Chapter 39
39
The evenings were drawing in and soon the trees would be reduced to spiky silhouettes, bare of leaves. Olivia turned twenty-one and the legal guardianship of Sir Hugo came to an end. She knew that she could return to Windy Acres, if she chose, and manage her own affairs, but had decided to stay because the Fairchilds assured her she was family and she was not prepared to part from the man she loved. At night, Olivia spent far too much time whispering through the wall to him, making the most of their situation whilst they could. During the day, she continued her writing and finally finished the novel.
Encouraged by Seth, she approached her father’s former editor and he agreed to read her manuscript, more out of compassion, she suspected, than any genuine belief that he was about to discover the next Mary Elizabeth Braddon.
Whilst she awaited his verdict, and after a week of driving rain, when venturing outside held little appeal, the weather finally broke and she was finally able to continue with her enquiries regarding the disappearance of Annie Taylor.
One of the problems she had was that the girl had run off so long ago. Memory was an issue with those she spoke to as details were now blurred and dates were muddled. Olivia hung around the kitchens and talked to Freda again, who couldn’t even be certain of the last day she’d seen her friend. She asked the staff if any traveller families had been in the area at the time, but no one could remember if any were camped out at Widow Larwood’s cottage or not. Ernest Dunn, Clarence’s childhood friend who had so nearly kissed her that day in the music room, had been killed in the war, so she couldn’t question him about what he’d seen in the lane, and others had died too – the old woman who’d employed the young girl as a housemaid, and even Annie’s father. He’d succumbed to pneumonia the previous winter, although she doubted he would have volunteered information about the daughter who was such a disappointment to him. She decided to pay Mrs Taylor a visit, and also talk to Ernest’s mother and see if she could remember anything about the day her son had seen Annie walking to the station.
Mrs Dunn had worked at the bakery since the loss of her son, so Olivia waited until after three, and then called on her. She was invited in and offered a cup of tea, and to share the tin of broken biscuits the older woman had been sent home with.
‘I’m so sorry about Ernest,’ Olivia said, as they sat together in the back porch.
‘And my sympathies to you too, miss. Her Ladyship was so excited about the wedding. It just ain’t right that all these young men have been taken away from us. I’ve still got my girls, but for the Fairchilds to lose three was unthinkable.’ She had two older daughters who were now married with children and lived elsewhere. ‘And yet the postmaster sent two sons out and they both came back.’ She shook her head, lost in her melancholy. ‘My lad had such big plans for life. Humble beginnings weren’t going to stop him from achieving marvellous things. Had a way with people and bags of charm, did our Ern, positively brimming with it.’
‘I remember,’ Olivia said, thinking back to the handsome young man who had danced with her and called her enchanting.
‘And Master Clarence was so kind. Strutted about a bit, like his father, but the gentry can be like that,’ Mrs Taylor said. ‘Passed lots of things down to our Ern, although that was part of the problem really.’
‘Oh?’ Olivia wasn’t aware of any problem.
‘He started aspiring to greater things once he was asked to spar with Master Fairchild up at the manor. “One day I’ll have a big house, Mother,” he’d say. “With my own man to dress me and a wife to be proud of.” And he was a clever lad.’ She tapped at her forehead to indicate that he had brains. ‘Had a gift of saying the right thing and using a bit of flattery to get what he wanted.’ She chuckled to herself at the memory. ‘I’m not saying he was an angel, mind. Had a bit of a temper when he was riled. But everyone loved him.’
Whilst every mother thought the very best of her children, this wasn’t quite true. Benji hadn’t liked Ernest much, and Howard hadn’t been overly keen after the almost kiss – even though she now understood why.
The two women looked out over the fields at the horses pulling the harrow across the Fairchild land in preparation for the planting of winter wheat. Olivia brought the subject round to Annie and asked if Mrs Dunn could recall anything from the day Ernest had seen her leaving.
‘Not really. He said she was heading north, carrying a carpet bag, and he assumed she was off to catch a train.’ The Dunns’ thatched cottage was one of several houses on the main street that led to the station. ‘I was surprised not to see her myself as I was washing all the front windows that day, but I guess I had my back to the road.’
A carpet bag made sense if the young girl was leaving town, but then Mrs Dunn said the stationmaster couldn’t remember Annie buying a ticket. Perhaps she hadn’t left by train, after all, but by another means of transport. Which brought Olivia back to the traveller scenario, although Widow Larwood’s was in the completely opposite direction, on the way to the manor.
After eating far too many broken biscuits, Olivia thanked Mrs Dunn and decided to visit Annie’s mother. It wasn’t far to the Taylors’ small house. Olivia knew her from church but the woman kept herself very much to herself, even before her husband’s death, and Olivia wondered how she would be received.
‘I don’t know why you’re dredging all this up.’ Mrs Taylor invited her inside but did not offer her so much as a seat or a cup of tea.
There was a pinched look about her face, as though she was sucking a lemon, and a very dated way of dressing, so that the widow’s weeds she wore made her look like a lean version of Queen Victoria.
‘Isn’t there a tiny part of you that wants to know what happened to your daughter? Where she is now? If she’s happy? You might even have grandchildren. Wouldn’t that be a small comfort after losing your husband?’
She could see the widow narrow her eyes at the thought, and she finally gestured for Olivia to take a seat. ‘I don’t know where we went wrong.’ She wrung her hands and looked as though she might cry. Olivia shifted uncomfortably in her chair. ‘My Annie attended church twice every Sunday and learned her scriptures from a young age. She was taught right from wrong and we kept her away from temptation and yet, I’ve heard whispers that she was with child.’
This strict upbringing probably contributed to the young girl’s desire to seek out adventure, Olivia thought to herself, but she was not here to judge.
‘Did you know anything about the man she ran off with?’
Mrs Taylor shook her head. ‘My husband wasn’t happy with her seeing the Tanner boy but he was a good Christian lad, and a hard-working one. I persuaded him that he would make our girl a decent husband in time. It was only after she fled that I remembered occasionally hearing noises in the night, which I now suspect was her sneaking out to meet someone, but you know how old houses creak? The afternoon she left, she packed a bag and took all the essentials with her. And, I’m ashamed to say, the next day we discovered the rent money was missing. To think that I bought up a wanton woman and a thief.’ She shuddered.
The decision to run off had not been on the spur of the moment then. Again, everything was pointing to a planned elopement – but with whom?
‘Someone recently remembered occasionally seeing her heading in the direction of the Larwood house at night. Perhaps she really did run off with a traveller,’ Olivia concluded.
Mrs Taylor slapped at her bony thighs. ‘Then there we have it. I did wonder for a while if the Tanner boy had us all fooled. If my Annie was heading south to meet with someone at night, then I doubt the widow’s run-down house was her destination, but beyond that. She was clearly heading for the manor!’
Olivia had suspected this to be the young woman’s true destination when she’d mistakenly considered Sir Hugo as the culprit, and she circled back to it now. There had been over twenty men working there before the war, but servants risked instant dismissal for such conduct. A member of the household, however, could do as he damn well pleased. Her thoughts kept returning to the boathouse. Hadn’t Howard told her that theirs was not the first romantic liaison conducted there? Perhaps it wasn’t the lord of the manor who was toying with the blue-eyed beauty in the village, but instead a man who would one day become exactly that…
* * *
As Olivia was wheeling the bicycle up the long drive, Benji stepped from the house and she nearly dropped it to the ground in surprise as he strode across the gravel to meet her. There was more swagger in his walk now, she realised, and he still looked alarmingly like Howard from certain angles.
‘What on earth are you doing home?’ She’d not been expecting him until the end of term.
He shrugged. ‘Measles outbreak in the dorm but I’ve got no symptoms as yet. Mother pushed for me to come back until I’m clear. The headmaster knows what she’s been through, so he didn’t put up much of a fight.’
Poor Cynthia, Benji was even more precious to her now, and Olivia’s heart went out to the woman.
‘I’ve been waiting for you all afternoon. Since you’ve already had the stupid disease, I thought we could take a walk together or play a game. But Mother said you were out. She told me you’d both been to see Tanner recently and that you’d gone down to the village today to dig about in his past – ask about the Taylor girl and whatnot.’ He graciously took the bike from her. ‘But it was all before your time. Why the sudden interest, Livvy?’
‘The poor man has been dealt some unfortunate cards in his life yet he always struck me as the decent sort. Look how he encouraged your sketching and let you help him in the greenhouse when you were young? He never got over Annie’s disappearance, so I thought I’d try to track her down. It’s guilt, mainly. I feel so rotten that the job he loved was taken away from him. I can’t do anything about his war wounds, or what he witnessed with his father, but thought I could help to heal his broken heart.’
She couldn’t admit that part of her wanted to eliminate the competition. Tanner’s reception of her had been cold and indifferent, but she had felt something that afternoon, in his tiny backyard. She’d already fallen in love with his words, his spirit and his kindness through the wall, but there was something about his body, his face and the smell of him that had elicited a reaction from her too. Seth was correct, and she knew that now. If she couldn’t be with the man she loved, she could so very easily love the version of him that she was with. Finding a happily married Annie, or even a kept one, with numerous children clinging to her skirts, might take the shine off those sapphire eyes for her heartbroken former beau.
They entered the west wing of the house and Benji propped the bicycle up in one of the empty stalls in the stables, as Olivia took her shawl from the front basket.
‘Your mother has offered him his old job back. I think she feels guilty that she was so quick to find him other employment when I caused all that trouble. The gardening staff here could certainly do with an extra pair of hands.’ There was a moment when she realised what she’d inadvertently said and the colour drained from her face, but then she caught Benji’s smile.
‘Livvy!’ he laughingly chastised, as they walked back outside. ‘I’m sure Tanner’s remaining hand would be most welcome. And in all seriousness, it would be great to have him back here. Maybe I could even pop and see him – have a word.’
They climbed the shallow steps to the front door.
‘I spoke to both Mrs Taylor and Mrs Dunn today.’ She paused, wondering how to word her suspicions. ‘Finding out who Annie was seeing back then is obviously key to where she is now.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Is it possible that Clarence…’ She couldn’t finish the sentence.
‘Olivia! No. What did Ernest’s mother say? That friendship was damnably odd and I never much liked the Dunn boy – the way Howard used to suck up to him, and how Clarrie was always so keen to do things for a postal worker’s son from the village. I know that makes me sound like a dreadful snob. But it should have been the other way around.’
Olivia narrowed her eyes and considered this as they both stepped through the door. Benji sat down on the long bench and began to remove his boots.
‘He caused Clarence’s scar, did you know? Ernest thumped him so hard in a temper that he cut his chin open. They told everyone it had happened during one of their bouts, but it wasn’t true.’
‘But everyone liked Ernest,’ she said, frowning.
‘Liked him, or was scared of him,’ Benji said, raising both eyebrows. ‘He was so full of charm and flattery but, just occasionally, there was a flash of something darker. I never thought much of it when I was younger, but he was an ambitious man, Liv, and I guess his lack of fortune made him feel weak. He often tapped Clarrie for money. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw my brother say no to anything he asked. Had an extraordinary way with girls too.’
Olivia’s heart began a slow but definite pounding, and she lumped down on the bench.
‘As did Clarence. Inheriting all this made him an attractive prospect.’ She gestured to the house. It was Howard telling her about the rendezvous in the boathouse that had made her consider him as Annie’s secret lover.
Benji shrugged. ‘He talked about girls a lot, but it was bravado. He never seemed particularly interested in any – spent more time with the horses than he did with women – and he certainly didn’t love his fiancée. That was all Mother’s doing.’ He rolled his eyes.
Yes, she realised, because Clarence had been in love with someone who’d worked at the house, but it was a love that could never be. Had he told Ernest about her? Did it give the Dunn lad some sort of hold over the future heir to the manor? Olivia’s mind was racing now.
‘I was so sure Annie Taylor was meeting Clarence at the boathouse. She was spotted coming this way in the middle of the night.’
‘Crikey, Liv. The boathouse? You do know Ernest was the person who crashed there most often? Usually if he’d been over for the day and couldn’t be bothered to walk back to the village. It’s why the blankets were kept out there.’
Two pairs of eyes met and locked in the entrance hall in Merriford Manor as Olivia tried to work through the muddle in her brain.
Ernest had supposedly seen Annie walking towards the train station just before he disappeared, but his mother, cleaning the windows, hadn’t seen the young girl. He was a handsome lad, charming all the girls for miles about, and Annie was a real beauty. Yet he had a temper… a scary thing when coupled with his great ambitions.
‘But Ernest couldn’t have been the man Annie was running away with because he never left the village,’ Benji pointed out.
A spear of realisation pierced Olivia’s body.
‘ What if Annie didn’t leave it either? You said yourself, he revived the story about the shrieking pits being haunted? The biggest of which is on his family’s land. What if he did that to keep people away?’
Finally, Benji understood what she was getting at, and his eyes became saucer-wide.
‘Because he was out to enjoy everything life had to offer,’ he said. ‘He intended to be someone – and that someone would not want to be tied down by a village girl with a baby on the way… Oh my God, Livvy, you don’t think…?’
She turned to Benji and she knew that they both most definitely did think.
What if Annie had sometimes met with a man at the Merriford Manor boathouse back then, and what if it had been a charming young lad from the village? What if Clarence Fairchild had been sufficiently intimidated by this young man to let him use the boathouse for these liaisons? And then she had another thought. What if… what if Clarence’s secret was even bigger than she’d first assumed? He’d never been one for the ladies, nor had he expressly stated the sex of the servant that so enchanted him. Perhaps it wasn’t the horses that drew him to the stables. Ernest was the sort who might use such information against him. The sort to smash his fist so hard into his friend’s cheek that the friend was left with a lifelong scar. The sort to flirt with a fifteen-year-old girl one minute, and the lady of the manor the next.
But was he the sort to revive a long-forgotten ghost story with the sole aim of keeping locals away from his land? Because maybe, she considered, in the murky depths of the largest shrieking pit lay the body of a pregnant young girl who had tried to force him into a marriage that did not suit his ambitious plans.