The Silversmith's Wife _ Sophia Tobin

by Tobin, Sophia

  Joanna pushed away the memory; it annoyed her, and what good did that do? In the past she had been able to dismiss her envy of those she served. But there was something about Harriet, and about the relationship between the Chichesters, which was creeping in under her defences. Some nerve had been found and pressed; and she did not know how to dissolve the irritation that welled up in her every day.

  ‘Joanna?’ Harriet had taken her place at the dressing table.

  Joanna started to tease out her hair. She did it carefully, as precisely as she arranged the pots and boxes on the tabletop, and as she did so she could not stop her thoughts from returning to her master.

  Mr Chichester had, at first, made nightly visits to his wife’s bedroom. As a paid confidante to a green young woman, Joanna was spared no detail. It was only in the last month or so that his visits had tailed off, and now ceased. Less laundry, she thought, which was good; then she realized that Harriet had not bled for some weeks, and the thought of a child halted her hands for a moment.

  She wished she didn’t know half the things she did. She wished she was still the innocent girl she had once been, before service forced her to know too much of others’ lives. Coming to this house on Berkeley Square had been a step too far on a long road. These days the experience weighed her down, hardening not just her heart but her face too: setting valleys and ravines into skin that had once been fresh and soft. Had he lived, she thought, Stephen would hardly recognize her now.

  Her hands moved; a little involuntary tug on Harriet’s hair. But, unusually, her mistress did not cry out.

  ‘What are you thinking of?’ said Harriet.

  ‘Only how I should do your hair,’ said Joanna.

  ‘You looked so thoughtful,’ said Harriet. Joanna opened the silver box that contained black pins.

  ‘I will tell you what I was thinking of,’ said Harriet. ‘I was thinking of how my servants lie to me.’

  Joanna looked up at their joint reflection in the huge mirror. Harriet’s blue eyes watched her, her lips compressed. Joanna saw her own face, and it looked strange to her: the dark hair drawn tightly back, her brown eyes, her features oddly passive and immobile. She thanked God for the lack of expression on her face: a cultivated inscrutability, worth the years of practice.

  ‘For example,’ said Harriet, ‘I know that my husband was not alone last night. That he was in the library with someone. And yet, you told me he had gone to his club.’

  Joanna’s mouth was dry. She continued to dress her mistress’s hair, turning her eyes to the task in hand. Let her talk, she thought, let her run the stream of her thoughts dry, and I will see what I am dealing with. It had not been a malicious falsehood; it had been a way of freeing herself from Harriet’s company. The master had dismissed his staff yesterday evening, for it suited him to have privacy. It was rare that the servants were all together, but they had played cards in the basement room known as the servants’ hall. Unusually, Joanna had enjoyed herself, even breaking through her brusque shyness to risk a remark or two. Now and then the butler had run upstairs and checked the silent staircase hall and the dim seam of light under the library door.

  ‘I heard something,’ said Harriet. ‘I suspected you had lied to me. I went to my window; and I saw a figure on the steps, all wrapped up in a cloak, so I went down. There was no one there. I could barely spend a moment on the steps. It was so cold.’

  Joanna imagined Harriet tiptoeing down the stairs; opening the front door, and stepping tentatively out on to the front steps, arms bare, her breath misting in the winter night. ‘Forgive me, but you should not go outside, madam,’ she said. ‘It is not right. What if someone had seen you? It would ruin your reputation.’

  They would know you are not a lady, she thought. That you are counterfeit, with the blood of a pit-owner flowing in your veins. She did not say it; for all her bitterness, she did not have the bent for deliberate malice.

  ‘no one saw me,’ said Harriet. The pettish tone had returned to her voice; her normal tone of a child, thwarted in her will.

  Joanna felt on safer ground. ‘It is for your health I worry the most,’ she said. ‘The cold is dangerous; what if you had caught a chill? I sought only to soothe you, madam. I believed Mr Chichester had gone to his club.’

  ‘Help me dress,’ said Harriet.

  Joanna laced her, and the knowledge that Harriet had not had her flux made her do it looser; there was no need for tight lacing with the current fashions, and she thought her mistress would not notice.

  ‘You lace as quickly as you sew,’ said Harriet, a little smile darting across her face. Joanna said nothing, but as she began to fasten up Harriet put her hand out, and took one of her wrists. ‘Tighter,’ she said. ‘I do not wish to be one of those fat old wives, neglected by her husband. I wish always to be a girl.’

  Joanna stared at her.

  ‘Go on,’ said Harriet.

  Joanna took a breath, and pulled. It was good the mistress couldn’t see it, she thought, her one chink of weakness. Because when she did it, she had to close her eyes.

  CHAPTER THREE

  2nd May, 1792

  The Chichesters will do well for me, I think; they wish for a fine toilet service to be made. Such a quaint idea, but one that takes a good deal of bullion, and a good deal of fashioning, so I am satisfied. The husband asked me how I had come to be a silversmith, and I spoke lightly of it, but as I walked away I thought further on it, and of how no man knows the truth that lies in my heart.

  After my mother’s death I was taken in by a family she had known. They were prosperous, charitable people and the father, Mr Pelletier, took to me and thought me worthy of his time. In his company, I saw my first jeweller’s shop. How my heart leapt at the sight of such wealth: the precious stones glittering, and the silver plate casting light over the room. I decided, earnest beyond my years, that this was where my vocation lay, and begged him to help me find an apprenticeship. Before long, I was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Cheapside; Mr Pelletier paid my premium partly in furs and partly in money. I believe his children envied the affection he had for me, for when he left this world they did not send word to me. I felt that, and resent it still. It is strange, with life, for my resentments seem to pile on top of each other, so that they all together build into an anger that haunts me. Why should things that happened so long ago cause me to crumple up a sheet of good paper, or make me wish to snap the pen in my hand as I stare at my ledger?

  As she emerged on to New Bond Street, Mary bowed her head. She had often thought there was something cruel about the morning light, and now splinters of it seemed to be embedding themselves into the sensitive membranes of her eyes. She felt the delicate, papery skin around her eyes crease in discomfort. With a pang of guilt she thought it was lucky Pierre was not here to see her, and tell her that she was not the fresh young girl he had married, her outward disintegration the sign of her inward inferiority.

  She had been left alone in the parlour all night, and even as the sun began to shine her people did not want to come and stir her. She hadn’t noticed the glow of sunlight around the shutters until Ellen came and took the keys again. ‘Are we to open up the shop, Mrs Renard?’ she said. She had taken on the role of spokesperson, the men of the house shying away from the mistress’s unpredictable state. Mary opened her mouth, but couldn’t formulate a reply. She felt empty of all emotion; anaesthetized by a general numbness.

  She heard Ellen pad back to the passage and report to the others that the mistress was insensible. There was a short debate, and Mary decided not to go out there and interrupt it; she had the vague sense that they were enjoying it. Whatever they had to say, she was not interested in it. She was saved from further decision-making when Grisa, the shop manager, arrived noisily on the scene. She heard his voice, heavily accented as always in imitation of her husband, expressing his shock and alarm as Ellen told him the news. He was a theatrical man who always wished to be attired appropriately, so she wondered whether she
might hear him beg leave to return to his lodgings to don full mourning. Instead he began to shape a response that the others could follow: ordering black cloth to drape the counters, chiding Benjamin for his uselessness, and weeping flamboyantly. All of these things he did loudly enough for her to hear from the parlour.

  As he gave directions for the others to rearrange the shop, Mary left quickly and quietly, unnoticed in the midst of diversion, like the most enterprising of prisoners. She ran down the stairs and out into the light, without even putting on her hat or cloak, still wearing the clothes of the night before. As she passed the window she saw Grisa waving his arms as he berated the apprentice. For all of his fastidiousness, she noticed that his wig was slightly askew.

  She had acclimatized to the light before she reached the end of Bond Street. She turned left along Piccadilly and walked without looking up until she came to Castle Street, where her sister lived. It had been months since she had last come to this door. There she knocked, persistently, until Mallory yanked the door open, cursing under her breath.

  The sight of Mary seemed to drain all of Mallory’s aggression away. She put her hand to her sister’s forehead. ‘Are you sick?’ she said.

  Mary shook her head. ‘It’s Pierre,’ she said. ‘Someone killed him. They wouldn’t bring you to me last night.’

  Her sister stared at her. Her brown eyes, so dark they seemed almost black even in the morning light, showed nothing. ‘You look like hell,’ she said, and taking Mary’s wrist, she pulled her into the house. Weakness wasn’t for the London streets, not at any time of day. ‘It’s a wonder you arrived here unmolested, looking like that.’

  Mary followed Mallory in and sank into a kitchen chair as her sister bellowed at her children and coerced them into going upstairs. The house, though tall enough to be impressive from without, was only two rooms deep, and much of its life revolved around the kitchen, its gloom only assuaged by the flickering of the fire. Mallory’s second husband had been dead a year and she often complained that her children’s noise swelled up and filled the space he had left behind. ‘Will you never give me any peace?’ she shouted after the retreating backs as they raced each other upstairs. Mary thought kindly of poor, complaining Francis Dunning; her brother-in-law had known her since childhood. Had he been here, he would have embraced her.

  Mallory did not; she moved around quickly, here and there, tidying things, as though at any moment she might start butting at the confines of the house. There had been no love lost between Mallory and Pierre. Even now Mary could sense that it was not grief agitating her sister, but rather the tension of words left unsaid. Mallory was so direct that she could sooner ignore the thrust of a knife than her own thoughts, always pushing to be spoken.

  Finally she sat down by the fire, opposite Mary.

  ‘How?’ she asked.

  ‘His throat was cut last night in Berkeley Square,’ said Mary.

  Mallory left a barely decent silence. ‘He ruffled too many feathers,’ she said. ‘He was bound to push someone too far, one day.’

  ‘You think someone killed him purposely?’ said Mary.

  ‘Drawing a knife across someone’s throat is hardly accidental,’ said Mallory. ‘Though for the number of enemies he had, it will not be worth you engaging the Runners to investigate. Unless there is someone they are thinking of for the crime?’

  Mary shook her head. ‘I thought footpads,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’ It crossed her mind that she had not even considered a motive, in the same way that she did not question why the rain fell or the sun rose.

  ‘Look at the state of you.’ Mallory got up, took out her comb from her pocket, and began to untangle her sister’s hair, carefully but firmly, ignoring Mary’s intake of breath when she tackled a knot.

  ‘Dr Taylor will call a coroner’s meeting. I should go,’ said Mary.

  ‘No reason for you to be there, even if they let you.’

  ‘I feel I should. Perhaps it would be real for me, if I saw him.’

  ‘With your nature?’ said Mallory. As a child Mary had been plagued by nightmares; small traumas brushed off in moments by Mallory had lasted weeks for her. ‘It’s real enough as it is. No husband, no income.’ She finished the combing to her satisfaction, and sat back down.

  They looked at each other. ‘Can you be our plain old English Mary again, no more madame this, and madame that, now he is dead?’ said Mallory.

  ‘You’re glad of it, aren’t you?’ said Mary.

  Yes. The word appeared in her mind as if Mallory had spoken it aloud.

  ‘Don’t snap my head off,’ said Mallory sharply. Mary wondered how, on such a morning, she could still be rebuked. ‘It’s a terrible thing and I’m not saying it’s not. I just thought you could be an Englishwoman again. It’s probably his French mouth that got him into trouble. Someone fancied him a Jacobin, all the stuff he was fond of spouting. He’d say anything if he could vex someone.’

  Mary regarded her sister carefully; the way she had gathered her teeth together under tight lips, she was just about suppressing a tut. She was right, she supposed, in her remembrance of Pierre talking in that way: after the Revolution, he’d really laid it on.

  ‘Who’s at the shop?’ Always businesslike, Mallory was. ‘I hope you haven’t gone and left all the doors and windows open, in the care of that fool Grisa.’

  ‘Ellen and Benjamin are there,’ said Mary. ‘People will come. Everyone will have heard.’

  ‘Of course they will. What do you expect? They’re probably rummaging around in the plate chest as we speak.’

  ‘No they’re not. Grisa is a faithful guard. I trust him as I would a brother.’ She felt unbearably tired. She had come to Mallory for comfort, but now she could almost hear the chime of silver on silver, the greasy fingerprints left on valuables looked over. ‘Oh for goodness’ sake,’ she snapped, irritation breaking through. ‘no one will touch my plate.’ Mallory tutted out loud this time, as though to indicate that, on a normal morning, she would have said more. She trusted no one; not even a theoretical brother. Mary took her arm.

  ‘Will you not ask me how I feel?’ she said.

  Mallory was stilled at last. She stood, and it seemed to Mary that her words had dissolved her sister’s rage. ‘No,’ she said, eventually. ‘No, I will not.’

  ‘I feel nothing,’ said Mary.

  Mallory put her hands on Mary’s shoulders. ‘Hush,’ she said. ‘It is over.’

  When she walked back to Bond Street, the crowds, the noise, the cold sunlight all made Mary feel giddy. She tried to hold her shoulders back, to walk as Mallory would, but the effort only lasted for a moment, before the fear came, overtaking everything. I said my silver, she thought. I said it was mine. She glanced over her shoulder. And for a moment it was as if Pierre walked beside her.

  ‘Everything,’ he said. ‘Everything you have, you owe to me.’

  There was almost nothing Edward Digby liked more than a good coroner’s meeting, and Pierre Renard’s was no exception. He arrived early at the tavern near St George’s, Hanover Square, and dallied around outside greeting some of the tradesmen he knew. It was a cool evening, but it had been a day of pale sunshine and a vein-blue sky, and the light had cheered him. When he’d amused himself for half an hour he went inside the tavern, the customary place for coroner’s meetings in the parish, and watched the men as they arrived. The constable did not come; he had told Digby he had a particularly profitable case to pursue that evening, and besides, Digby himself was the key witness.

  He’d felt better today, and not just because it was a bright day. When he’d got home after discovering Renard he had slept in the arms of a woman – a tart, but still a woman. He could not remember how long it had been since he had been held like that, but her embrace had imparted to him a liquid warmth that had clung to his skin, blood and bones. He felt happy. He thought if he had that warmth every night, he would soon be cured of his ills.

  In the chill of the evening
the cold was finding him again and he was obliged to rub his hands together for warmth, cursing the innkeeper for his meagre fire. Though he stayed to the side, trying to disappear into the shadows and merely observe, his red hair and jiggling limbs made this almost impossible. Dr Taylor, the coroner, was first to arrive. He had been appointed as coroner only a year before, and Digby wondered how the well-connected Taylor found balancing the needs of the dead with those of the expectant mothers of Mayfair. The man certainly looked tired.

  After Taylor, the members of the jury followed. Most of them didn’t care to speak to Digby, of course; they had their own concerns, and merely glanced at him before looking for someone more useful to converse with. Before long the air in the room seemed thick with self-importance. The tone of their voices rankled with him, and he could feel his good mood slipping away.

  Henry Maynard, the foreman of the jury, was one of the last in, and the first to acknowledge the watchman. He had the relaxed demeanour of a man past fifty who had nothing to prove to his fellow men. Digby liked him: Maynard was a real gentleman; unobtrusive, not flashily rigged up, and always free with his coins.

  ‘My good man,’ Maynard said, by way of a salute. Digby managed a smile, although it didn’t quite reach his pale eyes.

  ‘What’s your business here today?’ said Maynard.

  ‘It was me who found him,’ said Digby, nodding to his right, where they were bringing the body in. He said it in the same voice he always used: emotionless. But he felt cheerful about his find. He was the talk of the watch. Long would Watkin regret staying in and reading poetry.