Death Sits Down to Dinner

by Tessa Arlen

  She noticed that Miss Gaskell seemed to wear a habitual smile of apology. The hallmark of a class of young women who, lacking financial security or a family to take care of them, become useful only to elderly spinsters and widows. Poorly paid, severely patronized, and with few prospects of making a family of their own, a companion, like a governess, was perched precariously between upstairs and downstairs, their status ill-defined, their lives often lonely and narrow.

  Miss Gaskell might not enjoy the fellowship of the servants’ hall, where everyone knew his place and proudly worked with skill as part of a whole, but neither was she considered to be on the same social footing as the family she worked for.

  Mrs. Jackson remembered the sense of family she had experienced when she was a young girl new to service; the whispered confidences shared at night in their cramped attic bedrooms, a group of lower housemaids and kitchen maids united in their pretended fear of the upper servants, and the excitement of fleeting crushes on handsome young footmen. After the parish orphanage, the servants’ hall had been the first family life she had ever known.

  As Mrs. Jackson took stock of Miss Gaskell it was easy to see that she had been and still was quite unwell. There was probably no one in the house who would look after her with the care that usually rallies most of us through our illnesses, she realized. Miss Gaskell had been fed at mealtimes if she rang for food, given a jug of water or a cup of tea when the maids could spare the time, but nothing had been done for her comfort. Her room was both stuffy and cold. It was a cheerless apartment without a fire, and dark and gloomy with heavy curtains hastily dragged across the window. She felt Miss Gaskell’s forehead, it was quite cool so luckily no fever, but her hands were awfully cold. Annoyed with everyone in the house, Mrs. Jackson got up and rang the bell. This time it was Eliza who came into the room.

  “Eliza, please light a fire in the grate and draw back the curtains. Bring up a jug of hot water, a clean face flannel, and fresh towels. Oh, and be a good girl and fill up a hot water bottle, Miss Gaskell feels quite chill.” She turned in her chair to smile at the young maid; after all, who was she to direct the Chester Square servants’ efforts? She was reassured by a deferential little bob, before the young woman hurried about her business.

  Mrs. Jackson picked up a hairbrush and carefully unbound, brushed, and plaited Miss Gaskell’s thick, dark-gold hair. By the time she was finished a fire was burning in the grate and a wintry sun was shining through the windowpanes. She washed Miss Gaskell’s face and hands with warm water. And then she sat back down and they regarded each other for a moment before Miss Gaskell said, “I am never laid low, Mrs. Jackson, I usually have boundless energy.” She laughed, showing even, perfect teeth, milk-white like a child’s. Her manner was modest and gentle, thought Mrs. Jackson as she considered her patient. She was obviously from some respectable family. Her room was well organized, with little homey touches, and there was a library in one corner. Mrs. Jackson noticed that she favored the novels of Jane Austen, and there were anthologies by Byron and Wordsworth. A romantic young thing, she thought, I expect her favorite book is Jane Eyre.

  “I am not surprised you are feeling so poorly, Miss Gaskell. Lady Montfort told me you were sick before the party here the other night and that you were required to attend.” She kept her disapproval at bay.

  “Yes, Mr. Churchill brought a guest at the last moment, but I was quite happy to make up the numbers.”

  “And then you had to play the piano.” Mrs. Jackson couldn’t help her stern tone. Who on earth would make someone who was unwell attend a dinner party and play the piano?

  “Yes, I am sorry.” Immediately she was contrite, and Mrs. Jackson was annoyed with herself for sounding judgmental and causing the young woman to apologize.

  “Lady Montfort said you played beautifully,” she said.

  “It was an honor for me to play; Lady Ryderwood has a wonderful voice. I was brought up in a house that enjoyed music, you see. My father was a concert pianist and my mother was a singer. That was of course long ago, but I was lucky enough to be taught to play the piano, and music means everything to me.”

  That would explain her cultured air and appreciation of music and literature, Mrs. Jackson thought, and she wondered if the young woman’s parents were still alive. She was always sympathetic toward those who struggled through childhood without parents, as she had had to make her way in the world at a young age. She approved of the young woman’s quiet disposition and her willingness to see the good in life; so many companions were either bitter or abjectly cowed by the time they were thirty.

  “Shall we continue with what I have arranged so far for the charity?” she asked, and together they bent over her notebook and Miss Gaskell explained her seating arrangements.

  “After we have observed the order of precedence, and incidentally the dowager queen Alexandra will accompany the Marchioness of Ripon and her dear friend Princess Esterhazy, so we must reserve our best places for them; even though the princess is very stingy with her donations. Well once we have taken care of our royal guests, we always reward generous contributors with the best places to sit. I call them the dress-circle seats. And then we seat people who have made lesser contributions around the edges of the room and in the corners in what I call the stalls.”

  They spent a pleasant morning together, and it was well past one o’clock when Mrs. Jackson realized how long they had been working and how tired Miss Gaskell now looked.

  “It’s time for me to go downstairs for my dinner, Miss Gaskell. I’ll arrange with Cook to send up some nice hot soup for your luncheon,” she said.

  “I hope all the servants are being helpful, Mrs. Jackson; they have always been accommodating to me.” Understandably, Miss Gaskell did not want her to see the servants in a poor light.

  Now was the time Mrs. Jackson thought to ask about Mr. Jenkins, since her little chat the other afternoon with Martha had produced no real understanding about the butler’s absentminded behavior. She started tidying away her notebooks.

  “Indeed they have been most helpful, Miss Gaskell. Mr. Jenkins runs a nice servants’ hall, orderly and well disciplined. He has been most helpful, if not a little absentminded at times.” She kept any possible hint of criticism out of her voice.

  “Well, he is getting up there in years, Mrs. Jackson. He is a true gentleman and has been with Miss Kingsley all his working life. Before that he worked for Miss Kingsley’s parents. This house is the only one he has ever known for nearly sixty years. He started here as a hall boy when he was seventeen years old.” She watched Mrs. Jackson do her arithmetic and nodded as she arrived at her sum.

  Good heaven’s above, thought Mrs. Jackson, that makes the butler nearly eighty years old. No wonder the poor man is forgetful.

  She said nothing in response, and Miss Gaskell, accurately interpreting her silence, went on, “Mr. Jenkins is well past the age of retirement, but Miss Kingsley cannot bear to let him go, even though he has a lovely little cottage waiting for him in Boscombe Bay, and a younger sister who is ready to look after him in his dotage.”

  Seems like he’s in his dotage already, thought Mrs. Jackson, and she imagined Mr. Jenkins dressed in his formal butler’s coat, trousers rolled up to the knee, as he happily pottered among the tide pools of Boscombe Bay, shrimp net in hand, or strolling along the front with his sister eating winkles with a pin. The image was incongruous. Perhaps Miss Kingsley felt that her butler should remain at her side, where he had always been, and continue to lead the dignified life that he was familiar and comfortable with.

  Miss Gaskell continued, “Very luckily the lower servants are ready to cover for him when he forgets things, but unfortunately this is happening with greater frequency and sometimes the things he forgets can cause embarrassment. Lady Ryderwood came to call last week. He took her umbrella and coat from her in the hall, and when it was time for her to go, he simply couldn’t find them. The entire staff searched high and low. In the end, the hall boy found bot
h umbrella and coat in the coal cellar, hanging quite neatly on a peg next to the boiler room. We had to work like mad to brush off the coal dust. We couldn’t understand what he had been doing in the coal cellar anyway.” She stifled a little giggle, and Mrs. Jackson realized that she was, after all, a young companion barely in her twenties. With her face flushed from laughing, which had ended in a fit of coughing, and her two neat plaits, she looked awfully young and pretty. Why on earth wasn’t this sweet young thing not married to some decent solicitor or bank manager instead of being shut up here in this grand old house, a paid companion to an autocratic elderly spinster who was demanding and probably not always particularly kind?

  Chapter Eleven

  Clementine was reading a letter from her middle daughter, Althea, who was enjoying a particularly enthralling trip up the Nile with her archaeologically inclined friends under the protective auspices of Dr. and Mrs. Alistair Campion, to join Sir Wilfred Shackleton’s dig in Thebes. She would be away for the winter, returning hopefully sometime in the early spring. Clementine scanned between the lines of her daughter’s ecstatic descriptions of her journey from Memphis to Thebes for signs of a homecoming date and found none. The wretched girl had shown no interest in her London season and had avoided all opportunities to meet the young men invited to its balls, picnics, and parties. Clementine’s concern for Althea’s determination to avoid the usual pursuits that would lead to a satisfactory future was not quite as acute as that which she felt for Harry. But her daughter’s letter caused an exclamation of irritation before she put it to one side, feeling both helpless and resentful as she remembered the hours she had sat up for Althea at countless balls until dawn during this year’s London season.

  Their eldest daughter was far more conforming than her siblings. She was successfully married to a French aristocrat who doted on her, and who had provided her with a beautiful house in Paris and a castle or two in the Loire Valley. Monsieur le Comte de Lamballe was extraordinarily rich, his family was extremely well connected, and without a doubt he was a devoted husband. Perfect in every way, except perhaps for his nationality, and generous to a fault to his wife, which did a great deal toward offsetting the disappointment that her daughter lived so far away.

  Now why, Clementine asked herself, couldn’t the other two settle to more conventional lives? It was at this moment that her son, having no doubt consumed a large breakfast with his father, decided he would honor her wishes by dropping in on her before he left for Eastchurch. He appeared in the doorway, and she immediately saw by the expression on his face that he expected a lecture from her on his appointment to the RNAS. She had to admit it was rather a sad state of affairs when her only son, her dear, amiable, well-meaning son, should be so wary when he was in her company. She resolved to keep to herself any advice she desperately wanted to offer. Lord Montfort had given his consent and she must not interfere.

  “Harry, darling, good morning. Have you had a chance to find out about Captain Wildman-Lushington’s funeral? I take it you will be going?”

  “Yes, I’m sort of representing Mr. Churchill as he is unable to attend. I’m meeting up with Sir Hedworth Meux, Wildman-Lushington’s commanding officer, and driving down to Eastchurch with him.” And sensitive as always to the feelings of others, he went on, “This business is bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “Which business, the murder of someone we knew in the house of a friend, or the accidental and wasteful death of a young man with his life before him? What an ill-fated affair Hermione’s party has turned out to be.

  “I am wondering, Harry…” She paused. She was never quite certain how much Harry knew about her involvement in the investigation of his cousin’s death—probably far more than he let on. “I am wondering if perhaps Captain Wildman-Lushington’s death might be in some way linked to Sir Reginald’s murder. Is it possible that an aeroplane can be made to crash?”

  Made to crash? He must think I’ve gone quite batty.

  He turned in his chair to face her directly and leaned forward as he considered her question. She was grateful to see that his expression was quite serious.

  “Any engine can be made to malfunction,” he said after a while. “But the question one would ask next is, why? And why would someone invited at the last minute to a birthday celebration, attended by people he had never met before, need to be done away with?” He wasn’t the slightest disconcerted by her question.

  “Well, I suppose it does rather sound unrealistic and ridiculous. But he might have witnessed something on that night that made the person who killed Sir Reginald decide it was necessary to remove him too.” As it had occurred to her, it would almost certainly have occurred to Detective Inspector Hillary. She wondered if Hillary knew of Wildman-Lushington’s death. He had probably been informed before anyone, as this investigation appeared to be under the vigilant eye of the Admiralty.

  “I see you are thinking about a possible suspect for the murder of Sir Reginald and are now linking events.” Her son’s voice was noncommittal, and she realized that of course he knew about her investigation into Teddy’s murder.

  “If Wildman-Lushington saw something out of place on the night of the murder, that means the person who killed Sir Reginald and Wildman-Lushington would have to have had access to Eastchurch and to Wildman-Lushington’s plane. And that someone would also have been at the dinner party, or connected to someone at the dinner party.” Having decided to take her seriously, Harry was now playing the game.

  “Exactly my thoughts! Captain Vetiver was both a guest at that dreadful dinner and has access to Eastchurch.” She remembered that Vetiver had come into the salon after leaving the dining room alone and probably, according to the timetable that she had worked on last night, around about the time when poor old Sir Reginald had been bumped off.

  Harry was aghast. “How can you possibly imagine Captain Vetiver could be involved? He is Mr. Churchill’s right-hand man, completely trustworthy and extremely well thought of.” After the murder of her husband’s nephew last year, Clementine had come to the understanding that any human creature, no matter how well connected, well born, or utterly trustworthy, was capable of murder if he or she was put in a position where he believed he had no other choice. She took a little time to explain this to her son and ended with, “So you see, darling, we must always consider everyone at the scene of the crime capable of murder, until one has proved otherwise. All of us who sat down to dinner in Hermione’s dining room on 30th November are suspects in the murder of Sir Reginald, until we can each prove that we were with someone or somewhere else at the time of his death, it’s simply a fact.”

  But Harry was having none of it. “Yes, I’ve read Conan Doyle, Mama, I know all about alibis. Well, you can forget Vetiver. He had no real connection whatever with Sir Reginald. You have to look to the people whom Sir Reginald knew best, the people who shared his life.” He was lightly drumming his fingers on the little table to his right, a nervous staccato rhythm, his chin sunk in thought. The drumming slowed until the tips of two fingers lightly beat a steady tattoo on the rosewood surface of the table.

  “But it’s funny you should mention that Wildman-Lushington’s plane might have been tampered with.” He stared off into the fireplace, watching the flames leaping in the grate. “You see, we have been noticing some odd incidents at Sopwith. Tom has a new aeroplane that he’s designed, doing some test runs on it, I can’t fill you in, because it’s all a bit hush-hush and anyway I know you are not interested in machinery and engines. But we have suspected for some time that there might be a spot of snooping going on at the factory. And what is worrying is that information might have been stolen from us either by a competitor or, worse, by someone working for another government.”

  And by “another government” he meant Germany, of course. Clementine was aware of the country’s obsession with war and the government’s increased expenditure on armaments, submarines, dreadnoughts, and other colossal machines of naval warfare. A headlong rac
e to keep up with Germany’s astonishingly massive new navy, bristling with innovations and gargantuan battleships equipped with powerful guns had been all the talk at London dinners and luncheons this season. And with Britain’s increased preoccupation for new war machines and inventions to destroy the world they lived in, she had never heard the word spy mentioned quite as much as she had during her last week in London. German spies, double agents, and counterespionage were terms bandied about liberally at dinner parties. Up until now, she had seen it all as the inevitable business of selling newspapers and sensational novels. She almost laughed, and her son caught her change of mood and was quick to join her. They both shook their heads and smiled at each other.

  “I know, Mother, sounds like the worst of cheap novels, like Dr. Fu Manchu.” Harry’s youthful fascination with Sax Rohmer’s fiendish arch-criminal of cunning perception and devious methods had increased as he had read every one of Rohmer’s novels.

  “Or like Conan Doyle’s The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, where German spies spend months gleaning information on British plans and then try to make a getaway on the evening before war starts. Doyle told me he made more money on that short story than on his entire series.”

  They fell quiet. And Clementine realized how incredibly fearful everyone was these days. Underneath the bright chatter at dinner parties there was an undercurrent of unease that belied the swaggering conviction that Britain held center stage in world affairs. Society continued to impress, to hold lavish costume balls, dinners, and parties, and invite one another to their country houses where diverting entertainments were arranged on a scale that seemed to become grander with each passing month. Perhaps our distractions have become more extravagant and more outlandish to deflect us from our unspoken fears that we are dancing on the verge of war, and our country is being overrun by secret agents all on a mission to discover our expensive military secrets, and turn them against us. Harry and Tom Sopwith’s concern about security at the Sopwith Aeroplane Factory did not seem quite so far-fetched after all.