Death Sits Down to Dinner

by Tessa Arlen

  The matron introduced herself as Miss Biggleswade. As she pronounced her name she gave Mrs. Jackson a thorough once-over, her deep-set eyes taking in every detail from Mrs. Jackson’s elegant but simple hat to the quality of her neat little boots. No doubt she has accurately pigeonholed me precisely for what I am, Mrs. Jackson thought, a working woman in the employ of a rich and established family. She bore the matron’s scrutiny with her customary poise and felt a pang of sympathy for whoever had to work for the woman.

  “Just call me Matron, Mrs. Jackson, everyone does here. I am solely responsible for the boys’ welfare in Kingsley House,” Miss Biggleswade explained as she labored up the well-worn, oak staircase. “I am responsible for the domestic side of things, and the boys’ behavior once they are finished with their schoolwork. With one hundred and ninety young boys, I can assure you I have my hands full with the little scamps.” She lowered her voice to a more confiding tone: “And what with all this bother over Sir Reginald’s accidental death and policemen talking to the headmaster and his staff, I am behindhand this morning, dear. So it’s take us as you find us, I’m afraid.”

  Matron toiled up another flight of stairs; her corsets creaked ominously as she reached the penultimate step and paused to catch her breath, the crisp angles of her wimple shaking from the effort of her climb.

  “All the boys are at their lessons on the ground floor of the house for the rest of the morning. So we can catch our breath and get to know one another.” And on she lumbered to open the door of her room.

  “Please come into my little home away from home, and we will have a nice cup of tea, dear. Then I’ll call in the boys who have excelled both in their schoolwork and their good conduct and you can talk to them in turn.” She ushered Mrs. Jackson into a comfortably sized room so stuffed with furniture and whatnots supporting a mass of bric-a-brac and curios that Mrs. Jackson felt stifled the moment she set foot in it. Matron, now quite startlingly short of breath, nevertheless talked on, pausing to inhale in great wheezing gasps, her face red and mottled from the exertion of her climb.

  “Miss Gaskell always made what I thought were the strangest choices in her selection of pages for the charity evening.” A deep sniff of disapproval. “But I can see you are a sensible woman.” And Mrs. Jackson understood that her conversation with Matron if handled with the right touch would be as informative as anyone could hope for.

  They settled themselves in lavender and pink chintz chairs with deep flounces, and tea was brought to them by a young maid. Matron poured milk into teacups, and had yet to pick up a large teapot adorned with lurid pink roses, when something occurred to her.

  “Oh, just one moment, please excuse me, dear. I almost forgot.” She thrust herself out of her chair, trundled across the room, and opened the door. Leaning through its embrasure, she called up the corridor, “Symes, Symes? Come here, boy.” And after a moment a small, nervous, and sharp-eyed little boy appeared in the doorway and stood dutifully to attention before her, his thin, mouse-color hair, skinny arms, and knock-knees assurances of an early life of deprivation.

  “You can cut along to your classroom, Symes, and if I catch you running in the dormitory corridor again it will be bread and water for a week.” She reached out a sturdy arm and pushed the boy in the direction of the stairs, and with a fearful nod he set off as quickly as he could without breaking into a run.

  “Have to have my eye on them all the time, you see, Mrs. Jackson. It takes some of them a long time to understand the importance of obeying rules, coming from their disadvantaged beginnings. It will be the third time this week I have had to put that boy in the corner for running. We never beat boys in Kingsley House.” She went on virtuously and Mrs. Jackson was careful to keep her face impassive. “A good whipping never works with their kind. But most of them learn to toe the line quickly if you deprive them of the one thing they count on here: three square meals a day and hot milk at bedtime. Now where were we? Ah yes, this sad business of Sir Reginald. Were you there, dear, at the time I mean?”

  It had been a long time since anyone had dared to call Mrs. Jackson “dear” and Matron had committed this blunder several times, but Mrs. Jackson chose to ignore her presumptuous gaffe. “No, I wasn’t, Matron, I am just…”

  “I heard all about it from the chauffeur; Macleod is a terrible old gossip, all chauffeurs are of course. But that’s servants these days. Now, how is Miss Gaskell? I heard she had been taken quite ill.”

  “Nearly recovered, she…”

  “Not a robust girl, I’m afraid, which makes extra work for poor Miss Kingsley. I advised Miss Kingsley not to employ such a young and flighty girl as a companion. Choose someone solid, I said, someone dependable, not some flibbertigibbet, always making eyes at the gentlemen.” She put four sugar lumps into her teacup.

  “She is certainly a pretty girl,” Mrs. Jackson managed to contribute.

  Matron made a loud, derisive sound as she turned her immense, creaking bulk in her chair toward the tea tray and seized a plate of iced fairy cakes. “Ah yes, most conscious of her appeal is Miss Gaskell, always on the lookout for an opportunity, that one.” She waved the plate toward Mrs. Jackson.

  “Not for me, thank you. Yes, I suppose that is a risk with employing young and pretty girls.” Mrs. Jackson felt disloyal to Miss Gaskell as she offered encouragement to a woman who needed none at all where her judgment of the young companion was concerned.

  In between delicate bites of cake, the offering of sandwiches, and the cutting of a large Victoria sponge cake oozing raspberry jam and cream, Matron recounted a seemingly endless catalog on the unsuitability of Miss Gaskell as a companion, listing all her faults and finding nothing to recommend in her.

  “… Now of course with Sir Reginald being murdered under the poor lady’s nose, where is Miss Gaskell to help and comfort her mistress, I ask you? Upstairs in bed with a cold, so I have been told. Well I’m sure she is cast low; she had such high hopes for Sir Reginald and now they have been dashed once and for all.”

  “Indeed, Matron? I had wondered…” Mrs. Jackson tried not to lean forward.

  “Oh yes, she had plans there all right; all wide eyes and demure little gestures, all ‘yes, Sir Reginald, no, Sir Reginald.’ It was sickening to watch. Of course he was far too busy to pay attention. But that little miss was always finding an excuse to come here when he was at Kingsley House on business. Little errands to run for Miss Kingsley, all of them made up, I’m sure. Then I understand from Macleod that she was the talk of the servants’ hall in Chester Square, always thrusting herself forward when Sir Reginald came to call on Miss Kingsley.”

  “Sir Reginald didn’t return her interest? I mean, Miss Gaskell is an attractive young woman with a pleasant manner…”

  Matron shot her a shrewd look and pressed her lips together. “Sir Reginald was embarrassed for her,” she finally said. “His only interest lay in the welfare of the boys and helping the brightest and ablest of them to make a useful life. He was a good Christian gentleman, devout, and with a strong sense of right and wrong … and morality. That is our purpose here at Kingsley House, Mrs. Jackson, first and foremost, to instill in these young heathens a sense of right and wrong, and to help them take their place in the world. No, Sir Reginald was polite but remote with Miss Gaskell.

  “And now perhaps you had better meet with the boys. There are six of them this year, chosen by Sir Reginald himself just last week.” She pulled out a piece of crumpled paper from under her apron, glanced at it, put it down on the tray, got to her feet, and waded across the room.

  Mrs. Jackson had no intention of talking to the boys with this old busybody evaluating her every word. “I think I would like to meet with them individually and alone, Matron. It is always interesting to see how boys do with complete strangers, away from the people they know. I have some specific tasks in mind for the charity evening and I want to make sure that the young men we choose are able to fulfill them.” This was her longest speech so far, and Mrs. J
ackson realized that if Matron had underestimated her when she first arrived, she did not do so now. She was evidently displeased to be deprived of the opportunity to meddle in her interviews, but Mrs. Jackson had been sent by Miss Kingsley, and Miss Kingsley was God in this house, too, of that Mrs. Jackson had no doubt.

  “Very well, I will put you into the sick bay, as I have to get on with my inventory of the laundry here. Just tell me when you are finished and who you have chosen.”

  Mrs. Jackson was taken down a wide corridor and shown into an empty room with twelve beds ranged in two lines of six on either side of the room. A strip of India drugget ran down the center to a large white-painted desk at the end. Matron pulled forward a wooden chair that had been standing by the door and set it in the middle of the room, and then puffing with exertion left her to it.

  Mrs. Jackson walked to the window and looked out onto the stark lawns and tidy flower beds, cut down and mulched for the winter and scattered with the remnants of fast-melting snow. Despite the dull gray winter sky, the sparse winter landscape, and the scarlet brick, Kingsley House was on the whole a reasonably agreeable place, better by far than a parish workhouse or orphanage, thought Mrs. Jackson. There was a knock on the door and she called out to come in.

  The door opened and a pleasant-looking boy came into the room; he was perhaps the same age as Symes, but there the similarity ended. Whereas Symes was a thin and weedy little specimen, this boy was tall for his age, with clear, fresh skin and a glossy, well-set-up look about him.

  “Matron asked me to come straight in, but I thought I had better knock.” He walked into the room and introduced himself as Daniel Phelps, and then he stood in front of her, his large brown eyes fixed on her face, alert to what she might need from him.

  “There is nowhere for you to sit but on the bed,” said Mrs. Jackson.

  “I’ll stand—we are not allowed to sit on the beds, ma’am.” And he stood with his hands at his sides and waited.

  Mrs. Jackson was not at all sure what she should be asking this polite young man. “How long have you been here, Daniel?” she finally ventured.

  “Since I was six. I will be nine next month.” His body was still but his eyes flitted to the corner of the room as if he expected to see someone there.

  “Matron says you are a good scholar, and that you work hard at your lessons.”

  The boy nodded and shifted his weight.

  “Who is your schoolmaster?” she asked in slight desperation.

  “Mr. Crosby for mathematics, Mr. Carruthers for French and Latin, and Mr. Newhouse for geography, history, and English.” The young eyes were watchful but not unduly so.

  Mrs. Jackson drummed up another inane question: “And I suppose you will go away to school soon?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I have been accepted into Saint Austin’s. Sir Reginald particularly wanted me to go there.” There was no evident pride in his voice, it was a statement of fact.

  She felt unsure what to ask next and then inspiration struck. “What do you want to do when you leave school?” It was the right question, and he answered with real enthusiasm, the first he had shown.

  “The Indian Civil Service. I am hoping to take Hindi next month if they can find a tutor.” This was the most animation she had seen in him. He was strangely docile, she thought, there was no real spark there; just a nice, dutiful middle-class boy, with not a trace of the East End in his carefully formed vowels and consonants. She would have given anything to know more about his previous life and how he had come here. But she didn’t trespass and cause embarrassment. She knew how hard it was to acknowledge the lack of parents and the awful shame children felt at being abandoned.

  “Are you familiar with Miss Kingsley’s charity event, the one she holds at her house every year?”

  “Yes, I am familiar with it.”

  “Then you know we like to have some of you young men to meet the people who are interested in the charity. To help the butler take coats and hats, show our guests to their seats in the salon, and help out all round. Do you think you would enjoy that?” She saw the slightest hesitation, his fair skin flushed and his young face wrinkled in concern.

  “Do you tell us exactly what we are to do? I would hate to make a mistake and ruin things.”

  “Oh, it is not a difficult job at all. But you might find it interesting. Don’t worry about the details too much, everyone is there to have a pleasant evening and that includes you young men.”

  She interviewed the next five boys and found there was not much difference among them; all were well-mannered, scrupulously clean, with none of the blots, scrapes, bruises, falling-down socks, and ink-stained fingers that Lord Haversham had exhibited when he was that age. She was talking to the same boy over and over again, she thought, as if they had stepped off a conveyor belt in a manufactory, newly made in one another’s likeness. They were all extremely polite and attentive, and every one of them exhibited concern that they do a good job at the charity and “not let the Chimney Sweep Boys down.” Afterward she wondered if any of them were ever unruly or broke rules, if they shouted, whistled, and threw stones. It didn’t matter how different their backgrounds had been before they arrived here, as they were now neatly institutionalized. She wished she could observe them in their common room, away from adult supervision.

  When the last boy was about to leave, she took a risk.

  “Tell me, Edwin,” she said, and he turned back to her at the door. “Was Sir Reginald Cholmondeley a kind man to you all?” She was instantly rewarded with a look of consternation—a rabbit in the entrance to its burrow when it emerges and finds a stoat waiting there. Transfixed, he gazed at her silently.

  “Sir Reginald took a good deal of interest in how well you did here. He must have been like a … father to you boys.”

  Edwin didn’t answer.

  “Did he spend a lot of time with you?”

  “Sometimes,” came the cautious answer, and he reached for the door handle.

  Into her mind flashed something she had seen briefly at the top of Matron’s list of the boys she was to meet that morning, the word Chums and then underneath it the six names. It had taken her a moment to make the connection: Cholmondeley written thus was pronounced “Chumley,” and this group of perfect boys must have been referred to as Chums.

  “Were you one of the Chums?” she asked before she could stop herself, and then with a flash of intuition: “That was Sir Reginald’s society for boys who excelled, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was.” His hand closed around the door handle, but he did not open the door.

  “What sort of activities did you excel in? Sports, literature prizes, that sort of thing?” Now she was sure what questions she wanted answered.

  “We have to excel in everything: academics, sport, comportment, and doing our duty to the school and the governors.” It was a mechanical answer, but his eyes were watchful and he did not take his hand away from the doorknob.

  “That must have been taken a lot of effort to accomplish; you must be a hardworking boy.

  Edwin turned around and gave her a thoughtful look. “Yes, we have to work hard here. We want to be a credit to the charity.”

  “I am sure you are,” she said, hoping to reassure. And she saw the relief on his face as he left the room without a backward glance.

  Mrs. Jackson sat on in the sick bay with its rows of empty beds and thought about the boys she had interviewed. It didn’t matter in the slightest which ones came to help at Chester Square, they were all equally acceptable. But she thought Edwin, Clive, George, and Albert would probably more than adequately fit the bill for taking hats and coats and helping during supper. She did not doubt for one moment that they would do a thorough job, far better than Jenkins’s luckless and ill-trained Clumsy Footman. She sighed and stared across the room. They were all such earnest boys, extremely conscious of their duty to the charity, and so careful with their answers.

  When Mrs. Jackson returned to Matron’s parlor
she found her sitting at a desk, working on her laundry inventory. She was running a pencil down a column of figures and obviously performing rapid mental arithmetic; the tip of her tongue protruded from between large yellowing teeth and she was breathing quite heavily. Her small, deep-set eyes lifted from her work as Mrs. Jackson came into the room and in one smooth movement she closed the book and slid it under a stack of bills skewered on a spike to the left of her on the desk. She got to her feet and came around her desk.

  “Got what you came for, did you?” Her belligerence was palpable. “Yes, I wondered why you wanted to talk to the boys on their own, and so I spoke to Edwin when you had finished questioning him, and what I want to know is why were you asking about the Chums, ay? There are no favorites here, Mrs. Jackson, all the boys are treated the same.” Matron came toward Mrs. Jackson, her head down: a large sow protecting a farrowing house full of piglets. Mrs. Jackson fully expected the woman to butt her in the stomach and she almost took a step backward.

  “Matron,” her voice was cold, “Sir Reginald Cholmondeley often talked of the Chums. He said they were his most promising boys. Naturally, I needed to know if his death had upset them. If they are distressed about the death of Sir Reginald, it would not do to bring them to the house where he was murdered. I am sure you understand the necessity of my questions, now.”

  She had stopped Matron in her tracks, but the woman was still uncomfortably close. Angry eyes were staring intently into her face. Mrs. Jackson felt a momentary surge of alarm and an irrational fear that at any moment Matron might lift a mighty arm and hit her. Don’t be so ridiculous, she told herself, she’s just a mean-spirited woman who bullies little boys. But why does she care so much about my questions? She stood her ground and began to pull on her gloves to disguise the fact that her hands were shaking a little.