Chapter 33
Chapter 33
A fug of steamy warmth clouded the tea shop windows, obscuring the street outside. After Derbyshire, London seemed oddly warm—there was no sign of any recent snow—and after Coldwell the Lyons Corner House on Tottenham Court Road felt stifling. Kate had unbuttoned her coat but stopped short of taking her gloves off. A woman alone, she felt conspicuous enough as it was.
She sipped her tea and looked without enthusiasm at the dry slice of Madeira cake she had ordered. She had got off the train at St Pancras a little over an hour ago and felt as dazed and disorientated as if she’d landed on some distant foreign shore. It was impossible to comprehend that at the same hour yesterday she’d been making preparations for the servants’ ball, moving through the rooms that had been her world for almost ten years, with no inkling that before the day was over she would have left them forever.
But she couldn’t allow herself to think of Coldwell, or of Jem. Not now. (An emotional unravelling would draw even more attention than removing her gloves.) She was a servant, skilled at hiding her feelings. Numbly she unfolded the copy of the Evening Standard she had bought outside the underground station and pushed aside the unappetizing Madeira cake to make room for it on the table.
The advertisements for employment and accommodation were near the back, but as she went to turn the page a small front headline snagged her attention, one familiar word leaping out as if it had been written in six-inch scarlet letters.
MURDER AT COLDWELL HALL
At the next table the two elderly ladies stopped their conversation and looked round, eyes stretched with alarm at the gasp she made.
‘My dear, are you quite well?’
She nodded, unable to find her voice. Folding the newspaper and picking up Lady Hyde’s valise, she left the tea and cake and a scattering of coins on the table as she blundered clumsily to the door, to gulp the cool outside air.
It was an hour later, as the train she had hastily boarded slid past the goods yards and engine sheds of Victoria Station and began to gather pace, that she pulled out the paper and read the story properly.
Mr Frederick Henderson, valet to Sir Randolph Hyde, Fifth Baronet Bradfield of Coldwell Hall, Derbyshire, was discovered by household staff in the housekeeper’s parlour in the early hours of Wednesday, December 27th, having suffered a single stab wound to the neck. The instrument of his misfortune was a pair of sewing scissors, attached to the housekeeper’s chatelaine. The housekeeper herself, a Mrs Kate Furniss, had fled the house and remains at large. She is described as being of slim build, with dark hair and of refined appearance, aged approximately thirty years, and is wanted by the police for an interview.
The train plunged into a tunnel. In the carriage window the ghost of Mrs Kate Furniss stared back at her for a second, all hollows and shadows. And then the train emerged again, into the light of the dreary December afternoon, and she disappeared.
I don’t remember much about it.
The police came, and Dr Seymour. I don’t know who sent for them—Goddard, I suppose. The doctor must have given me something to knock me out, though I would never have agreed to it if I’d known. I was desperate to find you. I woke up in the cottage hospital at Hatherford with my arm strapped across my chest—a broken collarbone and a fractured jaw, they said.
I was there for a week, paid for by Hyde, so I missed what went on at Coldwell, but Eliza came to visit and told me that the police had spoken to the musicians. They all remarked that you were tense and mostly silent in the motorcar, as if in shock or distress. You wanted to get to the station, even though there were no trains that night. And of course, you left Coldwell with no word to Goddard or Lady Hyde and no forwarding address for your sick mother, no instructions for the running of the household in your absence. The evidence was stacking up, and it all seemed to point to one conclusion.
Except everyone at Coldwell knew it wasn’t the truth.
None of us had noticed that Joseph wasn’t there when we discovered Henderson’s body, and no one thought to look for him. The gamekeeper found him later, half-naked, none too sober and out of his wits, trying to wash the blood off his clothes in the lake.
The story came out slowly. I’d say there are still bits that haven’t come out, about the things he witnessed before he went into the workhouse. Henderson had made a bit of a favourite of him and had been bribing him to spy on us. Joseph didn’t realise what he was getting into at first, and I suppose he liked the money. By the time he understood, Henderson had his hooks well and truly into him. Joseph must have been desperate to do what he did.
You’d have thought that Hyde would be devastated to lose his right-hand man, but that wasn’t the case. He knew as well as the rest of us what Henderson was like and what he was capable of, but Henderson was privy to Hyde’s unsavoury secrets too, and that had given him a hold over his employer. Hyde must have been relieved to be rid of him, though if he believed his secrets were buried alongside Henderson in his pauper’s grave, he was mistaken.
I could have told the police what he had done. Perhaps I should have, to try to get justice for my brother, though it would have been an unequal fight—a footman with a criminal record against a baronet—and my appetite for revenge had left me by then. It seemed more important to look to the other boy I should have protected. The one who was still living.
We all closed ranks around Joseph and kept him away from the police as much as possible. They weren’t much interested in him anyway. They had their suspect—the housekeeper who had disappeared so suddenly and couldn’t speak for herself.
I could have spoken for her.
God knows, Kate—I wanted to, please believe me. But I kept silent, because clearing your name would have meant exposing Joseph’s guilt and I couldn’t do that to him. Not when I should have seen what was going on and prevented it, or at least listened when he tried to tell me. Besides, I’m almost ashamed to say that I wanted the police to look for you. Finding you was all I could think about, and they had a better chance of success than I did. I would have admitted to the murder myself, then. I would have gone to the gallows without complaint if it meant I could see you again and have the chance to explain.
I never went back to work at Coldwell, only to help close it up. In the new year, the Hydes moved down to the London house, taking Miss Dunn and Thomas with them. Goddard was given a pension and went to live with a niece somewhere, and the rest of us were given generous characters and a sum of money to tide us over. The Gatleys stayed on as caretakers of the estate, and are still there, as far as I know. Lady Hyde didn’t stay in London long. She and Miss Dunn returned to Shropshire, with the excuse of nursing her father, who wasn’t in good health. You perhaps heard that Hyde suffered a heart attack at the card table in a London gaming club later that year. He wasn’t much mourned, except by the fellow who was beating him at cards. When Lady Hyde returned to Coldwell for his funeral, she instructed the solicitors to put it up for sale.
I didn’t want to work in service again. What I really wanted to do was scour the country and search until I found you, but I felt a responsibility for Joseph and Eliza. I know you were aware of her situation and were going to help her, and since she looked after me when I was recovering, it seemed only right that I should do the same. Joseph was very troubled after what happened, and I couldn’t leave him to make his own way. I managed to get farm work for us on a small estate in Nottinghamshire. It came with a cottage, and I presented Joseph as my half brother and Eliza as my widowed sister.
It would have been kinder to say she was my wife. I know that was what she would have chosen, but I couldn’t do it. Just in case word got out and reached you somehow and you believed it was true. Or, by some miracle you came looking for me, asking around, and were told I was married. It was a small hope, but I clung to it. I had nothing else.
I thought the arrangement would just be for the short term, until the child had been born and Eliza had decided what she wanted to do, but it didn’t work out like that. The baby—a tiny girl—came too soon, in the coldest part of that winter, and never drew breath. In spite of everything, Eliza took it badly. We all did. Such a little life, but a big loss, on top of everything that had come before. Someone else I hadn’t been able to keep from harm.
After that, it was just a case of going on. Long days, hard work, the shifting seasons. In another life, I might have been happy there. I wrote to Miss Dunn from time to time. She was better placed to hear word of you than I was, and though she used her connections in the church and in service, we could find no clue. I knew you must have changed your name and done all you could to disappear again.
Why did you have to do it so well?
The night is almost over, and time is running out. It’s beginning to get light now and the chill is starting to ebb away. In any other circumstances I’d say it was going to be a glorious day.
Maybe, wherever you are, you are happy. I hope you are. Maybe you found someone else and fell in love and have a home and children and the life I said should be yours. I hope you have.
I can say that now and truly mean it. More than anything else I want to know that, wherever you are, you are safe and loved and you have a good life.
But I am still selfish enough to wish that it could have been with me.