“It was Monday last sennight”
“And when was Grace’s Elwin dismissed from his place by Lady Weston?”
"That would be on the Sunday morning.”
“Did he leave immediately? One would imagine so - certainly Grace never saw him after that.”
“And why did he not try to see Grace?”
“My dear, if he had been meeting Millie clandestinely all this time, you would hardly expect him to wish to face his other sweetheart. A man should be able to choose between two charmers and not go canoodling around the countryside like Captain Macheath!”
Effie drooped. “It is all so sad,” she sighed.
“And on the subject of canoodling,” continued Harriet, “we need to get all these putative fathers of Millie’s child clear in our mind. There is Elwin, of course,” she ignored another sigh from Effie, “and there is Sir William, if Silas Budge is to be believed, and I don’t see why we should leave Gervais Weston, or indeed any of the other servants out of the reckoning. Like father, like son, they say, and with some good cause.”
“Gervais!” exclaimed Effie.
“We must not forget that Lady Weston made a considerable effort to point out that Gervais was away in Le Touquet at the time of Millie’s death.”
“Of course she did,” said Effie, “as we know to our cost!”
“And so far we have completely overlooked the fact that Elwin, and I think we can be sure it is he, has suddenly appeared at Mr. Benjamin’s pottery. What is he doing there? How did he get there? And why is he not several counties away by now, fleeing from the police?” said Harriet, ticking the various points off on her fingers. “It is time we got a little organised, Effie dear, and I think we will begin by paying another visit to the pottery.”
* * *
Effie looked hopefully at the rushy margins of the pool by the pottery as they approached it along the bridleway, but this time there was no naked faun emerging from the mists, only the scudding clouds reflected in its surface, disturbed only by the plashy ripples caused by the colony of frogs that leaped into the water as the ladies passed by and disappeared into its black depths.
The interior of the pottery struck a little dank this time, after the sunny riverbank. There were no pinging pots and the kiln was cold, but the racks were beginning to fill with serried rows of mud-coloured mugs and bowls and plates, exhaling their heavy moisture into the air as they slowly dried.
To the sisters’ surprise it was not Mr. Benjamin who was sitting at the wheel when they entered, but the Faun, the long fingers of his left hand supporting a half-dry, upturned bowl as he untwined a long curl of clay from its under-surface with a metal strip fixed into a wooden handle. He looked up guardedly as the sisters darkened the doorway, his fingers stilled on the bowl, but then he put the tool down and slowed the wheel to a halt.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said, and Mr. Benjamin turned from a bench at the back of the workshop where he had been pulling a lump of clay into a long strip to form handles for a splendid, large crock.
“Goodness, Mr…Rush, isn’t it? Are you the potter now?”
The Faun looked across at Mr. Benjamin with a twisted grin.
“No, no, he’s just…”
“I’m just…”
“helping out,” chorussed the sisters, and Effie smiled maternally at the Faun. She was sure such a beautiful young man could not be guilty of anything really wicked. Although, she reflected, who knows what could happen when a Faun entered into the rather dull lives of ordinary human girls?
“Were you wanting something, ladies? Your Becky aint broke another bowl, I hope?”
“No, I have to admit, Mr. Benjamin, that this visit is on account of nothing more serious than my own insatiable curiosity. You must forgive the weakness of a single lady with very little to exercise her mind.”
“Two single ladies,” said Effie.
“Well, Ma’am, the curiosity of one single lady I might be able to resist, but two would be one too many,” chuckled Mr. Benjamin, “besides which I don’t think as you ladies have any intention of causing trouble to anyone?” He finished on a questioning note.
“Only to one person, Mr. Benjamin,” said Harriet briskly, “that person being the one responsible for Millie Budge’s death.”
Mr. Benjamin nodded, and the Faun slowly got up from the wheel. He dusted off his hands, and removed a curl of half-dry clay that was dangling from his jumper. “It weren’t me, Ma’am,” he said, coming over to stand before the sisters and looking from one to the other. “I swear it weren’t me.”
Goodness, thought Effie, lost in the river-bed depths of the Faun’s hazel eyes, just look at the perfection of those eyelashes, and that nose! And the deep runnel down to those hand-crafted lips. A sculptor would just throw away his tools in disgust knowing that he could possibly capture their shape, but never the richness of the blood flowing beneath the surface.
“You are Elwin, are you not?” said Harriet.
The Faun nodded, “I’m Elwy Forrester.”
“What happened after Lady Weston dismissed you from her service?”
“I…I had to leave.” Harriet nodded and waited. “But I didn’t want to go, not straight away, and anyway I had nowhere to go to, so I thought as I’d hang around a bit.” He paused, and then went on hurriedly “I spent that night in one of the old sheds, but it were mortal cold, even wrapped in all my clothes, so when Silas come in, round about dawn, and he said…”
“You saw Silas Budge?” interrupted Harriet. “But I thought he was dismissed from the Manor long ago?
Elwy nodded, “that’s right Ma’am, but Silas used to come up to the Manor from time to time to see Millie, we all knew that, and he…”
“It was to see Millie, was it?” asked Effie. “He never came to see Sir William?”
Elwy looked at her astonished. “To see Sir William?” he repeated.
“You’ll be thinking of what I told you Sunday past,” said Mr. Benjamin, and the sisters nodded.
Elwy looked enquiringly at Mr. Benjamin, who only said, “you get on with your tale, lad, I’ll explain later.”
The thick brows were furrowed as Elwy turned back to the sisters. “I don’t understand,” he said, “Silas could never get to see Sir William, why, he wouldn’t get past the front door - Mr. Masters the butler had strict instructions to keep him out, and the gatekeepers too.
“Then how did he get in to see his daughter?”
Effie thought the Faun looked rather exasperated, as if he were trying to play his pan-pipes but foolish mortals kept interrupting him.
“He comes in this way, along the river bank, and then over the stile and through Prickets Wood, there’s a little track that ends up round the back of the sheds. The gardeners’ sheds, that is. I think he used to meet Millie there regular-like and she’d give him a few bits and pieces of food and a shilling or,two when she could."
“And had he just arrived when you met him?”
“Yes, M’m, he come into the shed, where I was sleeping - well, not that you could call it sleeping - what with one thing and another I’d not got a wink all night, but I’d finally fallen into a bit of a doze, and the next thing I know there’s Silas standing over me. Well, I wasn’t best pleased, I’d never liked the old rip, but I have to say he was uncommon friendly to me, said I’d catch my death sleeping there in the cold, and said he knew where I could spend a few hours curled up in the warm.” Elwy looked at Mr. Benjamin. “He told me as you’d got the kiln fired up, said I’d be safe and warm enough here for a few hours. He said you never generally came in till about ten so I’d have a good few hours before I set off for wherever I was going.”
“I don’t know why he should say that,” said Mr. Benjamin cheerily, “I’m always up and about early. I’m surprised Silas didn’t give me a look in as he went past.”
“Did you not see Mr. Budge as he went past?”
“Must have missed him, Ma’am - mayhap I was ta
king a bite of breakfast just at that time.”
“Mr. Forrester,” said Effie anxiously, but longing to have her fears confirmed one way or the other, “did you know that Millie was expecting a baby?”
Elwy looked wretched, “Mr. Benjamin here told me just the other day.” He turned away with a groan, “Oh this is all such a mess!” Effie’s face fell.
“You know that Lady Weston is telling everyone that Millie killed herself in remorse at finding herself with child, and that you, Mr. Forrester, were the cause of her condition?”
“I know, I know!” cried the Faun, “but it wasn’t me!”
Effie cleared her throat. “We understand that one of the other servants overheard you telling Lady Weston that you…had an understanding with Millie.”
The Faun clutched at his curly locks and slowly shook his head back and forth, “I did say it,” - the words were almost wrenched from his beautiful lips, “but it wasn’t true!”
Harriet looked at the young man with a measured scepticism. “Then why did you say it?”
“To protect…Grace,” the last word was almost a sob.
“To protect Grace?” repeated Effie. “You mean Grace Albright? But I don’t understand!”
The Faun turned swiftly towards her. “You know my Grace?” he said eagerly.
“We have talked to her,” said Harriet, in rather a clipped tone, “but I don’t think you currently have any right to call her your Grace!”
“Seems like I haven’t got the right to call anything mine, as of now,” said the Faun, with an oblique look that seemed full of the old maliciousness of the forest.
“Now, now, lad,” soothed Mr. Benjamin, “take it gently. These ladies are only trying to help, and you can’t deny it’s a right old mess you’ve got yourself into.
“But Mr. Forrester,” insisted Effie, “what did you mean by ‘protecting’ Grace?”
The Faun sighed and dragged his hands through his curly hair, then rubbed his face and eyes. There were dark circles round his eyes, Effie noted, and he was very pale, which only made him look even more like a Pre-Raphaelite model who had spent his earnings on laudanum rather than a bowl of nourishing broth.
“Grace and me belong together,” he said finally, in a mixture of defiance and nobility. “I want to get back to my own people, and to take her with me. That was always my plan ever since I first saw her.” His lips curved in a small smile, he appeared to be looking beyond them. “She were hanging out the washing; reaching up to the line to peg the clothes, and then she took a forked ashplant to prop up the line. She weren’t no servant; it was more like she was tying up ribbons and rags to dress a well, calling down the god, like, and just as she took up the staff and looked up, the sun came out from behind the clouds and lit up her face. There were scraps of curls loose from her cap, shining like old gold, or bronze or summat like that. I’d never seen aught so beautiful.”
“So why did you take up with Millie Budge?” said Harriet, the cynic.
The Faun flashed a look from under that straight line of black brow that should have slain her as she stood, but Miss Fotheringay bore the look unharmed.
“It was Grace I was with when that tattlebox saw me!” The words were almost spat at her.
“You were with Grace?” exclaimed Effie. “Then why did you say you were with Millie?”
“Because Grace would have been turned off if they knew she was seeing me!”
“But you didn’t care about Millie being turned off?”
“I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about Millie, and if they turned her off for something she didn’t do, then ’twas only justice since she never got turned off for the things she did do,” said the Faun, bitterly.
“Dear me!” said Harriet. “You certainly don’t believe that one should never speak ill of the dead, do you? And poor Millie unable to defend herself.” Harriet’s tone was scornful.
“I’m telling you the truth! The truth is all I’ve got now. I’ve got no money, no work, no…nothing,” the young man flung himself away to the back of the room and laid his hands on something that was reposing on a bench.
“What is that?” said Effie, who was easily distracted.
He looked over his shoulder at her and at first it seemed as if he would not answer, but then he picked it up and showed her. “My goodness!” cried Effie, and Harriet stared. It was a full crown of antlers, quite splendid.
“Where did that come from?” said Effie eagerly.
“Elwy found it in the wood,” said Mr. Benjamin, who had been watching silently all this time, content to let the little drama unfold.
The Faun brought it over to Effie. “It’s perfect, see. I found it that morning, when I was coming here from the Manor. “’Twas almost pitch dark in the wood, I could only just make out the path - a lighter sort of darkness than where the trees were thick. I almost tripped over it - it caught my ankle - I thought at first ‘twere a snare or summat, for rabbits, like, but it were this.” He stroked the tines, bleached by weather. “It reminded me of home - we had one like this nailed up over the door.”
“Where is ‘home’, Elwin?” asked Harriet.
The Faun looked at her under his brows; he liked Miss Effie, but he wasn’t at all sure how to take Miss Harriet Fotheringay; her eyes were quite ordinary in shape and colour - an indeterminate light blue - but somehow they seemed to look straight through you and gave the impression that the observer was not totally satisfied with what she saw.
“Forest of Dean, Ma’am,” he said somewhat grudgingly, “my family’s been verderers there as long as we can remember.”
“Why did you leave?” asked the ever-curious Effie.
“Times are hard. Been bad ever since the Enclosures, according to Granddad. I thought it were the sensible thing to do, come and try to earn a wage in richer parts, but I’d rather be back in the Forest.”
“Well the sooner we get this business cleared up, the sooner you can be on your way,” said Harriet briskly. “Now, what did you mean about Millie and why were you happy to cast the blame on her?”
The Faun looked uncomfortable and his heavy eyelids half hid his eyes. “I didn’t mean for her to be blamed…I didn’t stop to think…I just said the first thing that come to mind. Oh!” his face twisted, “the truth is I didn’t care. She was…she was easy, was Millie, she’d go with anyone, and she always had a look for me - you know what I mean. That inviting look. But I never did, I don’t like that sort of care-nothing sport. They say it’s like animals, but animals only sport to raise up young - there’s meaning to it, it’s life…”
“It was life that Millie was raising, too,” commented Harriet, “for all her sport.”
“Bound to get caught sooner or later,” said Mr. Benjamin, but Elwy laughed hollowly.
“She said not,” he said.
“She said not?” repeated Effie.
The Faun looked from one sister to another. “It’s not fit for ladies’ ears,” he said.
“My dear boy,” said Harriet in exasperation, “please get on with your story and leave us to take care of our ears.” There was a brief chuckle, hastily disguised as a cough, from Mr. Benjamin, and Elwy grinned at him in embarrassment. “Millie said,” he began, still hesitant, “Millie said, one time when she was laying out a lure for me, that I’d no need to fret over what might come of it, ‘cos she knew how to take care that nothing would come of it.”
“No babies?” said Effie.
“That’s right, Ma’am, no babies - leastways, that’s what she said. I never put it to the test, mind.”
Harriet frowned. “But she was carrying a baby when she died.”
“S’pose she must have got it wrong, then,” said Elwy, “or maybe she was just stringing a line when she said that to me, and she didn’t know how to stop a baby coming.”
“Or maybe she thought that in certain circumstances a baby could be more of a tool than a handicap,” mused Harriet. She exchanged a
look with her sister, whose pained expression at the thought of a baby being used as a tool nonetheless held a great deal of comprehension.
“And Silas?” Harriet rapped out the question.
“What do you mean, Ma’am?”
“What were your relations with Silas? He seemed to be kindly disposed to you?”
The Faun rubbed his fingers along his knife-edge jawline thoughtfully. “Aye, he did that morning, which took me summat by surprise, as you might say. He’d been down sharp enough on me when he had me working under him.”
“You used to work for Silas Budge?” said Harriet, surprised.
Elwy nodded. “When he was still at the Manor. Gardener,” he explained laconically, seeing the sisters' expressions. “Old Silas had the kitchen garden in charge; put a foot wrong and it seemed as if Silas always had a bed that needed double digging, or he’d have you fetching barrowloads of muck from the stables to build up in heaps for the autumn. The work didn’t bother me, I’m used to hard labouring, but he’d a nasty tongue on him if he felt like it - which he usually did.”
“What happened? Why does he no longer work at the Manor?” asked Effie.
“I dunno. One morning there was no sign of Silas, and Mr. Fowles, the head gardener, come and said that Sonny Prestwick would be in charge of the kitchen beds from now on. We never saw hide nor hair of Silas for a couple of weeks and then someone said as he’d been up to see Millie. I never saw him, never laid eyes on him until that morning when he woke me up in the shed and said I should come along here.”
Harriet looked at Effie. “Peter will know,” said Effie confidently, “why Silas Budge was turned off, that is.”
“Peter?” asked Mr. Benjamin.
“Peter the footman,” explained Effie, “he knows everything that goes on at the Manor.”
“You’re right there Ma’am, Grace always said there ain’t nothing that goes on at the Manor that Peter don’t know about,” said the Faun with a bitter laugh.
“Well,” said Harriet, looking at him sardonically, “he didn’t know it was really Grace that was with you when he overheard you telling Lady Weston that it was Millie.” She caught Elwy’s suddenly arrested expression, “which is why Grace is breaking her heart believing that you deserted her for Millie.”
The Miss Fotheringays and the Faun (The Miss Fotheringays Investigate Book 1) Page 6
