The Miss Fotheringays and the Faun (The Miss Fotheringays Investigate Book 1)

by Florrie Boleyn

  Grace pushed her thoughts to the back of her mind, “No, it’s alright, M’m.” She took a deep breath. “He stuck his hand down the front of my dress.”

  Effie gasped, her eyes round, “Down the front...?” Grace nodded.

  “Er...what were you wearing?” Effie thought of her own multi-layered upholstery - cotton shift, whaleboned corset, flannel vest made high to keep the chill from her... from her upper chest, full length petticoat, bombazine dress to her throat with an endless row of tiny buttons up the back...

  “Mrs. Ravilious had me put on an old dress of her grandmother’s - beautiful it was, the material, like, she said it was made of real silk,” the girl almost whispered the magic words, “but it seemed more like a nightdress than a proper dress; I asked her, Mrs. Ravilious, if it weren’t a nightdress? but she said as all the ladies wore them back in those days.” She looked enquiringly at Harriet, who nodded affirmatively.

  “So Mr. Weston was able to be extremely insulting?”

  Tears started to gather in Grace’s eyes. It had been a horrible, frightening experience, and ever since then she’d been forced to put a lid on all her emotions, to sit and pretend nothing had happened while the Miss Fotheringays made their visit and the rector talked on endlessly. But now...

  “Don’t cry, Grace dear,” said Effie, who felt like crying herself.

  “Not in the street, certainly,” said Harriet, “why don’t you step in and sit with us for a quarter of an hour until you feel stronger?”

  “Oh, no, Ma’am, I’d rather get back, but round by the river,” gulped Grace, doing her best to stem the tide of her tears. Harriet silently passed Grace her handkerchief, which the girl looked at in some doubt. It looked like the same one she’d been lent before - rather small, and very delicate - the cotton almost transparent - and lace trimmed to within an inch of being useful; when she’d washed it out afterwards she had been almost ashamed that she had actually used it to blow her nose on...

  “Wipe your eyes,” said Harriet kindly, and Grace dabbed at her eyes with the pretty thing.

  “Now let us move on, before we become the focus of attention,” said Harriet, setting off down the hill and leaving the other two to follow on behind.

  It was a silent threesome that walked along the river bank; Grace was wondering what to say to Elwy if he should see her pass by the pottery, Effie’s mind was wandering over a multitude of subjects, and the thought of what it would have been like to be a woman who wore a chemise dress and cropped hair - she was sure she would have felt quite different from her starched, pinned and rigidly encased self - jockeyed for space in her mind with the appalling behaviour of Gervais Weston, and the fact that she was feeling really quite hungry; normally she would have eaten a little luncheon by now, and despite the fact that she never ate very much at lunch time, it was amazing how the body seemed to miss it - Effie’s stomach was getting quite demanding. Harriet...but whoever knew what Harriet was thinking?

  Both Elwy and Mr. Benjamin were sitting outside the pottery when the ladies approached, and both rose to their feet immediately on catching sight of them, although Elwy hung back as if a little burst of resentment held him by the ankles. However this lasted for only as long as it took to register the set of Grace’s shoulders, the way her head drooped...and Elwy was running to her and gathering her into his arms, “What happened?” he demanded, and Grace burst into tears against his chest, “Oh Elwy,” she sobbed.

  Harriet raised her eyebrows at Effie. So much for all the warnings and the determination not to let Elwin know what had happened. Effie looked back at her sister and shrugged, rather apologetically. Certainly if Harriet had told her not to do something, she would, she felt, have made a much stronger effort to do as she was told than Grace had done.

  “It’s that bastard Weston, aint it?” Elwy was demanding, and Grace nodded, but made one heroic - although useless - effort:

  “You mustn’t go after him, though, Elwy, promise me you won’t! They’ll catch you and put you in prison, and then...then god knows what will happen to both of us!”

  “She’s right, lad,” said Benjamin, but Elwy took absolutely no notice.

  “Are you on your way up to the Manor, love, or did you come to see me?”

  “I’m going back to the Manor, I’ve got to... where else can I go?”

  “Then I’ll come with you, and, Grace love, you can keep out of his way up at the Manor?”

  She nodded.

  “Then come along now, and you tell me all about it, mind?” It was not a question.

  Grace nodded again. Effie found herself nodding in sympathy and watched the two pass on over the river - the white of Grace’s dress reflecting as fragmented shards of brightness in the swift-moving surface, but the wood-colours of Elwy blending in with the colours of the wet stones and the broken mirror-images of the overhanging trees.

  CHAPTER 14

  The Faun’s revenge and Mrs. Ravilious’ developments

  Grace was clearing away the cake crumbs and bundling up the tea-stained cloths to take them down to the scullery to be put into soak by the time that Gervais Weston stepped out of a side door of the Manor, a rifle under his arm and his favourite spaniel frolicking by his side, uttering occasional whimpers of excitement. Dusk was a good time to pick off a few rabbits, which always came in handy for the servants’ meals. Not that the practical reason had any influence with Gervais; like most of his contemporaries, he just enjoyed exercising his skill with a gun by potting moving targets.

  There was a rabbit warren up on Hill Field, backing onto the woods. Gervais sauntered along, keeping to the margin of the trees so that he would be less visible to rabbits and also stand a chance of bagging a wood pigeon or two - although a pigeon was a very testing shot and in this low light there was little chance of bringing one down. The dog, nose down, made little excursions into the wood, snuffling amongst the leaf litter.

  A freshening breeze started to come up as the light faded, ruffling Gervais’ hair, and he stopped to pull his cap out of one of the deep pockets of his shooting jacket. He shivered slightly as the wind rustled through the new leaves of the trees and he stopped and rested his gun against a stump in order to have both hands free to put his cap on and turn his collar up. At that moment Elwy stepped silently out from the trees, upwind of the questing spaniel. In the startled pause as Gervais recoiled from the figure before him, a figure that seemed to belong to the wood itself, he felt a sudden irrational fear as of something vastly old, something that belonged to the land that Gervais - an ephemeral mayfly on the history of the Weald - mistakenly thought belonged to him.

  It was an unusually romantic thought for the well-fed young man to entertain, but - in extenuation - it only lasted a few seconds, until something that felt like a hefty branch from one of the trees crashed into his jaw. It was, in fact, only Elwy’s fist, but there were a good many years of lopping, felling and general tree-work in the muscles that drove it, so Gervais could be pardoned for thinking that the trees themselves were ranged against him.

  Gervais staggered back and Elwy followed him, planting another fist somewhere in the region of Gervais’ third waistcoat button, and finishing the job with an uppercut that snapped the man’s head back on his neck and left him sprawled on the ground, dizzy, winded and spitting blood from a split lip.

  It was not, perhaps, according to the most honourable rules of pugilism, but since Elwy was only interested in punishment, not sport, he felt no remorse at having taken Gervais by surprise, and he paused only long enough to say “Leave the maids alone,” before he disappeared back into the forest - although he did stop to speak a few low words to the dog as it came bounding out of the trees. It is frequently surprising at how much can happen in a very short time, and this whole business had taken much less time than it takes to tell, so it is not really any disparagement on the intelligence of spaniels that by the time it arrived on the scene it was unable to come to any rational evaluation
of the connection between the softly-spoken stranger and its master lying groaning on the ground, and decided that its first duty was to succour the weak by licking Gervais’ face.

  This was the cause of an urgent summoning of the police to the Manor later that evening. Of course, Lady Weston only had to take one look at Gervais’ bruised and battered face - which not all the best efforts of his man had been able to disguise - and she set up a screech that galvanised the whole household into instant action. One groom was sent riding for the two police officers, who were staying in rooms above the Bull in the town, another was sent for the doctor (the old doctor, since although Lady Weston had little confidence in him as he was one of Sir William’s hunting cronies, she had none at all in the young doctor, who didn’t even have MD on his brass plate - although he was entitled to it - but the more humble MRCS as an encouragement to the poorer elements of society to call him out since he would presumably not be charging guinea fees like old Dr. Pevensey).

  Peter the footman, in his usual place outside the drawing room door, felt as if all his birthdays had come at once. He certainly found an extremely welcoming and festive air in the servants’ hall later that night, after the Family had gone to their respective beds - and with no nightcaps for either Sir William or Master Gervais.

  “Will you have a mug of beer, Peter, or perhaps a glass of port?” offered Mr. Masters, the butler, and Mrs. Beaton pushed a plateful of cheese straws towards him. Peter accepted the beer and the straws with delight, although it was some while before he could stop talking long enough to enjoy either.

  “Master Gervais was insisting that it was a poacher that give him a going over,” said Peter.

  “A poacher?” frowned Mr. Masters, “hardly seems likely.”

  “No,” said Peter, swallowing hastily, “Sir William poo-poohed the idea from the start, and her ladyship was all for it having been 'the murderous gardener', as she called him.”

  “Elwin Forrester, you mean?”

  Peter nodded. “Starting going on at the policemen about why hadn’t they caught him, and he should be strung up, or sent to Australia...”

  “Do they still send criminals to Australia?” asked the cook.

  “Not any more, they’ve got enough now to form a proper, civilised society,” said Mr. Masters, who, spending his life being deferential to his employers, found a release for all the petty irks and annoyances by cultivating a profound cynicism for the status quo.

  “Could it have been Elwy, do you think?” said cook, “I thought he was long gone.”

  “If it was him, then he’s done a good job of playing least-in-sight up till now. I wonder where he’s been hiding?”

  “But why would he attack Master Gervais?”

  “More to the point,” said Mr. Masters, “if it was Elwin Forrester, then why would Master Gervais say it was a poacher?”

  By the silence of the assembled company they all seemed to feel this was a valid point. And it was one which trickled its way down the hierarchy of the Manor servants, out into town and into the ears of Becky, who took it up to her mistresses with the fresh rolls she had just fetched from the bakery for their breakfast the next morning.

  “And whoever it was as attacked Master Gervais, split his lip wide open!” said Becky, in ghoulish tones. Miss Effie’s knife hesitated over the warm roll she had just been about to breach. “And they say that he was all over blood when he staggered into the hall!” Harriet put a spoonful of strawberry jam back down on her plate and looked at it with some distaste. She sighed.

  “Perhaps you could tell us the news after breakfast,” she said, and then saw her sister’s look of anguish. “Oh very well,” she said, “please carry on, Becky. What does Master Gervais say about it all?”

  “Well, that’s what makes it all so odd,” said Becky, with a fine air of self-importance. “Because Master Gervais is saying over and over as it were a poacher, even though Lady Weston is sure as eggs it was Elwy Forrester, and she’s told the police they have to catch him now, when they know he’s still hanging around, and they’re calling in extra men to hunt him down!”

  Effie looked fearfully at Harriet. Uniformed men hunting down the Faun - it was a horrible thought! “What should we do, Harry?” she asked.

  Harriet tapped the empty shell of her lightly boiled egg with her teaspoon and stared into its smoothly rounded depths. The pursuit of Elwin would follow as inevitably as the curve of the eggshell; he was an obvious and easy scapegoat for the police and there was no reason for them to look further unless...”I think we should introduce a little grit into the mixture,” she said.

  “Grit, Harry?”

  Harriet nodded. “Everything is too easy; the real murderer only has to keep quiet and the police will take up Elwin as soon as they can catch him. So what we need is a distraction. I think we need a piece of grit - an irritant, you might say; I think we need to stir the hornets’ nest with a stick.”

  “But suppose we get stung?”

  “We will hold the stick at a distance. We have a number of suspects: Sir William, Gervais, Mr. Myers and Lady Weston. And we know someone who is not afraid to tell any of them what he thinks, out loud and in public, as Mr. Benjamin described to us.”

  “Silas Budge,” breathed Effie, wide eyed and palpitating.

  “Silas Budge,” confirmed Harriet. “Let us give Silas a stick and put him in the middle of the nest.”

  “But where will we find a stick?”

  “I think,” said Harriet, her eyes narrowing, “that there is a chance of finding a stick at the Rectory. Put your bonnet on, Effie, and let us go!”

  Harriet looked at her reflection in the mirror of the hallstand and, with a deliberation worthy of an oriental warrior, withdrew a hatpin from the pincushion on the shelf and prepared to insert it into her own bonnet. It was her Sunday bonnet; a confection of subdued colour but glorious richness. There were amber artificial roses; there was a cloud of bronze tulle; a richly russet feather curled its way along the brim, and the pin, like a jewelled dragonfly, poised ready to strike. Delicately it pierced the sturdy fabric of the hat, threaded amongst Harriet’s coils of hair and re-emerged from the now firmly anchored hat. Another hatpin was taken up, its site selected, inserted and secured. Harriet nodded affirmatively at her reflection in the mirror. The hat nodded in strict tempo and did not quaver.

  Effie came bustling downstairs, exchanged an excited glance with her sister and opened the front door, standing back so that Harriet could pass through ahead of her, and then following her into the street.

  Twenty minutes later the sisters were sitting in Mrs. Ravilious’ charming breakfast parlour, accepting a cup of only slightly stewed tea and enjoying - Effie at least - the luxurious range of preserves that the Rector’s wife apparently found necessary to complete her table. Fresh toast had been brought and Effie was dithering between Oxford marmalade and Scottish raspberry jam and wondering if it would look too needy if she took both. Scottish raspberries, she thought, so unnecessary when we have here such wonderful soft fruits in season, raspberries and strawberries and currants of various colours. Not that we do have them at the moment of course, it being so long since last year’s soft fruit season and the larder now bare of anything more exciting than gooseberry. Somehow gooseberry was always the last to go.

  “Do help yourself, dear Miss Effie,” said Mrs. Ravilious, “and then I must show you the results of our photographic session. We could go into the studio, or..” catching Effie’s look of anguish, “I could fetch them in here and then we could look at them while we finish our breakfast - as long,” she laughed lightly, but the sisters heard the warning note in the tuneful trill, “as we don’t get jam on them!”

  Harriet wiped her fingers on her napkin. “We promise to be careful, Mrs. Ravilious,” she smiled. “In fact, why do you not hold the photographs for Effie and me to look at, and then if there should be fingerprints, at least you will know that they are yours.”

&n
bsp; Mrs. Ravilious looked rather embarrassed. “You must think me a terrible fusspot,” she said, but Harriet reassured her.

  “Oh no, I know how delicate the chemistry of photography is, and what a great deal of effort you must already have expended on creating these images.”

  Mrs. Ravilious beamed at the sisters. “Well, you are quite right of course Miss Fotheringay, it is really quite a tricky business whipping up the egg whites and adding the salts.”

  “Egg whites and salt?” said Effie, amazed, and wondering if the Rector’s wife was really still talking about photography or whether she had digressed onto the breakfast omelettes.

  “I know,” trilled Mrs. Ravilious, “it is quite amazing, is it not, that one creates photographic images with ingredients from the kitchen store-cupboard? But so it is, one floats the paper sheets on a bath of an equal mix of pure egg white and water, to which a little chloride - salt you know - has been added. And when that step is completed, one has to sensitise the paper with a silver nitrate solution - I always wear gloves, but even so there have been times when my fingers are sadly blackened - before I can actually create a print...”

  Harriet shook her head in apparent admiration. “My dear Mrs. Ravilious, I am sure you could not blacken your fingers in a more worthy cause! I assure you I have enormous respect for your work.”

  The delighted Rector’s wife hurried out to fetch her prints and Effie looked sideways at her sister, who raised one eyebrow in bland enquiry. Really, sometimes she herself didn’t know when dear Harry was being sincere and when she was being...something a little less.

  “I am rather pleased with one or two of them,” said Mrs. Ravilious as she came back in the room carrying half a dozen tissue-covered paper prints. “Most, of course, are not entirely satisfactory but one, or possibly two, are really quite - quite acceptable, I think.” She held up the first image and the sisters saw a female figure, draped in white. “Dear Miss Effie,” said Mrs. Ravilious, “so good of you to have given me your time, and this is the result! Quite impressive, I think; it has the feeling of an ageless goddess that I was hopeful of achieving.”