Death at Dawn (16 page)

‘Mr Legge, thank good—’

Then I shut my mouth because the person looking over the loosebox door wasn’t Amos Legge. He was
shorter, not so broad in the shoulders, and must have approached very quietly because I hadn’t heard him until he was there.

‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Why are you hiding in there, boy?’

Then he slid open the bolt on the half-door and walked a few steps inside the box.

The voice was a high drawl. As he turned and the sunlight came on him I knew that I’d never seen him before. There was no doubt, though, that he was one of the two gentlemen just arrived from London. He walked delicately into the rustling straw, like a nervous bather testing the temperature of the sea with his toes, looking as if he’d just stepped off the pavement of Regent Street. He wore a plum-coloured coat, a waistcoat in plum and silver stripes, a white ruffled shirt and a silver-grey cravat with a ruby and diamond pin, breeches of finest buckskin and beautiful boots of chestnut leather, with soft tops ornamented with plum-coloured tassels to match the coat. He was about my age, soft and plump, with a clean-shaven, pale face as if he spent most of his days indoors, hair clubbed back under a high-crowned grey beaver hat with a big silver buckle. His eyes were pale blue and protruding, his expression vacant, but amiable enough. As he waited for an answer from me, he hitched up a coat-tail, reached into the pocket of it and brought out a round gold box with a diamond on top that flashed when the sun caught it. He opened the box, drew off a glove,
ran his little finger round the contents of the box and applied it delicately to his rather full lips, pursing them in and out. Lip salve. The box went back into his coattail pocket.

‘What’s the trouble, boy? Lost your voice, have you?’

Lucy the cat had jumped up to the manger as soon as he came in, but Rancie was unafraid and turned her head to see if he had a tidbit for her. He stroked her nose cautiously, but his eyes never left me.

‘What are you hiding from? Have you been a naughty boy? Threatened you with a beating, have they? Threatened you with a birching on the seat of your little pants?’

His affected lisp made it ‘thweatened’. There was such a gloating in his voice that I was sure he’d discovered my secret and knew I was no boy. In my shame and confusion, I clamped my hands over the front of my breeches. He sniggered, a horse-like sound.

‘Pissed yourself, have you, boy? Is that what your trouble is? Oh naughty boy, naughty boy.’

I thought he was taunting me. There was a strange greed in the pale eyes. I turned away, trying to cram myself into the dark corner, but he stepped towards me. His hand slid over my haunches, then round towards my belly. I opened my mouth to scream and closed it again, unwillingly gulping in the smell of him: bay-leaf pomade, starched linen, peppermint breath. Then a warmer, earthier smell as Rancie caught my fear, lifted her tail and splatted steaming turds on to the straw. I
wriggled away from him and dodged under Rancie’s neck, putting her body between him and me. He came round behind her, still giggling.

‘Don’t be shy, boy. Don’t stand on ceremony.’

He was between me and the door. I was too shamed to even think of screaming and had even taken hold of Rancie’s mane, wondering if somehow I could manage to clamber up on her back, when a larger shape appeared at the half-door.

‘You all right in there, boy?’

Amos Legge, a pitchfork in hand. The word ‘boy’ that had sounded a slithery thing in the fashion plate’s voice was different and reassuring in his. I said ‘no’, trying to make it sound masculine and gruff, but the fashion plate’s high drawl cut across me, speaking to Amos.

‘He’s been a naughty boy and I’m dealing with him. Go away.’

Amos took no notice. He slid back the bolt and walked in, giving the fashion plate a considering look. He said or did nothing threatening, but the size and assurance of him was enough. Fashion plate took a step away from me and his voice was less confident.

‘Go away. You can come in and clear up later.’

‘Best do it now, sir.’

Amos picked up Rancie’s droppings with the pitchfork. In the process he let some fall on the toe of fashion plate’s highly polished boot. The man let out a howl.

‘You clumsy oaf.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. Mucky places, stables.’

Fashion plate opened his mouth then looked up at Amos and decided not to say anything. He pushed past us to the door and went, slamming it behind him.

‘You all right, miss?’ Amos said.

I nodded, not trusting my voice.

‘You’d best be off, miss. You just walk along with me as far as the midden and no one will take any notice.’

We went side by side across the yard, Amos carrying the bundle of soiled straw on his pitchfork. Most of the people in the yard were fussing round the travelling coach and took no notice of us. There was no sign of the fat man. The fashion plate had his boot up on a step of the mounting block and a trim man in a black jacket was wiping it with a cloth, both of them looking as serious as if he were performing delicate surgery. The muck heap was right alongside the gate.

‘Off you go then,’ Amos said. ‘If you’re in any trouble, you get word to me, look. And here’s your letters –’

He took a slim bundle out of his pocket and slid it into mine. Until then, I’d forgotten, in my fear and distress, the reason for being there.

‘Here’s another one for the post,’ I said, almost dropping it in my haste to hand it over and be gone.

I covered the first half-mile or so at a pace between a stumbling run and a walk, fearful all the time of hearing shouts or horses’ hooves behind me. Fashion plate, once
his boot was out of danger, would surely tell the fat man about the woman in disguise, and if the fat man somehow guessed who she was …

I know the fear wasn’t reasonable. Perhaps it should have occurred to me that fashion plate had hardly cut a noble picture in the loosebox so might not be eager to talk about it. The fact was, I credited the fat man with almost demonic powers and wanted to get as far away from him as I could. A stitch stabbed at my ribs and my breath came short, but I would not slow to an ordinary walk until I was on the main road again, within sight of Mandeville Hall. I went up the back road as usual, into the kitchen courtyard, through the room with the chamber pots and up the four flights of wooden stairs to my room. The letters crackled in the pockets as I took off my jacket. There was one addressed to me in Mr Blackstone’s hand, another plumper one for Miss Mandeville. No time to do anything about them now. The stable clock was striking seven and I was already late for the children’s prayers. I put the letters in my bag, changed, did my hair and ran downstairs.

The two boys were already dressed and sitting at the schoolroom table. Betty was brushing Henrietta’s hair.

‘There’s straw on your dress,’ Henrietta said.

I brushed it off. Betty looked a little disapproving, probably convinced I was a lazy lie-a-bed. Once prayers had been said, I made amends by volunteering to take
the children for their before-breakfast walk on my own. The fact was, I wanted to go to the flower garden to leave my signal for Celia. As they ran around among the flower beds, I chose a spray of white sweet peas and wove it into the curlicues of the rustic bench.

‘Why are you doing that?’ Henrietta said.

The child was worse than a whole army of spies. I distracted her by making a crown of sweet peas for her hair. She was delighted and wore it at breakfast, but it didn’t stop her noticing things.

‘Miss Lock has eaten four slices of bread and butter.’

Betty told her a lady never made comment on what people were eating, but I was shame-faced, wondering if I’d developed a boy’s appetite to go with the rest. After that, I yawned my way through the after-breakfast session in the schoolroom. Luckily, Saturdays were less formal than the rest of the week and the children were put into pinafores and allowed to do things involving paint or paste. Charles painted meticulous red jackets on to his lead soldiers, Henrietta attempted a watercolour and James re-arranged his formidable collection of empty snail shells. Seeing them so happily occupied, I was wondering whether I might sneak upstairs and read my letter from Mr Blackstone when there was a knock on the door. Patrick the footman stood outside.

‘Mrs Quivering’s compliments, and would Miss Lock kindly go down to the housekeeper’s room.’

Betty gave me a look that said, Oh dear, what have
you done? and I followed Patrick’s black-liveried back down the stairs, wondering which of my many sins had found me out, almost certain that in the next few minutes I faced dismissal. I could only hope it was nothing worse than that.

She was sitting at her desk with a pile of papers in front of her, cap tilted sideways as if she’d been running her hands through her hair. She looked tired and worried, but not especially hostile.

‘Miss Lock, it’s good of you to come down. I’m sorry to take you away from your pupils.’

Was it sarcasm? If so, there was no sign of it on her face.

‘As you may have heard, Miss Lock, we are planning to entertain a large number of people next weekend, a dinner for forty people on Friday and a ball for more than a hundred on Saturday.’

I nodded, not sure if I was supposed to know even as much as that.

‘Amongst other things, there is a deal of writing to be done: place cards, table plan, menus and the like.
Mrs Beedle has suggested that you might take on the duty.’

She must have mistaken my look of amazement for reluctance and went on, rather impatiently.

‘I am sure you could accommodate it with your other duties. Mrs Sims could supervise some of the children’s lessons, if necessary.’

Almost overcome by relief and my good luck, I assured her, truthfully, that nothing would give me more pleasure.

‘Thank you, Miss Lock. I suggest you start this afternoon. I shall have a table brought into this room for you. The first thing I want you to do is make a complete and accurate copy of the guest lists here.’ She picked up from her desk several pages pinned together. My eyes followed the lists like a dog craving a bone. ‘Then you may use it to work from when you do the place cards. You understand?’

‘Perfectly, Mrs Quivering. I’m delighted to have an opportunity to be of use.’

By mid-afternoon I was sitting by the window in the housekeeper’s room, the precious lists on the table in front of me. There were three of them, the longest, some 120 names, consisted of those invited to the ball on the Saturday night. A shorter one listed the 40 guests who would also be at dinner the night before. An even more select group of 20 would be staying at Mandeville Hall for the weekend, the majority bringing valets or maids with them.

I read through the lists, looking for names I recog
nised. The house guests included one duke, two lords, four baronets and their ladies, and six Members of Parliament. (I refrain from giving their names here because most of them were nothing worse than foolish and easily flattered, and I am sure they would not now want the world to know that they had ever set foot in Mandeville Hall.) I racked my brains, trying to remember what I’d heard or read about any of them. The duke was eighty years old or so, and I remembered from accounts of Reform Bill debates in the Lords that he had been a bitter opponent of it. Given his host’s views on the subject, it was not surprising to find him on the guest list. The same applied to two of the Members of Parliament, both to my knowledge die-hard Tories of the old school. I’d heard my father talk about them. It was a reasonable guess that the other four, of whom I’d never heard, shared their opinions.

‘Have you everything you need, Miss Lock?’

Mrs Quivering came sweeping into the room, followed by her assistant, who was burdened with a bad cold and an armful of bedsheets.

‘Yes, thank you, Mrs Quivering.’

I started mixing ink. The ink powder and pens were of fine quality, much better than in the schoolroom. Mrs Quivering took a bedsheet from the pile in her assistant’s arms and spread it out on her table. They were on the far side of the room from me, so I couldn’t hear all of their conversation but gathered that some wretch in the laundry room had ironed them with the creases
in the wrong places. Then they started talking about other things. I caught ‘wheel off’ and ‘didn’t get here till nearly midday’ and stopped stirring ink powder so that I could listen more carefully.

‘… blue room all ready for him, then we have to change it because his man must sleep in the room next to him. So Mr Brighton offers to take the blue room, his valet goes upstairs with the others, and Lord Kilkeel has the oak room, which was …’

She unfolded another sheet, muffling the end of what she was saying. I looked at the papers I was to copy. A Mr H. Brighton was at the top of the list of guests who would be staying at Mandeville Hall, with Lord Kilkeel just below him. Which was the fat man and which was fashion plate?

‘Take them back,’ Mrs Quivering said, sighing. ‘Tell her she’s to do them again in her own time, and I don’t care how long she has to stay.’ She heaped the sheets back into her assistant’s arms. ‘Miss Lock, Mrs Beedle says when you do the place cards you must make your ‘s’s the English way, not the French way.’

Soon afterwards she went out, leaving me alone with the lists. It was clear to me that I must make not one but two copies, one to stay in Mrs Quivering’s office, the other for Mr Blackstone. It was an awkward business because my sleeve kept brushing the wet ink and making smudges, so I had to use quantities of blotting paper and the inkwell seemed as thirsty as a dog on a hot day, needing constant replenishing. I was never a
tidy worker, not even in convent days, and got blots on my cuffs, smears on my face, the top two joints of my pen finger so soaked with ink I thought it must be black to the very bone. I had no time now to register the names I was copying: they were just words to be harvested. Mrs Quivering came back towards evening and seemed to approve of my industry, even showed some concern.

‘You’ll miss your supper, Miss Lock.’

‘I think I should like to finish the lists today, Mrs Quivering.’

The true reason was that I wanted to have a reason not to be there if the children were sent for. The fat man and fashion plate were under Mandeville’s roof now and would surely be in the drawing room before dinner. Fashion plate might not recognise the boy from the loosebox, but the fat man would surely remember the woman who’d butted him in the stomach. How I’d avoid him for a whole week, I didn’t know.

Mrs Quivering was so pleased by my zeal that she had sandwiches and a pot of tea sent in, proper plump beef sandwiches on good white bread. I tried not to get ink on the sandwiches as I ate, then went back to copying. It was a fine evening outside, but the light inside was past its best and my eyes were tired.

I was near the end of the ball guest list when the door opened. It was Celia, in a flurry of pink silk and white ribbons.

‘Betty said you were here. Have you got my letter?’

I’d brought it down with me and had it under the blotter. She went over to the window and read, her hand shaking so much I was surprised she could make out the writing.

‘Oh, thank God.’

Her body sagged in a swish of silk and muslin. I think she’d have fallen to the floor if I had not jumped up and caught her. I put her down in my chair and she still clung to me.

‘What’s wrong?’ I said.

‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. Philip will come for me.’

‘When?’

‘He leaves that to me. He’ll come to Ascot and be ready for a word from me. Oh, I can’t think. You must help me think.’

I had no wish to be an accomplice in an elopement – my life was too tangled already – but I could hardly desert her.

‘When will he get to Ascot?’

‘Tuesday, he says. Wednesday at the latest. But how shall I get away? If I as much as walk in the garden, somebody notices. And now Mr Brighton’s here …’

She said the name as if she’d bitten into something bad-tasting.

‘Mr Brighton?’

‘Didn’t you see him? Oh, I forgot, you didn’t come down with the children.’

She made a face, pushed out her lips and pretended to smear something on them with her little finger. It was exactly the gesture of fashion plate with his lip balm.

‘So the fat one is Lord Kilkeel,’ I said.

‘Yes. Isn’t he the most hideous person you’ve ever seen? He’s a great friend of my stepfather’s, though.’

I was on the point of telling her how essential it was that Kilkeel should not see me, but before I could get the words out, she was demanding my help as usual.

‘Tell me, Elizabeth, you’re clever, how do I get away without them noticing?’

‘If there are a hundred and twenty people coming here for a ball, will anybody notice an elopement?’ I said.

‘But that means waiting until next weekend – a whole week.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘A lot of things may happen in a week. But I’ll think about it.’ She stood up, rather shakily. ‘Philip says I must write to him at Ascot poste restante. I’ll decide tomorrow, so you must take the letter on Monday morning.’

I thought, Must I? but didn’t argue because I knew I’d go to the stables in any case to send my copies of the lists to Mr Blackstone. Celia was on her way to the door.

‘If anybody sees me and asks what I was doing here, say I brought you a message from my grandmother. I think she approves of you. She keeps asking me questions about you.’

‘What sort of questions?’

But as before, she went without answering.

I finished copying the list and, in the last of the daylight, took the note from Mr Blackstone out from under the blotter and read it.

On Sunday afternoon I wrote my reply.

I wrapped it up with the lists and addressed it, wondering why I had not admitted to Blackstone that I had already been considerably closer to Mr Brighton than the length of a church away. One reason was that I distrusted the man and did not see why I should give him more than our bargain. The other and deeper one was that the memory of Mr Brighton’s hands on me in the loosebox made me feel so dirtied that I could not face writing it down for another man to read.

On Sunday afternoon Celia came into the flower garden when Betty and I were there with the children. She’d brought scissors and a trug with her, to cut some sweet peas for her dressing table. When Betty wasn’t looking, she slid a letter out of the trug and into my hands.

‘I’ve taken your advice. I’m telling him to come for me on Saturday.’

When she’d gone, I watched the children and worried. It was wrong that Celia should depend on me for advice in something so important. Until then, the matter of the elopement had been useful to me, but now I felt guilty. Her position at Mandeville Hall might have its disadvantages, but at least she was provided with a permanent roof over her head, a life that connected one day with the next and the company of a mother and a brother who cared for her. Missing all of those, I valued them more than she did and wondered if this Philip were worth the loss and whether she really knew her own mind. I supposed I should have to speak seriously to
her but did not look forward to it with any pleasure. Betty said she was happy to look after the children while I went back to my other work. Now that the lists were done, I turned to a stack of forty blank place cards that Mrs Quivering had set out for me. She’d suggested that I leave them till morning, but they gave me the excuse for missing the children’s visit to the drawing room again and a close-quarters encounter with Kilkeel and Brighton. How I’d manage to spin out the excuses for the rest of the week, I couldn’t imagine.

On Monday morning I woke with my eyes still tired from all that penmanship, body stiff and weary after an uneasy night. The thought of being under the same roof as the fat man had kept snatching me back from the edge of sleep. I fumbled in the half dark with the buttons and buckles of my boy’s clothes, hating them for the memory of Mr Brighton’s hands. No ride on Rancie this morning. The delight of that had been lost in what followed it and I had more serious things to do, although how poor Rancie was to be given her exercise was one of the thoughts that had nagged at my brain through the night. I hurried down the back stairs, through the room of the chamber pots and across the courtyard.

When I came to the drive and took the turning for the back road, the clouds in the east were red-rimmed, the sky overcast and rain threatening. About a hundred yards down, to the right of the road, was the big dead oak tree. On the other occasions I’d passed there had
been two or three crows sitting on it, but there were none that morning. I don’t know why I noticed that. Perhaps I sensed something, as dogs and horses do. I passed the tree and had my back to it when a voice came from the other side of the trunk.

‘Good morning, Miss Lock’.

A woman’s voice. An elderly voice. Even before I turned round I knew who I’d see, though it was so wildly unlikely that she’d be there in the early hours of the morning. She’d come out from behind the tree and was standing there dressed exactly as she always was, in her black dress and black-and-white widow’s cap, ebony walking cane in her hand. She stood where she was, clearly expecting me to walk towards her. I did.

‘Well, aren’t you going to take off your cap to me?’

Confused, I snatched off my boy’s cap. My face, my whole body felt as red as hot lava while her cool old eyes took in everything about me, from rag-padded high-lows to disorderly hair.

‘I wondered where those clothes had got to,’ she said. ‘Where are you going so early, if I might ask?’

I didn’t answer, conscious of the two letters padding out my pockets and sure she was aware of them too.

‘It’s going to rain,’ she said. You are likely to get wet before you reach the Silver Horseshoe, Miss Lock.’