The Housekeeper’s Secret

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

‘Well, well… what have we here?’

Frederick Henderson’s shoes clicked on the stone flags as he walked slowly across to the table. He removed his hat, as if he were paying an ordinary social call. As if it wasn’t dark, and they weren’t alone in an empty cottage in the woods.

‘Mr Henderson… What are you doing here?’

Dread solidified in Kate’s throat, making her voice hoarse. As soon as the choked words were out, she regretted them, because she knew exactly what he was going to say in reply.

‘Funny. I was going to ask you the very same thing.’

‘I overheard people talking about this place… about whether it was empty. I didn’t… I didn’t like the sound of it. I thought I should come and make sure that the door was locked.’

The clouds must have parted enough for the moon to reappear because suddenly she could see his face and read the amusement there. He knew she was lying and was deciding how far to play along with her.

‘As always, Mrs Furniss, your dedication to duty is… exemplary .’ He trailed a finger over the scarred surface of the table. ‘If a little unwise. You should have sent someone else to check, or at least to accompany you. And brought a lantern. A place like this—dark and isolated—isn’t safe for a respectable woman alone at night, when any of the local drunks might be wandering about. What were you thinking ?’

At some point his tone had changed, losing its silky, cajoling note and turning flinty. Her whole body felt hot and light, like a paper lantern. Fear glowed inside her. For a second everything was still and suspended, and the air seemed to quiver with malice. She was still standing by the low stone sink, but she swivelled her eyes to the door, mentally calculating the distance.

A mistake.

He saw, and read her intention. When she moved, he was ready to dart in front of her, blocking her way.

‘I swore I’d never say anything. They made me promise. And I never did—all these years. I put it out of my head until you came poking around… digging it all up again.’

Jem had steered Mullins round the back of the ale tent, where he dropped to the ground amongst piled-up crates of empty lemonade bottles, like a puppet with cut strings. After a few moments of floundering to get his balance, he settled with his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

Jem couldn’t see his face. Mullins had reached the pitch of drunkenness when logic was jumbled and speech punctuated by long spells of silence, so it was difficult to tell if he’d fallen asleep. Jem shoved his hands in his pockets and prayed for patience, trying to drown the urge to take hold of him and shake the truth out.

‘It was a game. A laugh.’ The words came grudgingly. ‘That’s how it started. Hyde didn’t live here all the time in them days. He worked in India, but he’d come back for a few months and invited his friends up here. House was fuller than it had been in years. They had a shoot, but it wasn’t up to much—the old keeper had let the bird stocks go down. It showed him up, that did… Made him look a fool in front of his fancy mates. I reckon he felt he had to make up for it. Impress them.’

‘That sounds like Hyde,’ Jem muttered. His reputation in London had been as a bragger and a show-off. Amongst other things.

‘They had dinner in the tower that night. The temple, they called it. I don’t know whose idea it was, but it had never happened before while I’d been there. Foreign food it was, like they have in India. Made the inside of your mouth burn something shocking. Sir Henry didn’t join them. He went to bed and left them to it, and they didn’t want old Goddard hanging about, but the footmen—Wilf Williams and what’s-’is-name, the other one—stayed downstairs in the tower. Wilf kept having to come back for more wine, more port, more brandy and whisky—Goddard looked like he was going to have a turn at all the booze they were going through.’

Mullins had hit his stride now, his initial reluctance disappearing as the events of that night caught him in their current. ‘Wilf kept us informed about what they were getting up to—gambling games and the like. We thought the whole thing was a laugh. There were plenty of bottles around for us to help ourselves to on the sly, and that other lad—Viscount Frensham’s tiger—he was all right. A bit quiet, but we hit it off. The older footmen always treated me like a dog. It was good to have someone the same age to joke around with…’

He trailed off. On the other side of the tent, the country dance tune the band were playing was accompanied by stamping feet and whoops of merriment. Jem had to lean in closer to hear Mullins speak. Close enough to smell ale and sweat and bad teeth.

‘It was a laugh.’ Defensiveness bristled in his tone. ‘It felt like no one was in charge anymore… like there were no rules. We were having a fine time, drinking the dregs in all the bottles, telling ghost stories; then Wilf comes back and says they want us to go over there—me and the other lad. Some game they want to play.’

In spite of the warmth of the evening, Jem realised he was shivering.

‘I didn’t think nothing of it. I’d sat up keeping score for their billiards and that plenty times, and there’s always the chance for a bob or two from the toffs when they’re pissed.’ He squinted at Jem with a frown. ‘I was a bit pissed myself, if I’m honest… so we went up there, me and him. Up to the room at the top of the tower.’

His head dropped heavily, his stubby fingers sliding into his hair to support it.

‘I’d never been up there before. There were these carvings all around the walls and the candles made them look like they were moving. We’d been telling the story of the Indian lad—Samuel—about how his ghost haunts the woods, and there’s his portrait, right there above the fireplace. And they’ve got his clothes—his actual bloody tunic and the silk thing what wrapped around his head and his britches and what have you—and they wanted us to put them on.’

There was a long pause. Jem clamped his jaw shut and looked across at the tower, silhouetted against the blue dark. He felt light-headed, slightly sick. After all these years he was about to find out what had happened to his brother, but for the first time it struck him that he might be better off not knowing. He felt a sudden compulsion to leave Mullins, alone with his ghosts and demons and guilt. To leave the past where it belonged and go to Kate. The future, if only he could find a way—

‘It wasn’t funny no more.’ Mullins’s voice was thick with emotion. ‘There was something wild about them—like you wouldn’t expect of the gentry. Savages, they were. None of them things was ever going to fit me, but they got the other lad and were pulling his jacket off, then his shirt, winding this silk about his head, and Hyde was going on about his stupid ancestor. There was this silver hunting horn on the wall and Hyde took it down and was blowing it. They made Frensham’s lad stand up on the table in front of the painting and they were all cheering and shouting… baying like animals—’

He broke off with a wet, snivelling sound and dragged his arm across his face.

‘I don’t know how it happened. I don’t remember. Someone made a joke about the tiger hunter, and said they didn’t need to go to India when they had their own tigers to hunt. It was… out of control. One minute we were up there, in the temple, the next they were shoving us down the stairs, starting to count. I can still hear their voices, all of them together, counting, before they came after us. Frensham’s lad tried to follow me, but I knew he’d be easier to spot in that stupid bloody get-up. I told him to bugger off and make his own way—every man for himself.’

Jesus.

‘I went back to the house. I’m not ashamed to admit it.’ Mullins’s tone was one of aggressive defiance, at odds with the claim. ‘I hid in the privy for a bit and I could hear that bloody horn… I was going to go back and give myself up, I was, but… I was feeling proper rough by then. I took myself off to the silver cupboard. That was where I slept.’

‘What happened to Jack?’ Somehow Jem was on his feet, though he hadn’t been aware of moving. He looked down at Mullins, slumped amongst the crates. When he didn’t answer, Jem nudged him with his boot. ‘ What happened? Did you see him again?’

‘I don’t know what happened, I swear! I went out like a light, slept in my boots, and woke up with a splitting head, a good bit later than I should have. There was no sign of him and damned if I was going to do all the coal myself, so I went looking, up to the nursery corridor where the visiting servants kipped. His clothes were there—the ones he’d arrived in. I was going to tell Goddard he hadn’t come back, but he wasn’t up. The place was still in a state from the night before, but Hyde’s valet was buzzing around.’

‘Henderson?’

‘ Bastard. ’ Mullins turned his head to spit viciously onto the grass. ‘He didn’t seem that bothered then, but later he came to find me. Twisted my arm right up behind my back and told me that I wasn’t to breathe a word about no tiger hunt. All that had happened was the boy had been dressed up to wait on the dinner. He said that if I told a soul, my family would be turfed off their farm. He said if anything ever came out, they’d know it was me who’d blabbed, and my pa would be finished. Fat lot of good it did them—everyone round here knows what the Hydes are like, any road—’

He made an attempt to stand, fuelled by rage but sabotaged by drink. Collapsing back into the crates, his voice was raw. ‘There’s something rotten about this place. Always has been. That bastard nearly broke my arm, and then he tossed a sovereign on the floor, to buy my silence .’

Jem was pacing in front of where Mullins sat. It was beginning to dawn on him that the answer he had come so far to find was no answer at all and he had only stumbled upon another question.

‘So that’s it—he’d just vanished? ’

‘I don’t know, all right?’ Gripping the crates, Mullins made another attempt to get to his feet. ‘I’ve told you everything I know and that’s a lot more than I should have said. I’m sick of keeping their secrets.’ Upright, he took a few staggering paces towards Jem and grabbed the front of his shirt. ‘Ask that fucking bastard Henderson if you want to know what happened. Or Hyde himself. I’ve told you all I know—now leave me alone.’

He gave Jem’s chest a shove and let go, swearing as he stumbled backwards. And then he swung round and lurched away, leaving Jem standing alone in the dark, blood pounding, fists clenched against an enemy that somehow managed to stay ahead of him, always beyond his reach.

‘Now, now, my dear Mrs Furniss, there’s no need to be so unfriendly. Since the two of us find ourselves here together, there’s no need to hurry back.’

Kate heard the click and rasp of a lighter flint, and Henderson held the small flame aloft. ‘I must say, you’ve got this place looking better. One can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but it’s cleaned up nicely. I daresay it could be quite homely with a fire in the grate and some lamps lit. For an unmarried woman, it seems you have a knack for creating a home.’

‘I must be getting back.’

Henderson went on, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Marriage has been on my mind rather a lot of late, understandably. A wedding gives one pause for thought, doesn’t it? Were you never tempted to take the path of matrimony, Mrs Furniss? A woman with your… advantages must have had plenty of offers.’

‘I’m perfectly satisfied with my life as it is, thank you, Mr Henderson.’

‘I can understand that. You have your independence—the Pankhurst woman would applaud you. But the life of a housekeeper is essentially solitary, is it not? This is the closest you’ll get’—he swung the wavering flame around—‘to making a home. The warmth of the hearth and the blessing of children… The companionship of marriage. You must once have hoped for those things?’

A fleeting vision of the cottage she had imagined flashed into her mind, and she shoved it away. She would not allow Henderson to insinuate himself into her dream and sully it.

‘If you’ll excuse me—’

‘The thing is, I sense that you’re a woman who needs that sort of companionship, Mrs Furniss. The… physical sort, if you get my meaning.’ His voice thickened. ‘You and I—’

‘I need to go.’

She forced her legs to carry her towards the door, groping for her chatelaine and clutching helplessly at the empty folds of her skirt.

‘Not yet.’ His hand shot out, his fingers closing around her arm. ‘You haven’t shown me upstairs yet.’

‘Mr Henderson, please —’

She heard the rising panic in her voice in the moment before his body slammed against hers, knocking the breath from her, pushing her back against the door. He wasn’t tall, but he was solid, strong. Though she twisted and thrashed she couldn’t shift him, and the scuffle of feet was loud in the small room, his hot breath gusting across her face.

‘You can pretend you don’t want it,’ he rasped, close to her ear, ‘but I know you do. I can smell it on you. This is what you came here for, isn’t it?’

His knee drove into her crotch, forcing her legs apart. His arm was across her neck. And then suddenly there was a juddering blow and they were knocked sideways. It took her a moment to realise that someone had rammed the door open, catapulting them away from it.

Henderson’s laugh was cruel and jagged. ‘Well, look who’s here. The village idiot. What do you want, boy?’

The moon had cast off its veils of cloud. Davy Wells was clearly visible as he stood by the table, shoulders hunched, face screwed up so that he looked like he might be about to cry. He was carrying a stick—one of the sturdy branches he collected on his wanderings through the woods and stripped of its bark, honing it to a sort of staff. Breathing hard, he raised it, preparing to strike.

Henderson swung round to face him properly, smoothing his hair and straightening his clothing. Kate stumbled past him, moving to the other side of the room with the table between them.

‘I know you’re not very bright,’ Henderson growled through clenched teeth, all traces of laughter gone. ‘But even I didn’t think you were this stupid.’

Davy’s chest was rising and falling quickly, the stick still held aloft. His face was a mask of anguish and rage.

‘It’s all right, Davy.’ Kate straightened her dress and cleared her aching throat. ‘Good boy—you can put the stick down. Mr Henderson was just leaving.’

Slowly, his eyes darting between Kate and Henderson, Davy lowered his arm, though his fingers remained tightly clenched around the stick. His whole body bristled, like an animal facing a predator.

‘ Are you a good boy, Davy?’ Henderson queried softly. ‘Or are you a liability, to Coldwell and to your poor old mother? Where will she go, I wonder, when she loses the home that she’s been living in all these years on Sir Randolph’s generosity? So hard for a widow to manage… especially with an idiot son. Luckily there are places… institutions … that take people like you, Davy. That lock them up, so their violent rages aren’t a danger to the rest of us.’

‘Leave him alone!’

A flare of protective fury fizzed through Kate’s body. Davy shrank back and hissed in a breath as Henderson took a step towards him, but he made no move to touch him.

‘Let’s just check, shall we? Open your mouth,’ he said softly. ‘Say ahhh …’

It was how a doctor might speak to a child. Kate was confused, but Davy did as he was told, his eyes wide with terror.

‘Still there, I see,’ Henderson murmured. ‘For now.’

He clapped Davy on the shoulder, almost avuncular, and without so much as a glance at Kate, slipped out into the dark.

Jem walked quickly, stumbling on the uneven ground, his head full of the rasp of his own breath and the swarm-like buzz of his thoughts.

Plunging into the woods, he didn’t look behind him, to where the windows of Coldwell Hall glittered gold in the dusk. But in his mind a different version of himself turned round and went back, slipping along the garden corridor to the gun room, where Randolph Hyde kept the collection of weapons essential to any country gentleman for the slaughter of wildlife, selecting the first that came to hand.

No one would remark on the sound of a gunshot once the fireworks started. And with the park full of so many people, no one would think to point the finger at Jem. How could they? Doing so would mean acknowledging what had happened to Jack. What Hyde had done.

They had their own tigers to hunt.

He stopped walking and looked around in bewilderment, realising he had lost his bearings. The darkness was thicker here, the sounds of the celebrations more distant. Above his head the trees stretched towards the sky, blotting out the stars. He swung round, breath burning in his chest, trying to orientate himself. What time was it? Panic pumped through him at the thought of Kate, waiting for him in the gamekeeper’s cottage. It was closely followed by guilt and a brutal sideswipe of longing that made his knees buckle. Longing to hold her and breathe her in and let the goodness of her drive away the rottenness of everything else.

Pushing himself forward, he was shocked to feel a stinging sensation at the back of his eyes, which he didn’t immediately recognise as tears.

She was all he cared about now. She was the only one who was on his side, who saw him for who he was. And still he had kept a part of himself hidden from her.

If he told her, would she understand? Would she despise him?

She had been brave enough to lower her guard and confide in him. She had trusted him enough to share her secret.

Now it was his turn.

In her room Kate locked the door and poured boiling water into the bowl on her washstand. She pulled off her stockings with shaking hands and struggled out of her dress with a shudder of disgust. She would never wear any of those items again.

She had maintained a veneer of calm as she had walked back with Davy, instinctively seeking to minimise what they had just experienced by chattering distractedly about stupid, inconsequential things. As if remarking on the moon, or the strains of a country jig drifting over the trees, could make either of them forget the dark cottage and what had happened there.

And what would have happened next, if Davy hadn’t appeared.

It wasn’t so easy to avoid thinking about it now that she was alone, or about where Jem had got to and why he hadn’t come. In a far corner of her mind there lodged a painful shard of worry that Henderson had somehow prevented him, but he would have been keen to taunt her with that, if it had been true. Instead, her thoughts cycled through other possibilities. That he hadn’t been able to shake off the others, and had eventually given up trying. That he’d got drunk and lost track of time, or been swept up in the dancing and found he’d rather stay at the party, rationalising that he had satisfied her once already and would apologise later. She pictured him circling the floor with one of the pretty village girls, their eyes fixed intently on each other in the glow of the lights. In the mirror above the washstand her own image swam in the darkness—hollow-eyed and haggard.

The water was so hot it made her wince. She set her jaw hard and rubbed the soap onto a flannel, concentrating on the rose scent of it, splashing water onto her body and scrubbing her skin.

Still she could smell it. Hair oil. Meat. Sweat.

It could have been worse , she told herself. She had been lucky that Davy was there.

But the thought brought her no comfort.

As she pulled on her nightdress, she heard a tentative knock on the parlour door. She froze, torn between hope and dread, her head signalling a warning that it might be Henderson, wanting to smooth things over or finish what he’d started, her heart spiralling with yearning for Jem.

‘Who is it?’

She closed her eyes. The answer came quietly, in a voice she hadn’t expected.

‘It’s me, Sarah Dunn…’

An expectant silence spooled from the words as Kate’s hope was snuffed out. Which was exactly what she needed to do to Miss Dunn’s sudden odd need to seek her company. Kate opened the door a crack. The corridor outside was lit only by moonlight and the dim glow of the lamp at the far end by the basement stairs, so the figure of Lady Hyde’s maid merged with the shadows. Only the white ribbon pinned to her dress stood out in the gloom.

‘Was there something you wanted, Miss Dunn? Only I’m rather tired…’

In the silvered dark she saw the gleam of Miss Dunn’s eyes as she took in Kate’s loosened hair, her nightdress.

‘Forgive me. It—it can wait. Sorry to have disturbed you.’

Kate was vaguely aware of guilt, but it was a pale, colourless emotion compared to the lurid flashes going off inside her head. Insipid, like Miss Dunn. Easily pushed aside.

She closed the door and turned the key in the lock. Then, as an afterthought, she dragged the velvet armchair across the room and pushed it hard against the door.

I came to your room that night.

I hoped that you would have left the door unlocked, as you so often did. When it wasn’t, I assumed you must be angry that I hadn’t come to the cottage. I didn’t blame you. I was angry with myself for having been so single-minded that I’d left you waiting there, as if you didn’t matter, or as if I didn’t care. I had allowed myself to be so focused on getting revenge for my brother’s wasted life that I didn’t notice I was throwing my own away.

I’d hoped I could make it up to you, but when I saw you the next day, I realised that was impossible. You never said exactly what happened in the gamekeeper’s cottage, but you didn’t have to. I knew from the outset that you were too good for me, but I thought I could make myself worthy of you. All I did was drag you down. I compromised you, in every way.

Sorry isn’t adequate, but I need to say it anyway. I don’t have any right to comfort myself that you would forgive me—hell, I don’t even have any hope that you’ll read this—but dawn is only a few hours away and I want to confront my own conscience. I lost my faith a long time ago, but I have some superstitious need to confess my sins before meeting my maker, as I am very likely to do.

God knows, there are enough of them. I’m an ex-felon, after all. I wasn’t guilty of the crime they laid on me, but I have plenty more charges to my name—deception, dishonesty, breaking and entering, failing those I love. All of them pale into insignificance compared to what I did to you.

It’s not God’s forgiveness I want, Kate, it’s your understanding.

I loved you, but I betrayed you. I want you to at least know why.

Date unknown

Somewhere in France

‘I say—you, soldier! Stop, man!’

The voice seems to come from a great distance away and it penetrates the strange ringing in his ears. Jem turns. The figure approaching rapidly from behind him on the road is nothing more than a dark shadow against the glare of the sun. It has an aura of gold around it.

‘What on earth are you doing, man? Where’s your tunic?’

Jem looks down and feels a stutter of surprise. His shirt is stained with blood—properly soaked—though he appears to be standing upright and he has a feeling he’s been walking for a while.

‘I don’t know. Sir.’

‘What’s your name? What regiment are you with?’

Jem wants to answer. He can’t quite bring the figure into focus enough to see how many stripes he has on his shoulder, but you can tell from his tone he’s an officer, and if you ignore an officer, you get put on a charge. He opens his mouth, but the pain in his head makes him wince and the ground is suddenly tilting and the man (who is probably an officer) is getting farther away, the aura of gold around him becoming dazzling, too bright to look at.

It is a relief to realise he is lying down, though his mouth is full of dust.

He closes his eyes.

July 7th

Brighton

As the days go by the tone of the reports in the newspapers grows less triumphant, more sombre. After almost a week, the decisive success that seemed so certain on the first day has failed to materialise, though the convoys of wounded arrive with dreadful regularity at the station and guns go on and on, their muted boom rolling across the ocean, an incongruous backdrop to the golden July weather.

She is more used to the wounded now. There are so very many, and while all of their faces are dirty and exhausted, unshaven and seamed with pain, none of them are familiar. No one recognises her. After that first day, and the shock of going into the ward for the first time, the sheer number of men becomes perversely reassuring. She writes their stoic platitudes on postcards and sends them to addresses across the British Isles from Inverness to Ipswich, Cardiff to Carlisle and any number of towns, villages, and hamlets in between. But not Coldwell. Not Howden Bridge or Hatherford. Not yet.

‘What would you like me to write?’ she asks a Scots Guard, whose head is swathed in bandages, his right ear torn off by a bullet. His brown eyes stare out from his swaddled face, his pupils pinpricks from the morphine. They seem to look straight through her.

‘Dear Mother…’ he says eventually. ‘I wanted to let you know… I am… well…’

She puts it down. (Who is she to call out a lie?)

As she finishes the card and writes the address he mumbles, she notices Nurse Frankland hovering by the door. She gets up, promising to put the card in the post that afternoon.

‘Miss Simmons…’

Nurse Frankland is twitchy with urgency, glancing behind her to check if Sister Pinkney is on her tail.

‘What is it?’

She suspects a housekeeping crisis. Since Nurse Frankland discovered her background, she has furtively sought her help with bed making and dealing with soldiers’ soiled clothing ( honestly, anything like that I’m just hopeless…) which will land them both in trouble if Sister Pinkney or Matron find out. But as she reaches the door Nurse Frankland takes her hand and holds it gently, drawing her aside. Her eyes—the same colour as her blue chambray uniform—are full of compassion.

‘I must be quick, but I wanted to let you know… I’ve just come from Rodney Ward. I think someone you know may have been brought in this morning.’

It’s a hot day. They are struggling to keep the wards cool as the sun streams through the house’s wide windows, but in that instant the heat seems to gather inside her, sweeping down through her body with an intense, searing flame.

‘I don’t—’ Her voice has dried to a husk. Her heart seems to have ballooned and is booming inside her chest. ‘I mean, how do you—?’

‘I haven’t got time to explain—Sister will skin me alive if she catches me here. His name is Joseph Jones, Fifteenth Battalion, Sherwood Foresters—I undressed him when he came in, and in his tunic pocket I found this.’

From the pocket beneath her apron, she produces a letter, and shoves it towards her. On the grimy envelope it says Miss Eliza Simmons .

The handwriting.…

She knows it immediately. Stars burst like fireworks inside her. The words shimmer and blur in front of her eyes as the blood beats hotly in her head.

‘That’s you, isn’t it? I’m not wrong, am I? Nurse Williams said we should hand everything over to Matron to go through, but—well, if it is you, and not another Eliza Simmons, I was quite sure you wouldn’t want Matron reading your business, and it would be jolly annoying if this got posted on to’—she glances at the envelope—‘Little Langley in Nottinghamshire, when you’re right here.’ There are spots of colour on Nurse Frankland’s china doll cheeks, suggesting that there had been some disagreement over this decision. ‘And if you don’t know Private Jones, and it’s just a coincidence, I’ll slip it back with his other things.’ She shoots another glance over her shoulder, and turns back expectantly. ‘So, do you? Know him?’

Joseph Jones. Skinny Joseph from the Sheffield Union Workhouse with his bony knees and birds’-wing shoulder blades. Surely he isn’t old enough to be fighting in France?

‘Yes, I know him.’

Her voice is little more than a whisper, but Nurse Frankland’s face breaks into a beaming smile and she gives her hands an excited little clap. ‘Oh, phew—thank goodness for that! Thought I’d made a chump of myself for nothing for a minute. Wouldn’t be the first time. Anyway—I’d better dash—’

‘How is he?’

‘Oh—you know…’ A shadow passes over her face. ‘Bullet wound to the thigh, and he was out in no man’s land for an awfully long time. Heatstroke and sunburn haven’t helped. He was brought in by a friend, apparently… a few more hours and he wouldn’t have made it. Come and see for yourself before you go.’

‘Yes,’ she says faintly. ‘Thank you.’

She wants to, but she can’t.

Of course she can’t.

Because Joseph knows that she is not Eliza Simmons, and the letter is not intended for her. He will recognise her and name her for who she is: Mrs Kate Furniss, disgraced housekeeper of Coldwell Hall.

He will say she is a murderess.