by Robin Paige
When Kate inherited Bishop’s Keep from her aunts, she had decreed that breakfast would be a simple affair. In this insistence, she knew she was going counter to custom, but the staff had enough work to do without fretting over an elaborate breakfast. So a dish of seasonable fruit and a dish of hot porridge were set out on the sideboard, and the dining table was laid with preserves and butter, sugar, and a pitcher of fresh cream. When the diners appeared, the footman (a young man named Pocket who had been with Kate’s aunts since he was a boy) brought up from the kitchen a large tray of boiled and scrambled eggs, sausages and rashers of bacon, and hot toast. Mr. Hodge, the butler, asked each person what was wanted and served it from Pocket’s tray. Kate poured tea or coffee. When all were served, Mr. Hodge and Pocket placed the hot dishes over spirit-lamp warmers on the sideboard and withdrew. Guests who slept late helped themselves when they arose.
This morning, Charles had already eaten and excused himself from the table. Kate was finishing the last of her coffee and reading The Times when Jennie came in, carrying a large brown envelope.
Kate looked up, thinking that her guest looked a little pale and out of sorts. “Please help yourself at the sideboard,” she said with a smile. “Charles is in the library—he’ll be pleased to talk with you whenever you like.” She picked up a cup. “Tea or coffee?”
“Tea, please.” The envelope under her arm, Jennie filled a plate at the sideboard and sat down. “I fear I must see Mr. Raeburn this morning,” she said shortly. “He telegraphed to say that he would be bringing samples of the leather bindings for my approval. Each issue of the journal is going to be bound like an antique book, you know. I prevailed upon Cyril Davenport of the British Museum to show me some of the best old bindings, which we are going to copy. Mr. Raeburn’s visit shouldn’t take long, though. He’s on his way to Ipswich.”
Kate turned her head, hearing the crunch of wheels on gravel. It proved to be the pony cart from the station at Colchester, bringing their visitor. In a few moments Mr. Raeburn had joined them, refused Kate’s offer of breakfast but accepted coffee, and sat down at the table.
“I apologize for the bother, your ladyships,” he said humbly, inclining his head. “I should not have intruded, but I thought that Lady Randolph would like to see—”
“Oh, it’s no bother,” Kate said quickly.
Jennie pushed her plate away. “Show me what you’ve brought.”
Kate watched as the young man opened a portfolio of leather engravings and placed it on the table in front of Jennie. She had not seen Manfred Raebum since the dinner party at Sibley House some weeks before, and she thought he did not look as well as he had. He was a thin-lipped young man with an arched nose and gold-rimmed spectacles, his chin stiffly elevated over a high starched collar. Kate thought she remembered Charles saying that he had left the Fourth Hussars under some sort of cloud. He did not look the military sort—too slender, with an almost feminine grace, and nervous. His nails were bitten to the quick. Probably his work in Fleet Street had suited him better than life in a regiment. From things that Jennie had said, he certainly seemed to know how to go about publishing a journal.
Jennie did not take long to make up her mind about the bindings. “This is the one we shall have for the first number,” she said, pointing. “Tell Mr. Conroy that I like the gold embossing very much and think his price quite fair.”
“Very well, your ladyship,” Mr. Raeburn replied, and closed the portfolio. “I stopped by Great Cumberland Place early this morning and took the liberty of collecting the post for you. I thought it might require your attention before your return.” He placed five or six letters on the table and cleared his throat. “May I ask when that might be?”
“I’m not sure, Manfred,” Jennie said. “I am enjoying this respite from Society.” She tossed her head with a little laugh. “Perhaps I may never come back.”
“Just remember that you can count on me to do whatever you want done,” Mr. Raeburn said. He rose. “I must be on my way. The train for Ipswich leaves on the hour.” And with that, he bowed himself out.
Jennie sorted rapidly through the envelopes. She tore one open and read it quickly, her lips tightening. “What audacity!” she exclaimed. “Why, this is nothing but blackmail!” She looked up, dark brows drawn together. “Winston writes from Manchester that the Tories have demanded a thousand pounds to guarantee him a safe seat! And after all Randolph did for the party!”
“It does seem a rather steep tariff,” Kate agreed.
“I shall write to Lord Cecil at once,” Jennie said, picking up another envelope and beginning to open it. “The party must understand that Randolph’s son is not to be dismissed as if he were simply an ordinary—”
A clipping fell from the envelope onto the tablecloth and Jennie picked it up. Reading it, her eyes widened, the color drained from her face, and she gave an inarticulate cry.
“Jennie!” Kate exclaimed, half-rising. “What is the matter ! Has someone been injured? What—?”
Jennie sat still for a moment, as if frozen. Then slowly, she drew a folded paper from the envelope, and read it. Her hand trembling, she extended both the paper and the scrap of newsprint to Kate. “Read,” she whispered.
Kate sank back in her chair, looking first at the sheet of plain notepaper on which four words had been typed: “You are not free.” It was unsigned. Puzzled, she turned to the clipping. “Bloody Murder,” she read silently, her lips moving with the words. “Man discovered stabbed.” She looked up wonderingly. “A murder? What does this have to do with you, Jennie?”
Jennie drew in a savage, shuddery breath. “Go on,” she whispered. “Read the whole. Then tell me what you guess.”
Kate scanned the newspaper story quickly. A certain Tom Finch had been found by his landlady, stabbed to death with a knife, in his lodgings at Number 2 Cleveland Street. A veiled lady had been-seen entering his rooms that afternoon. Her identity was still unknown, although it was expected that she would be identified shortly.
Kate shivered, feeling suddenly cold. A chorus of questions echoed through her mind. Had Jennie simply found the dead body? Or had she wielded the knife? The idea seemed almost unthinkable, but she knew her friend to be a woman of extraordinary determination and iron will. If Mr. Tom Finch had threatened someone or something she loved, Jennie was entirely capable of killing him. And the note—You are not free. Who else but a blackmailer could have sent it? Was it the same person who sent the note Jennie had shown them yesterday, the note signed “A. Byrd”? Then, glancing at the clipping, she noticed something else: was A. Byrd a pseudonym for Mr. Tom Finch?
Kate did not ask these questions. She merely said: “I should guess that you were the veiled woman, and that whoever sent this note means you to know that he knows you visited the murder scene.”
“You are clever,” Jennie said in a thin, metallic voice. “Come. We must see Charles at once.”
Carefully, Kate placed the clipping, the note, and the envelope on a small tray. “Charles will want to examine these items. But are you sure you don’t want to see him alone? There may be certain things you must tell him but would rather not share with me.”
Jennie’s mouth softened. “I fear,” she said more gently, “that I shall soon need a friend who stands beside me without judging or reservation.” She picked up the large brown envelope she had brought to the table and stood, holding out her hand. “Please come, Kate. I need you.”
13
Blackmail is by common consent the blackest of the black arts, brushing with filth and an indescribable despair all whom it touches.
BERYL BARDWELL
The Smugglers’ Village
1898
With the dining-room breakfast sent up, a guest in the house, and the vicar expected in the evening, Sarah Pratt should have been occupied with the galantine she had planned for luncheon and the fruit jelly her ladyship had requested for dinner. But on this particular morning, Sarah’s attention was distracted from her kitche
n chores by Pratt’s impossible demand, which hung like a sword over her head, and by the fearful dream that had visited her when she finally fell asleep the night before. In the dream, she had turned herself into a true widow and rid herself of Pratt for all eternity by the easy expedient of seasoning the man’s roast chicken with rat poison. The dream, in fact, had been so real that Sarah was half convinced that she had already poisoned Pratt and that Constable Laken should soon appear on the kitchen doorstep to take her off to jail. With this half-real, half-imagined misdeed weighing heavily on her mind, it was no wonder that she dropped the pitcher of cream on the floor and when she turned for the mop, knocked a jam pot into the mess.
Sarah had no more finished cleaning up when Mary Plumm tripped lightly into the room, carrying a trayful of dirty dishes from upstairs. She set the tray on the table with a rattle of crockery.
By this time, Sarah was completely out of patience. “Wash up an’ be quick about it,” she snapped. “We’ve a galantine t’ make fer luncheon, an’ a pot o’ pea soup t’ strain, an—”
But Mary Plumm was not rolling up her sleeves in preparation for the scullery chores. “I don’t b‘lieve,” she said with a sharp sniff, “that I wishes t’ do the washin’ up this mornin’. I prefers t’ go in the garden an’ get the veg’tables instead.” She adjusted her cap to a becoming angle and picked up a basket from the shelf.
“Ye prefers t’ go t’ th’ garden!” Sarah Pratt cried, scarcely believing her ears. “What kind o’ nonsense is that, I want t’ know! Fer such sauciness, me girl, ye’ll be in the scullery the ‘ole blessed mornin’, an’ when ye’re done, ye’ll be scrubbin’ the flagstones an’ blackin’ the stove. Now git on wi’ it!”
But Mary Plumm did not get on with it. “I don’t think so, Mrs. Pratt,” she said coolly.
“Ye don’t think so!” gasped Sarah Pratt, one hand going to her heart. In all her life, she had never heard such impertinence from a lower servant to her elder and better. Why the very thought of it was enough to make the blood boil!
But there was more. Mary Plumm narrowed her eyes, lifted her chin, and said, softly but distinctly, “Wot’s sauce fer the cook is sauce fer the maid, Mrs. Pratt. If ye kin ‘and over a basket o’ wine an’ vittles an’ a pair o’ the master’s trousers to yer ’usband, I kin pick ‘n’ choose me chores. I prefers t’ take the air in the garden this mornin’. An’ if that don’t suit ye, ye kin complain t’ Mr. ‘Odge.” She gave a light laugh. “I’m sure both ’ee an’ the mistress wud be terr’ble sad t’ know about them trousers. They wud hate worse t’ see ye took off t’ jail. But that’s as may be. Them that plays wi’ fire is bound t’ be burnt, as me mother allus sez.”
And having triumphantly delivered this parting shot, she tossed her head and sauntered out of the kitchen, leaving Sarah Pratt, for once in her life, with absolutely nothing to say.
In the library, Charles was reading the first forty pages of The War for the Waterway, which Winston had sent with his mother—a better title Charles thought, was The River War, and he made a note to mention it to Winston. The boy had an uncanny knack for description, he thought admiringly. About the Sudan, which Charles knew well, Winston had written:Level plains of smooth sand are interrupted only by occasional peaks of rock—black, stark, and shapeless. Rainless storms dance tirelessly over the hot, crisp surface of the ground. The fine sand, driven by the wind, gathers into deep drifts, and silts among the dark rocks of the hills, exactly as snow hangs about an Alpine summit; only it is a fiery snow, such as might fall in hell.
Charles sat for a moment with his eyes closed, smoking his pipe and thinking. Winston’s words recalled to him the angry landscape that he knew very well and hoped to forget. But the past was not dead and gone, as some might wish. His own military experiences in the Sudan lived on in him, Khartoum and Gordon’s defeat lived on in British souls, and now Winston’s book would give an eternal life to the bitter revenge that had been exacted at Omdurman, so that it could never be forgotten, by victor or by vanquished. Even if at some future day, there might come a generation that could no longer recall why Britain was in Egypt, The War for the Waterway—or whatever it would come to be called—would tell them. Of course, it was good to know the past. But to know too much about it was not always a good thing.
Charles’s musings were interrupted by the sound of cart wheels on gravel. He opened his eyes and went back to his reading. The cart departed a little later, and some moments after that, Kate and Jennie joined him. He put down Winston’s manuscript. His smile faded at the somber looks on their faces, and a moment later, when he had read the typed note and the newspaper clipping, his expression was as somber. So there had been more—much more—to the blackmail matter than Jennie had cared to reveal last night. Unless he was mistaken, she was in a great deal of trouble.
He looked at Jennie. “You are the veiled woman seen leaving Mr. Finch’s rooms?”
Her nod was barely perceptible. “I was afraid I might be seen and recognized. I wore a heavy coat and several layers of dark veil.” She glanced over her shoulder, as if to assure herself that none of the servants was in the room. “I went up the stairs and knocked at the door. When there was no answer, I opened it, since I was expected. I did not want to leave and come back again.” She shivered and wrapped both arms around herself. “I saw him there, dead, at his table. The knife was ... still in him. I went immediately back to the cab, and home. I could not sleep that night for thinking of it, and trying to think what to do. I did not want to stay in Great Cumberland Place, for fear the police might come and question me. The next day—yesterday—I came here.”
Charles opened his mouth, but Kate asked the question first. “You left from your house and returned to your house by cab?”
Jennie nodded, biting her lip. “I know now that it was foolish. The police will search out the driver, and he will surely remember me. But I only did what I was told to do—and of course, I had no idea that I would find a ... dead man!”
“What a terrible shock!” Kate exclaimed. She reached for Jennie’s hand. “You must have been frightened nearly out of your wits.”
Charles looked down at the address in the newspaper clipping. Cleveland Street, not far from Middlesex Hospital, in the boroughs of Marylebone and Saint Pancras. A rather bohemian area, frequented by artists and artisans, with salon-style coffee rooms and rather good pubs. “Why did you go to see this man?” he asked.
Jennie opened the brown envelope and took out a photograph, laying it in her lap. “I fear that I was less than forthcoming last night. I should have shown this photograph to you straightaway. But I will make amends by telling you as much as I know.” She caught his glance. “As much as I know,” she repeated, “and suspect.”
“Thank you,” Charles said dryly.
Jennie’s narrative was simple. She told the story in a low voice, carefully modulated and without hesitation, as if she had rehearsed it. On the ninth of the previous November, she had received the photograph, hand delivered to Great Cumberland Place. A handwritten note signed “A. Byrd” had accompanied the photograph, threatening its release to the newspapers if Jennie did not give one hundred pounds to a boy who would call the next day. The boy had called, Jennie had given him the money, and dispatched her man Walden to follow him. But the youngster was adept at evasions and Walden lost him in the crowds at Victoria Station.
The demand was repeated in increasing amounts and with increasing regularity, a different messenger appearing each time and departing in a different direction, each note signed with the name A. Byrd. Jennie grew ever more desperate. She was already besieged by a great many creditors: her manner of living was excruciatingly expensive but she could not seem to control her expenditures, nor could she think of any other way to live. She sold some of her jewelry ; then, to consolidate her debts, she had executed a very large loan which was guaranteed by two insurance policies Winston had been required to furnish.
Increasingly harried and desperate, in
creasingly short of cash, Jennie determined to tell Winston about the blackmail when he returned from the Sudan, for the publication of the photograph, if it came to that, would cause him enormous anguish. His career would be shattered—indeed, his entire life!—if his father were associated in any way with the Ripper atrocities. All Randolph’s old enemies, all the newspapers, would jump onto the story like starving jackals, whipped into a frenzy of feeding.
But Winston had come home so full of plans and dreams and hope that she could not bear to tell him. His political success depended heavily upon his confidence in himself and in the Churchill name and reputation. To others, he might seem filled with a great faith in himself. But his mother knew that Winston’s self-confidence was shallow and insecure, and that beneath it lay vast, black depths of uncertainty. His self-assurance would be annihilated by the knowledge that someone had the ability to destroy him.
In despair, Jennie had thought of appealing to the Prince, who would give her a stern look and chide her for not consulting him earlier. The world might think that HRH was a flighty, frivolous man who lived only to satisfy his appetites, but his friends knew otherwise. Bertie often found ways to provide unorthodox, behind-the-scenes help, for he was acquainted with a great many men of all sorts and classes, and he always knew how to get things done.
But something had happened that convinced Jennie she need not involve the Prince. She received another communication from the blackmailer, this one by telephone. In an obviously disguised voice, the man had said he was ready to end the dirty business and that he had something to give her in return for what she had already paid. He instructed her to come to his Cleveland Street lodging immediately, alone. Full of hope and anticipation, Jennie followed the caller’s instructions. But when she reached her destination, she had discovered the corpse.
