A Corpse in Shining Armour. Caro Peacock
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just wanted to do you a good turn, that’s all.’
I looked at the eagerness in her expression and thought that beneath her cunning there was truthfulness of a kind. Amazing though it seemed, the charade had been because she wanted me to like her, or notice her at least. Was that so wrong? Quite recently, in my own life, I’d been without family, money or a roof over my head. Admittedly, my circumstances had never been as poor as hers. The fates had been kind to me, so who was I to turn away from her?
‘Mrs Martley said you came into our rooms the other day,’ I said.
‘She thought I’d come to take something. I hadn’t. I only wanted to see where you lived, that’s all.’
‘Still, you shouldn’t…’
But she was launched on a sense of grievance and wouldn’t be interrupted.
‘She called me names and threatened to throw me downstairs. She said I was lousy and flea-ridden. That’s not my fault. The queen and all her ladies in waiting would be lousy if they had to sleep where I sleep.’
I burst out laughing. The picture of Little Vicky and her retinue of ladies in their satin and diamonds, couching in a shining heap in the shed next to Mr Colley’s midden, was too vivid to contemplate straight-faced. Tabby was startled at first, then she started laughing too, so that we were more like two schoolgirls than wronged householder and vagrant.
When we stopped laughing we looked at each other, caught off-balance.
‘Tabby, would you like to work for me?’ I said.
It was a ludicrous idea. Anything less like a lady’s maid than the ragged girl standing in front of me would be hard to find in the whole expanse of London. Still, I had a problem and needed a quick solution to it. Mr Lomax’s casual assumption that I’d be bringing a servant with me reminded me that any kind of gentlewoman–and a person seeking acquaintance with Lady Brinkburn would have to be some kind of gentlewoman–would not stay in a country cottage unattended. There was no question of removing Mrs Martley from Jenny at this interesting stage, even if I had wanted her company, and I couldn’t afford or endure a conventional lady’s maid. Tabby grinned as if I’d given her a present, nodded her head and kept nodding it. I wished she wouldn’t. It reminded me about the state of her hair.
‘It will only be for a week or two,’ I said. ‘It means living outside London for a while.’
‘Further away than Hackney?’
‘Yes. More than twenty miles away. A day’s journey.’
She knelt down and started tightening one of the laces on her wrecked boots.
‘We’re not walking,’ I said. ‘And not at once. It will be the day after tomorrow, probably. And there’s something you must do first.’
I opened my purse and gave her the seven and a half pence.
‘You know the bath house, round the corner from the workhouse?’ She nodded. ‘I want you to go in there tomorrow morning and have a first-class bath. That will cost you threepence. The rest you can keep for yourself. Wait there.’
I ran upstairs and rummaged at the bottom of my clothes chest, turning up a grey cotton dress, much creased but quite respectable, cotton stockings and garters, a plain chemise and petticoat, corsets that were too fancy and frivolous for the purpose but the only ones I had to spare, and a woollen shawl. Down in the parlour, I stuffed them in a clean potato sack, took a bar of carbolic soap from the cupboard and raided Mrs Martley’s box of herbs for the mixture of dried rosemary and fleabane that she said was good against lice. Another raid on the food cupboard produced half a loaf of yesterday’s bread and a lump of cheese. When I got back downstairs with my armful, Tabby was standing just where I’d left her.
‘You can put the clothes on tomorrow after you’ve had your bath,’ I said. ‘You’d better keep them in the sack till then. Rub this into your hair in the bath and make sure you wash it really thoroughly.’
She accepted the sack and the instructions with the same calm she’d shown when she thought we were going to walk twenty miles. I said I’d meet her in the yard after she’d had her bath and wished her good evening. When I looked back from the doorway she was still standing there with the sack in her hand, looking after me. I thought I’d probably live to regret it. And the same applied to the other commitment I’d made that day as well.
The next thirty-six hours were too busy to worry about whether I’d done the wrong thing: to a bank in the Strand to cash the lawyer’s draft, to a little shop in Soho for sketchpads, charcoal, a set of watercolours and brushes, to Bloomsbury for a quick visit to Daniel and Jenny to let them know I’d be away for a while, to a stage-coach office to take two inside seats on the Emerald, from the Spread Eagle in Gracechurch Street to the Bear at Maidenhead on Saturday morning. Of course, it should have been one seat inside the coach for me and one on the top outside for my maid. But I guessed that it would be the first time in Tabby’s life that she’d been outside London and I could hardly condemn her to a lurching and uncomfortable journey among total strangers. Besides, there was no telling what she might say to those strangers.
When I got back to Abel Yard, arms loaded with packages, she was waiting for me, face shining with cleanliness, hair damp and–from a not too close look–free of animal life. My grey dress was too long for her so she’d gathered it up at the waist with a piece of string. At least it was clean string. A strong smell of carbolic hung round her. She tried to give me back the diminished bar of soap.
‘I’m sorry, I used a lot of it.’
‘Don’t worry. Keep it.’
I checked that Mrs Martley was not at home and then took her upstairs to help pack. Naturally, Mr Lomax hadn’t given me any helpful details like whether the water bailiff’s cottage had its own linen, so I took some of our second-best sheets, pillowslips and towels and folded them into a trunk. By the time I’d added a tin of biscuits and a slab of portable soup, the spirit stove and kettle, my clothes, a few books and the painting materials, it was some weight. With difficulty, we manoeuvred it down the stairs together and put it near the gate to the yard, to be collected by a carter’s service as I’d arranged, and deposited to await our arrival at the Bear. There’d be no room for such bulky luggage on the stage. Then I took Tabby to my favourite secondhand clothes shop, where we fitted her out with another grey cotton dress nearer her own size, two white aprons, two white caps, a nightdress, and a carpet bag to carry them all. None of the second-hand shoes would do, so some of Mr Lomax’s money had to go on a pair of new black shoes from the cobbler’s shop. (I comforted myself that it all came from the Brinkburn family’s coal mines in the end, so I should feel no guilt.) The shoes looked lumpish and clumsy to me, but after the boots they seemed to her ridiculously light. She capered a few steps on the pavement.
‘I feel like my feet’s flying away from me.’
‘People are looking at us,’ I said.
I didn’t like to curb her exuberance, but in my business I often needed to blend into the background. A dancing lady’s maid wouldn’t help.
By the time I’d got her back to Abel Yard it was late afternoon. I remembered that Celia was expecting me to call, so dashed off a note to her saying that I’d be out of town for a few days. In case she wanted to write to me, letters could be addressed care of the mail office in Maidenhead. I gave the note to Tabby to deliver. That left just enough time for the most important part of my preparations. I went alone, crossing Park Lane, walking northwards through the park in golden sunlight, towards Bayswater Road. There weren’t many people in the park because the fashionable had finished their afternoon promenades on horseback or in carriages and gone home to change for dinner. That meant the end of the day’s work for their horses. By the time I reached the livery stables where Amos Legge