by Issy Brooke
“Geoffrey! Please.”
“As you wish. Tis only the same as tenderising meat. Anyways, the outcome of this was, that he was minded to reveal a few things to me, as he ought to have done to you, and saved himself the bother of – of being persuaded by me, as it were. To wit, that Ewatt Carter-Hall did speak to him on the matter of the letters that were sent to Liverpool. And that the same gentleman did then send his own letters to Liverpool, and received replies thereof. And he warned the clerk to say nothing more of the matter. Until I came along, that is.” Geoffrey snickered in a low grumbling way.
“But what was contained in those letters?”
“He could not rightly say. He does not read other folks’ communications, so he says, and I do believe him.”
“Then all was for naught.”
“Not so. For one reply was a telegram, and it went to Cambridge and thence came here written on a card. So no secrecy was possible. And it confirmed the date and place of Doctor Donald Arnall’s marriage … to a Miss Clara Fellowes. Clara. And that Mrs Clara Arnall is, indeed, dead. And that the sender would be very grateful for the known whereabouts of Mrs Clara Arnall’s husband so that – in his words – ‘matters may at last be settled.’ So, there you are!”
Cordelia sipped at the coffee and struggled to make sense of what she had heard.
“What does it all mean?” she said weakly.
Geoffrey looked down the stairs at Ruby. Cordelia followed his gaze. The shadowy figures of Mrs Unsworth and Stanley were still there, too.
“Does it have to mean anything?” Mrs Unsworth snapped.
“A death does. We both know that. A murder does, in particular. The murder of a boy, alone and unmourned.” It could mean keeping my home. Our home.
“He was not a boy,” Mrs Unsworth said.
“Everyone talks about him like he was not yet a man. He lived alone. Had he a sweetheart? We know nothing about him. Except that someone disliked him enough to seek him out and kill him.”
“Mrs Hurrell–”
“I do not believe she did it,” Cordelia said. “I am convinced of it.”
“Then it would be a grave injustice indeed, for I fear she is to hang for it,” Geoffrey said. “That is the latest talk.”
Cordelia felt the chill begin to creep up her legs. She wrapped her hands around the now-empty coffee mug. “And there is another question that I have, about the doctor. What does Ewatt Carter-Hall have so badly against Doctor Donald Arnall? They will not call him for their sick child. He seeks information to defame him. He hopes to pin the murder on him.”
“Pin it? What if it is true, and the doctor is the culprit?” Ruby said.
“Maybe that is the case. But I am suspicious of them all. Not a single one of them is telling the whole truth,” Cordelia said bitterly. “I want to know what they all hide. And it seems to me very strange that no one in this town likes the doctor – yet he seems a perfectly pleasant man to me.”
“Do they tell you they dislike him?” Geoffrey asked.
“They talk of him … strangely. They mistrust him.” Cordelia nodded down the stairs. “As Ruby can attest to.”
“It is true. He is keen to help the poor and he is full of new ideas. And maybe that’s the problem,” Ruby added. “He is not local and he is not traditional.”
“Could it just be that?” Cordelia wondered. “I ask again … what does Carter-Hall have against the doctor that he would dig up the matter of his previous wife?”
Stanley spoke at last, his voice rasping in the darkness. Perhaps it was easier for him to talk when he could not see his mistress clearly, for his stammer was diminished. “M-maybe Mr Carter-Hall did so because it was the right thing to do.”
Ruby turned on him before Cordelia could speak. “The right thing to do? Listen to you, stammering-boy. Carter-Hall might be lying for all we know. He could be setting the doctor up.”
“Again, for what ends?” Cordelia said. “It seems too elaborate to me.”
“Anyway,” Mrs Unsworth said, “As for me, I don’t reckon as the ends justify the means. That Carter-Hall, didn’t he sneak around and read letters or threaten the post master or somesuch? I can’t rightly follow it, but I don’t know that doing wrong to find out what is right can be justified. Not even in your churchy world, Stanley.”
“God’s laws t-t-trump man’s,” Stanley said.
“Oh, get you!” Ruby said. “You speak up louder when you’re angry. Go on, get passionate about something. Let’s hear you give us some fire and brimstone.”
“Tisn’t to be m-mocked about,” he said, but his stammer had immediately grown worse, and Ruby laughed cruelly.
Cordelia thought that she had been forgotten about as the servants teased and taunted one another, but Mrs Unsworth stepped in, hissing, “Hush, you all. Not in front of the mistress!”
Everything went silent.
Geoffrey reached out and took the empty mug from her unresisting hands. She sighed and straightened up, feeling sick.
Mrs Unsworth whispered something that Cordelia couldn’t hear, and the figures at the bottom of the stairs melted backwards, swallowed by the dark. The spell was broken. Geoffrey got to his feet and extended his free hand, but Cordelia ignored it. She got up, unsteadily.
“Thank you for your kindnesses,” she said, hearing an ungracious note in her voice, and hating herself for it. “I shall retire.”
“Shall I send Ruby to attend to you?”
“No. She is free for what remains of the evening.”
“As you wish.”
She gathered up her skirt and ploughed her way up the narrow stairs, feeling along the corridor at the top so that she could come out through a servant’s door and into the main house once more.
She could sense Geoffrey still on the stairs, watching and listening to her leave.
* * *
Cordelia felt restless and alone, and annoyed with herself for having had a moment of weakness – and one that was witnessed by her staff, no less! She shook herself all over, like a dog leaving a river, and sat down on her bed. She would have to undress herself, and see to her toilette, but now the alcohol was wearing off, she was steadier on her feet. She set about the task wearily.
Once she was dressed in her long nightgown, her hair neatly done about her head, she pulled a leather notebook from a drawer and slithered onto the bed, tucking the pillows up behind her to make a comfortable rest for her back.
The notebook contained a random mess of quotes and half-remembered poems, significant sayings, sketches and lists.
She flicked to the list that had pride of place on the back page.
At the top, in her scrawling copperplate, she had written PROJECTS and underlined it many times.
Below that, in smaller letters and much scratched through, was written “Compile a modern book of manners.”
Well, that had ended badly.
There was also, “Write a blistering romance about an army colonel and his long-lost sweetheart who now lives in seclusion in the woods.” Why had she thought that would ever appeal to anyone? She had grown bored of writing it by page twelve, but had ploughed on in increasing irritation until she had given up and killed both the hero and the heroine in an unexpected train derailment somewhere around chapter seven.
“Write a natural history of the hedgerow plants of Berkshire.” That had sold a handful of copies. It was a shame that she had had hundreds printed, however.
At the bottom was her latest idea. “Write a series of articles that will develop into books exploring the regional cookery of the British Isles.”
It still excited her, and gave her a reason to travel. But now she drew a line through that, too, and wrote, “Find the person who murdered Thomas Bains and bring them to justice. Thereby saving my house. And escaping Hugo.”
It was as ludicrous an idea as any of the others.
And yet, in all this, that poor man lies unmourned and his life is finished before it even began. She felt a flicke
r of anger deep inside. She folded the book closed and put it on her bedside table, and extinguished her lamp. She fought the pillows for a moment before she was comfortable, and lay down.
The anger remained. She burned with it all.
She shot upright in bed when she heard the outer door to her suite click open and closed, and light footsteps shuffle across the carpeted rooms.
“Ruby?” she hissed, groping sideways in the dark for a heavy candlestick.
The door opened and pale yellow light edged the furniture. “Yes, my lady. Are you quite all right? May I get you anything?”
“Come here, girl. Ruby.”
She came, setting one tall, wide candle on the bedside table, and stood next to the bed, her hands folded neatly in front of her body, looking every inch the biddable servant.
Cordelia felt the distance between them was an ocean. She patted the bed. “Sit.”
Ruby wavered. “My lady, perhaps the alcohol still–”
“Sit!” She lowered her voice, and said, “I am sorry. Please, Ruby, sit with me. I am … alone, and afraid.”
That was enough to startle the maid. “You, my lady? Afraid?” She hitched her skirts and gingerly slipped onto the edge of the broad bed, moving the notebook that still lay in the rumbled bedclothes. She held it in her hands, unseeing, keeping her attention on her mistress.
“I must tell you something, Ruby,” Cordelia said. “I am so sorry. This will shock you. It’s not a tale of stallions or strange predilections. This is a matter of our futures. Together.”
Ruby listened. Cordelia explained herself, and then explained herself again in different words, talking it over and over, just to get it straight in her own mind.
On her third attempt, Ruby stopped her, placing her small hand on Cordelia’s wrist. The touch was another step across the ocean that separated them. “My lady,” she said. “I have it. And I think we all knew that there was more to you, earlier this evening. Mrs Unsworth said as much though I ignored her.”
“You mustn’t ignore her,” Cordelia said. “Except when she is being spiteful.”
“Well, that is all of the time. But she said that something burned you deep, and now I know.”
“And what do you think?”
Ruby laughed. “We do it!”
“We?”
Ruby still held the notebook in her free hand. She tapped Cordelia’s knee with it. “For certain, my lady, this is not a journey you can do alone. Anyway, it is to all of our benefit, is it not?”
“It is.”
“So when do we start?”
“Tomorrow.”
“And where do we start?”
Cordelia took the notebook from Ruby, and opened it at the last page she had been writing before she tried to sleep. “With Doctor Arnall? With the post office clerk? With Ewatt Carter-Hall? No,” she said, decisively. “At the house of Mrs Hurrell. And in particular, I wish to know why she was so upset at the thought of anyone opening that drawer in her sideboard.”
Chapter Nineteen
“One night of drinking, I can cope with,” Cordelia moaned as she sat in her dressing robe. She didn’t dare to glance at herself in the looking-glass. She closed her eyes and let Ruby attend to her hair. “But two nights together … ah, I am getting old.”
“It was not just two nights. There was a full day of drinking too. Anyway, I’m sure it’s nothing that Mr Peeble’s Salts can’t cure,” Ruby said breezily.
“Are you mocking me?”
“Me, my lady?”
“Hmm.”
“Shall I call for breakfast to be served in your day room?”
“No. Let me dress; in my readings and research I came across a cure I wish to try. I need to visit the kitchens.”
* * *
“Soot?”
“Please, Mrs Unsworth. I simply need a spoonful of the ashes from the fireplace. And some warm milk.”
Mrs Unsworth’s flabby face contorted, her mouth pulling down at the sides, making folds and creases in her cheeks. “Raw egg and vinegar, that is what you need, begging pardon.”
“That has never worked for me. I should like to try this new medicine.”
Cordelia sat at the large scrubbed table. It was the lull between breakfast and luncheon, and the maids were going quietly and calmly about their tasks. It didn’t take as much to prepare the midday meal of cold meats and platters, and they conserved their energies for the hectic rush of later in the day. The other members of staff – those not employed in the kitchen – were all about their business as usual.
Except for Ralph Goody, the gardener, who had come into the kitchen with a box of freshly-dug vegetables.
“Hold – don’t be taking them into the scullery before I have seen to them,” Mrs Unsworth ordered.
Ralph met Cordelia’s eyes but quickly dropped his gaze. He looked uncomfortable at the intrusion of the lady into the servants’ domain. It was not done. “Where is Mrs Kendal?” he asked, referring to the manor’s cook.
“She is talking to Mr Hawke upstairs about the menu for the next few days.” Mrs Unsworth got down on her knees and scraped at the side of the fire below the range, pulling forward some ash, and spreading it on a pan to cool. She moved about the kitchen as if it were her own.
“Of course.” He stood to one side and waited as Mrs Unsworth heaved herself to her feet and showed Cordelia the ash. “Does this suffice?”
“It does. Tip it into the milk and warm it gently, and then I shall drink it.”
Mrs Unsworth shook her head almost imperceptibly, but she did as she was told. She stood by the top of the range and stirred the pan. A chalky-sweet aroma filled the air.
“Where’s Ruby?” Cordelia asked suddenly.
Mrs Unsworth shrugged, and bellowed, “Ruby!”
The maid popped her head into the kitchen. “I was looking for the cheese you had ordered in,” she said. “That blue. And the other. Which store was it in? I have searched them all, I am sure of it.”
“It was in the store by the dairy, on a high shelf,” Mrs Unsworth said. She poured the grey liquid into a glass, and handed it to Cordelia. There were disconcerting lumps floating in it.
“It’s not there now,” Ruby insisted.
“I am not surprised,” Mrs Unsworth said. “Two days ago, a wheel of cheddar went missing, too. And yesterday I could not find the pigeon pie I had made. Goody, you have a thief on the premises … ah, but you knew that already, did you not?”
Ralph shook his head vehemently. “No, not at all. For certain, we did have a thief,” he said, blinking briefly at Cordelia. “But it was Thomas Bains, and now he is dead, so there is no more thievery here. Upon my life, no, there is not. Just over-addled women.”
Mrs Unsworth folded her arms. “There is still a problem here, and I do not know why no one does anything.”
“Madam! I can assure you there ain’t no problem here, and if there were, we should see to it.”
“And I can assure you that you do have a problem, and if you people weren’t so lazy and up your own–”
“Mrs Unsworth!” Cordelia barked, and the woman stopped, her mouth snapping shut. She glared at Ralph.
He muttered, “Visitors here ought to be mindful of their place,” and left sharply.
Cordelia did not think the remark was aimed entirely at Mrs Unsworth.
She sipped at the drink. It was utterly revolting. She made an effort to drink it down while it was still warm, but when her teeth closed on some gritty particles, she nearly brought it back up again. She forced another mouthful down, and then gave up. “Thank you for this,” she said grimly. “I fear it might not catch on.”
“Shall I fetch some eggs?” Ruby asked.
“Good lord, no. That would be adding insult to injury,” Cordelia said. Soot, milk and then raw egg … she swallowed. “A cup of tea would suffice.”
“Perhaps we ought to consult the doctor,” Ruby said. “And it would give you an excuse to speak to him.”
Cordelia shook her head. “I am not yet at the stage of talking to the doctor because I cannot handle my drink,” she said. “Today, we must visit Mrs Hurrell’s cottage, yes. But I was thinking about him – the doctor – again this morning. We had been talking of the connection between the doctor and Carter-Hall, but what of the other connection?”
“Between…?”
“Between Doctor Arnall, and Thomas Bains,” Cordelia said.
Ruby shrugged, and Cordelia sighed in frustration. Ruby chewed her lip for a moment, and then went to the door that led to the scullery. “Claire. Is Rose in the dairy?”
