by Issy Brooke
“What is the matter? Why are you not at the inn?” Cordelia demanded.
Geoffrey nodded his head in the closest he could get to a deferential greeting. “Tis too busy, my lady. There’s not a space in the stable yard nor a room to be got within. The coroner is arrived and it seems he has sworn in his jury. Not the jury for trial though; I don’t rightly understand what they are saying. But I do know that the sheriff is on his way, and a room set aside for him. There are even a few newspapermen come from Cambridge but they are young bucks; reckon there is no point sending their important men as it’s not so big a story, excepting that it was the landlady as did it.”
“And therein lies the injustice,” Cordelia said, staring past Geoffrey at the wide, red-brick coaching inn. There were crowds on the steps, pushing past one another but no one was able to enter. “And I ought to lay it bare for the coroner. Poor Mrs Hurrell.” She took a step towards the inn but stopped. She could see, even without Ruby’s sigh and Geoffrey’s grunt, that she was not going to gain admittance to the place.
“I shall drive you back to the house,” Geoffrey said. “My lady.”
“No.” She whirled around and stepped back up into the carriage, seizing the chance to do so unassisted by Geoffrey. “I shall wait here. I am hungry. So, too, must you be, and Ruby also. If there are no rooms available for me within, then I shall remain on my own property – here. Geoffrey, you go into the back rooms of the inn, where men of your sort assemble, and buy some food that might be easily carried. Ruby, you can seek out some drinks. Here.” She pulled out some coin from her purse and handed it to the two startled servants.
“But where will you eat?” Ruby asked.
Cordelia looked around pointedly. The street was a place of meals as much as it was a place of commerce, conversation and entertainments. It was a fact that many people crowded into small rooms with no means of cooking, even here in a country town. It was the way of life, especially in London and cities, and common enough in smaller places. A working man could buy his coffee for breakfast on the way to work, buy a bread roll for a midday meal if he were lucky, and buy a pie for the evening. The air was thick with the smell of food.
There weren’t any other fine ladies preparing to make a picnic of it in their carriages, however.
“I am a widow,” she said to the world at large. “Who really cares what I do? Ruby, Geoffrey; go to it.”
* * *
Cordelia was left alone for a long time. She read her book for a little while, before sitting back on the cushions, with the door pulled closed, thinking. Stanley sat atop the carriage, silently watching. He would have been little use if someone tried to rob me, she thought. She drew her purse a little closer to her hip, placing it on the seat by her side, so that her hand could grab a sharp tortoiseshell comb easily. One jab of that into someone’s eyes, she thought, would be pleasingly effective.
She tried not to long for such an event to happen. For something – anything – to shake her out of her ennui. Oh, what fancies did a bored mind entertain! She rested her head back against the seat and sighed. The Devil really did make work for idle hands, she reflected. Here she was, imagining stabbing a footpad, and quite relishing the idea.
But if she were to avoid boredom and the Devil’s entreaties to mindless violence, what work could she usefully do? Her books were a dismal failure. Her investments were mostly handled by her agent in London. She had to think of moving out of her house and taking rooms somewhere – a seaside town, perhaps. She could have an affair with Ewatt. He seemed keen, though it would ruin her utterly. Or she could marry Hugo; she barely knew him but he seemed joyful and energetic.
Try as she might, every time she bent her thoughts to Hugo Hawke, they skittered away to something else. It was as if her mind didn’t want him in there.
I just don’t know him well enough, yet, she told herself.
She pulled out her notebook and glanced at her list of projects. There was so much she wanted to learn, to know, to see … but without a reason for that, it seemed so pointless.
“My lady!” Ruby was back, carrying two glasses and a bottle on a tray. Cordelia jumped and pushed her notebook away. “They were for giving me beer,” Ruby was saying apologetically. “I would have been back sooner but I had to make quite a fuss to get them to serve me wine instead.”
“Beer would have been fine,” Cordelia said. “I’ve never had beer. I’m told it’s an acquired taste.”
“You acquire it if you’ve no other choice,” Ruby said. “It is not for you, my lady.”
Soon after, Geoffrey returned, his dour face even more drawn into a scowl than usual. “They did not understand what I was asking for,” he muttered. “I could not serve you Mystery Pie. This took some getting.” He had three pewter plates in his two hands, the middle plate precariously overlapping to balance between the others. There was a suet pudding on each, with rich dark gravy oozing out. “This is hardly appropriate for a woman of your station,” he said as Ruby took a plate. She wiped the edge all the way around with her handkerchief before she passed it to Cordelia.
“It is perfectly delightful,” she replied. “And most exciting.”
Geoffrey, now with one hand free, tossed a coin up to Stanley. “Go find a pie, boy.” The carriage rocked as the lad jumped down. Geoffrey was about to climb up into his place but Cordelia stopped him.
“What news from within?” she asked. “Regarding the murder, I mean.”
Geoffrey snorted. “They say that the one who was killed, that Thomas, was an argumentative sort, who would spend a night telling you the sky was pink if the fancy took him. He had very little learning and what he did have, he did not use. He is the general topic of gossip, but I can’t say as anyone really misses him.”
Cordelia had not realised that Stanley was still nearby until he stammered out, “Yet he too … as are we all … was a ch-child of God.”
“Not by any account,” Geoffrey retorted. “He were a poor church-goer and a poorer worker. Go, get your food, boy. No sermonising here.”
Stanley scampered off. Geoffrey disappeared onto the seat up top, and Ruby pulled the carriage door closed so that the general public would not witness the shameful lack of standards currently being demonstrated.
“And what gossip have you heard, girl?” Cordelia said to Ruby. The inn had provided eating irons in the shape of a spoon for each, and it was a new skill to attack the soft suet pastry with any decorum. She kept her eyes on her food and waited for Ruby to begin to speak.
She could tell that Ruby was reluctant to open up, as she was still smarting from the morning’s dressing-down. But she had information too delicious to keep to herself, and eventually she broke. The bribery of a good, hot pie could do wonders.
“Well, my lady, I know that you pay no heed to the notion that it was Mrs Hurrell, the landlady, as did the deed.”
“Indeed, I think it most improbable.”
“The town, though, thinks otherwise. Most are set upon her as the perpetrator. She is not local, you know. That counts for an awful lot.”
Cordelia remembered back to the scene in the cottage. “She had been here eight years,” she said. “And where did she live before?”
“London, where they say that she had a house that was … disorderly. Ah, um… I don’t rightly know how to explain this to you.”
Of course. London ways. It came back to her. “I know exactly what you mean. You have little need to be coy with me. I am not like that mistress of yours who could not cope with the sight of a stallion, nor am I innocent in the ways of the meaner streets of London. I was married to a man who … So, she was a madam, this Mrs Hurrell, of a sort. But what did she do here? Her trade was otherwise, I am guessing?”
“There was no suggestion that she was anything other than a respectable landlady while she lived here.”
“Well. Stanley would be pleased to remind us that we can all repent of our sins and be saved.”
They fell silent for a resp
ectful moment, and Cordelia took some wine. It was slightly watered down, but it was drinkable. She poured a scant half-glass for Ruby. She surmised the maid would have had a glass already, while inside the inn.
“And what of the victim himself?” Cordelia asked. “Tell me all. Did you hear the same information that Geoffrey had?”
“Yes. Though what is odd, my lady, is that they spoke of his words as being fighting words but he never laid a fist upon anyone. He has never, ever fought with anyone, as far as anyone can recollect. He had a perversely generous streak. Once, they said, he gave his coat to a beggar woman. They mocked him for his weakness, though if a minister of religion had done such a thing, would not people praise him?”
“That is true. Society does want people to act only as they are marked to act.”
Ruby shrugged. “So, he was not a fighter, just a shouter. He argued with Mrs Hurrell. He argued with Ralph, the head gardener at the house – he argued a lot with him, about all manner of things, and did not work well there. He even argued, it is said, with the doctor.”
“Now there is a man I cannot imagine arguing,” Cordelia said. “He is altogether too in command of his emotions, his body, and his entire being. Have you ever seen a man so pressed in on himself?”
“He cuts a fine figure,” Ruby said wistfully. “There is a man for whom tight breeches were designed.”
“They said he was often to be seen performing callisthenics in the open fields,” Cordelia said, lost in her own thoughts for a moment.
“They said all sorts,” Ruby pointed out. “And then … they laughed. Some of the folks in the inn do like the doctor; he attends to all people, if he can, even if they are poor, and he does not overcharge. But they laugh at him, also. And to my mind, that laughter, it has an edge. Like they do not quite trust him.”
Cordelia was shocked. “Why would they distrust such a well-to-do trained man?”
Ruby sat back and a scornful look flitted over her face, her ripe lips curling just a little. “My lady, what reason have the poor to trust any man like that?”
Chapter Eleven
It was Cordelia’s turn to sink into an almost-sullen silence as they drove back to Hugo’s house. She pretended to read her book, but she was instead turning things over in her mind.
Why wouldn’t the poor folk of the town trust a well-educated man? She probed at it, worried at it, looked it at from all angles. If someone was of a higher standing, and had an expansive education, of course you would trust them.
She asked herself who she trusted, but the first name that popped into her head was, curiously, Stanley Ashdown. Why that name? He was poor; a mere servant. She closed her book. The young man was taciturn, easily intimidated, and quite rigid with religious morals. He would attend Church every day if he had the time.
“Here we are, my lady.”
“Oh! I hadn’t even noticed we had stopped. Ah, thank you, Geoffrey. Ruby, I fancy I shall take a walk in the gardens. I have much on my mind. Will you see to the deliveries and ensure they have arrived from town?”
“My lady.”
She passed her book and her purse to Ruby to convey into the house, but did not follow. She watched Geoffrey take the carriage and horses to the right, heading for the stables. She waited until she was alone, although the windows of the wide manor watched her still.
The weather was not as hot as it had been of late. After a few moments of contemplation, she made up her mind, and began to head around the left hand side of the house, heading towards the array of greenhouses and vegetable plots that she had spied hidden behind the house. This was an unexplored area for her.
All was quiet. She passed under a brick arch and entered a haven enclosed on all sides by tall walls. Only the vast size of the kitchen garden ensured that it still felt open rather than hemmed in. The paths were laid to gravel and bordered by low, well-clipped box.
She walked between glasshouses teeming with the summer explosion of ripening soft fruits and delicate vegetables. At the end of the path stood a larger greenhouse, this one of white-painted wrought iron, and clearly the showpiece of the gardens. The doors stood open, letting the build-up of summer heat escape, and she could see tumbling arrays of colourful flowers on staggered staging within.
When she was ten feet from the greenhouse, a man suddenly rose to his feet from behind an enormous jungle of rhubarb. He was a weather-beaten man with skin like roughed-up wood, sinewy and bow-backed and bow-legged. He stared at her, then tugged off his hat and stared at the floor, the tips of his ears bright red. He did not speak.
“Good afternoon. Are you the head gardener, Goody? Ralph Goody?”
“Yes m’m,” he mumbled. “Ralph Goody it is. Please forgive me. I had not been awarned of a visit.”
“No, no, it was not planned. You may relax.”
Ralph relaxed by staying entirely rigid and keeping his eyes on the floor.
She knew she wasn’t going to unbend this old traditional servant by simply subjecting him to a barrage of questions. She glanced towards the greenhouse. “Please, though, I should be utterly delighted if you were able to spare a few moments to show me your wonderful flowers. It is one of my interests.”
“Yes, m’m.” He straightened slightly, as much as his sloping shoulders would allow, and tried to wipe his earth-caked hands on his green trousers. He stepped carefully, and when he reached the edge of the plot, he used a boot-scraper – one of many fixed at intervals around the garden – so that his muddy boots did not sully the gravel path.
He didn’t look at her, but as soon as they were within the stuffy glasshouse, he became animated. A man is a king in his own small realm, she thought, as she walked alongside him and let him grow passionate about the camellias that ranged along the side, their pink heads nodding above them. He called them “tea flower” and pointed to their constant need for water. “Also, master has brought back orchids from his travels,” Ralph went on, as they turned around at the far end of the greenhouse and began to walk back up the other side. He showed her the delicate and bizarre flowers Hugo had acquired on his travels. “Though I think he does not understand the craze for them that some men have.”
“These are marvellous,” she said. “You have worked so hard. And is that Mirabilis jalapa? There, the red and yellow blooms.”
“The marvel of Peru,” Ralph said, nodding. He began to talk to her as one who knew plants, and she was pleased.
“I believe you can use the flowers to dye sweets and jellies,” she said. “I would like to try that. I am fascinated by the culinary arts.”
“I can arrange to have some sent to the kitchen,” he said. “It would be no trouble at all. Anything here in the garden is at your disposal, m’m.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.” They stepped out into the cooler open air and she surveyed the vegetables. “You do work hard.”
“Thank you, m’m. Been here since I were eight years old, and now I’m well into my fifth decade, somewhere, I think.”
“Goodness me. And you manage all this alone?” she probed.
“No,” he said, making a strange creaking noise that she was slow to identify as a chuckle. “I do have a few boys to help me out.”
“That murdered lad, Thomas Bains, was one, was he not?”
“On occasion but I had no truck with that one.” He stiffened up.
She decided to tread carefully. She nodded towards a smaller greenhouse. “May I?”
“Of course.” He led her into a room of glorious melons and exotic gourds, and she made appreciative noises.
When he was relaxing again, she said, “Thomas was argumentative, they say. I imagine he was a poor worker.”
“Aye, oftentimes late, oftentimes lazy. He stole food, I am sure of it, also, and I brought it to the master’s attention. He was not to be trusted.”
“How very responsible of you! It must have been very difficult to work with one such as Thomas.”
“Aye, so it was, m’m.”
“It is the gossip of the town. And they say it was a woman, his landlady, that did the deed!” she prompted.
To her surprise, Ralph shook his head. He scratched his neck thoughtfully as he stared past Cordelia, out of the greenhouse and across his gardens. “Well, people do say all manner of things and I am but a poor gardener and it is not in me to have big thoughts. But I cannot see it, myself.”
“She wasn’t local…”
“Aye but nor is anybody if you go back far enough,” he said. “Though a garden is where it all began. This is the only place we can truly be at home. No, as for Mrs Hurrell, she came from a bad place but she came away, and that is the thing, is it not? To leave and start anew. That’s courage.”
