Chapter 5 #2
Uncle Harold had always struck me as a cold fish, so thinking of him possibly carrying on with Morrison behind his wife’s back was difficult, not to mention deeply unpleasant.
I did not enjoy the mental images that accompanied the idea.
But the idea itself was intriguing. It would explain Morrison’s exile to Dorset, if nothing else.
I flipped through the rest of the book, but didn’t see anything else of interest, so I stuffed it back into the handbag and snapped the catch closed.
It was probably getting on for the time I ought to go back downstairs, but I took two minutes to open the wardrobe by the wall.
A handful of frocks, skirts, and blouses hung in it, all of them perfectly dull and respectable, in drab shades of brown and blue and gray.
Morrison’s stockings and unmentionables, kept in the drawer below, were likewise plain and boring.
No silk stockings or dripping negligees for Morrison.
Her nightgown, what I could see of it under the counterpane, was a perfectly serviceable white cotton.
I was about to close the drawer when something that wasn’t underwear or stockings caught my eye. Between the fabrics, something dark blue and leathery peeked out. Brows arching, I reached in and nudged the garments aside so I could see what I was looking at.
A deposit book, for the Post Office Savings Bank.
Wasn’t that interesting?
Not that Morrison didn’t have every right to have a deposit book, of course. She might have been a prodigious saver, for all that she was a maid.
I fished the book out with the use of Christopher’s handkerchief, and dropped it on the toiletries table. And made certain to cover my fingertips when I flipped open the cover and prepared to turn the pages.
There turned out to be no need. The first page wasn’t even full, and that was despite the original entry having been made more than twenty years ago.
Twenty-three, to be precise. A week into August, 1903, when Crispin was two months old, Morrison had deposited five hundred pounds sterling with the Post Office Savings Bank.
Was it severance pay, to sweeten the move from Wiltshire to Dorset, and from the Viscountess St George to Lady Peckham?
Was it hush money? Or, if Edith Morrison was Lydia’s daughter (but not Uncle Harold’s child), might it have been a gift from Aunt Charlotte to a maid she hated to lose, but who wanted to get away from Little Sutherland before the news of her pregnancy got out?
They were all possible explanations, I decided, as I glanced at the rest of the entries on the page.
There weren’t many. There had been no corresponding deposit after the flight from the Dower House this summer.
Morrison had withdrawn a hundred pounds in May.
I assumed it must have been for the cottage and perhaps furnishings, unless it had come furnished.
She must have been living off the rest of the cash since.
But the updated sum at the bottom of the column showed that even after the withdrawal, what was left was still worth more than the original sum had been when she deposited it.
Galling as it was to realize, Morrison had been worth more than I.
Or at least she had been worth more than Miss Philippa Darling.
If I were to go to Germany and cozy up to my paternal grandfather, if I were to take up the mantle of Philippa Marie Albrecht, Gr?fin von und zu Natterdorff, I would be worth a lot more, of course, but I wasn’t prepared to forgive my grandfather for disowning my father, even if he had changed his mind about it in the end.
But that was all by the by. There was no part of me that wanted to return to Germany. I was happy being Pippa Darling, cousin to Christopher Astley and confirmed Londoner. Even if that meant that I was worth less money than Lydia Morrison the lady’s maid.
And now I really did need to get out of this cottage before Francis and Constable Woodin came back with reinforcements.
I shoved the passbook back into the drawer and fluffed the unmentionables over it—the police would find it, and they would also go through the cottage and discover how much was left of the three hundred pounds Morrison had withdrawn in May, unless she had been killed for that cash, in which case they would find none—but there was nothing more I could do.
I used my knee to shut the drawer and gave the room—and the corpse—one final look before I headed back onto the landing and down the stairs.
“About time,” Christopher told me when I came back through the kitchen door. He and Constance were still seated—or seated again—on the bench by the wall. They were alone, so Francis and Constable Woodin had not beaten me here, nor had anyone else shown up.
“Found something interesting,” I told him as I held out his handkerchief.
He gave it a dubious look, but stuffed it back in his pocket. “What’s that?”
I wiggled onto the seat between them. “A bankbook.”
They both turned to look at me. “Depositbook?”
I nodded. “Opened with a five hundred pound deposit in August twenty-three years ago.”
“When we were all infants,” Christopher said.
“Right around the time, or so I assume, when Morrison left Sutherland Hall for the Dower House, and when Hughes left the Dower House for Sutherland Hall.”
“We didn’t live in the Dower House when I was a baby,” Constance piped up. “My father was still alive then.”
Yes, of course he had been, or Constance wouldn’t be here. “I don’t expect it matters, but where did you live before the Dower House?”
They had lived in London, Constance explained. “My mother was Uncle Maury’s sister, so we lived in Marsden House when I was small. My grandmother lived in the Dower House. After she passed and my father died, that’s when Mother moved into the Dower House. I was already at Godolphin then.”
“So Morrison moved from Sutherland Hall to London, and Hughes moved from London to Sutherland Hall.”
Constance nodded. “I know nothing about the five hundred pounds, though.”
I knew nothing about them, either, aside from the suppositions I had made while up in Morrison’s bedchamber.
That didn’t stop me from opening my mouth, preparatory to give my opinion on where the money had come from.
But before I could begin, there was the sound of voices from outside the courtyard wall.
“Let’s talk more later,” I said.
Outside the wall, Francis’s voice mentioned something about a blue door, and then the garden gate rattled.
Christopher, Constance, and I looked up, innocently, as the gate opened and Francis and Constable Woodin piled in, followed by an older man with a doctor’s bag and two other constables in uniform.