3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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the other side of the ha-ha, cows were already up and grazing. Nearer to hand, a narrow flight of steps led up to the back of the terrace, with a stone nymph guarding them. At right angles, a freshly mown grass path stretched to an archway cut into a high beech hedge. I followed it and found myself in an old-fashioned kind of garden, not so grand and formal as the rest of the grounds and to my eye all the better for that. Four gnarled mulberry trees stood at the corners of the lawn, with an old sundial at the centre. Hollyhocks grew at the back of the borders, love-in-a-mist and mignonette at the front, with stocks, bellflowers and penstemons in between. The whole area, no more than half an acre or so, was enclosed by the beech hedges with a semicircular paved area on the south side, a rustic bench and a summerhouse dripping with white roses.
I sat down on the bench and made myself think how to manage the conversation with Celia Mandeville when she arrived. I was reluctant to do it because, instinctively, I liked her. But she wanted something from me and – although she didn’t know it – I badly wanted several things from her. The most important by far was confirmation that Sir Herbert had been in Calais the day my father died. I could hardly expect from her proof that Sir Herbert had killed him. Surely she couldn’t know anything so terrible and be in the same room as the man?
It wasn’t a great wrong I was doing her, after all. Her stepfather was an arrogant, cruel man and she surely could not love him. At the very least, she must be ready to go behind his back, or why should she want this meeting with me?
She was late. Ten minutes or so after the stable clock had struck six she came running through the archway in the beech hedge, face anxious and hair flying.
‘Oh, here you are. Thank you, thank you.’
She was wearing a rose-pink muslin morning dress, thrown on hastily with only the most necessary buttons done up and, I couldn’t help noticing, no stays underneath. Her feet were stockingless in white satin pumps, grass-stained and wet from the dew. Perhaps I should have stood up, since she was my employer’s daughter, but it never occurred to me. She sat down beside me and took my hand, panting from her run.
‘Last night … I couldn’t believe it. What are you doing here?’
‘Your mother was kind enough to engage me as governess.’
‘But when we met in Calais, I thought …’
I think she might have been on the point of saying that she’d taken me for a social equal. She glanced at me, then away.
‘I suppose you’ve had some misfortune in life?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
Another glance at my face. She seemed nervous, poised to run away. But she, if anybody, should feel at home on this stage and sure of her part.
‘I liked you, you know,’ she said. ‘Liked you at once.’
‘And you were kind to me.’
Part of me wanted to reassure her, but a harder and colder part that had been born only in the last few days told me to wait and see.
‘Your poor head. Is it better now?’
‘Head? Yes, oh yes. Thank you.’
We stared at each other. Her eyes were a deep brown, not the periwinkle sparkle of her mother’s in the portrait.
‘Can I trust you?’ she said. The question should have been offensive, but somehow it wasn’t. She seemed to be asking herself rather than me. ‘You see, I do very much need to trust somebody.’
Perhaps I should have leapt in there and assured her of my total trustworthiness, but I couldn’t quite bear to do it. I watched her face as she came to a decision.
‘I must trust you, I think. Goodness knows, there’s nobody else.’
That in a household of – what was it – fifty-seven people, not counting the family.
‘You have a mother and a brother,’ I said.
She looked away from me. ‘Stephen doesn’t always do what I want, and my poor mother is … has other things to worry her. Then if he found out that I’d confided in her and she hadn’t told him, he’d be so angry with her …’
‘“He” being your stepfather?’
She looked away from me and nodded. A full-blown rose had dropped down from its own weight so that it was resting on the arm of the bench. She began plucking off its petals, methodically and automatically.
‘Miss Lock, would you do something for me and keep it secret?’
‘What?’
‘Promise me to keep it secret, even if you won’t do it?’
Rose petals snowed round her grass-stained pumps.
‘I promise.’
‘Oh, thank you.’
She let go of the despoiled rose and gripped my hand. I could feel her pulse beating in her wrist, like a panicking bird. I remembered what Betty had said – sweet winning ways.
‘What is it that you want me to do?’
‘Take a letter to the post for me.’
‘Only that?’
I felt both relieved and disappointed.
‘Only that, but nobody must know. I can’t trust any of the servants, you see. They’re nearly all his spies.’
‘Spies?’
‘I’m sure my maid Fanny is, for one. Or they’re all so terrified of him, they’d tell him at the first black look. But he’d never guess it of you, being so newly come here.’
‘This letter is to a friend?’
‘Yes. A gentleman friend. Not a love letter, in case that’s what you’re thinking.’
She glanced sideways at me and must have caught my sceptical look.
‘It’s more important than that. It’s …’
She hesitated.
‘Yes?’ I said, waiting.
‘If … if a certain thing happens, my life may be in danger.’
There was a flatness about the way she said it, more convincing than any dramatics might have been.
‘What certain thing?’
She let go of my hand.
‘I mustn’t tell you, and you mustn’t ask any more questions. But you’ll take the letter for me?’
‘I’ve already said so. But how am I to get it to the post?’
Though Celia was not to know it, I’d been giving the question some thought on my own behalf. With the amount of work demanded from a governess, I couldn’t see how I was to find the time to get to the Silver Horseshoe, let alone make regular reports to Mr Blackstone.
‘There surely must be a way,’ she said.
I let her see that I was thinking hard.
‘There must be some livery stables near here, with carriages that meet the mail coaches,’ I said. ‘If I could take your letter to one of those …’
‘Yes. Oh, Miss Lock, how very clever of you. Could you do that?’
Her eyes were shining. She took hold of my hand again.
‘I think so, yes. I’ve heard somebody talking about a place called the Silver Horseshoe, on the west side of the heath.’
‘Yes. We pass it in the carriage sometimes. I think they keep race horses there as well as livery.’
‘Is it far away?’
‘About two miles, I think.’
‘If I were