3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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by an instrumental coda with so much work for the trumpets that I hoped they’d demand an extra fee.
I wondered if Mrs Beedle had proposed me for the copying work and, if so, what I was expected to gain from it. As the afternoon went on, I guessed that it had nothing to do with the music, but very much to do with keeping me in a convenient place for spying. Everything in a household, from kitchen maids with hysterics to guests mislaying their toothbrushes, came to the housekeeper’s room.
There was one particular incident that afternoon. The assistant housekeeper came into the room and whispered something to Mrs Quivering, who followed her out to the corridor. She left the door half open and I saw one of the under footmen leaning against the wall, pale-faced, with tears running down his cheeks. I knew him slightly because he sometimes brought coal and lamp oil to the nursery kitchen. His name was Simon and he was fourteen years old, tall for his age but childish in his ways. I believe he owed his promotion from kitchen boy to under footman to the fact that his shoulders were broad enough to fill out the livery jacket. Mrs Quivering gave him a handkerchief to mop his eyes and listened with bent head to what he was saying. I couldn’t hear him, but her voice carried better.
‘It is not your fault, Simon, but you must not talk about it. While he is here, you will go back to working in the kitchen, then we’ll see. But if you talk about it, you will be in very serious trouble.’
Her assistant led the boy away and she came back into the room, heaving a sigh and not looking very pleased with herself. Soon after that, the butler came in, a sad-faced man named Mr Hall. They carried on a conversation in low voices, heads close together, with Mrs Quivering doing most of the talking.
‘I will not tolerate it, Mr Hall. The servants are under our protection. A word must be said.’
‘He won’t take it well.’
‘I am almost past caring how he takes it. I had Abigail in tears this morning too. She said Lord Kilkeel swore at her most vilely when he found her in his room. She’d gone in there to clean and make the bed, and he told her nobody was to set foot in there, for any reason, without his express permission. The poor girl was so terrified she’s been quite useless since. And now the other one and Simon. If you won’t speak to him about the two of them, then I shall. And if I lose my position through it, there are others.’
The butler said yes, he’d speak to him as soon as he had the opportunity. I could see Mrs Quivering didn’t quite believe him, but they parted on civil terms and she went back to her lists.
Towards the end of the afternoon, I grew tired of having to draw musical staves with Mrs Quivering’s knobble-edged ruler and went up to the schoolroom for a better one. I found Charles and James arguing, Henrietta sulking and Betty so worn out with having to cope with them on her own that it was the least I could do to give her an hour’s relief by taking them for a walk in the grounds. We went out by a side entrance because they were in their plain schoolroom clothes and not fit for being seen by company. With that in mind, I guided them quickly towards the flower garden, for the protection of its high beech hedges.
‘Celia? Celia, where are you?’
Stephen’s voice came from the other side of the hedge. Henrietta stopped. I whispered to her to go on, but she put her eye to the hedge.
‘He’s with Mr Brighton,’ she said in a loud whisper.
I caught Henrietta by the arm and fairly dragged her along a gravel path to the safety of a little ornamental orchard behind the flower garden, with the boys following. It was a pleasant acre of old apple and pear trees with a thatched wooden summerhouse in the middle, too far from the house to be much used by adults. Once we were safely there, I helped Henrietta tuck her skirts up to the knee and encouraged them to play hide and seek. Soon they were absorbed in their game and I sat on the bench in the summerhouse, still uneasy at having come so close to Mr Brighton, even more so in case Kilkeel came to join him.
‘Elizabeth.’
Celia’s whisper, from behind me. I spun round but couldn’t see her until she hissed my name again. One alarmed eye and a swathe of red-gold hair showed in a gap between the planks that made up the back wall of the summerhouse.
‘Miss Mandeville, what in the world are you doing there? Your brother’s looking for you.’
‘I know. Would you please keep the children here long enough for them to get tired of looking for me.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my stepfather wants me to be pleasant to Mr Brighton.’
She said the name with such scorn and anger that I half expected it to scorch the planks between us.
‘But why should you be …?’
I was puzzled. She had no reason, as far as I knew, to share my abhorrence of the man.
‘Haven’t you understood anything? He’s the reason why Philip must take me away.’
‘You mean your stepfather wants you to marry that …’
‘Shh. Yes.’
My voice must have risen in surprise. Luckily, it was masked by Henrietta’s shriek of triumph as she discovered James hiding behind a pear tree.
‘My turn to hide. My turn to hide.’
The boys closed their eyes. Charles started counting.
‘One hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight …’
‘I’ve been trying to keep away from him all afternoon,’ Celia whispered. ‘He must surely get tired soon.’
‘Eighty-seven, seventy-nine …’
‘You’re not counting properly,’ Henrietta protested.
She was plunging round among the trees, looking for a hiding place. Then she changed direction and came running towards the summerhouse.
‘No, don’t let her,’ Celia hissed through the planks.
I stood up, but too late to intercept Henrietta as she ran behind the summerhouse.
‘I’ve found Celia. I’ve found Celia.’
‘Go away you little pest.’
But Henrietta’s voice must have carried over the hedges. Stephen called from some way off in the flower garden, ‘Celia?’ Two pairs of footsteps sounded on the gravel path, one quick, one slow and heavy.
‘Go to them,’ Celia said to me. From her voice, she was near to tears. ‘Tell them she’s lying and I’m not here.’
By then I was in a fair panic myself.
‘I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Mr Brighton saw me at the stables dressed as a boy. Supposing he guesses?’
A gasp from behind the planks, then silence apart from Henrietta’s capering steps on the grass. Stephen appeared at the gap in the hedge. I sat down again, curling into the darkest corner of the summerhouse. As he came striding in our direction I stayed where I was, determined that Celia must solve her own problem for once.
‘Celia, are you there?’ he called.
Celia came out from behind the summerhouse looking far cooler than I’d expected, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear.
‘You’re too hot, Henrietta. You’ll make yourself ill.’
Her voice was cool too, but she threw me a glance of pure terror. As far as I could tell, Stephen hadn’t noticed me in the summerhouse.
‘Celia, where have you been? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
‘Here, with the children,’ Celia said. ‘But Henrietta’s made herself over-excited running about. I’m taking her back to the house to lie down.’
‘Can’t Betty or Miss Lock see to them?’