Obsession

by Claire Lorrimer

  ‘I am awaiting your answer, Ellen!’ Felicity was saying sharply, hoping that for once the woman had something to tell her. But Ellen’s face remained impassive.

  ‘I’m afraid I have little to tell you, madam,’ she said in level tones, wondering at the same time why she had not long since given up hope of her, Ellen, discovering any discord between husband and wife. No couple could be more devoted, and both were totally besotted with their little boy.

  Ellen herself was not fond of children, and had never wished to marry and have a family. All she had ever wanted since the day her younger sister had been run over by a carriage and so badly injured that she had been physically handicapped was to make Susan’s life as bearable as possible. Nearly all of the money Ellen earned went to pay the rent for the two cold, damp basement rooms in London where her sister lived out her purposeless life. One day, Ellen had vowed, she would have saved enough money to buy a little bungalow by the seaside, where they both could live; take in a lodger, perhaps, to help make ends meet.

  ‘The master is still sharing madam’s bed each night,’ she reported. ‘As you asked me to do, I always take note of the bed after I have dressed madam and she has gone downstairs and it is always in its usual state of disarray. Jenny tells me that when she comes up in the morning with madam’s hot chocolate she quite often finds them with their arms about one another if they haven’t heard her knock on the door.’

  Felicity frowned. ‘So there is still no marital discord!’ she muttered. ‘As you know, Ellen, I expect you to tell me immediately if they disagree with one another or quarrel in your hearing. Are you taking note of any gossip in the kitchen about them?’

  Ellen’s face remained expressionless as she replied in level tone, ‘Yes, madam! I am obeying your instructions precisely.’ She paused, looking down at her hands before adding in a quiet tone. ‘It is not my place to comment, madam, but I think I should say that it seems to me as if they are still very much in love.’

  It was a moment or two before Felicity, her forehead creased in a frown, said sharply, ‘Perhaps you are not present when they have disagreements, Ellen. You should keep better watch upon them. I will pay extra if this requires more of your time.’

  Ellen’s face remained impassive. ‘Do you wish me to enquire if any of the staff have seen …’

  ‘Certainly not!’ Felicity interrupted sharply. ‘I do not wish anyone but you to know I am concerned. Your position here is important to me for reasons I have no intention of explaining to you. All I require of you is that you will continue to do your best to observe any discord between the couple, and report it to me. Now give me my cloak and hurry yourself. I have been here quite long enough.’

  Without bothering to say goodbye, she opened the door and made her way back downstairs. She did not, therefore, see the look of scorn on the Ellen’s face as she muttered to herself, ‘She wants him, wants the master, and the only way she can hope to get him is if he turns against the mistress – but why should he? She dotes on him every bit as much as he dotes on her. Not that I care if Her Ladyship chooses to waste her money in the hope they will start quarrelling or lose their interest in their marital pleasures. So long as she continues to pay me, I’ll do what she asks and keep my mouth shut.’

  She would, she told herself, do anything within reason to be able to move her crippled sister to the seaside. Ellen went down the backstairs to the kitchen in the hope that the delicious-smelling game pie Cook had baked for luncheon had not all been eaten, and that Mr Fletcher would permit her to sit down belatedly at the servants table and eat what remained. Mr Fletcher was the undisputed head of the Edgerton household staff and a man not to be argued with. His rule over all the servants prevailed; he was only unable to control Ellen’s movements when her mistress required her services.

  One thought always uppermost in Ellen’s mind was that she would do anything required of her that would not put her job in jeopardy – anything that the lovesick Mrs Felicity Goodall required in return for the much-needed addition to her present pay.

  Returning downstairs to the drawing room, Felicity put her arms round Harriet’s shoulders and, thanking her for an enjoyable afternoon, kissed her warmly goodbye. She would have liked to have kissed Brook, too, but knew she could not do this casually as if she were no more than a close friend. For the time being, no one in the world, last of all Harriet, must know that she had fallen hopelessly in love. It was the first time in her life that Felicity had ever been in love. Despite being the daughter of one of the richest men in the country, the fortune her father had left her and Paul could not buy Brook for her. As she rode home with her groom, Felicity contemplated the fact that it had almost ceased to be a pleasurable excitement standing close to Brook, feeling his lips on her hand when he greeted her, being in his arms for the duration of an old-fashioned waltz on one memorable evening at a New Year’s Eve ball. Her marriage had been virtually barren. Her late husband, a heavy drinker, was almost incapable of enjoying a normal husband’s pleasure in his wife’s body. When he had done so, there had been no enjoyment in it for her, nor any desire for it, but even standing close to Brook Edgerton was enough to set her heart racing and her knees to tremble. It was only with enormous self-control that she had been able to appear no more than a good-natured, amusing friend and neighbour.

  There had been moments, Felicity thought as Melton Court came into sight, when she’d felt a sudden frisson of fear that Harriet might see or sense the effect Brook had upon her: but she circumvented any such suspicion by flirting very obviously not only with him, but with any other man in her vicinity. She played the part of a merry widow, as her brother called her, and was unfailingly welcomed as a friend, not least by Brook. It was, however, never less than painfully obvious to her that, even at the end of a happy afternoon riding side by side, he was always in a hurry to get back to his wife.

  TEN

  1867

  Paul Denning was a cheerful, likeable fellow and Brook, who was much the same age, enjoyed his company. From time to time when Brook was in London on business, he would dine with Paul at his London house in Cadogan Square. He was, too, impressed by the way Denning had made himself responsible in many ways for his widowed sister.

  On the last occasion, after Brook had left the house to return to his club for the night, Paul found himself harping back over the past. He poured himself another glass of port and carried it slowly up to his bedroom. He had, with some difficulty, refrained from confiding in Brook the reason for his exceptional mindfulness of his sister.

  In the days of their childhood they had lived with their parents in Stockton, a seaport over two hundred miles from London. Their father, Matthew Denning, had started work as a boy in the ship-building industry and became more and more interested in the development of the Stockton-and-Darlington Railway where they had produced the first train to carry passengers as well as goods to the capital.

  With single-minded purpose, Matthew Denning had over the years worked himself up to a senior position. Convinced that it would be only a matter of time before railways were constructed all over the country, he saved as much money as he could and invested it in rail transport shares. By the time he was fifty, he was a very wealthy man.

  It was then that Matthew Denning had married a woman twenty years younger than himself, and a year later, fathered Paul. The following year his wife died following the birth of a baby girl.

  From stories Paul’s father had told him, Paul knew how perilous the life of his little sister, Felicity, had been. Only the constant care of an experienced wet nurse had saved the baby’s life although, at first, they feared she would be mentally handicapped. Two more years passed before she suddenly started speaking and taking note of what went on around her. By the time she was five years old, she was not unlike other children of her age, although considerably more active than they were. ‘Hyperactive’ was the phrase their doctor had used to describe her behaviour.

  Matthew Denning was by then rich
enough to move himself and his family south, where he bought the imposing Melton Court, a large, red-brick mansion set in established grounds, sent Paul to one of the best public schools and hired a governess – an impoverished gentleman’s widow – to tutor his daughter and teach her the manners pertaining to the class of society which he intended to infiltrate.

  Away as often as not at school, Paul only learned much later of some of his young sister’s transgressions. Hopelessly spoilt by her indulgent father, she expected all her likes and dislikes to be met without delay. At the age of twelve she was so resentful of her governess’s discipline that she began putting tiny amounts of juice, from the poisonous berries she had squeezed from deadly nightshade berries she had found in the hedgerows, into the unfortunate woman’s food. It was her unlucky victim who had warned her about the dangerous effects they produced. Felicity had made no excuse when confronted with the failed attempt to kill her governess. As she was still quite young, their father had shrugged off the matter, saying Felicity would have had no idea that her childish ‘prank’, as he called it, could have such very serious consequences – might even have killed her. The governess was dismissed with a handsome remuneration for the shock she had received, and Felicity was cautioned never again to ignore grown-ups’ warnings about dangerous substances.

  With Felicity being so young, it was not long before the whole episode was forgotten. Seeing no further need for his pretty daughter to have an extensive education, Matthew Denning did not replace the governess but arranged for her to be tutored three hours a day by the local curate – he was unaware that Felicity ran rings around the young fellow and seldom completed the homework he set for her. When she reached the age of fifteen he finally sent her to a select finishing school.

  Other incidents of a less serious nature than that of the governess had followed when Felicity reached her teens. She was a highly strung, vivacious, energetic girl, always laughing and singing if she were not having one of her tantrums, which occurred when she could not get her own way. She was popular with the various girls of her own age at the finishing school and had many friends. Paul, by then up at Oxford, was proud of the compliments his university friends paid his sister, and their father boasted his daughter would have no problem finding a husband when she came of age.

  Only Paul, when home for the holidays, was aware of Felicity’s dark moods: days when for some reason or other she could not achieve what she happened to want, and would fly into an ungovernable temper. On one occasion she had even threatened to kill him because he would not agree to include her when he went with a group of friends to ski in the French Alps. At the time he was hard put to shrug off the episode, having been quite frightened by the look on his sister’s face as she threatened him, brandishing one of their father’s ornamental swords as she did so.

  On another occasion, Felicity had run over one of the dogs in the governess cart to whom she had taken a dislike. She claimed it was an accident, but having seen the incident from a window, Paul knew it had been quite deliberate. Deeply concerned about these incidents, he had consulted with his father as to whether the unfortunate start to his sister’s life could have affected her brain in some way. Matthew Denning, now a very sick man on the verge of death, refused even to consider such a thing, telling Paul that females were known to have what he called ‘funny turns’ at certain times of the month, as Paul would discover for himself when eventually he was married, and he should be more tolerant.

  The result of his sister’s erratic behaviour thus explained as customary for females, Paul had elected to remain a bachelor, amusing himself when he felt like it with chorus girls who were always available to wealthy young men like himself. Their jolly behaviour never reminded him of the worrying side of his sister’s dark moods.

  It had been a relief when Felicity agreed to marry the man her father had chosen for her before he died. George Goodall was almost the same age as her father, and was every bit as indulgent. For a year or two all had been well with the marriage, Felicity lacking for nothing that her wealthy husband could buy for her. Then, without known reason, he had suddenly died. The doctors were unable to discover the cause of death. His heart and other vital organs all seemed to have been in excellent condition for someone his age, and it was only after his body had been released by the authorities for burial that Felicity had said quite casually to Paul, ‘Now at last I can go on a steam ship to America. George would not even consider it no matter how hard I pleaded, silly man, saying he would be ill on board ship.’ She had gone on to say that although her husband had bought her anything she asked for without question, and paid all the bills she ran up, he would never give her money of her own. Now that he was dead, she told Paul, she was free to do as she pleased without having to ask for money or permission to do so.

  ‘Did you not love him?’ Paul had asked, shocked by her indifference to her husband’s death. ‘When you agreed to marry him, despite my warning that he was too old for you, you insisted upon accepting George’s proposal.’

  Felicity’s reply had shocked him still more. ‘I didn’t dislike George. For one thing, I knew that, being an old man, he would almost certainly spoil me the way Papa always did. If I had married one of the silly young men who proposed to me, I would have had to lead the kind of life expected of a wife, catering to their husband’s wishes, their demands. Had I been born a boy like you, Paul, I could have done as I wished when I grew up. I made up my mind a long time ago that I was not going to waste my life having to obey a husband’s wishes. George so doted upon me, he almost always agreed to whatever I wanted – that is, until I asked him to take me to America.’

  Surely, Paul had thought at the time of her marriage, his sister was not devoid of the usual feminine wish to fall in love and be loved? All the poets, writers, dramatists had love as their main topic, yet since her husband’s death his sister had seemed quite shockingly pleased with her widowhood.

  For one distressing week, Paul was unable to get out of his mind the suspicion that somehow Felicity had contrived the untimely death of her elderly spouse. The thought was all the more distressing because, much as he wished it to be so, the suspicion did not seem utterly ridiculous: in the past, his sister had quietly disposed of anything she disliked or did not want. Least of all did he wish to remember the episode of the unfortunate governess who, as a child, Felicity had so disliked.

  It was with a sense of relief when, at first, after the funeral, Felicity had retired to the country for the necessary period of mourning. Visiting her there as often as he could, Paul managed to persuade himself that he must have been out of his mind ever to have considered such a shocking thing as his sister contriving her husband’s demise. He recalled how she had always been a bright, carefree, amusing companion, popular wherever she went in society and with her neighbours. It was no less than shocking of him, he told himself, ever to have had such unlikely suspicions of someone with Felicity’s vivacious, outgoing personality contriving her indulgent husband’s death.

  Paul had expected Felicity to fulfil her desire to go to America when she came out of mourning, but by then she had made new friends in the neighbourhood and become exceptionally close to the newly married Edgertons, who she saw several times a week.

  Paul liked Brook Edgerton, who never failed to invite him to his shoots, and was charmed by his lovely young wife, Harriet, who had become Felicity’s best friend. He well understood his sister’s laughing comment that if Harriet had not married Brook Edgerton first, she would most certainly have tried to ‘nab him as a husband!’ as she put it. Sharing the joke, Harriet promised that if anything ever happened to her, she would bequeath Brook to Felicity in her will. She had no cause to be jealous as Brook treated Felicity much as he might treat a sister or a male friend, and shrugged off what he termed her childish teasing.

  As time passed, Paul did find himself questioning whether this banter might have a more serious side, at least where Felicity was concerned. For the first time ever
, she was behaving in a far more feminine way – as if she was intent upon winning Edgerton’s admiration. In her conversations alone with Paul at mealtimes, she seemed to mention Edgerton’s name particularly often. Edgerton, however, had eyes only for his wife, who he so clearly adored.

  Not altogether easily, Paul managed to put his disquiet to the back of his mind, helped by the fact that he had fallen in love with a charming young French girl who had been sent to live in London with her aunt in order to learn English. He had neither the time nor the inclination to delve further into his sister’s life, and spent less time with her at Melton Court.

  It was only at night, after an evening carousing with his friends, that he found himself waking in the early hours unable to prevent the dark thoughts surfacing from deep inside his throbbing head. If Felicity really did want Edgerton for herself, she was certainly not going to be able to break up such a devoted couple, he told himself, nor was Edgerton the type of philanderer who might be tempted to take her as his mistress.

  What, he asked himself, would his sister do when she finally realized the desires he suspected her of having were thwarted? How serious was her mental state, which had been so determinedly ignored by their father?

  Tossing uneasily in his bed, Paul’s thoughts went round in circles. He had always shied away from the suspicion that his sister’s mind was at times undoubtedly deranged, still less that she might have caused her husband’s unexplained death. The memory returned of her driving deliberately over a young dog she had disliked, surfacing with other such thoughts: the day when she had screamed at him, her face distorted with fury, when he’d told her he would not take her to France with his friends. He had never quite forgotten the look on her face that day.