“I have been in the village for two days and thought I would drop by, on the off chance that you might be able to accommodate a meeting for a few moments. I am most grateful to you for seeing me.”
Sandermere looked Maisie up and down, rather as he might judge a hunter. “Let’s adjourn to the drawing room.” He turned to his butler. “Mason. Tea in the drawing room.” The instruction was punctuated with neither please nor thank you.
Maisie suspected the drawing room was exactly as it had been when Sandermere’s parents were still alive and may not have had even a lick of paint since the turn of the century. The room seemed cluttered, with a worn brown leather chesterfield and an assortment of armchairs drawn close to a fireplace, now hidden by a needlepoint screen. Long, musty red-velvet drapes obscured a calm green view from the windows out toward the farms, the woodlands, and, to the right in the distance, the village of Heronsdene. Maisie thought the brickworks was probably not visible from the part of the house it faced but was instead surrounded by trees so the gentry’s view would not be sullied by such a thing as a factory.
Sandermere sat down on the chesterfield with something of a sprawl, leaning back into the corner of the seat and putting his boot-clad feet up on the low table upon which the butler would doubtless place a tea tray. He inclined his head and held out his hand toward an armchair with worn covers. Maisie rested her black bag alongside the proffered chair and sat down.
She was about to speak when the butler entered, set a tray to the side of his employer’s feet, and poured tea for both Maisie and Sandermere. Maisie made a point of smiling broadly and thanking the butler but, again, Sandermere barely nodded toward him.
“Mr. Sandermere, first of all, I would like to clarify the reason for my visit. I am here at the request of Viscount Compton of the Compton Corporation to conduct certain inquiries that will support the company’s purchase of the estate, except, of course, your residence and the immediate gardens and land. I am not here to discuss the division of the land prior to sale or issues such as rights-of-way.”
Sandermere raised an eyebrow, sipping his tea with an audible slurp. Maisie bristled but continued. She already felt slighted by his manner and fought the pressure to descend into immediate mistrust.
“I am, however, interested in incidents of small-time crime that seem to have beset the estate, with particular acts of vandalism at the brickworks and in the stables here—I understand you were lucky not to lose your horses.” Maisie looked down at papers she had drawn from her black bag. “I take it, though, that you were recompensed by insurances.”
“Indeed, Miss Dobbs, without which I would not have been able to bring the brickworks back to full output or provide shelter for my horses.”
“And your insurers are Lloyds.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“Now I also know something of the unfortunate burglary that took place last week.”
“Blasted Londoners! Lord, I know the farmers need them for the hop-picking, but what do you expect when a tribe of ruffians from the East End of London is set loose in the country? I’m amazed I didn’t lose more—but at least the two louts who broke in are in custody now.”
“Yes, that must be a weight off your mind, Mr. Sandermere.” Maisie paused. “Two small items were recovered—the culprits were caught with the goods on them—but I understand a significant haul is still missing.”
“Yes, all family heirlooms, not the easy-to-carry trinkets those London boys kept on them. A list has been submitted to the police and also to Lloyds.”
“It’s unfortunate that such family treasures cannot be replaced by money alone.”
“Yes, indeed. I am saddened beyond measure at their loss.”
Maisie reached for her tea, which she had set down when the interview began. She sipped; then, continuing to rest the saucer in her hand, she held the cup to her lips but did not drink. When she sipped again, she looked directly at Sandermere. “You do appear to have been victimized. I must ask if you have any idea, any thoughts as to who might have initiated the fires? The theft is more easily explained, as you have said yourself, a couple of London ne’er-do-wells. But what about the fires? There have been a number of fires in Heronsdene over the years. Do you think they are connected?”
“To be frank, I believe each fire in the village has an explanation. Perhaps a saucepan left on a stove for too long, or a chimney fire as a result of an overzealous villager loading up the logs—probably cut from my forests without permission! No, I’d be willing to bet those fires in the village are all coincidence, with nothing to draw them together at all. And the fires here?” Sandermere leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “To be honest with you, Miss Dobbs, I own everything you see when you stand at that window. In years gone by, my ancestors owned Heronsdene itself—owned every man, woman and child.” He leaned back, smiling, though it was not a warm smile of grace and inclusion, but one of arrogance. “Of course, feudalism died centuries ago, but most of the people who live in the village have their roots as intertwined with this house as with their own humble cottage. In fact, with a few exceptions, most of the villagers pay rent to me.”
“I see.” Maisie put down her cup and brought her attention back to her notes, then to Sandermere. “So what you are saying is that the fires on the estate are really the result of history’s follies seeping into the present. Bad blood from the past finding an outlet here, in 1931.”
“If you want to put it like that, yes.”
“Would you envisage that, should a sale go through, there would be no cause for the new owners to be concerned about continued delinquency?”
“No, no cause whatsoever. Once the act of retribution has had the desired result—for whatever the perceived infraction on the part of some long-lost ancestor—the need for more of the same is negated.”
Maisie pushed the clutch of papers into her black bag and stood up. “Thank you, I think that’s all for now, Mr. Sandermere.”
Sandermere came to his feet, pushed his hands in his jacket pockets, and walked to the door with her. “I suppose that when you’ve completed your reports, I will hear from Viscount Compton’s solicitors to move forward with the purchase.”
“I am not privy to the details of the purchase, Mr. Sandermere. As you have already been informed, my role is to complete a more informal report on the area and, indeed, to look at recent events in the vicinity of the estate and brickworks that might have an effect on the smooth takeover of a considerable acreage and a vital manufacturing asset.”
“Very good.” Sandermere nodded.
The butler stepped forward to escort Maisie to the door, and she bid good afternoon to Sandermere. She was about to cross the threshold but turned, calling to Sandermere, who had just set foot on the staircase. “Oh, Mr. Sandermere—one quick question.”
“Yes?”
“I’m curious—were you at all familiar with the Martin family, Jacob, Bettin and Anna?”
He shrugged. “I am familiar with them only because their lives were lost when the village was bombed by a Zeppelin during the war, Miss Dobbs. I was not in situ at the time, having returned to school.” He turned and continued walking up the stairs.
Maisie made her way back to the MG, settled into the driver’s seat, and shut the door. She chewed the inside of her cheek while surveying the mansion, then drove toward the main road, halting at a place she thought would not be visible from the house. Stepping from the motor car, she walked around the perimeter of the landscaped grounds toward the stable block. The stables, with stalls for seven horses, were quiet when she entered. There was no sign of the groom. Maisie suspected that he was probably in a tack room, applying saddle soap to deep brown leather or preparing buckets of bran mash for the horses—she’d counted three bay hunters and two gray carriage horses. One of the hunters glistened with sweat and smelled of liniment. She laid her hand to his flank and knew he had been galloped to the point of exhaustion. She could see that a groom had walked him cool,
then covered him with a soft flannel sheet packed with dry hay to absorb the moisture that still ran from his body. The horse searched for a sweet treat in her hand as she touched his nose, and she whispered to him while reaching up to rub his ear, “He wouldn’t dare do that if Frankie Dobbs were his groom—he’d soon see who’s boss!”
She walked on until she came to the part of the structure damaged by fire, passing the tack room on the left. The groom was not there. A tarpaulin was drawn across a gaping hole in the roof and down the side of the building, where repairs had yet to be completed. She looked up into the rafters, then closely at the remains of a wooden stall, now charcoaled and splintered. The detritus left by fire was not something about which she claimed to be an expert. However, she did know when she’d been told a deliberate lie—or two.
SEVEN
Maisie walked up the hill toward the gypsy encampment and stopped, as she had before, to survey her surroundings. The horses were clustered in a corner of the field, and when she looked up, she saw clouds in the distance, moving in from the coast. The pickers would not be put off by rain but would soldier on through any downpour, sheltering under tarpaulins drawn capelike across their shoulders as they worked.
Gypsy vardos were not the gaily painted horse-drawn caravans of common fairy-tale mythology but more workmanlike in appearance, of deep and earthen colors. This tribe’s vardos, with their accompanying tents, were all maintained well, and even now, close to teatime—not the afternoon tea of ladies in well-to-do homes but the more common hearty after-work repast—the rom, gypsy men, were tinkering with wheels and repairing roofs.
Maisie came closer and saw the lurcher emerge from the clearing, sit back on her haunches, and stare in her direction, nose held up to a breeze that gave notice of the visitor. When she reached a boundary visible only to the lurcher, the dog stood up, moved forward, and, without giving voice, walked silently alongside Maisie as she entered the clearing.
The black rotund cooking pot had been drawn across a blazing fire. Paishey and a woman Maisie knew as Esther were adding greens gathered from the hedgerows, first leaning forward toward the pot and then turning back to plates that held different ingredients. Maisie thought Esther even more gypsy-like than Paishey or Beulah. Her ruddy skin was framed by hair that had been pulled back at the crown, then pushed forward with carved wooden combs, giving the impression that she was wearing a mantilla, with jet-black tresses piled on her head before cascading veil-like across her shoulders. Each woman wore a copious white apron covering her waist-gathered skirt. The apron, Maisie knew, was worn less to protect clothing from stains and splashes than to provide a barrier between the body of the cook and the food to be eaten. In gypsy lore, if food came in close proximity to a woman’s body, it was considered mokada—sullied—and not worth the eating.
Beulah was sitting on the same log as before, so Maisie stopped to wait for the old woman to become aware of her presence. The dog moved toward her mistress and nudged her elbow, and Beulah turned, beckoning Maisie to sit beside her. The lurcher settled at Beulah’s side, remaining ever watchful.
“Sit, rawni,” instructed Beulah. “Jook caught us a nice couple of shoshi.” She nodded toward the pot. “You’ll have a full belly tonight.”
“I’ll be glad of that,” said Maisie. She did not have a deep knowledge of the gypsy dialect but knew enough to understand that the dog had caught a brace of rabbit. Maisie waited to be spoken to again.
“So, you’ve been to see the sap up at the house.” Beulah nodded toward Sandermere’s mansion.
Sap: snake.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“What’n be your business?”
“I know a man who wants to buy the whole estate.” Maisie swept her hand around to indicate the breadth of the buying. “He wants it to be a clean chop” A clean sale. She knew this sale wouldn’t be sealed gypsy-fashion, with a banging together of knuckles to bind the agreement and barely a word spoken. Instead there would be offers and counteroffers, punctuated by pages of land law utilizing long-outdated vocabulary, and mazelike codicils to protect both parties. Indeed, if trust had been involved at all, she would not have a job.
Beulah reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of wood. She held it to her mouth and began to chew. She was quiet for a moment, then regarded Maisie, shaking her head. “The moosh is a dinlo.” The man is a fool. She stopped chewing and put the wood back in her pocket.
“Have you had dealings with him?” asked Maisie.
At that moment, Webb came into the clearing holding an armful of wood. He set the fuel alongside the fire and nodded to his wife, Paishey, and to Esther. The women took a couple of logs each and added them to the fire, holding their white aprons lest they be caught by sparks spitting out from the wood.
Beulah shook her head. “Not directly.” She pronounced it direckly, her eyes on Webb as she spoke.
Maisie turned and found that, once again, he was watching her, this time with eyes narrowed as a gust of wind pushed gray woodsmoke in his direction.
“Hello, Mr. Webb.” Maisie smiled, just enough, she hoped, to break the shell of ice that always seemed to envelop Beulah’s son.
He touched his hat in greeting and left the clearing, returning with more wood. She thought it might be better if she delayed the asking of questions until bellies were full and the warm fire had worked magic on aching backs. She had only picked for a short time, but already she felt the soreness in her hands and arms where rough hop-bines had scored the skin, leaving welts that stung when she washed. These people—men, women and children—had worked for days, and even after the picking was done the women had gathered flowers to bind into bunches, or made lilies of colored tissue paper to sell door-to-door, while the menfolk hunted or fashioned clothes pegs from wood to take to market.
Soon the rich aroma of a broth well simmered teased Maisie’s taste buds and caused her stomach to rumble. The women brought enamel plates from their respective vardos and gathered to dish up the meal. At the edge of the clearing, children lined up to be washed from bowls set aside for the purpose, and the men began to come in from their work.
Maisie followed the conversation, spoken in an English that was scoured of embellishment and peppered with dialect. For the most part, their stories mirrored those of the Londoners. They spoke of the hops in this garden or that, of the farmer, the tallyman, and how much they had earned. They talked of the clouds in the distance and were glad their tarpaulins were at the ready. Beulah complained of a toothache that had spread to her jaw, and one of the children squealed when a hot, wet flannel cloth was rubbed along his arms.
She heard Paishey telling Esther that the gorja-rawni—the woman who was not a gypsy—who had smiled upon her little Boosul, had turned her back today as they passed on the way to the tap. Esther put her hands on her hips and shook her head. She wagged a finger, telling Paishey that the woman wasn’t any different from all the rest of them and would probably cook her baby for tea if she had the chance, because she was—as likely as not—a beng, a devil. Maisie stared into the fire. Was it worth putting the story right? Should she tell them that the woman grieved for her own lost daughter, had felt warmed as the gypsy baby nestled in her arms, and was now shrouded in a chill of prejudice that enveloped her because her people didn’t trust the gypsies and were wary of them? No, probably not. She would keep her counsel. After all, the tribe suffered too, from the virulence of fear.
Paishey brought a plate of rabbit stew with a wedge of bread for Beulah, who pointed to Maisie and nodded, indicating that a plate should also be offered to their guest. A portion was brought for the outsider, and as steam wafted up from her food, Maisie’s mouth watered and she smiled at Paishey. “Thank you. This smells lovely.” Paishey said nothing, acknowledging the gratitude with a brief nod, and continued handing round enamel plates, with those of the men holding a good third of a measure more than the women.
There was little talk as the company devoured the awaited meal
. Then the empty plates were cleared and slops from the pot taken to the edge of the clearing for the dogs, though Beulah’s jook was fed first, on account of her catching the tribe’s end-of-day meal.
Maisie made her move. “Why are the people in the village so afraid, Aunt Beulah?”
Beulah laughed, though it came out as a cackle, making her sound like a chovihanni, a witch. “Them’s too afraid of their own shadows. Them’s looking over their shoulders, waiting for the ghosts to see them.”
“What ghosts? What do you mean?”
Beulah shook her head. “Them ghosts that feed on all of us, the ghosts of them as we’ve done wrong by”
“But that could be anyone anywhere. There’s someone in every village who has done something wrong, but those places don’t feel like Heronsdene.”
Now the gypsy woman sighed, and Maisie, drawn to look over her shoulder, saw Webb walking toward them. Beulah turned to her and said, “It’s all a long time gone, but not what they hold of it.”
Webb leaned forward to whisper in Beulah’s ear, and Maisie watched as some of the gypsies, men and women, went to their tents, returning with fiddles and tambourines, wooden sticks and whistles. Paishey emerged from her vardo with a violin case in her arms, which she passed to Webb. Maisie noticed that the other rom carried their fiddles with much less care than Paishey and Webb had demonstrated. And even as Webb clicked open the case and lifted his violin from the faded golden velvet in which it was cocooned, it was with reverence, as if the instrument were a religious icon.
He lifted the violin to his ear, picked at the strings, tensioning them to tune, and then pressed it under his chin, to sound chords and test the notes. The other gypsies were creating a cacophony of sound, yet Webb had closed his eyes as if they did not exist, as if the world around him had receded like the tide, leaving only soft, untouched sand. Then he opened his eyes and looked at the company. Silence fell upon the group, as Webb lifted his bow to the strings and teased out notes that caused tears to form in Maisie’s eyes. So skilled was Webb that it was as if he had become, in an instant, one with the violin, its fine maple tinted with a reddish-gold varnish reflecting flames that leaped up between the musicians and their audience. He played a lament, and as she listened it was as if the whole forest had become silent, had stopped to listen to the gypsy and his violin. He quickened the pace, his foot now tapping out a faster beat, his head moving from side to side, as he sawed the bow across the strings. Then he looked up, nodding to his fellow fiddlers as the lament became a jig. They joined in with strings squealing as bows were pushed back and forth, back and forth, all of them keeping pace with Webb, like pilgrims following their master along a winding and leaping path.
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