Chapter Eleven #3
‘Have they?’ said Mrs Dorter, coming forwards into the room. ‘Of what nature? And what are you doing in my kitchen?’
‘We came to look for Pam,’ he said. ‘She had left her station for a long period of time, and we were concerned that something had happened to her.’
‘What had happened to her was the two of them,’ said Iris. ‘We found them trying to force themselves on her.’
‘That is a vile slander!’ shouted Norris. ‘I demand that you—’
‘Pamela, speak,’ said Mrs Dorter, looking at the girl, who still held the knife.
‘They attacked me,’ she whispered. ‘Here. They had me pinned on the table, and that one had his hand over my mouth. I don’t know what would have happened if Miss McTague and Mrs Bainbridge hadn’t come in.’
‘I do,’ said Iris.
Mrs Dorter looked at each of them in turn, then fixed her gaze on Norris.
‘Pamela,’ she said, her eyes never leaving him, ‘go wake your brother. Tell him to fetch the shotgun. Rock salt only.’
‘Yes, Mrs Dorter,’ said Pam, edging past Elster, then scampering out of the room.
‘The two of you should know better,’ she said to Norris. ‘Whoever you want to bring here, whatever arrangements you make with the other guests, that’s up to you. But my staff are off limits.’
‘This is nothing but a pack of lies!’ sputtered Norris.
‘You are to vacate your rooms immediately and leave the premises,’ continued Mrs Dorter. ‘Timothy will escort you to your autos and make certain that you do. If there is any sign of you twenty minutes from now, he has permission to switch to birdshot.’
‘Do you know who we are?’ shouted Norris.
‘I know exactly who you are,’ replied Mrs Dorter.
‘As well as who the ladies are who you brought here. I will be happy to make that information known far and wide should any further trouble come from either of you. The twenty minutes began one minute ago, so I suggest you not waste any more time and get packing.’
The two men glanced at each other. Then Timothy appeared at the door, holding a double-barrelled shotgun pointing down.
‘Goodbye, gentlemen,’ said Mrs Dorter. ‘There will be no refunds.’
They hesitated. Then Timothy stepped forwards, raising the weapon.
‘Rock salt still hurts,’ he said.
‘We’re going,’ said Norris.
The two men stormed out of the room. Timothy followed them, keeping the shotgun levelled.
Mrs Dorter turned to Iris and Gwen, then noticed the poker.
‘I’ll take that,’ she said, holding out her hand.
Iris gave it to her. She rested it against the wall by the stove.
‘The fire is still lit,’ she observed. ‘I’m going to warm up some milk and sweeten it with a little rum. Would you like any?’
‘Please,’ said Iris.
Mrs Dorter bustled about the kitchen, pulling up three chairs that were stacked in a corner, then fetching a bottle of milk from an icebox in a small room off the far side.
She poured it into a small pan, then set it on the stove top.
As the milk began to bubble they heard two car engines roar to life, then the screeching of tyres. Then quiet.
She poured the milk into three cups, then added a healthy pouring of rum to each. Timothy appeared in the doorway, the shotgun broken open and unloaded.
‘They’re gone,’ he reported. ‘They didn’t leave a tip.’
‘That was to be expected,’ she said. ‘You did well, Timothy. Get some sleep while you can. Tell Pamela to do the same. I’ll clean up down here.’
‘Yes, aunty.’
‘Timothy.’
‘I mean, yes, Mrs Dorter,’ he said. ‘Goodnight, ladies.’
‘Goodnight, Timothy,’ said Gwen. ‘Don’t worry about the tip. I’ll make it up to you.’
‘That won’t be necessary,’ said Mrs Dorter. ‘They paid through Monday morning, so fewer meals to prepare.’
Timothy left. Mrs Dorter placed the cups and saucers on the table, then sat down.
‘They call me their aunt, but they’re my cousin’s children,’ she said. ‘Their father ran off when they were young. My cousin came here with them to help me run this place, but the tuberculosis took her six years ago.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Iris.
‘I’ve never had children of my own,’ she said, holding up her cup and blowing on it.
‘So these two are quite special to me. Timothy was too young for the war, fortunately, and Pamela … well, I was hoping she’d remain out of danger as well, especially with her brother around to keep an eye out for her.
But they’re growing up. I want to protect them, but it isn’t always possible.
So I’m grateful for what the two of you did just now. Grateful and surprised.’
‘Why surprised?’ asked Iris.
‘I’m surprised that you’d step up and put yourself in danger for some girl you don’t know and have no responsibility for.’
‘I know her,’ said Iris shortly.
‘Maybe you do,’ said Mrs Dorter, looking at her, considering. ‘Or maybe you have changed since we last met. Saving one girl doesn’t make up for failing another one, though.’
‘I know,’ said Iris. ‘All I can do is try to save who I can.’
‘Which is why we’re here,’ added Gwen. ‘There’s still a man who needs saving back in London. And you can help us do that.’
‘Saved, lost, it doesn’t matter much in the end,’ said Mrs Dorter.
‘But it’s not the end yet,’ said Gwen. ‘Not for you, not for him, and certainly not for Pamela. Hopefully, she can move on from this without too much of a scar.’
‘I’m keenly aware that she’s at the same age I was when my innocence was lost,’ said Mrs Dorter.
She finished her cup, then refilled it, making the rum’s contribution larger.
‘Or more accurately, when it was taken from me,’ she said.
‘By whom?’ asked Gwen.
‘Who do you think?’ asked Mrs Dorter. ‘I grew up as a servant in a servant family in a large house set away from civilization, and Lord Pickard watched me grow up and waited, licking his chops, until he couldn’t wait any more.
I had no say in the matter, and my parents were too beholden to make any fuss about it. ’
‘What about Mr Dorter?’ asked Gwen. ‘What happened when he came along?’
‘There never was a Mr Dorter,’ she said.
‘When Mum and Dad grew too old and were pensioned off, I took over, and the Pickards called me that to give me some respectability. There were no men on the staff who were brave enough to try to pry me away from Pickard’s grasp, and the few in town who knew my situation considered me damaged goods, so I was trapped there, kept at his beck and call. And it became even worse.’
‘How?’ prompted Gwen, guessing and dreading the answer.
‘When Kevin turned fourteen, his father decided he needed proper instruction in manly behaviour, and why take the lad to a bawdy house in the city when good old Dorty was right there for the taking?’
‘How horrible,’ said Gwen.
‘Yes, well, Kevin didn’t stick with me for long,’ she said.
‘Once he was up and running, the rich pretty boy became accustomed to the local girls falling for him. And fall they did, one after another, but he tired of them quickly. I became accustomed to sobering up many a confused girl after she would wake there, not sure where she was or what had happened. And I turned away more than a few tearful discards when they would show up on our doorstep, begging to see him again, hoping for another chance. He was a precocious little monster, was our Kevin. And when he brought Bruce into his orbit, the two of them became even worse.’
She sighed.
‘I say all of this to give you an idea of the hellish situation I was trapped in,’ she said. ‘Not to justify what I did, but to explain it.’
‘What you did?’ repeated Iris. ‘You mean to Nancy? You did something to her?’
‘I saw her as my means of escape,’ said Mrs Dorter. ‘She was different because she came from outside the world ruled by the Pickards. And she was a Cambridge girl, so I thought maybe that meant she had more to her than all those frightened local girls. So when the opportunity came, I used her.’
‘How?’
‘She showed up at my door that night, sobbing and hysterical. Instead of telling her to go crawl into a room, lock the door and sober up until she could think straight again, I took her into my own room and comforted her. I didn’t even know I was capable of giving comfort to another person, but somehow I managed with her, and she responded.
She told me what had happened to her, that she had been violated and wanted to go to the police.
I told her that nothing could be done right then, that the only constables who would be on duty wouldn’t give a fig about a girl who went willingly to the Pickard house to drink and spend the night, then complain about what happened.
But I told her there was one honest policeman in Kimbolton I could go to.
I told her to write down everything that had happened and that I would protect her for the night, get her to safety in the morning and then bring the letter to him and see that she got justice.
She believed me. She wrote the letter, I witnessed it, then I let her sleep in my bed while I went to collect her belongings from the master suite.
‘I woke her early the next morning. The only person she would trust to drive her to the railway station was Tony. I roused him, told him that she had an emergency and was called away, and that he was the only one sober enough to drive her. I told him to keep quiet as the others were sleeping off the previous night’s drinking.
‘I told Nancy that I would take her letter to the policeman after the weekend. Only I didn’t, of course.
I saved it for myself, to use when I saw fit.
She called a few times, asking what happened, why they weren’t doing anything.
I told her to be patient, that these things took time.
But finally, I told her the truth: that there was no possible way that the police would act on the word of a silly little minx like her against the local lords and masters, and that she should have known better. ’
She glanced over at the stove. The fire had burned down. She got up, took the poker and prodded the remaining embers until they fell apart.
‘I didn’t know that she’d go and throw herself in the river after that,’ she said. ‘But that ended up working out better for me, didn’t it? I had to wait for the father to come back from his travels. It was too late for the dead girl, but that letter could still ruin his precious son and heir.’
‘So you blackmailed Lord Pickard,’ said Gwen.
‘Pickard? No point in going to him about it,’ said Mrs Dorter bitterly. ‘If it was Kevin she would have happily gone along with everything, wouldn’t she? She thought she had a chance with him, just like they all did at first, until he got bored and sent them packing. No, it was the other one.’
‘Bruce,’ said Iris.
‘Yes, little Brucie, who usually got the leavings from Kevin, only he didn’t want to wait that night.
His girl had begged off from that particular party, hadn’t she?
So there he was, all alone, and his best friend wasn’t about to let him go without.
So Kevin gave her to Brucie. Held her down when she didn’t want to go along with it.
Held her down while his best friend satisfied himself with her, then they took turns, and when they were both spent, that’s when the screaming started.
Maybe it started before that, but with two of them it was easy enough to stop her screams. Every detail of what happened to her was in what she wrote.
When I read it, it sounded like one long scream.
And it sounded that way to Bruce’s father when I brought it to him later that summer. ’
‘My God,’ whispered Gwen.
‘He paid for my silence and my escape here. I told everyone it was Lord Pickard’s generosity after my years of devoted service that allowed me to retire to a life as an innkeeper.’
‘You could have saved her,’ said Iris.
‘So could you,’ said Mrs Dorter.
‘I didn’t know what had happened.’
‘You knew,’ said Mrs Dorter. ‘Kevin told you by not telling you when you sat with him the next morning in the breakfast room.’
‘You were listening.’
‘I was listening. So were you. And you stayed. You stayed, and you ate his food and drank his liquor and danced all night with him and his friends and all of you pretended to worship him.’
‘I tried to talk to her as soon as I got back,’ said Iris.
‘How did you get back?’ scoffed Mrs Dorter.
‘In Bruce’s car, with Kevin in the front seat?
Did they hold the door open for you when they dropped you off at your fancy girls’ college?
Like proper gentlemen should? Did you give each of them one last kiss goodbye while Nancy watched you from her window?
Are you surprised that she failed to confide in you? ’
‘You traded her life for this place,’ said Iris. ‘Was it worth it?’
Mrs Dorter stood and walked to the back window.
‘They used to drown women they suspected of being witches in that pond in the meadow,’ said Mrs Dorter, looking out into the darkness.
‘Sometimes, I look out there at night. I think about her. How she gave herself to the water. I watch the water here, and wonder if she will rise from it, pointing at me. The water took her, the fire found Bruce and the guns took Kevin. And I’m still trapped in an isolated house in the country. ’
She turned back, her face haggard.
‘That’s all of it,’ she said. ‘Now you know what I know. Go up to your room and get some sleep. I have to clean up around here.’
They left as she began shovelling the ashes from the stove.