Death at Bishop's Keep (21 page)

But thought-provoking as well. As the chaise turned onto the lane toward Bishop's Keep, Kate's thoughts turned to another subject—Sir Charles Sheridan. She had been pleased to see him, more pleased than she was willing to admit to herself. Over their last several meetings, she had begun to feel a marked interest in him, not only in his knowledge of investigative procedures and methods of analysis, but in the man himself, lumpy coat, camera, and all. She had even felt—or had it been her imagination?—that he looked at her attentively, as if he were actually listening to what she said.

But she couldn't help wondering whether she had been entirely wise to suggest that he call on Mrs. Farnsworth. Her recommendation had seemed to pique his interest, although she was sure that he thought her both whimsical and overbold, intruding once more into an investigation in which she had no part.

It was, of course, the sight of the scarab ring on her finger of the dead man that had prompted her to speak. That, and the peacock feather. Sir Charles had seemed to think neither important, but Kate could only conclude that, taken together, the two items were of singular and rather troubling significance. There was, although Sir Charles did not know it, a third: Aunt Sabrina's interest in the murder. When Kate put that together with the fact that Aunt Sabrina and Mrs. Farns-worth each possessed a scarab pendant, and that most of the people at Saturday's gathering had worn the emblem of the peacock feather, she could reach only one reasonable conclusion, and its corollary: Monsieur Armand had visited Colchester with the intention of seeing some member of the Order of the Golden Dawn, and Aunt Sabrina suspected as much. Further, Aunt Sabrina did not wish anyone to know of her suspicions. Kate could not suggest to Sir Charles that he speak to her aunt on the subject, but she could suggest that he consult with Mrs. Farnsworth, who must be acquainted with all the members of the temple she had organized.

But still, Kate felt troubled. She certainly had no wish to embarrass either Aunt Sabrina or the Order. And she liked Mrs. Farnsworth, who evidently dared to be as audacious in the way she behaved as in the way she dressed. If Sir Charles did indeed take up her suggestion, she hoped he would be discreet in his inquiry. She wished that she had thought to ask him not to mention her name.

It was approaching nightfall when the cart arrived at the stable yard of Bishop's Keep. Kate alighted and went in through the kitchen entry. She was greeted as usual with the ripe fragrance of pickles, potatoes, apples, and coffee, for the entranceway led through a storeroom crowded with jars, crocks, bins, and barrels. To furnish its tables, Bishop's Keep relied on its own gardens and pastures and on the local vendors of meat, fish, and fowl. Staple items—flour, sugar, salt, tea—were purchased infrequently at Dedham or Colchester.

The brick-floored, stone-walled kitchen was chill and dusky, lighted only by the fire in the large fireplace and a single oil lamp hanging over the worktable. Cook—Mrs. Pratt, Kate called her, thinking it demeaning to name her by her function—stood over the table, kneading bread. She was a thickset woman in a gray dress covered with a starched white apron. She had a dour mouth and piercing black eyes under heavy black brows that met in the center, giving her a suspicious look. But she had warmed to Kate and usually greeted her with the twitch of her lips that passed for a smile.

This evening, however, there was no smile. Mrs. Pratt's brows were knit together in a scowl and her frilled cap was dangerously askew. Her arms were white to the elbows with flour and she was pummeling a mound of stiff dough as if it were her bitterest enemy.

“Good evening,” Kate said, pulling off her gloves. She was surprised to see Mrs. Pratt engaged so late in the day with a task that she usually completed much earlier.

“Evenin',” Mrs. Pratt muttered, dealing the innocent dough another hard blow.

Kate sniffed. Amidst the comfortable smells of the kitchen—the lingering odor of the luncheon onion soup, the smoke of the fire, the sharp aroma of lamp oil—she caught the unmistakable perfume of Aunt Sabrina's best port. Mrs. Pratt had been at the tipple.

Kate put her gloves in her pocket. “I trust all is well,” she remarked in an idle tone, although it was clear to her that it wasn't.

Mrs. Pratt gave the dough a quarter-turn and a smart smack. “An' how culd anythin' be well in this house,” she said, slurring her words, “wi' sweet Jenny dead an' that woman struttin' round proud as Herself in a temper?”

Kate was distressed by the bitterness of Mrs. Pratt's remark, but not surprised. She had known since the Friday before that the servants' resentment of Aunt Jaggers was not an ordinary hostility, derived from the accumulated aggravation of small slights. It was a sustained ferocity that brooded, like a bird of prey on its nest, over a long-held and deeply felt injury. When Kate had overheard Mrs. Pratt's threat, she had understood why. “Jaggers'll be in bloody hell,” Cook had said savagely. “That's where the Lord sends the murderers of pore babes and young girls!” Mudd had echoed her feeling with an almost equal violence.

Kate looked at Mrs. Pratt's dark face, troubled. A storm was brewing. Was there anything she could do to help the household weather it? It was not that she gave two beans for Aunt Jaggers's feelings. If the woman had wronged Jenny Blyly, she deserved to suffer for it. But she wanted to shield Aunt Sabrina from the worst of the blow, if she could. And she had come to feel an honest affection for the people who devoted their honest labors to make Bishop's Keep comfortable. It would be a terrible pity if the storm shipwrecked their small security, such as it was.

“I would be interested in hearing your concern if you care to tell me,” Kate said quietly. She sat down on a stool beside the fire. “Perhaps there is something I can do.”

“Do?” Mrs. Pratt asked bitterly. “Ain't nothin' can be done.”

“But still—” Kate said, and left the sentence hanging, hoping that Mrs. Pratt would tell her about Jenny Blyly. But that wasn't where Mrs. Pratt began.

“ 'Tis Nettie,” Mrs. Pratt said finally, stripping shreds of dough from her hands. “Nettie an' th' pincushion.” She pulled two fingers of lard from a tin bucket and began furiously to grease a brown earthenware bowl as large as a small washtub.

“Pincushion?” Kate asked, surprised.

“Wi' th' image of the queen on't. ‘Tis gone missin'.” Mrs. Pratt thumped the heavy bowl on the table so hard that the crockery rattled on the sideboard. “Jaggers whipt her fer stealin', she did.” There was deep indignation in her voice, and frustration.

“Whipped!” Kate exclaimed. “Over a pincushion!”

“Aye,” Mrs. Pratt said darkly. “Whipt, wi' a leather strop. Nettie missed th' pincushion a while ago. We hoped it‘ud turn up, like, under th' carpet or at th' back of the drawer, th' way lost things does. But Jaggers wanted it yestiddy, an' it culdn't be found, nowheres. She accused Nettie of thievin' an' give her till this arternoon to put it back.” She gathered up the mass of glossy dough with both hands and dropped it into the bowl. “When she cudn't, she whipt her an' took away her half days fer a year.”

“Oh,” Kate whispered miserably. “Poor, poor Nettie.” The girl was little more than a child, thin and pale-faced, with narrow hunched shoulders and lank hair. “Where is she now?”

Mrs. Pratt turned the dough lardside-up with a swift motion. “In th' cellar, cleanin' coal boxes. Jaggers give her a can'le an' set her to't afore tea.”

“How unkind!” Kate exclaimed. Being sent to the damp, black cellar with only a candle would of itself be a horrible punishment, let alone sent there to clean the coal boxes.

Mrs. Pratt looked at Kate, her glance narrowed and bitter. “There's no dealin' wi' th' wretch,” she said bleakly. “An' no use appealin' to Miss Ardleigh.”

“But surely, if my aunt knew—”

Mrs. Pratt's voice was fierce. “An' wot'ud she do? It were th' same when Jaggers drove Jenny away last spring. Miss Ardleigh din't do nothin' then, neither.” She shook her head. “No, Jaggers has got a hold on Miss Ardleigh somehow, otherwise she wudn't be tolerated here fer a bloody minute.”

“Please, Mrs. Pratt,” Kate said painfully, “tell me about Jenny.” She didn't want to hear the story, because she had already guessed its outline. But it might help Mrs. Pratt to tell it.

Without speaking, Mrs. Pratt covered the bowl with a damp towel and set it on the hearth. Putting the bread to rise at this late hour meant that she would have to get up for the baking well before dawn. It was a measure of just how far things had slipped out of kilter today.

Kate knit her fingers together. “It's too late to help Jenny,” she said painfully, “but I can do nothing for the others unless I know the whole story.”

Mrs. Pratt dropped into the chair on the other side of the fire. “Can't do nothin' anyways,” she muttered, wiping her hands on her apron. “Nobody kin do nothin'.” She took a small flask out of her pocket and pulled on it.

Kate waited. In a few moments, the port loosened the cook's tongue. Mrs. Pratt began to speak, slowly and painfully, as if the tale were being wrenched out of her like an abscessed tooth, the pain of it undeadened, even by drink.

“Jenny were th' parlor maid afore Amelia,” she said. She put the flask back in her pocket. “Me sister Rose's oldest girl, Amelia's sister. Pert as a daisy an' prompt in ‘er work. But she wudn't put on an int'rest in religion, which soured Jaggers, an' sometimes she had a tart mouth.” Her jaw tightened. “When Jaggers found out that she were wi' child—”

Kate pulled in her breath, imagining Aunt Jaggers's fury. And Jenny had been Amelia's sister! No wonder the girl had been so distraught.

“Floggin' was first,” Mrs. Pratt said thickly. She put her work-roughened hands on her knees and leaned toward the fire. “Then Jaggers sent her out. No char‘cter, no money, 'cept what little we culd scrape t'gether among us. Fair broke her mother's heart, it did.”

Kate closed her eyes. It was a familiar enough story—one she had even written herself, complete with shy maid, sly seducer, and flint-hearted mistress. But Jenny's was no made-up story. It was
real.
Kate could feel the girl's hopelessness and despair, and her heart brimmed with an answering compassion. How could girls like Jenny and Nettie endure such terrible treatment? How could they live in a society of such wretched inequalities, where their sad poverty could at every moment be measured against the abundance abovestairs, where a parrot merited more casual affection than a parlor maid? But she had not yet heard the worst of it.

Mrs. Pratt clenched her hands. “Hadn't bin fer Jaggers, we'd a' come through it, Jenny an' us, fer th' father were a village lad, an' loved her. He were happy to marry her an' give th' babe his name, straightaway.” Her voice sharpened. “But Jaggers shamed her till she b'lieved hersel' worse 'n worthless, an' not gud enuf fer th' one she loved.” Her mouth twisted, her words full of poisonous hatred.
“Jaggers
is who killed Jenny, with her hard blows an' her harsh words. All o' us knows it. All o' us hates her fer it. Tom Potter most of all.”

“Tom Potter?”

“Jenny's young man. Th' constable who brought th' news o' her passin' also brought a note from her t' him. A love note, like.” She smiled grimly. “But yer needn't worry none, miss. Jaggers'll get her reward. It'll all be made right in th' end.” A coal broke on the hearth, scattering shimmers of spark. “An' if it ain't, Tom'll make it right, or Mudd will, or me.”

Kate stared at her, apprehension rippling through her like a hissing snake. “No,” she whispered. “That's not the way.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Pratt said darkly. “Yes, 'tis.”

“Find me some material, though it is no bigger than a fly's foot, give me but a clew no thicker than a spider's web, and I'll follow it through the whole labyrinth.”

—Wilkie Collins “Foul Play”

 

 

 

C
harles spent the next day following the two clues he had—the peacock feather and the dead man's photograph. Buttoned up in a mackintosh and wearing a hat against the drizzling mist, he rode into Colchester, where he stabled his horse and walked to Queen Street. At the fourth house, his portfolio under his arm, he pulled the brass bell. It was answered this time by a pert little maid with red cheeks and a ready smile who gave Charles a demure look under her eyelashes when he asked to see the master. He handed over his card, on which he had written, “A matter of paramount importance.”

“I'll tell Mr. Murdstone yer here, sir,” the maid said, leaving him standing in the narrow hall. He passed the time by examining a series of gilt-framed etchings of the Charge of the Light Brigade, hung against the rose-patterned wallpaper. Precious was nowhere to be seen but could be heard, yapping briskly but faintly in a distant room, and the rich perfume of cooked onions arose from the back of the house. A moment later the maid returned to take his coat and lead him to the parlor.

Frank Murdstone was roasting his feet on the small fender in the lace-curtained parlor immediately off the hall, comfortable in a soft jacket and loose tie, reading a newspaper by the light of a hissing gas lamp. He was a man with a horsey nose, a high forehead, and tufted eyebrows.

“Oh, it's you,” he said, removing his boots from the fender. He put down his newspaper, his ears reddening. He obviously remembered yesterday's encounter with some embarrassment. “What can I do for you, Sir Charles? What's this business of ‘paramount importance'?”