Chapter 4 #2
I will find you, she promised the whitewashed walls.
—
As Charlie’s door closed behind her with a soft snick, Caroline stood alone in the silent second-floor hallway.
As instructed, she had taken the servants’ staircase to ferry away the chamber pots and soiled sheets, and so far, she had not encountered any of the boardinghouse’s enigmatic guests while she worked.
Many of them, judging by the creak of the front door, had left after breakfast, and if any remained, they kept to their rooms.
What little Caroline had seen of the boardinghouse only filled her with more questions. For surely none of the other soot-stained facades in Old Montague Street hid interiors like this.
The house possessed a cozy darkness that wrapped itself around her. Dark blue wallpaper lined the hallways in a pattern of exotic birds, their eyes picked out in gold foil that caught the light and gave the impression they were following her.
The rooms were simply but finely furnished. Caroline, who had spent the last months selling off Audley House’s possessions, stared aghast at the etched-glass oil lamps, the turns of the table legs, the quality of the linens. There was money here. And greater than money: There was taste.
Caroline stood for a moment with her back against Charlie’s door.
To her right was the servants’ staircase, camouflaged by expertly applied paper in the same pattern as the walls.
To her left, the hallway opened onto a landing.
Past the polished banisters of the central staircase lay the east wing of the second floor.
Mrs. Easton would be missing her. Changing sheets had proven a trickier task than she had expected; it had taken her the better part of an hour to strip and remake four beds.
And this was after shining the silver, another chore that had required a surprising amount of skill, and emptying the chamber pots, which had required no skill at all but had been horrendous.
Caroline did not turn right and vanish back into the cool gloom of the servants’ stair. Instead, with her pulse thrumming in her ears, she walked toward the second-floor landing.
Thick oriental rugs swallowed her footsteps. A hundred shining eyes watched from the walls.
The landing was lit, like the rest of the boardinghouse, by brass oil sconces.
There were two small windows, which looked east and west to the buildings on either side, but the day was dreary, and the space felt close as a tomb.
The banister of the main staircase was polished oak, the stairs covered by a scarlet runner.
And across the mouth of the stairwell stood a door.
It was not like the other doors, which were built of the same oak as the staircase.
There was something…medieval about it. This door was built of darker, thicker stuff, scratched and weatherworn, crosshatched in studded belts of iron.
It stood incongruously beside the fine carpets and opulent wallpaper, like a Viking at a dinner party.
But the most disturbing thing about it, the thing that caught Caroline’s eyes and held them like a trap, was the iron padlock, large as a fist, that hung from the slide bolt.
In the hallway behind her, a door opened.
Caroline wheeled.
A man had emerged from room 104. He was middle height and middle-aged, his face suntanned and handsome beneath peppery hair. Caroline recognized him as the man who had been playing the piano last night in the parlor.
They stood in silence for a moment, regarding each other. Then he sketched a little bow.
“Bonjour, mademoiselle. I am Alfie Rodart.”
“Bonjour, monsieur,” Caroline replied, and, without thinking, dropped into a modest curtsy.
She instantly cursed herself. For what kitchen maid spoke French?
When she rose, Monsieur Rodart’s face had broken into a curious smile.
“Alors! Does the mademoiselle speak francais?” His accent was gentle and curving, his posture perfect. She was struck again, as she had been last night, by how genteel he had appeared among the strange collection of men.
“No, sir,” Caroline said, with a humble shake of her head. “My last lady did. I picked up a word or two, but no more.”
The Frenchman considered her for a long moment, then gazed past her, at the door across the landing. His mild hazel eyes narrowed. When they once again settled on Caroline, something in his pleasant expression had crystallized.
“And how do you find your new position? A large change, is it not?”
He stepped toward her, one immaculately polished oxford pressing silently into the carpet.
“I am grateful for the work,” Caroline managed to get out. Her mouth had gone very dry.
“And your benefactress? Madame Easton?”
“She is very kind,” Caroline replied.
It was a normal question. So why had her spine stiffened? Why had her fingers whitened on the rail of the banister?
“I have known Madame Easton for many decades.” His voice was soft, almost intimately so. He took another step. “There is no one kinder, or more trusting.”
Caroline swallowed audibly. “I am grateful for the work,” she said again.
“She blamed herself, you know,” the Frenchman continued. He was on the landing now; if Caroline had wanted, she could have reached out and touched the wheat-brown tweed of his coat. “When the last maid…Well. I tried to warn Madame Easton. Lives like Polly’s always end in tragedy.”
Polly.
The cabbie’s voice rang through her head. You can still see the blood on the pavement where he gutted her.
“So be careful, my dear,” Monsieur Rodart continued, with a nod at the door behind her. “Our neighborhood is not kind to those who wander. The last thing Mrs. Easton needs is another shock.”
And with that, he stepped past her and descended the staircase.
Caroline waited until she heard his footsteps disappear before making her way down the hallway.
She fought the childish urge to run. But she stepped deliberately, hunched her shoulders, tried to look every inch a kitchen maid.
It was not until she had closed the door of the servants’ staircase and was once more alone in the cool dark that she was again able to breathe.