Gamekeeper's Gallows

by John Buxton Hilton

  Mildred was flushed. The memory still excited her.

  ‘I had enough sense not to try to get out through the booking-hall. I went down the ramp at the end of a platform, then crossed a lot of sidings and nearly got run down by a wagon they were shunting. In the end I found myself in amongst a lot of empty cattle-pens: and, to cut half the story out, it was midday next day that some gruff old farmer woke me up, on a pile of sacks behind the brick wall of an auctioneer’s office, with the hot sun on me. I’ve never known for certain whether he was just being genuinely kind to me, or whether he was another of those who saw his chances with me as long as he played his cards right. Maybe by this time I was only looking at any man’s intentions from one point of view. And maybe that’s a pretty safe mistake for any girl to be making. He took me and bought me something to eat in the place where he was going for his own lunch.

  ‘The Rook Revived – that’s a funny name for a public, isn’t it? But that’s what it was called. It had once been called The Rook, then it had lost its licence, then someone else had taken it over, and now it was The Rook Revived. Somehow I must have got talking about myself – some things about myself, anyway – and they gave me a job in the kitchen. The Rook Revived – I was talking just now about smells. What would I give, Sergeant Brunt, to smell the smells of The Rook Revived again? Soap-suds and mutton stew, rough cider and hanging hams, cheeses and the hot sunshine on a row of beans we had growing up against a wall of the yard. I had to work hard – but I like hard work. George and Nan Dakin. They wouldn’t have described themselves as kind people, they’d have thought you were calling them soft: they wouldn’t have had me let up on my work, not for a second. But they weren’t capable of doing anything that wasn’t kind. The time came when I was moved up from the scullery sink to working in the bar and dining-room. I waited on the men in there, farmers and drovers on market day and some of them could be a bit of a handful when they’d got a can or two inside them. Sometimes I had to push one of them off, but it was all in good humour, and as often as not it only needed a joke to keep them in their place. I wish I was back in The Rook Revived, Sergeant Brunt, I do straight.’

  Someone looked round the door of the cottage and came in after the semblance of a courteous knock: some middle-aged woman of the village whom Brunt had not previously seen. He had to prompt Mildred to get her going again after the woman had gone.

  ‘Where was I? I know: Nan Dakin had a brooch, with a clasp that kept coming undone, and to stop herself from losing it, she’d taken it off and put it down on a shelf at the back of the bar, from where it had disappeared. We didn’t think much about it: it could have been knocked on to the floor, even swept up. Then, the same day, something else vanished – a gentleman’s snuff-box that he had left on a table while he went round the back. The next day it was a purse from a lady’s carriage-bag. We’d had things vanish in The Rook Revived before, but not very often, and George Dakin would never have suspected anyone in the house. But the next day, market-day, we were packed out and nearly standing on our heads to get done, when I heard him call my name across the dining-room, and I went back to him in the bar. And there in front of him he’d got all those things: the brooch, the snuff-box and the lady’s purse.

  ‘In your hold-all, upstairs,’ he said. ‘You hadn’t even bothered to push it back properly under your bed. I’ve sent for the constable.’

  Mildred’s eyes were nearly as wide with distress and hurt as they must have been at that calamitous moment.

  ‘I hadn’t touched those things, Sergeant Brunt, I’ll swear I hadn’t. But I knew that George Dakin was a strict and unbending man. He didn’t make threats or play games. I could see myself in the lock-up within the hour. But just at that moment there was a shout from the kitchen.

  ‘“One stuffed breast and two veg—”

  ‘“I’ll take it,” I said. So I took that plate and swept out with it to the customer. He was a youngish man who’d been in the town a day or two: we had a very good commercial trade at The Rook Revived. He always looked specially well cared for – the man you know as Fletcher: Captain Kingsey’s man.

  ‘“Well, what’s got into Beautiful?”

  ‘He could see I was upset – and I’d let him tease me quite a bit while he’d been coming here. And I’d teased him a bit, too. It was always a satisfaction if a man came back for a second stay.

  ‘“I’ve got to get away from here,” I told him. “Quick!”

  ‘I don’t know what came over me, blurting it out to him like that. I was desperate.

  ‘“Trouble of some sort?”

  ‘“They think I’ve stolen something, but I haven’t. They’ve sent for the bobby.”

  ‘“Leave what you’re doing,” he said. “Don’t go back into the bar. Have you got a coat?”

  ‘“It’s upstairs. I daren’t go and get it. I should be trapped.”

  “Do without it, then. It isn’t cold. And I think the funds will run to a new coat. Go to Number 17, Scarsdale Place. Say that you’re a servant from here and that you’ve been sent by a gentleman to help him carry the pictures. I’ll be along within the hour.”

  ‘And he was. I don’t know how I got across that town. I expected the bobby – who wouldn’t have known me, anyway – to come round every corner. Every pair of eyes I met seemed to know all about me, and I expected to hear someone shout Stop Thief! at any moment. And I was sure I was going to be turned away from a strange house with a story like that. They didn’t know me at Scarsdale Place and I didn’t even know as much as Fletcher’s name. But they seemed to know what it was all about. The maid who opened the door took me through the house to a white-washed kitchen, and they sat me on a bench and gave me a glass of milk as they might have done to any other Christian girl. Shall I go on? Is this any help to you?’

  ‘It’s helping me to piece together what happened in a place called Rowsley. A girl there hadn’t pushed her hold-all back under her bed, either.’

  ‘Fletcher came. He wasn’t as long as an hour. There were only two pictures, quite small ones, done up in brown paper, and he could easily have carried them himself. As soon as we got out of the house, he whistled a cab: he said we’d better wait to buy my coat somewhere where there wasn’t a hue and cry out for me. We went straight to the railway station, where his own bags were waiting for him. I felt very conspicuous on the train, still dressed for waiting at table, and not even a hat on my head. But we didn’t go far – the first stop after Cheltenham. And he took me to another small hotel, not a patch on The Rook Revived, and I can see now, looking back, how he had everything planned out in advance. In the afternoon he bought me some new clothes. I thought at first that the woman in the shop must think that something strange was going on. But money changed hands and nobody asked any questions.

  ‘Of course, I knew that Fletcher had booked us in at the hotel as if we were a married couple. And I thought to myself, “Well, this is it. This time you haven’t much choice, Mildred, my girl. And perhaps something will work out from it.” It might even have been worth saving myself for this. You’ve got to understand. Sergeant, I’d been in a pretty desperate corner, and here I was, out of it. There was one thing I’d fought for all my life: but I was anything but sure that it was worth going to gaol for. Besides, I’ve got to admit: Fletcher looked a lot younger than he was, and he was being very nice to me. He knew how to be a charmer when he wanted. We’d a quiet little supper together and he bought us a bottle of German wine. By the time he got into bed with me that night, I wanted him to.’

  The wheels of a farm-cart rumbled past the cottage: a load of stable-muck for somebody’s field.

  ‘I lay there, waiting for him to finish undressing, and I thought of Aileen, somewhere in London. Down in the world now, and you couldn’t have said she’d started all that high up, could you? Kathleen and Barbara, two of my other sisters, we didn’t even know where they’d got to. My mother, still half hoping, at least she’d be saying that she was, not to have to send Megs
and Sally on the night-train. And my father, somewhere, Portishead or Barry Dock, hopeful as ever, plucking up courage, or trying to save the fare, for another trip home. So maybe I hadn’t done all that badly for myself. The thought never crossed my mind – it never does occur to a girl, does it? – that Fletcher might get tired of me; still less that this was part and parcel of something the likes of which I’d never heard.

  ‘He tired of me, all right – at about half a minute’s notice. One minute he was kissing my cheek and his hands were all over me. And he was clean, he smelled nice, he was strong; I felt as if I was lying in cotton wool, what with the wine I’d had, and a day I could hardly believe in, and I was just letting things happen to me. And he knew what to do; there was no doubt about that. Even that thought was a sort of comfort to me. Then suddenly he stopped: took his hands right off me, half turned his back on me, as if I had offended him. A minute or two later he got out of bed and went and stood by the window. Then he put on his dressing-gown and went out of the bedroom. He was a long time away. When he came back, I’d just gone into a doze. But he said nothing to me. Within minutes he was snoring; and me awake, then, till daylight was beginning to show.’

  And what, Brunt was wondering, about Amy Harrington? A very different type of girl from Mildred Jarman. Mildred knew, at least, some of the things she was escaping from; Amy had seen nothing between squalor and the clean white world of her novels. There’d been sin enough – as she’d been accustomed to think of it – all round the edges of her life, but she had never ever begun to think of it as potentially colourful.

  ‘At breakfast time he was sweetness itself to me again, and on and off through the next few days. I say on and off, because he did sometimes seem to forget. He’d go off into a world of his own, as if he didn’t remember that I was sitting there with him. We spent the next night at a little hotel in Derby. I can’t remember its name, but I expect you’d know it. But this time he booked us into separate rooms – they seemed to know him there. At least, I was looking forward to supper with him again, but he said at the last moment that he had to go out and pay a business call; and he’d already told them in the kitchen just what I could have: hash, they called it; we wouldn’t have served it up in The Rook Revived.

  ‘By now, of course, I knew that he worked for Captain Kingsey, and that I was going to work for him too. Fletcher had charge of a lot of the Captain’s business and he did a lot of coming and going between the Captain’s two houses, amongst other things looking for suitable servants and bringing them home. There were moments when I felt like making a run for it again, but where would have been the sense in that? No job, no character, the police in Gloucestershire on the look-out for me. Sergeant Brunt – was it from Gloucester that you got your orders?’

  ‘Nothing was taken off the premises in Gloucester,’ Brunt said curtly. ‘So there was no theft. That’s the state of the law as it stands. The Dakins could sack you, but they couldn’t bring a charge.’

  ‘I said to Fletcher two or three times during our journey, “Supposing I don’t suit the Captain?”

  ‘“You’ll suit him,” he said. “I don’t make that sort of mistake.”

  ‘“But I’ve never worked in that sort of house before.”

  ‘“You’ll learn.”

  ‘And I did. But what do you think I felt, the first time I saw Derbyshire? I’d never lived anywhere, never been anywhere before that wasn’t civilised. Even in Bristol, there were houses. All this waste space! These rocks! And that train! We had to get out of it before we’d been in it five minutes, while it was pulled up a slope with ropes and chains. The second and third time that it happened, they let us stay in the coach, though they told us it was against the rules1 Then at Hopton we got out and went for a walk along the track because our engine hadn’t arrived. And when it did come, that was the first sight I ever had of Thos Beresford. It was as if his eyes lighted on me, and no one else among the passengers. He was staring at me. And those eyebrows: it was impossible to know what he might be thinking. Two or three times, when we stopped at stations, he’d get off his engine and walk the length of the train, pretending he wanted to go and speak to the guard. But always he stopped at the window where I was sitting, and stared in at me.

  ‘At least, I thought in my ignorance, when we got out at the Halt, and the train chugged off round the curve, that was the last I would see of him. He frightened me, and yet, by God, if I’d known what I know now, I wouldn’t have been frightened of Thos Beresford.’

  Shortly after the events related in this story, a passenger was killed on an incline due to non-observance of the regulations. Very shortly afterwards the L. & N.W.R., who had by now subsumed the C. and H.P., ruled that passengers were no longer to be carried. J.B.H.

  Back to Text

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘So you made your acquaintance with Piper’s Clough,’ Brunt said.

  ‘I had to walk up it, carrying the pictures. The men about here certainly know a woman’s place.’

  ‘And you had your first view of the Hall—’

  ‘I was taken straight to the servants’quarters. They alone took my breath away – such space! Mrs Palfreyman took charge of me—’

  ‘I’ve met her.’

  ‘“Let’s see what he’s brought us this time,” she said, and I suppose I must have looked put out, being weighed up like something in the herd that’s not quite pedigree, because she softened up there and then, showed me my room, gave me a good supper and sat talking to me while I ate it. I always had to mind my Ps and Qs with Mrs Palfreyman, but I can’t say I got on all that badly with her. I had to do things her way, and it was not all that easy at first to guess what her way might be. But by and large I don’t hold anything against her. She taught me a lot.’

  ‘About Kingsey and his little ways?’

  ‘I learned most of that the hard way, from Kingsey himself. But she taught me the way I was expected to behave. When she said, at first, “Well, we’d better get you into some sort of shape before the Captain sets eyes on you,” I thought she meant just my appearance. But she said other funny things, like, “You’ll be expected to do some work, you know.” The next day I was measured up for my new uniform. All my old things, except the coat Fletcher had bought me, went to help fire the boiler. Picture my surprise when my costume was ready. Black silk, with lace trimmings; they kept an old seamstress on one of the top floors who was doing nothing but keep the whole servants’hall looking like something out of a theatre show. “Am I expected to work in this?” I asked, and Mrs Palfreyman said, “Well, it all depends what you mean by work.”

  ‘Of course, I had a lot to learn about manners and table-setting. I may have been a bit surly about it at first, but I’ll admit, I needed tuition. The first time I took the Captain a drink in, I set it down on his little wine-table as if I were serving a pint of porter to a wandering sheep-drover in the Rook. The Captain turned his head the other way, and didn’t look at me again while I was in the room. But he lost no time complaining to Mrs Palfreyman about it, and she spent over an hour the next morning, making me walk a yard and a half to put a glass down on the corner of a table.’

  ‘How well did you get to know the Captain in the long run?’

  ‘That’s a long story, and not an easy one. One way or another, I ought not to have been too unhappy at the Hall. The food was good, the work was easy, and there were enough of us to do it. We had plenty of fun together, me and the other girls, when Mrs Palfreyman and the butler weren’t breathing on us.’

  ‘One thing, and then I won’t interrupt again: were all the other girls there on the same terms as you, or were you something special?’

  ‘I was – something special. That’s how they treated me right from the start, though nobody told me in so many words what was special about me. And the Captain took the trouble to tell me once that he was not promiscuous. I don’t really know what that word means.’

  ‘Whatever the Captain wanted it to mean.’
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br />   ‘Yes, well, as I’ve said, I ought to have been able to content myself. While I’d got the Captain’s roof over my head, I wasn’t standing in front of the justices in Gloucester. But I knew all along, of course, that something else was in the offing. Mrs Palfreyman used to talk about it vaguely. “When the call comes,” she’d say, as if there were going to be angels with trumpets. Then one evening, after the Captain had had his dinner, she told Edwards to open some special bottle for him, and I was to take it in to him when various things had been done to it. “And you’re to take in two glasses, which means that he’ll probably ask you to take one with him. That’s if you haven’t upset him before you get as far as that.”

  ‘I don’t know why, but my hands were trembling before I even picked up that tray. There was something about the Captain. He’d never been anything but kind to me. True, if I’d done something clumsy, or said something not particularly clever, he pointedly looked the other way. And when he was disappointed in me like that, he always gave me the feeling that he was, well, only just managing to contain himself. He hadn’t lost control of himself yet, but if he ever did, he wouldn’t be answerable for what might happen next.’