Chapter Seventeen #4
It was said with pain, as though giving the credit hurt too much.
Kitty was struggling with sheer bewilderment. ‘I suppose I had heard…rumours,’ she said. ‘Talk that he…that he was…But it’s quite another thing to be faced with the reality. The proof.’
‘The reality, as you put it, is the very difficulty we have in raising money,’ said Miss Eddowes.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Kitty said. Then an idea came to her. ‘Does Giles – does my husband know?’
Miss Eddowes seemed not to have expected that question.
It took her a moment to think about it. ‘I would be very surprised if he did. The previous earl was careful, in this regard if not in other ways. The present Lord Stainton has never given me any reason to suppose he knows of any connection between me and his father, or indeed has ever heard of High Beeches.’
Kitty thought she was probably right. She thought Giles would have warned her if he knew of this specific activity. Another thought occurred. ‘Does his mother – my mother-in-law – know?’
Miss Eddowes exchanged another long look with Mrs Painswick. Then she said, ‘I have never spoken to her directly about it, but she did know about one case because he told her.’
‘The earl told his wife that he…?’
Miss Eddowes’s mouth was grim. ‘There was a certain kitchen maid.’
Kitty did not send for the carriage to collect her from the village afterwards.
She was glad of the walk up the hill to think through what she had learned and settle her emotions.
In her second year at Ashmore Castle, the cook, Mrs Oxlea, had hanged herself.
It had been a horrible, shocking thing. Oxlea had been a very bad cook, and Kitty had wondered why her mother-in-law had kept her on.
But Maud famously cared nothing about food.
Kitty could not have known there was another reason.
And it had not occurred to her to wonder why Oxlea had killed herself.
Suicides were not uncommon, and no-one could ever know what went on in another’s head.
The verdict was always ‘while the balance of their mind was disturbed’.
Suicide was a crime and a terrible sin, so your mind would have to be unbalanced.
Now Kitty knew that Oxlea had been one of the earl’s victims, that she had given birth at High Beeches, that the child had been placed with foster parents, that the earl had made a large donation – and that Oxlea had returned to the Castle to be re-employed as kitchen maid and later cook.
Why? Why?
It was no wonder, then, that Maud hated Miss Eddowes, who not only knew the dark secret of her marriage, but had, Maud would consider, connived at it.
It explained why she would not have her name mentioned, would not have her in the house, why she had forbidden Kitty to have anything to do with her.
She felt a spasm of pity for Maud, which surprised her.
Her mother-in-law had made Kitty’s life a misery in the early days, and was not, in any case, the sort of person to attract sympathy.
Nor would she have wanted it. But to have to live with that constant reminder in her own house – it was a monstrous cruelty by the earl, who must have been a very dark person.
And Giles, poor Giles, brought up by such a father!
Someone capable of such cruelty to his wife would not be likely to be kind to his son.
The loneliness of Giles’s childhood was suddenly brought home to her in all its starkness.
Her own upbringing had been cold and loveless too, so she was well placed to understand.
She wanted to hurry home and fling her arms round him.
But Giles was a grown man and hardened in his character, and how could she break through that carapace?
More pertinently, should she tell him what she now knew?
It was not the whole story, of course – nowhere near the whole story.
And she was almost certain he knew nothing about High Beeches, nothing about Mrs Oxlea’s connection with his father.
If she told him, he would be shocked. Hurt.
Ashamed? Possibly. Angry? Certainly, but with whom?
Anger with his father was pointless now he was dead.
Anger with his mother, who was a victim too, in a way, unproductive.
Anger with Kitty for telling him? Quite probably.
The messenger was traditionally killed for bringing bad news.
Anger with Miss Eddowes for the whole business?
Yes, she feared that was the most likely outcome.
He could denounce her, bring her activities to the notice of the village, have her closed down and driven out.
Kitty knew by now that the child inside men made them lash out blindly when they were hurt or afraid.
Miss Eddowes had successfully kept her service to the unfortunates from public knowledge all these years, and if she was exposed it was the unfortunates who would suffer most. Thus the old earl would continue to wreak his havoc despite being five years in his grave.
She stopped, having come in sight of the house.
The Castle looked down at her, just as it had at her first sighting when, before her marriage, she and her parents had been invited to visit.
But now it was not an awe-inspiring and rather frightening edifice, it was her home, and the home of her children.
She supposed that over the centuries it must have kept a lot of secrets.
She had found one out – a bad one. Who would benefit from her sharing it?
No-one. Least of all Giles, her adored but fragile husband.
To upset him more would be to do the old earl’s dirty business for him.
Miss Eddowes had not pleaded for her silence: she had treated her as an equal, leaving her to make up her own mind.
And Miss Eddowes would never tell, not to the ending of her life.
Kitty’s respect for her had increased tenfold today.
That closed-in, little, brisk woman, who accepted Maud’s hatred without complaint, who went about her business without ever asking for thanks or praise or even liking, because she thought it was the right thing to do.
She would help Miss Eddowes in any way she could that would give nothing away.
Miss Eddowes had told her of a plan she had to create a stream of income.
The domestic washing at High Beeches was done in a separate building that had once been the brewery, a large building capable of being turned into a commercial laundry.
With the girls providing the labour, they could compete with other laundries and take in sheets, towels and table linen from hotels and big houses.
But it required capital outlay, to install a bigger boiler, an industrial-sized roller, and various other pieces of equipment.
And she had only her pin-money. It would be perfectly possible to fund the whole installation, if only she could find a way to get hold of the money without telling Giles what it was for.
And she couldn’t tell Giles. Shouldn’t. She would have to find some other way.
She looked up at the house and said, ‘Don’t worry, I will keep your secret.’ And the house looked back and said, And I will keep yours.
If she ever had any.
But she really wished she knew the whole story.