Suspended in quiet between luncheon and afternoon tea, the kitchen stood cavernous and eerily silent, interrupted only by a clashing of pots and girlish giggles from the scullery next door, accompanied by a loud male shout from outside.
Hetty sat reading a newspaper in a wheel back chair beside the range, her salt-and pepper hair fastened in a tight bun on the back of her head. Her black skirt fell to an inch above swollen ankles and puffy feet, a delicate floral-patterned cup and saucer and tiny teapot sat on the table in front of her.
Flora took in the mutton-leg sleeves of the woman’s black dress that was otherwise shapeless; though without an apron now she was not working. She might have been in mourning too, had not Flora known this was how Hetty always dressed.
‘Hetty?’ Flora paused beside her chair. The woman raised her head slowly from the newspaper, her eyes sharpened though her face did not so much as flicker in either recognition or welcome.
‘It’s Flora. Flora Maguire that was. Did Scrivens not mention I was coming?’
Hetty seemed uncertain of her, as if Flora were a stranger and not the girl who had practically grown up in this kitchen. Perhaps since her marriage Flora had changed more than she realized.
‘Flora is it?’ A crease appeared between the old woman’s eyes as she considered this information. ‘I was only saying to Mr Maguire the other day that I hadn’t see you for a while.’
‘That’s right, quite a while.’ Hetty must be at least seventy, so perhaps a month was similar to a year in her mind.
‘Mr Maguire died, Hetty. Flora said gently, the words still painful to say.
‘You don’t have to remind me,’ Hetty brought a work-reddened hand to her chest, the knuckles swollen and arthritic. ‘A riding accident weren’t it?’ Her thin lips puckered. ‘Though Mr Maguire’s the last person I imagined would lose his life that way. Lord Vaughn maybe or even Lady Jo, they’re always off about the place jumping fences. But Mr Maguire.’ She broke off and shook her head. ‘Now that did surprise me.’
‘It surprised me too, Hetty. I don’t suppose you knew where he was going that day?’
‘Going, dear?’ Hetty went back to her newspaper. ‘He didn’t tell me. Why should he?’ She repeated the words with the same inflection Tom had. ‘It were his day off. His time was his own.’ Her eyes widened in a way which said one should never encroach on a person’s privacy. ‘That’s why you’re here isn’t it? Cos he’s dead?’
Flora winced. ‘Yes, that’s right. Do you happen to know if Father was worried about something in the days before he died?’ The second the words were out Flora knew them to be futile. Riordan Maguire never confided his feelings to anyone. The chances of him sharing personal problems with Hetty were remote.
‘No dear, Mr Maguire wasn’t a brooder. He just got on with things.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Flora exhaled on a sigh. ‘There’s something else I wanted to ask, if you wouldn’t mind?’
‘What’s that, dear?’ Hetty lifted the newspaper higher, though her eyes moved too rapidly for normal reading. Flora had to fight an urge to snatch it away and demand she pay attention. Aware she should not take her frustration out on Hetty, she took a deep breath and forced a smile onto her face.
‘Do you remember my mother, Lily? Lady Vaughn’s maid?’
The woman’s wrinkled hands stilled for a second, then she directed a smile past Flora’s shoulder as if she were looking into another time. ‘Course I do, dear. Lovely girl was Lily, and pretty as an angel.’ Her eyes dipped to the page again. ‘She’s not here no more.’
‘I know.’ Flora closed her eyes, summoning patience. ‘She died when I was a child. Don’t you remember?’ Flora frowned. Had Hetty become more forgetful since the last time Flora spoke with her? In the past it was the odd misplaced word or an inability to recall names, but she seemed more vague now, almost disengaged.
‘I remember everything, my girl,’ Hetty snapped, as if to answer Flora’s internal question. ‘I’ve been here at the Abbey since God were a lad.’
Flora smiled at Hetty’s stock response to anyone who dared question the running of her kitchen. She had heard it so often as a child, she had half believed it.
The clack of the door latch announced the arrival of a slender woman who looked to be in her late twenties whom Flora had not seen before. She must have come to work at the Abbey within the past year or so.
Her toffee-brown eyes were set in an oval face above a chin too pointed to be pretty, though she carried herself with confidence. A small white scar cut across her top lip that slightly fattened her nose, but at the same time was somehow attractive.
With a polite sketched curtsey to Flora and an indulgent smile at Hetty, the woman went straight to a bench table by the door where she began transferring eggs from the basket she brought with her into a white bowl.
‘I’m not one to gossip,’ Hetty said without acknowledging the newcomer. ‘Though to my mind Lily should have stayed at home with her husband, not gone where she shouldn’t have. Messing with things that didn’t concern her. Not when she had a child to care for. Lovely little girl with pretty chestnut hair she had. Much like yours, dear.’
‘That was me, Hetty.’ Flora suppressed the impatient edge that crept into her voice. ‘I’m grown up now.’
‘You, love? No, that can’t be right.’ Hetty’s eyes dulled. ‘Lily’s little one is no more than five or thereabouts.’
Flora sighed, unsure how to get the conversation on track again. A movement to her left showed the woman at the bench had stopped what she was doing, her hands stilled on the bowl and the way she stared at the wall ahead indicated she was listening.
‘Hetty.’ Flora’s tone grew more frustrated by the second. ‘What did you mean about Lily going where she shouldn’t?’
‘Ohh, can’t tell you that, dear. Never went there m’self. Not a respectable place are those houses in Barnard’s Row.’
‘The cottages near Knapp Road?’ Flora recalled the area was a notorious slum, due for condemnation in the not too distant future. Why would Lily have gone there? ‘Is that where my parents lived when they were first married?’
‘If you don’t mind my saying, Miss.’ The other occupant of the room turned from the bench, her hips braced against the edge and her hands clasped in front of her. ‘Hetty’s memory isn’t what it once was. She confuses what happened last week with something from twenty years ago. She’s been getting worse these last few months.’
‘I had noticed.’ Flora sighed. ‘Odd that Mr Scrivens didn’t think to mention it,’ she added archly. Nor Lady Vaughn either. ‘I suppose I didn’t want to admit her memory might be fading. She’s the only link I have to my mother, you see.’ She indicated Hetty, who studied her paper with apparently no interest in their conversation. ‘I hope I haven’t upset her.’
‘Don’t worry, she’ll have forgotten all about it five minutes after you leave.’ She closed the space between them. ‘It’s Flora isn’t it? Mr Maguire’s daughter?’ At Flora’s nod she continued, ‘Lady Vaughn said you were coming. I’m Amy, Amy Coombe.’ Her hand drifted to her mouth as if she knew Flora was looking at the small imperfection, although at that moment that was not in fact true. ‘I’m so sorry about Mr Maguire, he was a lovely man to work for.’
‘Thank you, and it’s nice to meet you, Amy.’ Fresh grief rushed into Flora’s chest. When would the pain lessen?
‘I’m the assistant housekeeper,’ she continued. ‘I only came to work here a few months ago, which is why we haven’t met before.’
‘Maguire accused me of making those men sick, you know,’ Hetty’s sudden announcement brought Flora attention back to her. ‘I told him, no one ever suffered from my cooking, not in all the years I’ve been here.’
‘Sick? Who got sick?’ Flora split a look between the old woman and Amy.
‘Some of the workers fell ill after the summer fête,’ Amy gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Mr Maguire thought it might have been food poisoning.�
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‘And my father accused Hetty of causing it?’ Flora frowned, disbelieving. ‘It doesn’t sound like something he would say.’
‘It wasn’t.’ Amy dragged a stool across the floor, and straddled it. ‘Mr Maguire asked if the meat served at the fête was fresh, that’s all. He questioned the butcher as well. It wasn’t as harsh as it sounded, though Hetty took it to heart. She’s complained about it at least twice a day since.’ She hunched her narrow shoulders in a deprecating shrug.
Hetty had gone back to her newspaper, her unfocussed eyes scanning a page she still had not turned.
‘What was my father’s interest in these men?’
‘They were all estate workers.’
‘Did my father find out if it was food poisoning, or something else?’ Flora asked.
Amy shook her head. ‘If he did, he didn’t tell me. I doubt it was serious, for they recovered fairly quickly. And before you ask. No, I don’t know where Mr Maguire went the day he died. Hetty was having one of her restless days and I had to run the kitchens. I didn’t even know he had gone.’
‘I see,’ Flora said slowly, though nothing had been made clearer.
‘I have tea with Lily and her little girl every Tuesday,’ Hetty interrupted them again. ‘Fleur she calls her. Funny name, foreign I think, though it suits her.’
‘I am that little girl, Hetty.’ Flora had reconciled herself to the housekeeper’s random train of the thought, unable to imagine what it must be like for Hetty to lose her grip on the past. Was the present equally as cloudy? ‘That was the one thing I do know about my mother. She gave me the name Fleur when I was born. My Scottish grandfather felt it was unsuitable for a butler’s daughter, he said he would call me Flora. Somehow it stuck and no one calls me anything else.’ She carried on talking, her voice softer now as she concluded Hetty wouldn’t remember what she had said, but it hardly mattered.
‘They haven’t found the girl, have they?’ Hetty said, apropos of nothing.
‘What girl, Hetty?’ Flora responded out of habit, though she did not expect a sensible answer any more. ‘Do you mean Lily?’
‘Flighty bit that one.’ Hetty snorted. ‘All the men round here buzz round her like flies to sugar. Not just the young ones either. Not surprised she went off.’
‘Who went off?’ A shadow crossed Flora’s heart as the words sank in. Was that what had happened to her mother? She had simply met someone else and ran away with him? It would explain the hurt in her father’s eyes whenever her name was mentioned. It would also explain why she didn’t have a grave. Flora’s heart sank. Bunny was right when he intimated she might not like what she discovered. Why hadn’t she listened to him?
Frustratingly, Hetty had reverted to silence, her attention back on the newspaper though she had made no attempt to turn a page the entire time Flora had been talking.
‘I don’t think she meant your mother,’ Amy whispered.
Apart from Flora’s recurring dream, she had a sepia-tinted photograph on her father’s dresser of a fair haired, light-eyed woman with a gentle smile. A soft-voiced lady whom Flora had built up in her head as the love of her father’s life, a perfect, beautiful being taken too soon, who left a broken-hearted man behind her. A man who could not even bear to hear her name. In the space of a single day that image had been shattered. She had learned her mother had got herself pregnant and had to get married, and that the whispers she had heard as a child were most likely because Lily Maguire was considered ‘flighty’ by the rest of the staff.
‘I didn’t know my mother. Maybe Hetty’s memories aren’t inaccurate. Lily could well have been a flirt everyone gossiped about in corners.’ Flora rose from the wooden kitchen chair so fast, it toppled over onto the floor with a crash. ‘I’m-I’m sorry. I had better go.’ She bolted through the rear door into the kitchen garden; a well-trodden route she took by instinct, where the harsh afternoon sunlight seared her eyes.
Amy’s plaintive call for her to wait followed her, but she didn’t stop as she ran along the tiled pathway to the end wall where a bench stood against the brickwork next to the gate that led into the stables.
She slumped against the wooden gate, uncaring that the rough wood threatened to snag her dress, her breath coming in halting gasps that tore through her lungs. How typical that Hetty’s damaged memory recalled the one fact about her mother Flora didn’t want to hear. Flighty! That’s what she called her. Did everyone at Cleeve Abbey have the same opinion? She could hear them now. ‘That governess who thinks she’s something special is the daughter of that baggage who ran off. Poor Mr Maguire raised her all by himself. A saint he was.’
Tears blurred her vision as she stumbled through the arched gate, which slammed shut behind her. She leaned against the brick wall, letting the wind tug her hair from its pins and stole her choked breath.
The ordered symmetry of the kitchen garden with its bean canes, herb beds and neat pathways had given way to the raw beauty of Cleeve Hill where wild gorse, drystone walls and hedgerows criss-crossed the undulating hills like a patchwork. The air smelled sweet and green with a promise of rain. A pigeon’s rhythmic coo came from the tree, while the sound of a hand mower rattled from somewhere beyond the wall.
She had once played on the hill, the rooftops of the town spread before her like a child’s toy. As disturbing emotions crowded her head, she longed to let her feet take her down the incline once again, where a fall was only a stumble away and exhilaration replaced any fear she might hurt herself.
Her gut clenched at the thought she had not only lost her father, but the image she had carried all these years of her mother was now tainted. Had Hetty’s memory been intact, would she have allowed her thoughts free rein after keeping them to herself for so long? Perhaps not, but Hetty’s wandering mind took no one else’s feelings into account.
As much as it hurt to know the truth, at least she wasn’t being protected in ignorance any more. Flora at least knew what her mother was really like. She never did subscribe to the saying that ignorance was bliss.
Absorbed in her own misery, Flora didn’t register voices until she heard angry words from the other side of the kitchen wall. The first voice she didn’t recognize, though the second was the strident tone of Bracenose, Lord Vaughn’s estate manager.
His voice was deep, more a low rumble, so she couldn’t make out the actual words. However, whatever the first man had said seemed to infuriate Bracenose, whose response, though indistinct, was gruff and threatening.
The second man laughed, apparently not intimidated by the burly estate manager. Seconds later, the gate flew open and hit the wall, revealing a red-faced Bracenose.
Flora had left it too late to pretend she had not been listening, so the look he gave her made it clear he was aware she had been eavesdropping. He narrowed his eyes and seemed about to say something, but at the last second changed his mind. Instead, he gave her a curt, grudging nod before he continued round the side of the house.
Flora waited, wondering who would have the nerve to challenge a man who had run the estate for years, but when no second figure appeared, she approached the gate and peered through, but the stable yard stood empty.
9
The clock on the stable tower struck four just as Flora re-entered the house. She paused at the entrance hall mirror and rearranged her loosened hairpins, wiping away all remaining traces of tears.
In the sitting room Bunny sat sprawled on the sofa with a newspaper, one leg crossed over the other and an ankle swinging gently. He looked so relaxed Flora couldn’t help but smile, for he might have lived at Cleeve Abbey all his life.
‘There you are, Flora.’ He looked up, caught sight of her face, and instantly his smile withered. ‘My goodness, what is the matter?’
He crumpled the paper onto the sofa beside him and rose, drawing her into the room with a hand beneath her elbow.
‘Do I look a dreadful mess?’ She brought a shaking hand to her hair.
‘Impossible. You’r
e angelic as always, though anyone who knows you as I do can see you’re upset.’ He pushed the ruined newspaper aside to make room for her on the sofa before resuming his seat.
‘Remind me in future to listen to you more.’ She summoned a bright smile as she sat, but doubted it was convincing.
‘I take it your interview with the housekeeper did not go well?’ He angled his upper body towards her in a familiar listening pose.
‘Hetty does remember my mother, but according to her assistant, Amy, she confuses recent memories with past ones.’ Flora fumbled in a pocket for her handkerchief. ‘She said Mother was a flighty thing who always had men flocking round her.’ Her lips trembled and her nose ran, so she blew noisily into her handkerchief. ‘Not that I should be surprised. After all, she started me without the benefit of a wedding ring.’
‘I think you need a cup of tea.’ Bunny patted her knee, then advanced on the trolley where a large teapot sat on a stand over a flame.
‘Where is everyone?’ Flora gave the room a swift glance.
‘Lord Vaughn is in the office with William, they returned from Cheltenham a half hour ago. Eddy went to lie down. Poor chap’s still not feeling quite the thing.’ Bunny handed her a cup and saucer from which a wisp of steam arose. ‘As for the ladies, I have no idea.’
She took a sip of the hot, smoky-tasting tea, which made her feel instantly calmer.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t pay too much attention to servants’ gossip,’ Bunny went on gently. ‘In my experience, pretty girls often attract a certain amount of jealousy from others. I saw those photographs your father kept of Lily, and speaking as an expert, she was indeed a lovely woman.’
‘I know, and thank you for such a generous view of her character.’ Flora sniffed, cradling the cup in both hands. ‘Hetty also said Mother spent a lot of time in a place called Barnard’s Row. She “went where she shouldn’t” were her exact words.’
Murder at Cleeve Abbey Page 9
