by Diane Janes
Once upstairs, she opened her bedroom door with over-elaborate care, hesitating on the threshold lest the room be occupied. Ridiculous of course, because no one was likely to come in for anything at that time of day, not between Hilda doing the mid-morning dusting, and then returning much later to light the evening fires, and later still to turn down the beds and put the stone hot water bottles in place at nine o’clock each night.
It was cold in the bedroom of course. Even to someone fresh from the wintery garden. There would be a fire in the drawing room and if she went to sit in there, she could ring for a pot of tea, but with that came the possibility of interruption. She did not want Hilda to come fussing in, wanting to poke the fire or remove the tea tray, and in doing so catch sight of her reading this particular paper. Cook and Hilda both knew what was in it today, and Florence knew that they gossiped incorrigibly with every delivery boy and tradesman, with the other servants belonging to the nearby houses, and with their own families too, when they went home on their days off, and she was tired of being the object of their interest and speculation. Hilda in particular, she suspected of disloyalty. Suppose Hilda talked to a newspaper reporter? The papers were capable of printing anything and Florence did not want anyone and everyone to know that she was buying a rag like the Empire News, in the hope of learning more about her brother’s death. It was undignified.
As for Daddy, she did not want to see his face clouded with worry, or to hear his latest feeble excuse for heading to his study and the consolation of the decanter that stood on the table inside. She knew that her father wanted the matter dropped. Freddie was dead and nothing would bring him back. Pondering the rights and wrongs of it all, considering the possibility that little Diana was not his granddaughter, raking over his son’s marital unhappiness, did no more than twist the knife in his wounds. As for the little girl Diana, upon whom he had once set so much store, she was already almost certainly lost to him, for word had come from the Middlemost family that in the wake of the tragedy, Dolly and the child would very likely sell up the cattle factoring business – and probably Saxton Grange with it – and go to live abroad.
‘Of course,’ Aunt Phoebe had said, in her blunt, blundering way, ‘It’s very bad form, the property being sold out of the family when it had been specifically left to Freddie, but then one can quite understand that the place would be full of painful memories. Imagine looking out of one’s windows every day, and seeing the place where poor dear Freddie died.’
Florence privately thought that with her reputation in ruins, Dolly would need to go somewhere a long, long way from Yorkshire, if she ever wanted to be invited about in polite society again, and that it would be this sort of consideration, rather than any sense of loss or tragedy, which had motivated her sister-in-law to think of selling up and moving away.
Having eschewed the warmth of the drawing room, Florence hesitated for a moment, then hauled the heavy, purplish pink eiderdown off the bed, sat with her legs folded under her on top of the blankets, and wrapped herself up in the shiny, quilted satin. To begin with it felt icy next to her skin, but she knew that it would only take a few minutes before its weight brought a welcome warmth to her body.
Nestled within the confines of the quilt, she opened the newspaper at last and turned the pages until she found what she was looking for. Entitled ‘The Night of Terror at Saxton Grange’, the paper promised that the piece was an exclusive, penned by ‘the heroine of these events’, Miss Ann Houseman.
Florence read on with mounting indignation, wondering as she did, how much money the paper had paid that odious little mouse to write it. She supposed that the editor felt able to publish Ann Houseman’s story, now that Ernest Brown’s appeal had failed, yet there was something disgusting in the way that it had appeared within a mere twenty four hours of the higher court’s decision, something sordid in the gleeful exploitation of a story – still not quite at its conclusion – which had begun with the death of one man and was destined to end in the death of another. Florence thought that the very paper felt contaminated between her fingers, as she turned the sheets in order to follow the story across several columns, which were located on successive pages.
How the newspapers twisted things, she thought. According to the preamble, the full story of the night’s events was being told for the first time by Miss Houseman, who had ‘faithfully protected her mistress during their six hour ordeal at the hands of a madman’. As if Ann Houseman, that silly little ninny, would ever be capable of protecting anyone from anything! According to the Empire News, Miss Houseman’s original words had been reproduced without alteration. Presumably Miss Houseman had been able to name her price and stipulate her own conditions, Florence thought, no doubt the little fool imagined that she had a gift for writing. As she read on, barely able to suppress her indignation, the experience was rendered infinitely more painful by the author’s cringe-worthy, schoolgirl compulsion for over-description. How the editor’s pen hand must have twitched, Florence thought. Saxton Grange itself was portrayed in detail, together with the grounds and the surrounding countryside, in which ‘contented cows pass their peaceful hours’ while ‘the silver pond smiles back its light to the blue heaven.’
Though the paper had promised that it would be ‘the full story’ for ‘the first time’, so far as Florence could tell, the tale which Ann Houseman presented to the readers of The Empire News was much the same as that which she and Dorothy had been telling all along. As she continued to work her way through the morass of Ann Houseman’s verbiage, Florence was struck anew by the improbability of it all. In court it had emerged gradually, a series of answers in response to carefully phrased questions, whereas here it was presented as a coherent narrative, which made it sound all the more like a plot from a tuppenny novelette in which the villain behaves like a raving madman, while the helpless womenfolk show less gumption than a bunch of chickens in a coop.
‘It isn’t true,’ Florence murmured, as she read. ‘I just know it isn’t true.’
Dolly was such a persuasive character, Florence thought. You had only to recall the way Freddie had fallen under her spell, even pretending to be older than he was, in order to more closely match her years. Dolly could easily have asked one of her lovers to come by night and remove an increasingly inconvenient husband. Had the jury realised that Freddie had made a will, just a few months before his death, leaving Dolly everything? How much had Ann Houseman known about her mistress’s carryings-on with other men? The girl was such a goose, she would no doubt have believed whatever Dolly cared to tell her. She had only been at Saxton Grange a matter of six short weeks when it all happened – not nearly long enough to have got Dolly’s measure. Not long enough to have known anything about the affair between her mistress and the man who drove the horsebox, or to have witnessed Ernest Brown’s leave taking and return in June. There was probably an awful lot, Florence reflected, that Ann Houseman had not known about Dolly – just as she herself, her father and poor Freddie, had been largely in ignorance of Dolly’s temperament and predilections, when they had first encountered her, during Freddie and Dolly’s whirlwind courtship, nine years ago.
When she reached the end of the narrative, Florence carefully disentangled herself from the eiderdown, rose from the bed and crossed to the wardrobe, which she opened, reaching to the back of the upper shelf, where she had placed the flat, rectangular shirt box in a corner where the maids would have no reason to go. Having extracted the box and set it on the big walnut dressing table, which took up almost the entire bay window, she opened the second drawer down, where she kept her fountain pen and a sheaf of loose paper. Having assembled these various items, she pulled out the upholstered stool and sat down, carefully moving aside her hairbrushes and the green glass dressing table set in order to make more space. She positioned the pile of writing paper next to the Empire News, which was still folded open at the page bearing Ann Houseman’s account; unscrewed the cap of her pen,
and began to read afresh. After a moment or two, she removed the lid of the shirt box and began to sift through the press cuttings she had folded inside, checking first one and then another until she found the specific items which she sought, breaking off for a moment to fetch the eiderdown and drape it around her shoulders, before resuming where she had left off, reading the account in The Empire News line by line, comparing it to the testimony reported from the trial and making methodical notes as she went.
She was interrupted by an urgent tapping on the door and Hilda’s voice, from the landing. ‘Miss Florence? Miss Florence? Are you all right?’
‘Of course I’m all right.’ Florence grabbed the various cuttings and began to stuff them back into the box any old how. Hilda had taken her response as permission to enter and was in the act of pushing open the door.
‘Your father has come home, Miss Florence. He saw your motor car on the drive and wondered if you’d been taken poorly, seeing as how you’d gone straight up to your room.’
‘No, Hilda, I am perfectly well, thank you.’ Florence could see curiosity written all over the girl’s face.
‘Would you like me to light the fire in here, mum?’ The girl was looking at the eiderdown.
‘No thank you.’ Florence attempted dignity. ‘You can tell my father that I am coming down in just a moment. Have some tea made and bring it into the drawing room for us, would you please.’
She sensed reluctance in Hilda’s withdrawal. Her curiosity had no doubt been aroused and she would surely mull the matter over with cook, but Florence was confident that the wretched maid had not caught sight of the offending newspaper, which like the other cuttings, she had managed to sweep out of sight in the nick of time. As for her own jottings, Hilda could not possibly have read them from the doorway. As Florence reluctantly replaced the cap on her fountain pen, she glanced down at the sheet of paper which she had headed ‘Discrepancies in the Evidence’, the words neatly underlined. She would have to leave it all to one side for now.
Chapter Nineteen
Saturday 20 January 1934
His Majesty’s Prison, Armley, Yorkshire
Florence recognised the prison guard who met her at the main entrance as the same one who had conducted her through the labyrinth of Armley Jail on her previous visit to see Ernest Brown. The man seemed to look upon her more kindly on this occasion, and she noticed that when they finally reached the room where Ernest was permitted to receive visitors, he not only pulled out a chair for her to sit on, but accompanied the gesture with something very close to a smile.
She was more nervous this time, more strung up. The first time it had somehow been easier to screw up her courage, because then she had felt that she had to be brave for Freddie’s sake. They had not always seen eye to eye – in fact she had often thought her older brother a fool – particularly in his choice of bride, but a brother was a brother and he was the only one she had. On her first visit to the prison, she had been sure of her purpose – she had come to find out the truth for Freddie – this time she was not quite sure for whom she had come. Nor did she know how she would be able to face Brown. How did a man cope with the knowledge that he must die in a day or two – and in a particularly horrible way? What did one say to a man in that position? How did one even look him in the eye?
It was not as if Ernest Brown was a complete stranger, some man who had broken in, or attacked Freddie in the street. She had been aware of Brown for years. An un-regarded figure for the most part, leading horses in a show ring, or busy about the stables, when she had visited her brother’s home. A strong, dependable sort of man, of the kind who had always formed the background to lives such as theirs. A man who would have acknowledged her in passing, murmuring her name politely as he touched his cap. Such men could easily become fond of their employer’s children. In her own childhood, the family coach driver had often swung herself and Freddie high in the air, led them on their ponies, teased them as he pretended to produce sweets for them from behind their ears. It would have been so easy for Ernest Brown to have maintained an affectionate, yet apparently innocent relationship with baby Diana as she grew, and Freddie never any the wiser.
How much had Freddie actually known, she wondered? He had changed of course, since his marriage. He had always been fond of a drink. It was a family failing – among the men-folk at least – but by the end… staying out at pubs until all hours, and sometimes driving home the worse for drink and spending the night insensible in his car.
A single woman from a good family, Florence had known virtually nothing of relations between husband and wife, until on the recommendation of a woman friend, she had borrowed a book which explained the basic rudiments at least. The book had contained nothing which came anywhere close to explaining why her sister-in-law should be so keen on the activities described in the book, that she had actively sought to perform them with other men as well as with her husband, but that, Florence had decided, was not the point at issue, because when all was said and done, there was no doubt that Dorothy had been carrying on with several other men and naturally, if Freddie had found out about it, that must have made him very unhappy.
Unhappy? Mere happiness and unhappiness did not begin to describe what Dorothy had done to them. When Florence allowed herself to feel, when she relaxed her guard and imagined Freddie’s body, surrounded by a fiery inferno, Freddie falling to a single shot from a gun… had it only been a single shot? Or had there been others? Had he seen the gun, pleaded for his life? Had he suffered and lingered, as the blood seeped out from his chest? When she allowed those kinds of questions to permeate her consciousness, she felt herself sucked into a void of pain well beyond mere unhappiness. Being unhappy was a picnic spoiled by a rainy day, too many unfilled spaces on a dance card. She saw this same darkness in her father’s eyes. His only son gone. Morton & Son without a son to inherit. The knowledge that they would never again hear Freddie’s voice, eager and laughing, relaying some hot tip for the races at Wetherby, repeating a funny story he had heard in a pub, or a tale about some old boy he had bumped into at the cattle market. Sometimes, as she proceeded through the day, ordering the meals with Cook, answering her correspondence, politely declining the social invitations which had recommenced, now that Freddie had been dead for several months, she found herself wondering quite how life could possibly go on, just as before.
Then there was Ernest Brown. Unhappy was a poor enough word to encompass his situation too. Unhappy did not come close.
Moreover she was convinced that there was something all wrong about the case. The whole truth had not been told. Though her father had not allowed her to attend the trial itself, she had read pretty much every detail of the evidence in the newspapers, and then Ann Houseman’s colourful account as well, and the details sat uneasily, a host of tiny contradictions that did not seem right. Was it merely that she had misremembered what she had originally read, or perhaps that the newspapers themselves had misreported things? Her attempts to sort everything out in her mind, to compare the different accounts and get something down on paper, had so far been thwarted at every attempt. First there had been some trouble over a tradesman’s order and then unexpected callers who had to be entertained, and now her request for another visit to Brown himself had been acceded to with unexpected speed. But there – perhaps there was no point in going over it all again and again? And yet on the other hand, surely someone had to try to get to the bottom of it all?
Her chain of thought was interrupted by the opening of the door at the further end of the room. When Ernest Brown walked in she was surprised, yet half relieved, to see that he was unchanged. His ‘Miss Morton,’ and the inclination of his head were just as before, and for a split second, as his eyes met hers, Florence allowed herself to understand what Dorothy had seen in the man.
‘Thank you for agreeing to see me again,’ she said.
‘Thanks for coming in. It breaks up the day.’
>
There was a pause. He smiled at her and she found herself smiling back. He understands, she thought, that although it’s a very terrible situation for him, it is hard for me too.
‘Huddersfield did well in the cup,’ he broke the silence at last. ‘Fred would have been pleased. He loved his football team.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘6-2 was the final score, I saw it in the paper.’
‘Playing like that, they could end up winning it again.’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
What on earth were they doing?’ Florence thought, talking about football, when his very life hung in the balance. She would just have to forget polite convention, get to the point and raise the subject that really mattered. ‘I saw that your appeal had been turned down,’ she said, watching his face carefully.
‘Aye, but we’re not quite finished yet.’
He sounded surprisingly confident, she thought, for a man whose hopes must now be clinging by a thread.
‘Mr Hyams is putting together some statements,’ he continued. ‘He’s a good man, is Mr Hyams. He’s stuck by us, right from the off.’
Florence desperately wanted to ask what was in these new statements, and from whom they came, but she was uncertain of the legal etiquette involved and thought that he might not be allowed to tell her, or perhaps that he would not wish to, in front of the guards.