Chapter 6 #3
Considering the possibility? Tennant wondered. The Prince of Wales stays on my list.
Around the time Inspector Tennant’s train left for the south coast, his surrogate, Sergeant O’Malley, sat on the bench of a long trestle table in the Marlborough House kitchen, drinking a cup of tea.
“Just poking my big nose around for the Yard to see that all is well, Mrs. MacIntosh,” he’d told the cook. With all that’s happening, we can’t be too careful.”
A century’s worth of scrubbing and polishing had burnished the table’s oak planks until it resembled a golden mirror.
Across the room, two cast-iron ranges had replaced the open fireplaces, and glowing coals heated the oven chambers and the room.
A slatted wooden box the size of a bed hung by chains from the ceiling, suspending green sage, rosemary, and baskets of foodstuffs, keeping them high and dry and away from the mice.
“Mrs. MacIntosh, ’tis a lovely warm room and a fine place to spend a winter afternoon.” O’Malley breathed in. “Sure, that aroma is the bread you’re baking, and no mistake.”
Mrs. MacIntosh had grown gray in royal service.
As with many cooks, she was a red-cheeked, stout woman, the result of a lifetime’s leaning over a fire, surrounded by food—tasting, seasoning, and tasting it again.
She’d pushed her sleeves back from thick wrists and square hands that had beaten more batter and shaped more dough than there were days in most people’s lives.
“You’re after being the queen of your kingdom, Mrs. MacIntosh.”
“Most days, Sergeant. But when the royals do fancy entertaining, they bring in a Frenchman who turns my kitchen upside down. I’m happy to see the back of him.”
“’Tis hard work you’re doing, and that’s no lie,” O’Malley said.
Mrs. MacIntosh preened. “Let me add a wee dram to your cup.” She carried a bottle of whisky to the table and tipped an ounce into his tea. “A little fortification is welcome on a December afternoon.”
“I’m thanking you kindly, missus.” O’Malley took a sip. “Now, if I was to go into service, I’m thinking the master’s manservant would be just the thing for me.”
The cook sniffed. “Brushing the prince’s coats and hats is about all the work he’ll do. Mister Hackett farms out the boot-blacking to the second footman. And he’s always after the princess’s seamstress to stitch up the prince’s shirts.”
“Sounds like the fella has landed in a tub of butter. What sort of time off does a valet like himself have?”
“Two half days a week to my one. On Tuesdays and Sundays, you’ll see no sign of that one.”
“Is Mister Hackett a pleasant fella to be around?”
Mrs. MacIntosh looked over her shoulder to see if the scullery maid was out of earshot. “The laddie fancies himself. That’s clear as daylight. Travels with as much luggage as a lord, and he’s always buying new hats and aping the prince.”
“Seems a harmless way to waste his wages.”
She lowered her voice. “Fancies other things as well. I see him looking, and I keep a close eye on the lasses.”
O’Malley scratched at his side whiskers sagely. “Something of a Casanova, the creature.”
The sergeant left Marlborough House to pursue the inspector’s second line of requested inquiry: Sir Lionel Dermott.
Some A-Division coppers had steered O’Malley to the Golden Lion pub on King Street.
It was a stone’s throw from the building that housed the Home Office; clerks and junior officers in government service frequented it.
O’Malley recognized a few familiar faces from the Yard, as well.
The barkeep drew a pint of Guinness for the sergeant and pocketed an extra crown. He confirmed that Dermott was an occasional patron.
O’Malley said, “I heard the fella has an eye for the ladies.” He took a sip, watching the barman over the rim.
“News to me, and I’ve heard my share of bragging. But you know how it is, Sarge.” He held a glass under the spigot at a forty-five-degree angle, curled his fingers around the tap handle, and winked. “The bigger the talk, the smaller the tackle.”
He pulled the handle, poured a perfect pint, and delivered it to a patron. Then he returned to O’Malley and mopped the bar top.
“I’ll tell you one thing about Sir Lionel. He’ll stand his juniors a pint from time to time.” The barman leaned in, his elbow resting on the polished oak. “Not like some of these grand panjandrums who swan around Whitehall with poles up their arses.”
On Friday, Julia’s clinic treated more than the average number of daily injuries.
Tired workers grew inattentive as a week of exhausting manual labor wore on.
By three o’clock, Julia had set two broken bones and a half-dozen gashes deep enough to require stitches.
But by the middle of the afternoon, an ebb in the flow of the sick and injured gave Julia time to think.
She glanced at the wall clock, thinking, He’s nearly at the south coast by now. Again, Julia wondered about their awkward conversation. “What’s the matter with me, anyway?” she muttered.
Julia drained her teacup and carried it to the trolley in the hallway, stopping at the open door to the women’s ward. Kate was there, sitting with a patient. Nurse Clemmie joined Julia, looking over her shoulder. “She has a way with the patients, that girl.”
“She does indeed.”
“You’re giving evidence at the Leary inquest tomorrow morning. A shame on your free Saturday.”
“It won’t take long. A jagged, fatal wound from a broken bottle won’t be hard to explain to the coroner’s jury. I haven’t heard of an arrest, so ‘by person or persons unknown’ most likely.”
Julia returned her attention to Kate. She’d been coming in two afternoons a week, and Mrs. Donohue, the patient in bed two, had her attention.
The lady had merry eyes, blue and bright.
In late middle age, her complexion resembled pink-and-cream porcelain with fine lines around her eyes and mouth like the crackles in an old teacup.
“’Tis lucky we were in Black ’forty-seven,” Mrs. Donohue said in a light Irish brogue. “Our family survived the famine. We had helpful relatives in Cork who worked the hop fields in England each September.”
“I’m knowing many who did the same,” Kate said.
“My cousins had saved a little money, so we took the steamer to Bristol and ended up in Kent. Lovely, golden days they were, and not so different from the fields of Kildare.”
Kate then shared a childhood story that Julia knew well. After her parents died, she lived with a great-aunt, a retired housekeeper for a well-to-do Dublin family.
“Auntie was a fast learner,” Kate said. “She worked her way up and taught me what she knew.”
“Ah, I’m seeing her, now,” Mrs. Donohue said. “An téarma cuirtín lása.”
“You’re right about that.” Kate laughed. “Lace-curtain Irish, she was, and proud of the label. She found me my first job in service, and after she passed, I left Ireland for London. An agency placed me with the doctor’s family.”
“Our lucky day,” Julia called from the door.
“Luck and the Fates …” Mrs. Donohue yawned, her lids drooping. “I might have ended up a wren on the Curragh like the poor Murphy girls, but for my cousins from Cork.”
Kate adjusted the patient’s blanket and carried away her teacup.
Julia stopped Kate in the hall. “What did Mrs. Donohue mean by a wren on the Curragh?”
“They’re the poor creatures who live like birds in the hedges around the Curragh. The British army camp on the great plain. The ‘wrens of the Curragh,’ people are calling them.” Kate looked at the doctor. “Serving the soldiers, if you’ll be taking my meaning.”
“Yes, I see.”
“They’re much despised, but I’ll not be throwing stones like many who’ve landed on a comfortable perch.”
“Speaking of perches, back on the Isle of Wight, were you surprised that Lizzy Dowling found service in the queen’s house hold?”
“Was she a kitchen skivvy?”
“No. Lady Styles told me she was a parlor maid who sometimes assisted Princess Louise as a lady’s maid.”
“Then I’m surprised at that. ’Tis hard enough for an Irish lass to find work in a respectable house, never mind the highest in the land.”
“I thought the same thing.”
“I don’t know Lizzie’s history, but a girl who grows up in a country cottage? She doesn’t know the dainty ways of the English.”
Kate wheeled the tea trolley back to the kitchen, and Julia returned to her office, thinking. What was Lizzie’s journey? There must be a story there.
She also wondered if Tennant realized how unusual the girl’s employment had been. Lizzie Dowling had traveled a great distance, measured not merely in miles. How had a young Irish girl ended up in the queen’s household and serving a princess? It was something of a mystery.
Might the tragedy’s roots be in Ireland?