Florence and Giles

by John Harding

  When I reached my own room it was full daylight. Too tired to undress myself or even pull back the bedclothes, I collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  31

  Of a sudden I felt a hand around my neck from behind and another cover my mouth and nose with a cloth so that I near suffocated. The cloth smelt of something strong and strange, like the dentist’s surgery and –

  I awoke and found I aloned on my bed. I had but nightmared. I began to relax me again, meaning to go back to sleep, but then a dagger went through my heart. I bolt-uprighted. The chloroform! What an idiot I had been to make so simple a mistake! I leapt from the bed and ran to Giles’s room. He still peacefulled asleep. I bent over him. He stank of the stuff. I dashed to Miss Taylor’s room and by her washbowl found a tablet of soap. I sniffed it. It reeked of lilies, strong as if it were the flowers themselves I smelt. I poured some water into the bowl and carried it to Giles’s room. Taking a cloth, I covered it in soap and scrubbed his face with it. He stirred and flung his head this way and that, as even in sleep a boy will have a natural aversion to water, but he did not wake. At the end he smelt of lilies, which might be strange for Giles but not so strange as chloroform.

  I was just replacing the bowl and soap when another thought so sharped me I almost dropped them. What had I done with the chloroform bottle? I felt my pockets. It was not in any of them. What if I had dropped it in the trap? Or somewhere else, the stables, perhaps? How would I put that on Miss Taylor? Or would everyone just assume it was something to do with her?

  It suddened to me that if I had not dropped it, then it must be still where I had used it, in the tower room. I relieved me a sigh, for no one would find it there. So, congratulating myself, I was on my way back to my own room when another thought struck. Suppose they searched for Miss Taylor? It was not beyond the realm of possibility that someone might suggest looking up in the old tower. Especially if the police were involved, for a man like Hadleigh would leave no stone unturned. I turned around and made for the tower.

  Putting my head through the trapdoor, the first thing I saw was the bottle, and the cloth with it, lying where I had left them. I climbed up into the room and picked them up. I could not resist a little smile. That was it! Everything now taken care of. Nothing at all left to give me away. At that moment some movement must have caught my eye for I looked out at the drive and there, at the top of it, saw the wagon upping it. The servants were back!

  I dithered a moment. I could leave the bottle here, but then it might fortune a search would take place before I had chance to up here again. It was a risk I dare not take. On the other hand, I had to move fast, for it would be worse still to be caught bottle-handed. I outed the trapdoor and tore down the stairs. I outed the back door and downed to the lake. I ripped the label from the bottle, tore it to shreds and scattered them to the wind. I bent down to the water, filled the bottle, stoppered it and flung it as far as I could into the lake.

  I walked back toward the house and at the well slid the cloth between the narrow gap between two of the planks of wood, poking it right through, so it fell into the chasm below. I could not help thinking that it would help Miss Taylor sleep.

  I entered the back door as the servants came in the front. I could hear them chatting happily. I had turned the corner of the back stairs just as Meg and Mary alonged the corridor below. By the time they came to see why we did not downstairs to breakfast I would be sleeping peacefully in my bed.

  32

  ‘So, it seems she is gone, then?’

  I took a sip of my tea for I needed to swallow to clear any doubt from my throat. ‘Yes, she is gone.’

  Hadleigh stared at me the longest time until I so uncomfortabled I had to speak again. ‘She just took off one night. She didn’t even say goodbye to Giles. Last anyone saw of her was boarding the train for New York. She left the horse and trap at the railroad station. Poor Bluebird was out in the cold all night.’

  He stared at me another long minute then shook his head, and took a sip of his own tea. We were in the drawing room. He’d called soon after he’d gotten back. It was near a month since Miss Taylor…left.

  ‘Funny she should just go off like that,’ he said. He quizzed me one. ‘Why do you think she would do that?’

  ‘Well, maybe it was because of you. I showed her your letter. Maybe she figured she’d be dismissed anyhow, after lying about her references and all. She left right after that.’

  ‘Without Giles.’

  I chuckled, as though at myself. ‘I guess I was wrong about that.’

  He stood up and carried his cup and saucer over to the window and stood looking out. Everything was white outside. It was December now and we’d had a lot of snow. He took another sip of tea. ‘And this business of Mrs Grouse’s accident. She had nothing to do with that?’

  ‘Oh, no sir, I was with Miss Taylor when that happened. It wasn’t anything to do with her at all.’ It felt queer defending my old enemy, especially of a charge I knew to be true, but the last thing I wanted was Miss Taylor getting blamed for that and Hadleigh going looking for her; who knew what stones he might overturn? ‘I’m sure Mrs Grouse would tell you just the same.’

  ‘If she could remember anything about it.’

  I bowed my head. ‘Well, yes sir, if she could remember.’

  ‘I gather she makes good progress?’

  ‘Yes sir. Apart from not recollecting the day of the accident, she is almost her old self. Dr Bradley expects her to be able to resume her duties in a few weeks.’

  He turned and looked at me, that same penetrating stare. Then he shrugged and set his cup and saucer down on the tea tray. ‘Well, I must be going. I’m glad it all worked out.’

  I followed him to the door. ‘Yes sir, thanks to you.’

  ‘And you’ll be getting a new governess, I presume?’

  ‘Why, yes. When Mrs Grouse gets back and writes my uncle about what’s happened.’

  Suddenly Hadleigh looked me up and down. ‘I’ve just noticed. You’re all in black.’

  ‘Young Mr Van Hoosier, sir.’

  He looked shocked. ‘Good God, he was so young.’

  ‘Asthma, sir. A terrible affliction. We are all upset for him, especially Dr Bradley.’

  ‘Well, yes, a doctor hates to lose a patient.’

  ‘It’s not just that, sir, it’s the failure of his treatment that makes it so much the worse for him. Dr Bradley thought he had asthma cracked with that spray of his. Now he says his experiment has failed, for it did not save Theo, and the illness may have to wait many years for such a treatment as the one he thought to have found.’

  ‘Ah, so the young man’s death is a double tragedy, then.’

  ‘At least poor Theo is clear of his suffering now.’

  He fingered the brim of his hat. ‘Yes, that’s one way of looking at it, I suppose.’ He turned and outed the door and I ran after him into the hall and held open the front door for him. He stopped in the doorway and put on his hat and coat. ‘What happened to the mirror?’

  I followed his gaze to the empty frame. ‘Oh, it got broke.’

  He shrugged and outed the door. I watched him walk toward his horse, but at the last moment he turned and stalked off around the side of the house. I closed the door and took off down the long corridor and a few minutes later I was up in my tower. It was still my private place, for when Giles woke from his long sleep that day he didn’t remember being there. He told me of this dream he’d had that he and Theo had been together in a castle. He said it had seemed so real he’d thought it must be true, but I pointed out that it impossibled, for Theo had not even been to see us that day, and later, Giles said he wished it had been true, for it turned out to be the day Theo died and he would dearly have liked to have seen him one last time.

  I looked out the window and saw Hadleigh trudging along the side of the house. He made his way around to the back and then started down toward the lake. Of course, now it was frozen quite and on top of it
there were a good few layers of snow, so many falls had we had of late, that if you didn’t already know, you wouldn’t even guess there was a lake there.

  Hadleigh did know, of course, and he stood there a long time, staring out over the water, at the spot where Miss Whitaker had tragicked a whole governess ago. I wondered what our new governess would be like. I wondered whether it would be Whitaker again and felt it would not, for I somehow thought that this time I’d trapped her soul for good, but anyhow it didn’t anxious me now, for I knew I had her measure quite. Besides, I had my tower and, until she came, I had Giles to myself. Things were how they were when they were best. With luck it would take some time to find another teacher and until then it would be as it should, Giles and I together. Nothing would ever upset that now.

  Abruptly, Hadleigh turned and walked away from the lake. He passed the old well without even giving it a glance and disappeared somewhere below me. I crossed to the other side of the tower and saw him emerge at the front of the house. He trudged through the snow to his horse and mounted it. He took one last look at the house, then turned his horse away. I sat in my tower and watched them up the drive, horse and rider merging into one dark shape, a black rook upon the white snow.

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to thank Patrick Janson-Smith for his unwavering support for my writing, and for his astute observations and helpful suggestions at various stages in the evolution of this book; Jennifer Brehl at Harper Collins U.S. for her useful criticism of Florence and Giles at an early stage; my agent Sam Copeland for his enthusiasm and encouragement; Jack and Edmund Harding, the first readers of this book, for their insightful comments on the first draft; and all those who have given me support and encouragement over the last few years, especially Simon Taylor.

  Also by John Harding

  What We Did on Our Holiday

  While the Sun Shines

  One Big Damn Puzzler

  Copyright

  Blue Door

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  First published by Blue Door in 2010

  Copyright © John Harding 2010

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  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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