Scandal Above Stairs

by Ashley Jennifer

  “He’d have found the money, so the debts wouldn’t embarrass him,” I said. “But something must have happened at the end of last year, something for which he needed much money quickly. He sold the paintings, one every two months. I wonder which one he’ll sell in July.”

  Cynthia curled her gloved fists. “The blackguard. He’s making Clemmie miserable. I suppose Mr. Harmon advised him to sell the paintings to keep himself solvent. But why should Evan accuse Clemmie of stealing the blasted things? No, don’t answer. I know why. To deflect suspicion from himself, to keep others from realizing he’s going skint. When it seemed ludicrous to try to pretend the house had been burgled, he shouted accusations at Clemmie, who I am sorry to say is a lovely creature but not gifted with reams of cleverness. She will only weep and ask for her friends’ opinions. I hope Evan won’t be hard on her for showing me the drawing room. But from the looks of things, she’s found consolation elsewhere, eh?”

  “The person who paid the debt for her, you mean,” I said. “A man, I am guessing. She might not have taken it further than that, you know.”

  Cynthia barked a laugh. “Her blush told me it has already gone much further. Oh well. Good for Clemmie. Godfrey is a stick, as I said. She married him because it was assumed he had blunt—which he no longer does—and many important connections. She’d be a great hostess and invited to all the best dos in Town. This is precisely why I am never for the noose, Mrs. H. Who knows what imbecilic creature one will be stuck with for life?”

  I could not blame her for thinking so. “I would have a care, if you forgive me saying it, about Sir Evan,” I said. “I did not like the way he looked at you.”

  Cynthia gave me a nod, unsurprised. “Yes, I caught that. But he is only fascinated by me because he knows I put on trousers. Many gentlemen look at me like that, including your Mr. Thanos.”

  I thought about Elgin Thanos, the friend to Daniel who was a genius at accounts and mathematics. He was also one of the most amiable young men I’d ever met.

  “He is not my Mr. Thanos,” I said stiffly. “And he is quite a different sort of person from Sir Evan Godfrey. You know this. Mr. Thanos is a kind man, if a bit featherheaded about ordinary life.”

  Cynthia waved this away, though her cheeks grew pink. “Oh, he’s all right. Don’t take offense. But men do become titillated at the thought of females in gentlemen’s clothing—do not tell me they do not.”

  “I grant you that. But it does make me wonder, in that case, why you do it.”

  Cynthia flashed me a sudden grin. “That is because you have no idea what it is like to stride around in perfect freedom, able to go where you please, purchase what you wish, and speak as you wish, because people believe you are a man. I’ll get you into a pair of trousers yet, Mrs. H.”

  I could not think of anything more appalling. “Indeed no, my lady. I’d look like someone’s portly uncle.”

  Lady Cynthia went into peals of laughter. She had a lovely laugh, and she gave herself over to mirth without inhibition. “You’re a fine woman, Mrs. H. Thank you for being so candid about Clemmie and her husband.” She sighed, her amusement dying. “I’ll tell her. Maybe this will give her the nerve to confront Evan. He ought to have told her about his financial troubles—she is his wife.”

  I had the feeling Sir Evan was not the sort of man to include his wife in any of his private matters. No gentleman should have implicated a lady in the disappearance of the paintings, and Sir Evan had done so too readily. I hoped Clemmie put him in his place.

  Lady Cynthia and I parted after the carriage let us out at the front door. I hurried down the scullery steps, yanking off my gloves as I went inside, anxious as to how Tess had got on in my absence. The sidelong looks the scullery maid and Paul the footman slanted me in passing did nothing to ease my trepidation.

  I found Tess lounging on a chair at the kitchen table, her feet propped on a second chair, though she was peeling the onions as I’d told her to, a basket of them at her elbow.

  “Oh, there you are,” Tess said without getting up. “Ye showed me how to start peeling an onion.” She tapped the one she held with her paring knife. “But how do you stop peeling it? It just goes on and on, don’t it?”

  “For heaven’s sake.” I hung up my hat and coat, quickly put on my apron, and took knife and onion away from her. “Remove your feet from that chair and watch me. You cease when the papery skin is gone, and definitely when you’re down to the white. Now to chop.”

  I put a larger knife in her hand, and stood over her, explaining the technique for slicing, until the first onion was in a rather lopsided dice. Tess sniffled as the onion’s potent fumes worked their power.

  “Gracious, I’ve never cried so much in me life,” she said, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “You want me to do all of these?” she asked in incredulity, looking into the full basket.

  “I do indeed.” I was already at the stove, ladling stock I’d kept warm on a back burner into a pot. I’d do a nice sauté of vegetables to put over the roast.

  “I won’t have enough water left in me after I’m done,” Tess complained. “Did you have a fine time out in the carriage with her ladyship?”

  “We were visiting one of her friends who was not well.” Not much of an exaggeration. “But never you mind.”

  “I hear her ladyship gets up to all kinds of larks,” Tess went on as she peeled the next onion. “Goes to secret clubs where ladies prance around and kiss one another. She take you to one of those?”

  I turned from the stove and pinned her with a freezing stare. “Certainly not. And you keep a respectful tongue in your head about Lady Cynthia. Or I’ll speak to Mr. McAdam and tell him there is no place for you here.”

  Tess stared at me in shock, as though amazed I’d defend a member of the upstairs. “Well, excuse me, I’m sure,” she said, but her tone was more subdued. “It’s just what I hear, missus.”

  “Mrs. Holloway,” I said firmly. “Now get on with those onions.”

  Tess, to her credit, did close her mouth and work. She soon had the onions sliced rapidly and competently, which told me why Daniel had sent her to me.

  I guided her onward, and we got the roast braised and into the oven then filled pans with butter, throwing in the onions, garlic, new carrots, and asparagus, to let them sizzle. For fish, I ladled a sauce of dill, butter, and cream over cold cooked sole and followed that with clear beef broth with fresh buns. Once the roast was sent upstairs and the scraped plates came down, the footmen helped carry the food for the staff into the servants’ hall. I chose to eat my supper there instead of retiring to the housekeeper’s parlor, because I wanted to introduce Tess, and make sure she curtailed her sharp observations.

  As it was her first evening, I did not make Tess serve, but told her she’d be expected to wait on me and Mr. Davis most nights. Tess rolled her eyes, but when she dug into the food—not quite as savagely as she had at breakfast—she ate with enjoyment and without comment.

  The other servants asked where she came from. Tess was evasive and only told them “London,” but she said it in a cheery manner, and laughed, which put them at their ease. I had worried she’d be sullen, but Tess was friendly and open, not standoffish. I relaxed. If she continued this way, she’d fit in well. Strife below stairs was not a situation to be wished.

  After supper, Tess and I prepared for the next morning’s meal, and then I showed her where she was to sleep.

  The attic hall was chilly and stark, my candle throwing strange shadows onto the ceiling. The only place available to house Tess was a tiny cubbyhole at the end of the hall, and she’d have to share a bed with Emma, one of the downstairs maids. When I stopped in front of the chamber door, gesturing that this was hers, Tess flung her arms around me, nearly making me drop the candle.

  “Good gracious, girl,” I said, staggering under her onslaught.

  “Thank you, missus
—Mrs. Holloway.” Tess’s voice was clogged with tears. “Thank you for not slinging me out into the street. He said you’d be good to me, and you are. I ain’t been this warm and full in a long time, and now I get a bed with only one other girl. Don’t send me away, all right? Please, Mrs. H. I’ll do me best, I promise.”

  “Now, now.” I patted her with one hand while I held the candle well away from us. “Don’t be going on so.”

  Tess released me as abruptly as she’d embraced me and wiped her streaming eyes. “You don’t know, missus—Mrs. Holloway. You don’t know.” She scrubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Look at me weeping like a fool. I might be chopping the onions again.”

  I patted her shoulder once more. “Make sure you go to sleep. I’ll need you fresh in the morning.”

  “I’ll try, Mrs. Holloway. ’Course I’m so excited, I might just piss meself.”

  “Without language like that, young lady.” I sent her a frown, but my eyes were stinging—no doubt the smoke from the candle. “Good night, Tess.”

  “Night, Mrs. Holloway.” Tess banged into the room, singing out, “Hiya,” to Emma. She slammed the door, making the thin partitions shake.

  “I do hope you know what you’re about, Daniel McAdam,” I muttered as I made my way to my own bedchamber and inside. “I do hope.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Tess appeared in the kitchen at sunrise the next morning, her frock, apron, and cap neat, which I put down to Emma’s help more than Tess’s eagerness to please. I had to send Tess to the scullery to scrub her face and hands, which puzzled her, but she obeyed. I surmised that she’d had no one to tell her to wash herself before.

  I hadn’t had the chance to speak to Lady Cynthia or Mrs. Bywater about taking her on, but I would today. Tess was learning quickly, her help had already made a difference, and Sara was far happier waiting on the ladies upstairs than assisting me in the kitchen.

  I showed Tess how to boil a quantity of eggs to exact doneness without letting any of them crack, while I shoved bacon into the oven to grill. Mr. Bywater was very much an Englishman who liked eggs, bacon, and a mountain of buttered toast for his breakfast. Let his colleagues enjoy thin slices of beefsteak or a pile of sweet fruit, but for Mr. Bywater, it was eggs and bacon and buttered toast, in some form or other, like the omelets and mushrooms I’d served the day before.

  Because of Mr. Bywater’s fondness for toasted bread, I had convinced Mr. Davis to purchase a rack that could toast a half dozen slices in the fire at once. I buttered the bread before I shoved the rack into the oven, using an iron bar that clamped around it to guide it, and let the flames do their work. I’d keep one pile of finished toast warm on the stove while the next seared.

  I always used leftover bread from the day before for this task—no need to waste fresh baked on something that would become a butter-soaked crust. For the day’s bread, I showed Tess how to punch down the dough I’d left to rise overnight, knead it a bit, and set it aside for another rise.

  “Good Lord.” Davis was at the kitchen table, coatless, his face hidden behind his newspaper. I’d put one stack of toast out for the staff to enjoy as they went about their morning duties, and a loud crunching came from behind the paper, his exclamation muffled.

  “What is it now, Mr. Davis?” I asked. “Do we have a new prime minister? Or did your astronomers discover yet another planet circling the sun?”

  Tess darted me a look of inquiry, but I shook my head. Mr. Davis liked to bombard me with all sorts of information, from the important to the trivial.

  “There’s been a murder,” Davis said, incredulity in his voice.

  I leaned down to clamp my bar around the toast rack and withdraw the next batch. The slices were golden, just beginning to char. Perfect.

  “There’s a murder every night in London,” I observed. “Or seems like. Men will drink and men will fight. Knives come out, and there’s blood on the taproom floor. One can only pity them.”

  “That’s true,” Tess said from where she cut rashers of bacon. “Sometimes wives off their husbands for beating them, or husbands off their wives for having lovers. Sometimes the man offs the lover too, for good measure.”

  Davis flapped the paper down and stared at us. “Listen to you going on. Never knew ladies were so violent. No, this caught my eye because of our Mr. McAdam.”

  I froze, my clamp missing the toast rack’s bar.

  Tess squeaked. “Mr. McAdam?” She voiced the questions that stuck in my throat. “What about him? Never tell me ’e’s been murdered!”

  Davis scowled at her. “Well, I don’t know, do I? Remember the pawnbrokers I told you I saw him working in, Mrs. Holloway? There was a dead body found there this morning. A man’s body—he was wearing a brown wool suit and had dark hair, but his face was all smashed in. He was lying in the middle of the floor, the only man there. Tut-tut. I hope that’s not our Mr. McAdam. ’Twould be a shame. He could tell a good story.”

  My iron bar fell with a clatter, bouncing against the oven door and hitting my foot as it landed on the floor. I never felt it. Nor did I feel the heat of the oven, or the searing on my outstretched hand as the master’s breakfast toast caught fire and went up in flames.

  6

  The next thing I knew, a strong arm caught me around the waist and hauled me from the oven door. I came to myself sitting hard on a chair, Tess unwinding herself from me and peering into my face.

  “You all right, Mrs. H.? You had your hand right in the fire!”

  I looked down at my palm, which was indeed reddening, but Tess must have exaggerated. I was well acquainted with burned flesh, and this was but a light searing.

  The scullery maid rushed in with a cloth, dripping water all over the freshly scrubbed floor. She and Tess, both exclaiming and fussing, wrapped my hand in the cold cloth, which, in the back of my mind, I admitted was soothing. Tess rescued the toast rack, but the toast was a charred mess. I must rise and make more.

  But I could not move. I pictured Daniel lying facedown on the dirty floor of the pawnbrokers in a congealing pool of blood. Dead, dead, killed by whomever he’d been awaiting to offer him antiquities stolen from museums.

  It could not be Daniel, I told myself, not the man with the warm smile and blue eyes that lit when he saw me. Not the man who had kissed me under the bridge in Cornwall, such a kiss I’d never experienced in my life. Not Daniel with the voice that could make even the worst day better, a laugh that cut through all my troubles.

  Tess’s brown eyes were wide in a pale face, her freckles standing out like specks of cinnamon on cream. “It can’t be him, Mrs. H. Not our Mr. McAdam. He’s too cunning to get himself killed, inn’t he?”

  She spoke stoutly, with the air of one trying to convince herself. We shared a look of worry.

  Mr. Davis came to hover over me, his false hairpiece askew. The paper hung in his hands, and the cords with which he tied his shirtsleeves trembled.

  “Read it to me,” I said. “Quickly. The entire article.”

  “Not much of an article,” Mr. Davis said, his blue eyes troubled. “But it’s a touch gruesome.”

  “Please, Mr. Davis.”

  Mr. Davis spread open the newspaper and scanned until he found the right place.

  BODY IN THE STRAND

  A boy making deliveries late on the night of the seventeenth observed a door to a shop ajar, and alerted a constable. The constable, upon his arrival, found, to his horror, that a gentleman lay stretched out on the floor below the counter, with musical instruments, books, and weapons leftover from Crimea dangling above him. The man wore a brown wool suit and heavy boots, worn gloves, and had thick brown hair. His face was too crushed to be identified. The constabulary encourage anyone who might know who this poor fellow is to report to a constable or inquire at the Metropolitan Police.

  My heart beat in little bangs. The word
s could describe Daniel—or they could describe one of his customers, or the man who’d visited him that night—Varley. I’d only caught a glimpse of him, but he’d been dressed so. Daniel was expert at blending in with his fellows in whatever guise he took that I could not be certain it was he until I saw the body.

  I rose to my feet . . . and found myself in the chair again. “Steady, Mrs. H.,” Mr. Davis said in concern.

  Tess had my hands, including the one covered in the damp cloth. “We’ll go, Mrs. Holloway. We’ll find out.”

  “Yes.” My voice was barely a whisper. “Yes. We must not let him be unidentified, buried anonymously, without a name, friends . . .”

  “I can’t understand what you’re saying.” Tess regarded me with consternation. “Come on, then. We’re off to Scotland Yard.”

  “Hang about,” Mr. Davis said. “You can’t both go. What about the master’s breakfast?”

  Tess had me out of the chair, steadying me on my feet. “She can’t go alone,” she said to Mr. Davis. “Can’t you see she’s in a state? I’ll have to make sure she gets on all right. The breakfast is done—there’s already one pile of toast finished. Surely, you can carry it upstairs to his worship? You’re a butler, ain’t ye? You too lofty to both serve at table and get the food there?”

  Tess had me moving to the back door as she spoke, plucking down my everyday bonnet and coat from their hooks, while Mr. Davis spluttered behind us.

  “You watch your tongue, girl,” Mr. Davis called to Tess. “I’ll box your ears, wretched creature.”

  “Ya have to catch me first!” Tess yelled behind her, and then she had me out the door, herding me up the stairs.

  Mount Street was its usual bustling self for a Saturday morning. The aristocrats might be lying abed, but the working class were scrambling to provide them fuel, food, drink, and every device known to man to make their lives run smoothly. Add to this the usual London traffic moving through the street to elsewhere, and there was a nice crowd.