of the dog beneath it. Francesca had to reach out to take both of them.
Looking at first one and then the other of the infants, she could understand what Mrs. Passmore was saying. There was a resemblance between the two babies, but in her opinion it didn’t go beyond the wide eyes, plump cheeks, and tentative smile all children that age possessed. In fact, Francesca couldn’t say with any certainty if both were boys.
But then Mrs. Passmore was blinded by her own convictions.
“Who is the woman in this photograph? My late aunt?”
“Oh, no, I’d swear that’s Miss Weaver holding the child. She was the one who told me that fascinating story about the male ostriches, you know. I found it very consoling over the years. And the only reason I can think of for her to have done so was because my son was to be given to your grandfather! I was so grateful that someone—I’m sure it was Miss Weaver!—had been kind enough to leave this photograph where I could find it one day, if I came back.” She smiled sadly. “It was wrong of me, I know, but I slipped the frame into my bag when the little girl showing me around on my first visit was distracted. And when I went back again, I left the one I’d taken from this house, hoping it might somehow find its way back to you.”
“But why on earth did you take a photograph of my parents?”
“I didn’t know who they were,” Mrs. Passmore cried. “Not then! And it was the only photograph I could find in this house. I couldn’t ask—you’d only just buried your grandfather! I simply took it, thinking it wouldn’t matter to you but in some way it would help me. I can’t explain—I was so hungry for something—anything that might lead me to my son!”
“Harry couldn’t have been your child,” Francesca told her bluntly. “He was born to my aunt and uncle—”
“No, no! I have evidence!” She held out a yellowed cutting from a newspaper. “Look!”
It was an obituary notice, Francesca saw, for Tristan and Margaret Hatton. Dead by an unknown hand . . . She scanned the short column quickly. It listed as survivors only Francis Hatton, father, and Edward Hatton, brother, of Canada.
“This can’t be right,” Francesca told her firmly. “There were five sons—my cousins.” How had Grandfather managed to keep their names out of the newspaper? Bribes—to protect his family from brutal gossip?
Ignoring her, Mrs. Passmore said, “I tell you, I’ve spent months looking for answers. And the only one that fits is that my child was adopted into this family. I came tonight to search for other photographs—of Harry in his uniform or at school—something that would show me how his face changed as he grew up. Something that would tell me that I’m right! I didn’t want to steal anything—I wasn’t doing any harm—”
“Housebreaking is a serious offense! Have you come here in the night before this?”
“I promise you, I never did any such thing!” Mrs. Passmore exclaimed, as though affronted. “But I’m desperate—I couldn’t think of another way to ask!”
“I’m sorry. Whether he was truly your son or not, Harry is dead—buried somewhere in France.”
“That doesn’t change anything. I need to see what kind of man my child grew into. I need the peace of mind of knowing that my abandonment didn’t ruin his life, that he went to a good home, was loved—cared for—”
Her face was a mask of grief. “I want to mourn,” she said, through her tears. “I want to leave flowers somewhere and think about him as the man I never watched grow up. I want to mourn!”
After a time, Francesca said quietly, “I don’t believe there are any photographs of the cousins growing up. My grandfather always called them a waste of time and an embarrassment later in life.” But had that only been an excuse—?
“There’s the one of your parents—the one I took at the time of your grandfather’s funeral—”
“My father sent it to him. My grandfather refused to own a camera!”
“I can’t believe—”
“There are no photographs.”
The ravaged face lifted, studied her. Then Mrs. Passmore tucked the photographs and the cutting back into her handbag as if tucking a child into its cradle. “You grew up with Harry,” she begged. “What was he like?”
“He was sweet-natured and fun and, oh, I don’t know, just Harry.”
“His father—the man who seduced me—was a charmer. There was a lightness in his manner, as if nothing bad had ever happened to him. As if the gods had promised him nothing bad would ever happen. If your Harry was like that, I don’t know how he bore the war. How he could watch the killing and not go mad from horror.”
Francesca, too, had asked herself if his laughter had been stilled, his spirit dead long before his body died. . . .
“You mustn’t torment yourself this way,” she told the older woman. “You can’t go about looking for children who might resemble your son—there will be hundreds who could be him. And no assurance that this or that one is truly the child you’re looking for.”
Mrs. Passmore said spiritedly, “You have never borne a child. You don’t know what it is like to carry him in your body—”
“But you preferred to marry Mr. Passmore and pretend this child never existed,” Francesca pointed out.
“He existed in my heart,” she replied simply. “And I told myself I’d done all I could for him. But then the war came, and my husband passed on soon after. I began to wonder about my own boy. They say dying soldiers call out for their mothers—I could hear him in my dreams, and I’d wake up weeping. If there was a young man you loved, you’d surely feel much the same. Wondering if anyone was with him when he died, if you could have comforted him, if he called your name . . .”
With dignity she got to her feet. “I’m sorry if I frightened you. I didn’t intend to do harm,” she said for a third time, as if she truly believed it. “I only wanted to see young Harry’s face.”
“You told me,” Francesca said, “that my aunt had gone to Switzerland, that she was consumptive.”
“It was a lie. I didn’t want to mention murder. I wasn’t sure how much you knew.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t think anyone knows, really. There were rumors that the truth had been hushed up, and as far as I’m aware, no one was ever apprehended for the crime. A tragedy. I followed the story all those years ago, you see, having heard Miss Weaver speak of Mr. Hatton. It took me a very long time to find this cutting, but I managed.” She walked to the door, wary of what lay beneath the bedclothes. “He won’t bite, if I leave now, will he? I’m staying at The Spotted Calf, if you should wish to press charges. But I beg you not to!”
On the threshold she stopped. “Are you here all alone? Except for your dog?”
“Tyler’s all the protection I need.”
“On your word of honor—there are no photographs?”
“You could ask at Oxford. Surely there were house photographs, or sporting events—”
“I’ve been there,” Mrs. Passmore said. “They couldn’t help me. Or wouldn’t. You are my last hope.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”
Mrs. Passmore nodded and was gone, shutting the door gently behind her.
Francesca lay there listening for another hour, wondering if the woman had truly gone—or if, with no one to hinder her, she had taken the chance to quietly search the house anyway.
Mrs. Passmore’s words lingered in her mind. She refused to think that Harry, darling Harry, might not be her cousin by blood.
Of course the woman had lied again and again; it was impossible to sift fact from fancy. The dead husband and the illicit affair could all be of a piece with the portrayal of herself as Miss Weaver. Who was she and what did she want?
Yet, surely, there’d been such vehemence in her story. . . .
I should have sent her to Mr. Stevens, Francesca told herself. He’d have known what to do. What to say—
Unable to lie there in the bed any longer, she managed to swing her splinted leg over the side and drag it to the boudoir chair. It was still by the window and too far from the dying fire. Shivering, she was sorry that she’d made the effort. And the bed was too high to clamber into as easily as the chair had been. If the fire went out, she would be cold indeed!
Perhaps Mrs. Lane was right, and she was being unreasonably stubborn about staying on here.
There was a scratching at the door, for all the world like Tyler begging to be let in.
“Who’s there? Mrs. Passmore?”
“It’s Miss Trotter, dear Miss Hatton. May I come in?”
Miss Trotter refused to go upstairs to one of the bedrooms.
“I won’t be able to hear you if you call. And I shan’t sleep for wondering if you need me. No, if you don’t mind, I’ll just search out a few pillows and blankets and make myself comfortable here by the fire. Your chair will do just fine. I’m rather like a cat, you know. Happiest in the chimney corner where it’s warm.”
It was strange to share the sitting room with someone. To listen in the fire-glow to someone else quietly breathing. And yet there was a comfort in it.
Despite the fact that Miss Trotter could see into her soul.
It was after three when Francesca came awake and couldn’t go back to sleep. And as if Miss Trotter had sensed it, she said, her voice muffled in the quilt she had pulled up over herself, “Miss Francesca? Is there anything you need?”
“No,” Francesca answered softly.
She lay there, thinking about her grandfather and all that had happened to her since she had first come down from London to care for him. The secrets. The questions. The ugly glimpses into another life. It brought a sigh.
And I’m no better, lying to that man Campbell!
But how else could she be rid of him? For that matter, where were the ledgers, with all their secrets? She would have liked to examine them herself. To silence the insinuations in those anonymous letters. To silence Mrs. Passmore, too.
She stirred again, restless.
“Is it Mr. Leighton who is troubling you?” Miss Trotter spoke softly.
In the darkness it was easier to talk. Francesca said, “Mr. Leighton? No, why on earth would you think that? I was wondering—I don’t think I ever knew my grandfather. Not really. How could I, with so much of his life hidden away from me? Were my cousins in the dark as well?”
Across the room there was a listening silence.
“I know that he won a house in Essex gambling—but not why. I know that he bought a house in Somerset as a home for abandoned children—but not why.”
“He hated the Walsham family,” said the soft voice, surprising Francesca. “He punished them by taking away their house.”
“Hated them? But why?”
“He said once that they were vermin, and he wanted to see them brought down. He couldn’t forgive them for what they’d done to his son. Mr. Edward, your father. He blamed them—he said but for their schemes, Mr. Edward would still be alive. Here where he ought to be, not buried across the sea.”
Francesca asked, “Was that why Grandfather never lived in the house? It reminded him of my father?”
There was only the sound of the fire in the room, and Miss Trotter’s steady breathing. Francesca decided she must have fallen asleep.
When she spoke again, the old woman’s voice was light as a thread. “I’ve always believed it was her house. If she hadn’t died as she did. And therefore no one else should ever have it. I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn he ordered it burned to the ground before he died. But I expect there wasn’t time.”
“Her?” Francesca’s first thought was of Victoria Leighton.
“He loved her more than anyone in his life.” There was an implacable sadness in her voice now. “Except for you.”
“Who? My grandmother?”
“If he’d wanted you to know, I expect he’d have told you.”
“I don’t understand! Why didn’t he marry this woman?”
“There were reasons. I somet
imes wonder if the two of them would have been truly happy. But they never had a chance to find out. ‘What might have been’ is always better than what is.”
“Are you telling me this woman was married to someone else? Was that what kept them apart?”
“Go to sleep, Miss Francesca. Let the past bury its dead.”
In the morning, Miss Trotter was gone before Mrs. Lane arrived.
When Mrs. Lane was changing the sheets on her bed, Francesca asked her if her grandfather had ever been in love with someone else, before or after her grandmother’s death.
“Lord, Miss Francesca, don’t ask me! I never poked my nose in his business, and you know that.”
“It was a long night. I couldn’t help but wonder—”
“If Miss Trotter is filling your head with nonsense, you’d be better off at the Rectory!”
Francesca rubbed her eyes. “I’d be better off if I had some answers!”
“It was his life, Miss, not yours. If he’d wanted you to know the whole of it, he’d have told you!”
“Did my cousins visit here with their parents, before they were orphaned?”
“He and your uncle were estranged,” she answered with reluctance. “They’d had words.”
“You never saw them—before they came to live here?”
“I told you, there was hard feelings. Now, I’ve got to put the potatoes on, or you’ll have none for your luncheon!”
“Where are the letters they wrote from the Front? They aren’t in his desk, I’ve looked.”
“He burned them. As soon as he’d read them. I saw the ashes when I cleaned the grate.”
“But why? You’d have thought—he never showed most of them to me!”
“You weren’t here. You were in London.”
It was an accusation, and it stung.
“I never questioned anything he ever did, Miss. Nor should you. It isn’t right!”
And she was gone, the sheets bundled in her arms, her mouth in a tight line.
