by Mary Hooper
‘But I’ve nowhere to go,’ Grace said. ‘Unless . . .’ She thought of the last awful lodgings she’d stayed at with Lily – the warehouse in Southwark – and shivered anew.
‘Then leave it to me to find you somewhere comfortable,’ James said, hurrying her along the street.
The traffic, earlier stalled by the fog, was flowing freely now, and with the aid of a peeler they crossed Hyde Park Corner and went towards Mayfair. As the streets grew more elegant and the buildings smarter, Grace looked down at her clothing.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked in alarm. ‘Look at me! No halfway decent lodging house will take me.’
‘You aren’t going to lodgings,’ James said. ‘An heiress doesn’t sleep in lodgings.’
‘Am I an heiress?’
James nodded. ‘Remember, you are your mother’s legatee.’
They had reached a hotel by then: a famous, mirrored, sumptuous hotel on the edge of Park Lane. James whisked them through the swing doors, and, while Grace hung back, embarrassed, he went to the front desk. A business card was shown, she heard the name ‘Mr Ernest Stamford, QC’ and also the word ‘heiress’ and the manager immediately materialised. He bowed her towards the central staircase, not seeming to notice what she was wearing.
‘I shall see you in the morning, about ten o’clock!’ James called, and was gone before she could properly thank him.
x
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Grace stood at the window of her hotel room, looking at the vast expanse of Hyde Park spread out in front of her. It was a crisp day with frost in the air, the sky a clear blue. There were clouds of steam coming from the nostrils of the dray-horses pulling the omnibuses, and the people, huddled into their winter clothes, had a pinched look about their faces.
Grace had hardly slept. Of course not; she was too fraught and anxious about what she’d done and besides, the room she was in was so grand she’d not wanted to sleep in it, she’d wanted to walk around it, touching the curtains, sliding her hand over the polished furniture, stroking the thick blankets and patting the cloud-like pillows. And when she had finally lain down she’d felt compelled to go over, again and again, the strange and bewildering circumstances by which she’d come to be in such a wonderful place.
She turned from the window and sat down on a sofa. Before her, on a low table, stood a frosted-glass bowl full of fruit: apples, oranges, peaches and grapes. A whole bowl of fruit, just for her. She didn’t feel she could eat it right then, but she must certainly take some away, she thought, and she picked up two apples and put them in the pockets of the petticoat she’d slept in, then topped this with two oranges and stood up to look at herself sideways in the long mirror. She smiled – she looked ridiculous, as if she were wearing a donkey’s panniers! She took the fruit out again – just in time, it seemed, for there was a tap at the door which made her start in panic. She knew she shouldn’t have been allowed in such a place; they’d come to throw her out! Worse, the Unwins had discovered what she’d done. Another tap came, and Grace quickly climbed back into the bed and pulled the bedclothes up to her chin.
‘Come in,’ she said in a voice so tiny that no one could have heard it, then cleared her throat and said more loudly, ‘Come in, please!’
A maid entered the room carrying a bucket of coal to make up the fire, followed by another ready to open the curtains and tidy the room, and a third with a large jug of hot water, which she carried into the bathroom. Their duties accomplished, all three surveyed Grace with as much interest as she surveyed them, for the news that they had someone important staying – an heiress, no less – had circulated below stairs in an instant.
‘Will you be wanting your breakfast now, madam?’ one asked, and it was all Grace could do not to look behind her to see who was being addressed, for she’d never before been called madam.
‘Yes, I would, please,’ Grace answered. ‘Where should I go to collect it?’
‘We’ll bring it to you, madam,’ came the startled reply. ‘And what would you be wanting to eat?’
‘What is there?’
‘There’s sausages, rissoles, bacon, black pudding and devilled kidneys,’ said the first girl, counting them off on her fingers. ‘With eggs done anyways you wish.’
Grace’s mouth began to water. She nodded. ‘Yes, please.’
‘Which, madam?’
‘I have to choose?’ she asked in confusion.
‘Well, I suppose not,’ said the maid, her eyes widening. ‘Not if you don’t want to, madam.’
‘Then I’ll have everything,’ Grace replied recklessly, thinking how Lily would have loved to sit in bed eating sausages with her.
Of course, when the food arrived on white china plates covered with silver domes and accompanied by toasted bread in a little wicker basket, Grace was too overawed to eat very much at all. She managed a small amount of scrambled egg and a quarter piece of toast, thickly buttered, but could not manage any of the meat stuffs. Feeling guilty about what she’d wasted, she threw the sausages into the fire, left the rest of her breakfast under the silver domes and was pleased to be in the bathroom (a gleaming white-tiled room which – incredibly – was just for her) when a maid arrived to collect the trays.
Her washing water was almost cold by this time, but she was used to this and it didn’t stop her making full use of the washbasins and large, soft towels provided. She washed herself, and then her hair, with a pink soap which smelt wonderfully of roses, and rinsed it with copious amounts of water from the taps. These only gave out cold water, alas (for the hotel’s hot-water system had not quite been perfected), but it seemed miracle enough to have as much washing water as one wanted merely at the twist of a tap. Kneeling in front of the fire to dry her hair, she decided that while the fairytale that her life had turned into seemed highly improbable and might disappear at any moment, she was going to make the most of it.
She pushed her hair into shape (for she didn’t have as much as a comb with her), then looked at the only clothes she had to wear: the limp, half-dead-looking mute’s clothes, stained and dusty and damp from her exertions of the day before. She shuddered; how could she ever put on those dreadful garments again? But she’d have to if she wanted to leave the room. She found some hairpins on the dressing table and managed, after a fashion, to pin back her hair, when there was another tap on the door.
Dressed in no more than a towel, she fled to the bathroom calling, ‘Come in!’
One of the maids wheeled in a leather suitcase on a trolley. ‘A gentleman brought this case for you, madam,’ she heard. ‘He sends a message to say – begging his pardon and please excuse his presumption – that you may wish to avail yourself of some of his sister’s clothes.’
Grace peered around the bathroom door.
‘He said he was worried that you might not have anything right for the season,’ she continued, ‘what with you being new to town and all.’
Grace hid a smile. How kind of James; how thoughtful. ‘Thank you. And please thank the gentleman very much,’ she added.
‘He left a message to say he would be pleased to see you downstairs in about half an hour,’ said the maid before departing.
Grace opened the suitcase and found that it contained several gowns and matching mantles which she presumed had once been Susannah Solent’s. Looking quickly through the garments, which were all of a style and elegance befitting a young lady, she found a gown, tucked and pearl-buttoned, in a vibrant shade of turquoise. She shook some creases out of the skirt and hesitated a moment about the whys and wherefores of putting on a dead girl’s clothes, but finally came to the conclusion that as Susannah Solent had been such a nice person, she surely wouldn’t mind.
Dressing and looking at the final result in the mirror, Grace almost laughed at her altered appearance. She’d been in black for so long – and before that, only in drab, washed-out colours – that to be in such a bright shade made her feel like a completely different person. There was a matching tu
rquoise bonnet, too, with white flowers sewn around the brim, and she crammed this down over her curls and hoped that she had chosen well for the day ahead. The only thing to mar this stylish outfit was the fact that she had no elegant shoes, so was forced to wear the black lace-up boots she’d been given by the Unwins.
x
James was waiting downstairs in the reception hall, and sprang up as she appeared on the staircase.
‘You didn’t mind?’ he said, after complimenting her appearance. ‘You didn’t think it was too presumptuous of me to send clothes in?’
Grace shook her head. ‘I could not have come out in my mute’s clothes. I really could not!’
‘Then what would you have done if I hadn’t turned up with those?’ he asked, amused.
‘I would have had to cut down the room’s curtains and fashion something to wear!’ she said, laughing.
There were some hackney cabs already waiting outside the hotel and on a porter summoning one, James helped Grace in and tucked a travelling rug around her. As the driver whipped up the horse and Grace leaned back on upholstered cushions, the magnitude of what might happen that morning suddenly washed over her, so that she began trembling.
‘My dear girl, are you cold?’ James asked.
‘Not cold.’ Grace shivered. ‘Frightened. For they will know by now, will they not? About . . . ?’
‘About him?’ James gave a meaningful tilt of his head and she nodded. He brought out a newspaper from under his coat and asked in a normal conversational tone, ‘Have you seen the news this morning?’
She shook her head nervously. ‘I have not.’
He unfolded The Mercury. ‘One of London’s top businessmen has been found dead. Chap who owned a mourning warehouse in Oxford Street.’
‘How . . . how did . . . ?’ But Grace felt herself panting with fear and could not finish the sentence.
‘See for yourself.’ He smoothed out the newspaper and held it in front of her.
Grace saw the words SYLVESTER UNWIN – SUSPECTED HEART ATTACK, and was able to breathe again.
‘Shall I read it to you?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind.’
James read, ‘To the considerable shock of the city of London, Mr Sylvester Unwin, owner of the famous mourning emporium in Oxford Street, was found dead yesterday evening in the depository belonging to the Necropolis Railway, next to Waterloo Station. It was thought that Mr Unwin (cousin of George Unwin, of the Unwin Undertaking Establishment) had gone to the warehouse as a favour for his cousin, to insert a love token into a coffin for a grieving widow, when he suffered a heart attack. Mr George Unwin said that this thoughtful deed, undertaken on a desperately foggy night, was a typical act of kindness on the part of his cousin, and it was both poignant and tragic that he should die in its implementation.’
James glanced at Grace, who had her eyes tightly closed, and asked in a low voice, ‘Shall I read you his obituary?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thank you, but no. I don’t want to think about him – and what he’s done – ever again. I’m glad he’s dead.’ She opened her eyes. ‘Is that very wicked of me?’
James shook his head slowly. ‘No, I think not.’ One of Grace’s hands lay on top of the rug, and he moved his own to rest upon it.
She smiled at him tremulously. ‘Lily will be glad, too,’ she said, and offered up a prayer that one day soon she would be able to tell her about it.
x
Just before eleven o’clock, Grace was sitting on the edge of her leather chair in one of the interview rooms at Binge and Gently. She’d been introduced to both partners, and also to James’s own celebrated head of chambers, Mr Ernest Stamford, QC, who was famous not only for his astute counsel, but also for his lavish facial hair – his mutton-chop whiskers and vast curling moustache.
All parties had questioned her closely about her relationship with the Unwins and how she had come to be working for them. Mr Binge, in particular, had wanted to know everything she could remember about her mother. Sometimes he questioned her so aggressively that she felt he did not believe her stories, and at one point he asked if anyone could vouch for her to prove that she was who she said she was.
‘For instance, is there anyone who can verify that you and your sister were using the names Grace and Lily Parkes a year ago, before the inheritance was advertised?’ he asked.
After a moment’s thought, Grace nodded. ‘We were living and using those names at Mrs Macready’s lodging house in Seven Dials.’
‘Seven Dials?’ queried Mr Binge, raising his eyebrows. ‘Can one rely on the word of someone who owns a Seven Dials lodging house? Is the woman still there?’
Rather reluctantly, Grace shook her head. ‘The house was condemned.’
‘Exactly!’ said Mr Binge.
‘But I know where Mrs Macready lives,’ said Grace. ‘I can find her.’
Mr Stamford interposed, ‘According to one of my clerks, the woman in question – Mrs Macready – had a lodging establishment in Seven Dials for over twenty years. She is known as an honest woman.’
‘Hmm,’ said Mr Binge.
A little before midday, seeing that Grace was becoming increasingly anxious, James escorted her on to the terrace to take the air.
‘I don’t care very much for Mr Binge,’ she said to James as he led her outside to a sky heavy with snow. ‘He doesn’t seem to believe anything I say.’
‘You must try not to take it personally,’ James said. ‘At some stage your father appointed Binge and Gently to oversee his affairs, and they have to ensure that his exact wishes are carried out and his money goes to the rightful persons.’
‘But is it necessary for them to be so severe?’
‘Mr Binge is just doing his job,’ James said gently. ‘We are like a small court of law here. We are trying to discover the absolute truth.’
When they had paced along the small terrace for ten minutes or so, they went back into the office, where, the closer the arms of the mantelpiece clock came to midday, the more agitated Grace felt, until she thought she might faint, or be sick, or do some other such thing to disgrace herself. At five minutes to the hour, Mr Gently showed her, James and Mr Stamford into an anteroom, where they were to wait while the Unwins were interviewed. There was a comfortable chaise longue here and the gentlemen bowed her towards it, but Grace felt too nervous to sit down and, after asking Mr Stamford and James to please excuse her, could only pace the floor in a restless fashion.
Supposing it all went wrong? In London there wasn’t much that couldn’t be fixed for a bribe, and who was to say that Binge and Gently weren’t in league with the Unwins? Supposing Lily had been sent away somewhere and they never saw each other again? How was she going to survive the winter without a room or money of her own? What about the night she’d already spent in the hotel? Could she be flung into a debtors’ prison for staying there without the means to pay for it?
Grace might have shared some of these worries with James, but after a few moments he was called out of the room by an official who said that his presence was urgently needed elsewhere, and she did not dare to address Mr Stamford on what he would surely think were trivial matters. Besides, he was busily doing The Times crossword, pencil in one hand and twirling his moustache with the other.
At twenty minutes past midday, Mr Gently came into the anteroom and asked if they would go back into the main office. Grace, quite terrified, looked down the corridor along which James had disappeared, hoping for his return, but was disappointed. Mr Stamford, however – a calm, solid presence – offered her his arm, and she was glad to take it.
x
In the office sat Mr and Mrs George Unwin and Miss Charlotte Unwin. The two ladies were in black fur, Mr Unwin was in full mourning, and all three of them looked immensely startled at the sight of Grace. This was especially true of Charlotte Unwin, whose powder-pale face became quite ashen.
‘Mr and Mrs Unwin, Miss Charlotte Unwin, may I present Miss Grace Parkes?’ said Mr Gen
tly, as if they’d never met each other before. ‘Miss Grace,’ Mr Gently went on smoothly, ‘now you can be reunited with your sister.’
‘She is not my sister,’ Grace said. ‘That is Charlotte Unwin.’
‘But . . . but . . .’ Charlotte Unwin wavered, thought hard about her gig and her footman, and rallied. ‘Yes, I am Charlotte Unwin now, but before I was adopted by my dear Mama and Papa here, I was Lily Parkes.’
‘You never were!’ said Grace fiercely. ‘How could you say such a thing? I only have one sister and that is Lily, and you are not her!’
‘How dare you contradict my daughter!’ Mrs Unwin bristled, glowering at Grace. ‘I took you to work at our establishment out of the goodness of my heart! Is this how you repay me?’
‘You employed my sister, too!’ Grace said. ‘But where is Lily?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mrs Unwin threw up her hands. ‘The poor girl is demented!’
‘Mrs Unwin, can you tell me your story again from the beginning?’ Mr Binge asked. ‘Right from the adoption of er . . . Charlotte here.’
‘Certainly,’ said Mrs Unwin, ‘it’s quite simple. When Mrs Parkes – Mrs Letitia Parkes – died, she left a child, a daughter named Lily.’ Here she indicated Charlotte. ‘We knew the girl’s father was abroad, believed dead, and so we adopted her and made her our own. Here she is now, fully grown, a fine young gentlewoman whom we have long nurtured and loved.’
George Unwin shook his fist at Grace. ‘’Tis a wicked, wicked thing you are doing now, trying to prevent our dear girl from taking what is rightfully hers.’
‘Indeed it is mine!’ Charlotte Unwin burst into tears. ‘Mama always used to tell me that Papa would make his fortune abroad and then we would be very, very rich.’
‘She said that, did she?’ Mr Binge interposed.
‘She did! We were living in a dear little cottage in Wimbledon then, and though we were poor, every day Mama would make tea in her special teapot with bluebirds of happiness on it, and we would talk about what we would do when we came into money.’
