Chapter 22
Chapter 22
‘I’ll need currants and beef suet. Candied peel…’ Mrs Gatley crashed pans in the kitchen, raising her voice over the cacophony of her own racket. ‘Mixed spice, I daresay—I’ll have to look out a recipe. It’s been a good while since I’ve had to bother with fancy festive folderols, but if her ladyship wants a traditional Christmas with all the trimmings, what does it matter what I think?’
She slammed a roasting tin down on the range, conveying her thoughts on Lady Hyde’s tentative Christmas plans very clearly indeed. ‘Seven guests for five days? Who on earth is she thinking will trail out here for that long in the depths of December?’
Kate picked at a crusted spill at the edge of the table, missed by Susan’s cloth. ‘Well… Lord and Lady Etchingham, of course… And Lady Hyde’s father and an aunt, I think…’
She trailed off. She had only just left the Yellow Parlour, which Lady Hyde had chosen as her sitting room and the place where she conducted daily meetings with Kate to discuss household matters, but already the details of what they had discussed escaped her. As Lady Hyde had chattered on about plans for Christmas—still almost two months away—Kate’s attention had wandered as it so often did lately; her head as light as a balloon, only loosely tethered to the body in which she went through the days.
Outside, the park was a blur of brown, the outlines of trees and hedges smudged by the rain running down the window. The year had entered the tunnel of winter, with all the extra labour and inconvenience that entailed. The servants rose in frozen darkness to clean grates and lay fires, and the days were a race to complete the household tasks before the light faded again. That morning, writing the date in her ledger— November 1st— Kate had thought back to the syrupy heat of summer, but it felt improbable now, impossible to recapture. It was hard to believe she hadn’t imagined it.
Along with everything else.
‘Yes,’ Lady Hyde had said, with a brave attempt at conviction, ‘I think that will be just what we all need, don’t you? A lovely festive celebration, with the house lit up and decorated with as much greenery as Gatley can supply. Singing and games by the drawing room fire, and dear Papa and Aunt Ethel here.’ Her eyes had grown suddenly bright and damp then, and she’d rummaged in her sleeve for her handkerchief. ‘I wonder if we might be able to organise a group of carol singers to come from the village? We could give them sherry and mince pies for their trouble. I’m sure Mrs Gatley will be up to the challenge, won’t she? I know it’ll mean more work for her, but she can begin preparations now. The Christmas cake can be made and set aside, and of course, the pudding should be made on Stir-up Sunday, in the last week of November. It’s a tradition I’ve kept since childhood. We must all take a turn in the stirring—all the servants too—and make a wish for the year ahead.’
Kate had pressed her lips together, holding back the sour torrent of cynicism that threatened to spill out over Lady Hyde’s determined optimism. It would take more than wishes or childhood rituals to rid Coldwell of the misery that weighted the air in its upstairs rooms and seeped through the basement like smog.
‘Well, we’ll see what Sir Randolph has to say about it when he gets back,’ Mrs Gatley said knowingly now, bustling past Kate to collect a bowl of eggs from the dresser. In the weeks since the wedding, unspecified business had taken Sir Randolph away from Coldwell on several occasions, accompanied by his valet and chauffeur. These periods of absence were a relief to everyone, though the inevitability of their return, the knowledge that the reprieve was temporary, cast its own shadow.
Mrs Gatley plucked off a feather that had stuck to one of the eggshells. ‘I can’t see him agreeing to spending Christmas out here with his sister and some old maiden aunt of her ladyship’s. That’s if his sister even agrees to come… Anyone who’d willingly leave Whittam Park for this draughty old place should be spending Christmas in the county asylum, if you ask me. Place the orders at Pearson’s by all means, but I won’t get myself worked up about a Christmas house party just yet. My guess is it’ll come to nothing, like all of Madam’s other grand plans.’ She cracked an egg into a bowl and gave a scornful laugh. ‘A sewing circle in the village—wasn’t that one of them? I could have told her that was a non-starter. As if most of us have got time to sit around doing fancy embroidery on church kneelers.’
Kate watched the feather drift on one of the icy draughts that curled through the downstairs rooms. She couldn’t argue. It was true that Sir Randolph’s bride had come to Coldwell with an abundance of rather childlike enthusiasm for the role of lady of the manor. In the weeks immediately following the wedding, there had been an air of brisk purpose about the meetings in the Yellow Parlour, which had provided a welcome distraction for Kate. Noting down her ladyship’s plans and requirements—when she would need the carriage and what to put in the baskets of provisions she took on her visits to the elderly and sick in the village—had given her something other than the gulf between her and Jem to think about.
For a little while, at least.
But, as autumn hardened into winter, Lady Hyde’s cheerful determination had faltered. Her baskets of Gatley’s apples and plums had been accepted without grace or gratitude at cottage doorways through which she was never invited, and her suggestions for a sewing circle and a Mothers’ Union were met with stony cynicism by harried women to whom sewing and motherhood were part of the tough warp and weft of their lives rather than a pretty embellishment upon it.
‘You can’t blame her for trying.’ There was a low note of weariness in Kate’s voice. ‘She’s just trying to make the best of things, like all of us.’
Mrs Gatley snorted. ‘Things would be a lot more pleasant round here if folks weren’t going around with faces like a wet weekend in Blackpool. I don’t know what’s come over everyone lately, I really don’t.’
She wouldn’t, Kate thought.
Mrs Gatley didn’t eat her meals in the servants’ hall. She returned to the cottage in the kitchen garden at the end of the day, and remained unaware of the undercurrents that swirled through the basement, as icy as the draughts. Inconceivable as it seemed, the cook probably hadn’t noticed that Kate went to elaborate lengths to avoid Frederick Henderson—leaving a room if he entered it, making any necessary communications with him via a third party. When she was there, Mrs Gatley moved in a whirlwind of her own preoccupations, too caught up to notice the chasm of silence that had opened up between Kate and Jem, too busy to listen to the whispered reports about what went on upstairs or register the tight set of Miss Dunn’s mouth when she came down from her mistress’s rooms.
The sharp jangle of the bell at the back door saved Kate from having to think up a reply. ‘That’ll be the post,’ Eliza said, appearing in the kitchen doorway so quickly that she could only have been hovering outside. ‘Thomas is cleaning the silver—shall I get it?’
Usually the girls were discouraged from opening the door to the postman, who fancied himself a ladies’ man, and kept them talking too long and in a way that was too familiar for Kate’s liking.
‘Where’s Jem?’
‘Day off!’ Eliza called, already halfway down the passage to the door. ‘Left just after breakfast.’
Kate’s heart twisted. Not so long ago she would have known when he was taking his day off and what he planned to do with it. She might have contrived a reason to absent herself from the house at the same time. But since That Night (which was how she had come to think of it), the closeness they had shared had dissolved, corroded by the acid of her bitterness.
She didn’t blame him for what Henderson had done. It had been her idea to go to the gamekeeper’s cottage that night; she had chosen to risk her reputation and her safety for a few forbidden hours of pleasure. Jem had sought her out the next day to apologise for leaving her there alone. He wanted to explain; but when he touched her, she had flinched away, and a new distance yawned between them. Alone? she hadn’t been able to stop herself from echoing scornfully. I wouldn’t have been afraid to be alone.
It would have been better not to say anything. She couldn’t bring herself to tell him what had happened, but he had worked it out, near enough. And then his anger had filled the space between them, impenetrable, like fog. Directed at Henderson, but chilling and choking her too. Closing her off.
High up on the kitchen window ledge, a hollowed-out turnip with a crudely cut gargoyle’s face leered down, giving off a sulphurous, rotting smell. Susan had insisted on carving several of them the previous day, for All-Hallows’ Eve, and placed them throughout the basement. To ward off evil, she’d said.
Kate thought about Henderson, on his way back from wherever Sir Randolph’s ‘business’ had taken them. She pictured him, sitting in the front seat beside the shadowy chauffeur, his eyes flicking over the passing landscape as the motorcar ate up the miles.
‘Susan, get rid of those turnips,’ she snapped. ‘They’re starting to smell.’
It would take more than a few decaying turnips to drive out the malevolence that lurked in the basement passages at Coldwell, thickening the air with cigar smoke, leaving the whiff of hair oil in its wake.
Jem’s coat was a threadbare jacket, its fabric worn to a shine about the pockets and thinned at the shoulder seams. Before he had passed the church, he could feel the rain seeping through it, wicking into his shirt and chilling his skin.
The discomfort was of his own choosing. There were several heavy livery coats in the footmen’s wardrobe, available for anyone’s use. These had seen decades of service, protecting Coldwell men from the savage Derbyshire weather as they rode on top of the carriage, but some private sense of defiance had prevented him from taking one. It was his day off. He didn’t have to be one of Baronet Bradfield’s men today. He didn’t want to wear his colours or bear his crest on the buttons of his coat. He would rather be soaked to the skin and shivering than be marked as the property of Randolph Hyde.
He kept his eyes downcast as he walked. There was nothing much to see anyway: the trees were stark and skeletal, stripped of their autumn colour, and clouds cloaked the surrounding hills, drawing the horizon closer so that the world was shrunk to the confines of the Coldwell’s park.
Jem’s thoughts felt similarly muffled. His perspective was altered and he had lost sight of the way ahead. He had arrived at Coldwell with nothing more than a few sketchy facts to hang his suspicion on. But now that he had uncovered the truth, and lost Kate in the process, he didn’t know what to do.
The wind buffeted about him, making his face ache with cold. Turning up the collar of his jacket he saw the gate lodge just ahead, a smudged shape huddled against the high wall of the park. Even from a distance it had a forlorn appearance, its windows dark, water falling in a steady stream from its leaf-choked gutters. As he got closer Jem could see that the apples Mrs Wells usually made into pies and chutneys had fallen from the tree and were rotting in the long grass. Weeds had already clambered over the path, as if the house had been empty for a year, rather than a month.
He’d been there on the mellow October day when Mrs Wells and Davy had moved out. He had helped to load their meagre possessions onto the cart, ready to travel the short distance to the damp cottage she had arranged to rent at the back of the White Hart in the village.
Mrs Wells had endured the upheaval with a sort of numb bewilderment, pausing to dab her eyes with a handkerchief as she took teacups down from her kitchen dresser and wrapped them in dish towels. The terse letter from Mr Fortescue had given no reason for their eviction, beyond the terms of their tenancy having expired, since neither she nor Davy were official employees of the estate. I don’t understand , she’d protested. It’s twelve years since my Harry passed away. Why now?
Davy was nowhere to be seen. When the cart was ready to leave, two of Gatley’s garden lads were summoned to comb the woods. They had found him, they told Jem later, right in the heart of one of the giant rhododendron bushes, crouched on the damp earth. ‘Never would have seen ’im in a million years,’ Bert Oakley had said. ‘Never would have found ’im if he hadn’t been making a noise. Sort of whimpering. Like a wounded animal.’
Jem stopped by the fence and looked at the forlorn cottage.
Henderson had come up on the afternoon of the move not on foot but in the passenger seat of the motorcar, driven by that shady bastard, Robson. He had watched as Jem and Stanley Twigg manhandled bedsteads and pot cupboards, crates of china and linen onto the cart, and finally the kitchen dresser itself. He had watched as Davy was escorted across the rough grass, the garden lads on either side of him, gripping his arms as if he were a felon they had apprehended. The valet had watched as Mrs Wells hurried up the path of the place that had been her home for more than thirty years and fussed over her boy, reaching up to brush leaves from his hair and wipe away the tracks his tears had made in the grime on his face, and then he had got out of the motor and walked over to take the key from her. As he tucked it into the pocket of his waistcoat, he had looked straight at Jem and smiled.
Jem was in no doubt who was behind the eviction. That smile had been a warning: a reminder of who held the power at Coldwell.
He had got rid of Davy, and he could get rid of Jem too, if he wanted.
When he wanted.
And there was nothing Jem could do about it.
‘Morning.’
‘Morning.’
‘Bit of a filthy one.’ The postman looked up at the sky, tipping his head back so that water ran off the flat top of his hat and splashed onto the shoulders of his oilskin cape. His cheeks, beneath straggly whiskers, were mottled red by the rain. He winked. ‘All right for some though, warm and dry inside.’
His gaze skimmed down Eliza’s body, making her pull her shawl more securely around her. They all pitied the postman for the long ride out to Coldwell, and he was often given a mug of tea and leftovers from breakfast, which he paid for with local gossip as he gathered his strength for the return journey. But today Eliza was in no mood for idle chatter and flirtation.
‘Sir Randolph’s on his way back today—we’re rushed, getting ready for him,’ she said shortly. ‘I presume you must have post, as you’ve come all this way?’
Beneath the dripping peak of his hat, the postman’s face hardened. He reached into the bag at his hip. ‘A few letters,’ he said. ‘For Mrs Furniss and Lady Hyde. And this’—he pulled out a small package—‘for Miss E. Simmons…’
He gave it a little shake, making the contents rattle. Eliza felt colour flood her cheeks as she snatched it from him. ‘I’ll take those, thank you, and let you get on. I wouldn’t like to keep you out in this weather.’
She caught a glimpse of his startled expression in the second before she closed the door. Going back along the passage, she left the letters on the table outside Mr Goddard’s room. It was the butler’s responsibility to distribute any correspondence, which meant that he could monitor it, and withhold it, if he chose. He could call you into his pantry to open it in front of him, which was exactly why Eliza had made sure, for the past week, that she was by the back door when the postman came, and she was the one to receive the package with her name on it.
Tucking it beneath her shawl, she glanced over her shoulder and slipped through the door to the back stairs. When she reached her attic room, she closed the door and stood against it as she tore open the paper with shaking fingers.
A small brown cardboard box rattled into her hand.
Dr Octavius Pink’s Female Pills it said in scrolling writing on the label. For the Treatment of Menstrual Irregularity, and to Restore Feminine Vitality and Well-being. Safe, Fast-Acting, and Effective. A Boon to Womankind.
Eliza felt a rush of relief so powerful that it brought tears to her eyes. She had found the advertisement for Dr Octavius Pink’s pills in one of Lady Hyde’s magazines when she had been tidying the Yellow Parlour, and had hastily torn out the page. The Lady was a respectable publication, for respectable people. They wouldn’t allow advertisements for anything dangerous, would they?
Dr Octavius Pink offered two choices of pill—‘ordinary’ at 2/9, and ‘special’ at 4/6—which, for some reason, further reassured her. ‘Ordinary’ sounded like they were made for girls just like her, and so she had sent her coins (carefully wrapped in an old piece of flannel and parcelled in blue paper torn from a sugar bag) to the Hygienic Stores on Charing Cross Road. And she had waited, hardly daring to let herself hope that this might bring an end to her trouble.
There was a leaflet enclosed in the package, which she unfolded and skimmed quickly. Formulated from a Patented Combination of Specialist Ingredients inc. Pennyroyal, Rue, Bitter Aloes, and Slippery Elm, these Pills offer Immediate Relief from all Female Ailments… Universally Efficacious in Removing Obstructions, Regulating the Natural Cycle, and Restoring Health. Two Pills to be taken Three Times a Day, After Meals.
Eliza pried off the flimsy lid. The pills were small and greenish in colour, and the box smelled faintly of liniment. She took two out and dropped them onto her tongue. Her mouth was dry and swallowing was difficult. The pills stuck in her throat and she retched, eyes watering, before gulping them down.
Dr Octavius Pink was right, the relief really was immediate. She tucked the box into her pillowcase, and as she closed the door and went back down the stairs, she felt calmer than she had for weeks.
The police house in Howden Bridge was situated on the edge of the village, at the junction of the High Street and the road to Hatherford. Built in the middle of the last century and constructed of smart red brick under a steeply gabled roof, it was a good deal taller and more imposing than the straggle of stone cottages that lay beyond it. In the summer, the front garden was a riot of colour, but in dreary November it had a bleak and forbidding aspect.
Jem walked past the gate once, his hands bunched into fists in his pockets, his mind still at war about whether to go in. Bitter experience had taught him that the law was not there to serve the likes of him, but some innate sense of justice had brought him here anyway. The fact was, his brother had been at Coldwell and had disappeared without a trace. Surely the constable couldn’t dismiss Jem’s theory out of hand without supplying an alternative explanation?
The sudden memory of Jack—quick and skinny and smiling, alive —was like a kick to the stomach. He turned abruptly and walked through the gate of the police house.
The front door was painted dark blue. On either side, the large-paned windows were blank and unlit, though there was a bicycle covered with an oilskin propped against the wall, which suggested the officer was in.
Jem knocked.
The door was opened by a stern-faced woman in a red-smeared apron. She’d obviously been cooking and was wreathed with an air of impatience and the smell of frying onions.
‘What’s it about?’ she said when he asked to see Constable Hollinshead, looking disapprovingly at the drips falling from the hem of his jacket.
He didn’t know how to answer. The word murder seemed too melodramatic, but wasn’t that what it was when a fourteen-year-old boy was sent out into the night to be hunted by a pack of men, fired up on fine wine and brandy?
‘A disappearance,’ he said gruffly.
She went ahead of him up the tiled hallway, wiping her hands on her apron before knocking on a door and gesturing to him to enter.
The room he stepped into had an impersonal, institutional look. The walls were painted shiny brown and yellow, and the bookcase by the fireplace was untidily stuffed with piles of paper and bulging folders. A large map hung on the wall and a board to which newspaper cuttings, flyers, and handbills were pinned.
‘What can I do for you, lad?’
The man behind the desk leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over the paper he’d been reading.
Jem had seen Constable Hollinshead at a distance before; a tall man, well built, with a florid complexion and fulsome grey-flecked beard. He’d always been wearing his helmet, and looked incomplete without it now, the top of his bald head appearing naked and vulnerable.
‘I’ve come from Coldwell,’ Jem said. ‘I work there. I want to report something that happened a while ago—nine years. A boy went missing.’ He hardened his tone. ‘I believe he was killed.’
Constable Hollinshead’s eyebrows climbed up his smooth, pink forehead. Keeping his eyes downcast, he shut the pamphlet he’d been reading (a seed catalogue; that colourful garden obviously didn’t take care of itself) and lined up the pencil and fountain pen at the edge of the blotter. His movements were precise and unhurried.
‘Is that so?’ He folded his arms and looked at Jem thoughtfully across the desk. ‘A murder investigation, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘In that case, lad, you’d better sit down.’