Death Sits Down to Dinner (29 page)

As Mrs. Jackson left the library she found herself answering a question that had been at the back of her mind for the past couple of days.
Why is it,
she thought,
that those who publicly practice the greatest acts of charity, whose entire lives are given over to causes and the energetic raising of the massive funds that support them, who preach reform and know no other way than to take the poor away from their perceived lives of ignorance and deprivation to show them a better and more worthy path, are often so personally dismissive of their human characteristics?
Mrs. Jackson suspected that the individual boys had become no more than numbers in a ledger and her charity an arena for a helpless old woman to wield power and believe she still led a useful and active life.

*   *   *

Mrs. Jackson was met at Kingsley House by a young man who was waiting for her at the main door to the house, and who escorted her up the three flights of stairs to Matron’s parlor.

As Matron struggled to her feet, uttering exclamations of welcome, and shepherded Mrs. Jackson to a tiny chair loaded with cushions and antimacassars, she was immediately on the alert. Somewhere in this effusive greeting, Matron was guilty of a cover-up, of striving perhaps to regain a lost alliance. Breaking off from cries of welcome, she yanked on the bell pull, and when the maid appeared she directed her to bring a tray of tea, with minute instructions as to the quantity of butter on the toasted crumpets.

“I am afraid it’s slim pickings for the right sort of boy for the charity event, what with all this chicken pox, Mrs. Jackson. But I have six young men who will do a good job for Miss Kingsley and they are waiting for you in one of the dormitories. Now let me see about that tea…” She waded across her cramped parlor, miraculously avoiding footstools and other bric-a-brac. Opening the door, she bellowed down the corridor for the maid.

“Drat that girl,” she said under her breath, and then, “Drat that little … I won’t be a moment, Mrs. Jackson.” And so ready was she for her heavily iced teatime cake, chocolate fingers, and brandy snaps that she lumbered off to track down the maid.

In the few moments she had before Matron’s return, Mrs. Jackson found that she had slid her hand under the bill spike on the desk and pulled forth the little book that Matron had been toiling over so industriously on Mrs. Jackson’s last visit. She opened it at the first page and saw a column of dates from three years back followed by a column of figures in pounds: usually five, but sometimes ten and in several cases as much as twenty-five. Next to each amount was a tick
to denote receipt of the sum
? But what was more interesting was that the column with the ticks was headed with the initials RAC. She quickly turned to the last page of entries. Ah yes, here was the last entry, 15th November of this year, for the amount of ten pounds and a heavy-handed tick. Nothing was recorded since then.

A few seconds later Mrs. Jackson slid the notebook into its hiding place, slipped back around the desk, and resumed her interest in the view out the window from her chair. And as she politely drank a cup of tea with Matron and listened to her breathless complaints of the outrageous laziness of young maidservants these days, she barely acknowledged the speaker, so wrapped up was she in what she had discovered.

According to her ledger, Matron had been accepting money for at least three years from RAC, in payments twice a month that came to an astonishing two hundred and forty pounds a year and in the last two years sometimes as much as three hundred.

RAC? This was undoubtedly Reginald Algernon Cholmondeley, whose portrait hung in the hall of Kingsley House next to that of Charles Kingsley, the great Victorian reformer for child labor, author of
The Water-Babies
, and uncle to Miss Kingsley. And Mrs. Jackson remembered that RAC had died on 30th November, the date of his next remittance to Matron for the month.

Sitting there in Matron’s room, she felt a thrill of uneasy excitement.
Why had Sir Reginald punctually paid this unpleasant woman such large amounts of money each month, when she was well compensated for her work by the charity?
Blackmail usually being the basis of such monetary gifts, or some sort of service that Matron was performing for Sir Reginald in return for her twenty pounds a month, made Mrs. Jackson’s mind reel with endless, illegal possibilities. It was hard for her to concentrate on what Matron was saying as she poured tea and offered sandwiches. The parlor felt stuffy and stale and the voice of the woman before her unbearable. Mrs. Jackson stood up and said that she hadn’t much time and would like meet the young men she had come to meet, bringing Matron’s catalog of complaints against the hapless housemaids to a halt.

She was taken to one of the boys’ dormitories to conduct her interviews, where she stood beside her designated chair and looked at the rows of beds. How old were these children when they came to Kingsley House, she wondered, three years, four? She was not a sentimentalist; she knew what kind of lives these children had led before their rescue by the charity. Any boy coming to this house after living in the Old Nichol at Bethnal Green, or the Rookeries of Shoreditch and Whitechapel, would find Kingsley House overwhelmingly luxurious: three square meals a day, hot milk at bedtime, a warm, clean, comfortable bed, and new clothes to wear and most of all the benefit of an exemplary education to equip them for the future. But what kind of life were they leading now if the woman who looked after them was not only an unpleasant bully but possibly a blackmailer? And if Matron was blackmailing Sir Reginald, then what on earth had the man been up to? She wondered if the boys she had come here to interview were part of the elite corps that formed the Chums.

At Kingsley House, it seemed that once you reached the age of eleven you went away to school, either to the local grammar as a day boy or, if you were of top-drawer material, to board at a minor public or trade school. Well, Mrs. Jackson thought as the first boy came into the room, this young man was clearly not a Chum. He was quite tall for his age, but he was not particularly prepossessing. And sure enough, he said that he was a daily pupil at the Dulwich grammar school, and that he expected to become an articled clerk to a local solicitor when he was fifteen. Yes, he said, he would continue to live at Kingsley House until he was twenty-one. He was a straightforward boy, pleasant, with nice manners and the usual diffidence that all the boys she had met so far at Kingsley House seemed to possess. “Were you disappointed not to be chosen as one of the Chums?” she asked as lightly as she could.

He shot her a look that was almost derisive and shook his head as he answered, “No, not particularly, they were always swotting for their entrance exams for posh schools. They had to be top in everything. If they weren’t cramming they were out on the playing field practicing cricket or field hockey, and some of them were on the rugby team, too. I’m just not that remarkable…”

“But you all mix in together, don’t you? You all get along well with each other?” Again she kept her voice light and realized she was imitating Lady Montfort, because she would have had this sort of information out of the boy in a trice without his even knowing he was giving it.

“We all share the same schoolrooms and eat our meals together. But in the common room, after school, they keep very much to themselves.” And in a rush of confidence that this would not be repeated: “They look down on the rest of us but I think they lead a dog’s life; always worrying about making the grade.”

“Well, David, would you like to come and spend the evening at Miss Kingsley’s house for the charity event, and help us welcome her guests? I have organized some delicious food—would you enjoy it, do you think?”

He paused and looked at her for a moment and then said, “Yes, I think I could do a good job of it for you, and I would like to help out.” And Mrs. Jackson decided that she much preferred the ordinary boys to the chummy ones.

When she had finished interviewing all six boys, none of whom had been gifted enough to be part of the exclusive Chums, she asked to speak to Symes again. And after about twenty minutes the young boy arrived and stood uncertainly in the doorway.

“Hullo, Arthur, how are you doing with the not-running walk?”

He brightened up immediately “Very well, miss, I’ve got it down pat, no more conduct marks since I last saw you.”

He was really such a nice little boy, and once he stopped looking so anxious and furtive he was quite a presentable lad.

“Well, it seems as if all your Chums have fallen by the wayside, and so I had to start again. Have you had chicken pox, by the way?”

Arthur looked baffled for a moment, and then he shook his head.

“So all those other boys will be suffering in the sickroom whilst you are having the time of your life at the charity evening.” She watched him closely.

“Which boys?” Arthur Symes looked puzzled.

“Why, George, Edwin…” She glanced at her list and reeled off the names of the Chums who were spending a wretched time of it feeling feverish, itchy, and daubed with calamine lotion by Matron’s uncaring hand.

“Nothing wrong with those boys; who told you they were sick?”

“Why Matron of course.”

Just mentioning Matron changed the atmosphere in the room. Arthur looked way.

“Is Matron unkind to you boys?” she asked.

Arthur did not say anything for a moment, but the look he gave her was shrewd and assessing. Orphans of the poor may look like helpless children, but an early life of deprivation made them a lot sharper than the average middle-class child. “Matron doesn’t pay much attention to us ordinary boys, unless we misbehave. But she was different with the Chums, she kept them apart from the rest of us. If they did well in the classroom and on the playing field they were given special favor: treats and the like. If they didn’t do well … well, I just felt very sorry for them if they didn’t do well.” And then after a moment’s reflection he added, “Will I still be needed?” And Mrs. Jackson assured him he would. “You are my senior boy now that the Chums have all dropped out. Tell me, Arthur, how was Sir Reginald with the Chums?”

“Sir Reginald boasted about them being the smartest boys from the East End and they were always the ones who were shown off to the governors and people who gave money for the charity.”

“And Miss Kingsley?” She was almost too scared to ask. “Was she nice to you?”

“We don’t see her much. She comes for Speech Day, and for Christmas and for special occasions, and she is strict but nice.” He thought a moment and then said, “Is it true that we won’t see Sir Reginald again?”

“What were you told?” She was careful to keep her voice neutral.

“That he had been in a terrible accident and had gone to meet his Maker, and we would not see him again.”

“Yes, that’s quite true, and you won’t see him again, ever. But if the Chums are not in the sickroom, where are they?”

“In the classroom, miss. We’ll be having our midmorning break in a minute or two and I would not want to miss out on it, it’s bread and dripping today.”

“Would you bring one of those boys to me, would you bring George?” She fished in her handbag, opened her purse, and pulled out half a crown, careful not to laugh when Arthur’s little hand shot out and took it. Whitechapel wasn’t quite gone then, she thought with approval; Arthur may have been taught not to drop his aitches but his wits were still sharp and he was alert to a good opportunity—a combination that stood him in good stead for success in the world of commerce.

“Where shall I bring him?”

“To the motorcar I came in, it’s around the back of the house by the kitchen courtyard. Will he come?”

Arthur hesitated for a moment and then said, “Yes, he will if you give him one of these…” And he flashed his coin for a brief second and repocketed it. She handed over another and he was gone.

Mrs. Jackson dropped in on Matron to say goodbye and to tell her that she hoped her sickroom would empty soon. As she left Kingsley House she decided that she never wanted to set foot in the building again.

She walked around the house to where Macleod was standing by the motorcar in conversation with George, who was looking pale, but chicken pox free. She walked George away from the chauffer’s straining ear, and when they were a comfortable distance away she came straight to the point.

“George, I just want to let you know that now Sir Reginald has gone, I doubt Matron will carry on here…”

She was quite unprepared for how he seemed to shrink in stature. He had the look of someone who was carefully shutting up shop: locking doors and pulling down blinds.

“I can’t go back.” The expression of pleading on his young face made her catch her breath. Of course he was frightened that he would be sent back to the orphanage or the street he had been found on, she thought with grim certainty. In that moment she wished quite fervently for a quiet moment with Matron alone.

“Who told you that you would be sent away?” She knew the answer before she heard it.

“Matron did. The Chums represent the charity, if we don’t do well, get top marks at school, achieve in sports and get into the best schools, then they will get rid of us.”

“Surely not, they don’t get rid of the other boys who turn in an average performance. Did Sir Reginald threaten to send you back to the streets?”

“No, he never threatened, but he was awfully disappointed in us when we didn’t make the grade; two boys failed and they were sent away.” He glanced at her out of the corners of his eyes as if expecting confirmation that he was right.

“But Matron threatened you?” she persisted, and he nodded.

And now the words came tumbling out. The harshness of the woman who looked after them; hours of standing in a drafty corridor, face turned to the wall for the slightest infraction; isolation from one another and from the other boys to toil away over endless hours of homework; nights of swotting for tests and exams; bread and water if they failed to make the grade. Special teas and treats if they achieved, ostracism and scorn if they disappointed; being a Chum meant that you swotted and worried and stayed up late to improve a Latin translation that was already perfect. They were safe from the danger of homelessness, they were fed, clothed, and educated, but their lives were full of anxiety that it was all temporary. No wonder they all yearned to grow up and be shot of the place, Mrs. Jackson thought. So this was why Matron had dreamed up an outbreak of chicken pox. She didn’t want a nosy woman like herself talking to these boys and hearing how badly she had treated them—how manipulated and bullied the boys were in her care. With Sir Reginald gone she was vulnerable, she was losing her power, and she didn’t want suspicion turned toward her.