by Jess Kidd
‘Her position?’
‘Mending tapestries, ma’am.’
‘She hasn’t been here long, has she?’
‘Less than a month, ma’am.’
‘But the servants knew her real role?’
‘They did, of course, ma’am. Only everyone had a different idea as to what the master was keeping in west wing . . .’ Agnes falters.
‘Go on, Agnes. Trust that this is in confidence.’
Agnes nods. ‘Some said that the mistress had borne a monster, ma’am, at her late age. Then, maddened by the sight of it, she drowned herself. Others said the master had shipped it in from abroad.’ She looks up at Bridie, her face suddenly harried. ‘But everyone said – they still say – it was an abomination.’
‘Why do people say that?’
Agnes blesses herself. ‘Saints preserve us, ma’am, it was the snails.’
‘Snails?’
‘Buckets full of them every morning, ma’am,’ recalls Agnes, with an awed disgust. ‘Mrs Puck would send me to pick them off the walls and the doors and the steps. Then there were the newts and the frogs and the toads; any wretched thing that crawled in slime would be outside trying to get inside. And these great packs of gulls would come baying around the rooftops. Oh, and this mist, ma’am, rising through the house with every window closed. Turning the bread to soup and dampening the clothes on your back.’ She pauses. ‘So, you see I knew Mrs Bibby couldn’t be respectable and God-fearing.’
‘Why do you say that, Agnes?’
‘She was willing to get mixed up in all of that, ma’am.’
Agnes closes the curtains against the darkening sky.
‘The night of the theft, Agnes, can you tell me about that?’
‘Begging your pardon but I slept through it, ma’am. I’m to bed at eleven and up at five, I’m dead to the world in-between.’
‘Who raised the alarm?’
‘Mr Puck, ma’am. It was him that found the door to the west wing open that morning. It was always kept locked and bolted.’
‘Who had access to the west wing?’
‘The master, the nurse and Dr Harbin.’
‘And there were no other visitors?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘No, only poor Myrtle, ma’am. Dr Harbin would often bring her with him when he visited and he was here most days. She’d go in pale and come out paler and not a word could be drawn from her about what she’d seen in there.’
‘Did Mr and Mrs Puck ever go into the west wing?’
‘No, ma’am, but Mr Puck keeps a key in the butler’s sitting room. I saw him pass it to the doctor when I was in there doing out the fire.’
‘Does he now?’ Bridie is thoughtful. ‘So, the following morning Mr Puck discovered the door to the west wing wide open. Then what happened?’
‘After a quick discussion as to whether they ought to or no, Mr Puck and Mrs Puck went in through the door while Winnie and I waited in the hall, ma’am.’
‘Winnie, being the kitchenmaid?’
Agnes nods. ‘Then they came out all wooden-faced, and said, “Something has been taken,” and asked us to rouse the footman, the groom and the gardener, and search the house and grounds, ma’am.’
‘Did they tell you what had been taken, Agnes?’
‘No, ma’am, they didn’t. I asked Mrs Puck, begging her pardon, how I could search for something when I didn’t know what it was I was searching for.’
‘What did she say?’
‘Mrs Puck told me to mind my own business and get on with the searching. We went all over the house, from chimney to cellar, excepting the west wing, ma’am, as Mr Puck and Mrs Puck had locked the door behind them. The groom and the gardener did the grounds and the out-houses.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘Winnie found that window open and everyone else found nothing, ma’am,’ Agnes recollects. ‘Mrs Puck sent the footman to find the constable and Mr Puck went in to see the master, who was furious, for he didn’t want the police called at all.’
‘Sir Edmund was angry?’
‘We could hear him roaring from downstairs. Then Mrs Puck rounded us up and told us not to say anything to the police.’
‘And then the police arrived?’
‘Yes, ma’am, and Mr Puck told them that a robbery had been attempted but nothing had been taken.’
‘He said that, how do you know?’
‘I heard him, ma’am. Then the police went and Dr Harbin came, and him and the master walked up and down the terrace smoking. Then Dr Harbin rode off in the master’s carriage.’
Bridie thinks for a while. ‘I need to get into the west wing, Agnes.’
‘Oh, no, ma’am, that would not be allowed.’
‘The keys to the west wing are in the butler’s sitting room – could you show me?’
Agnes looks anguished. ‘Forgive me, Mrs Devine, but you’re after taking the keys?’
‘Borrowing them.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t, ma’am!’
‘A child is missing, Agnes, and I am puzzled as to why this child was kept secret and why she was taken. Are you not puzzled too?’
‘I am, of course, ma’am. But being puzzled is one thing and taking keys from the butler’s sitting room is another. With all due respects.’
‘As I said: it wouldn’t be taking, Agnes, it would be borrowing.’
Agnes considers this, brows knitted, and then shakes her head. ‘I am sorry, ma’am, but it wouldn’t be right.’
‘Secrets have their place,’ says Bridie. ‘Every household has its secrets. But when a child’s very life might be at stake, a secret held may be fatal.’
A conflict seems to be raging in the housemaid. ‘But if we’re caught, ma’am?’
‘We won’t be caught. Isn’t it Mrs Puck’s night off?’
Agnes’s countenance brightens. ‘Then I will help you, ma’am, for I would not want the life of a child on my conscience if I can help to save her. And Lord forgive me, but I want that nurse to get her come-uppance. I don’t know why she took the child, or what sort of child it is, but I’m certain Mrs Bibby is at the back of this.’
Bridie follows Agnes up the main staircase, a blue-carpeted, polished-wood thing of beauty, wide-stepped and rising augustly from the marble floor.
‘Sir Edmund is a great one for the water, be it the sea, ponds, lakes, fountains, rivers, even a well.’ Agnes gestures up at the stained-glass window that runs the height of the staircase.
In daylight, with the sun shining through, it shows an aventurine sea swelling three storeys. A golden galleon sails over this sea and iridescent fish swim under. Above, opal arrows of sea-birds fly in cloud-buffeted skies. Being dark outside now, the window is diminished, but Bridie has the idea of it.
They climb the stairs: Ruby, carrying his hat, comes up after.
‘Mr Bazalgette has been a guest at Maris House,’ says Agnes. ‘You know, ma’am, the fella with the drains.’
‘The famous civil engineer, you mean?’
Agnes nods. ‘He distrusts sandwiches and must sleep in a north-facing room. He came here to ask the master about water. How it moves: fast, slow, can it turn corners?’
‘Who told you this?’
They cross a landing and head up a further flight of stairs.
‘Mr Puck,’ answers Agnes. ‘He says that when Mr Bazalgette’s sewers are completed they will be world-famous.’
‘Very likely.’
‘The master has taken inspiration from Mr Bazalgette. He has been making great plans for Maris House,’ Agnes relates. ‘Self-filling baths and basins, raindrop machines with water cold and hot, miles of pipes so that no servant need carry another bucket.’
‘Indeed?’
‘The master designed the fountain, ma’am. Beautiful, it was. People used to come for miles to see it, until the tragedy.’ Agnes blesses herself deftly.
‘You mean Lady Berwick’s accident?’
‘God rest her, ma’am, that fountain never worke
d again and Sir Edmund never had the heart to fix it.’
They stop on the turn of the stairs and Agnes points out the painting above them. ‘Herself, Lady Berwick, ma’am, at Pevensey Bay.’
A young woman in a white dress sits on a rock brushing her brown hair with a mournful expression. Around her naked feet starry shells lie scattered. In the background, an ominous sea: the wind is blowing up waves, foamy horses stampede to shore.
‘Is it a likeness, Agnes?’
‘When she was younger, maybe, as I heard Lady Berwick was a big-boned woman with a cast eye. Begging your pardon, ma’am.’
Ruby laughs.
‘It’s said that she still haunts the grounds, ma’am, watching the master outside his study window when he’s at his papers and his planning. The gardener sees her footprints. He followed them once; all around the pond, out of the estate, into the woods to the chapel beyond. They ended at her tomb.’
‘And do you believe that, Agnes?’
‘I don’t at all, Mrs Devine. There are no such things as ghosts.’
They take the corridor towards the west wing. Paintings line the walls.
‘The master did these himself, ma’am.’
A leviathan hunts a fishing boat, its great head cresting the waves. In the next painting the brute closes its maw around the boat’s splintering hull. A fisherman clings to a piece of driftwood, his face a mask of terror. One painting in particular catches Bridie’s eye. A travesty of a mermaid looms in a rock pool with a looking-glass, a receding hairline and a pike’s grin. Below the surface of the water a barbed tail curls.
‘We call her Mrs Puck,’ whispers Agnes with a grin.
Bridie laughs.
‘Your master seems to dwell on these horrors of the deep?’
‘He has a whole library of books about the things that swim in the water and the things that crawl out of it, ma’am.’ Agnes wrinkles her nose. ‘There are things in jars.’
Bridie raises her eyebrows. ‘Things in jars?’
‘There’s this hidden door in the bookcase. I found it by accident one day when I was dusting.’ The housemaid shivers. ‘Heaven help me, but I pushed it opened and went through it into this room.’
‘The jars were inside this room?’
Agnes blesses herself, twice. ‘Mary Mother of God – the memory of them!’
‘Can you tell me what was inside the jars, Agnes?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t, ma’am!’
‘Go on, so.’
Agnes grimaces. ‘Drowned worms and these fish with teeth on them.’ She mimes the teeth with her fingers clawed.
‘Can you show me?’
‘I can’t see how, ma’am. The master keeps the library locked when he’s not in it, and Mr Puck fairly roosts in that part of the house, with the master’s study being along there.’
And here is a heavy-looking wooden door with a good stout lock to it. Bridie pulls the keys they lifted from the butler’s sitting room from her pocket and unlocks the door into a windowless passage. There’s a lantern hanging on a hook on the wall and a shelf for matches. Bridie reaches down the lantern.
‘Allow me, please, ma’am.’ The housemaid glances up at Bridie as she lights the wick. ‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Devine, but you won’t be telling anyone I brought you here, will you?’
‘Of course not, Agnes.’
‘Especially Mrs Puck, ma’am.’
‘Last of all Mrs Puck, she would roast you!’
Agnes smiles weakly and hands Bridie the lantern. ‘She’d pickle me, ma’am. I’d be in a jar with the worms.’
*
The smell of damp is heavy in the air. Mould blossoms over the wallpaper, creating elaborate growths to rival even the winding botanicals in Mr William Morris’s imagination.
They come to a riveted iron door. Bridie unlocks it and together they manage to push it open.
Bridie holds up the lantern.
The room is vivid green and running wet with condensation. Across the walls a pattern is repeated. Flat leaves with bulbous ulcers. Plants of the sea: bladder-wrack and sea-rod; not garden flowers.
Ruby stands in the corner grave-faced and flickering dimly. The skull tattooed on his abdomen is chattering its teeth. The mermaid on his shoulder swims wildly over his spectral skin; she seems to be looking for somewhere to hide, and dashes under his arm.
‘This is some class of place,’ the dead man says.
Agnes goes about lighting lamps, they splutter and catch under opaline hoods. The smell is overwhelming: salt water and iodine, rotten fish and stagnant silt. Bridie goes to open the window; it is nailed shut and barred.
She surveys the nursery. It’s unlike any nursery she has seen before. Everything is of a marine shade; from the doll with green hair to the story-books all bound in blue leather. The white marble fireplace has a delicate scalloped design.
There is a cage of sorts built around a bed-frame, with a mechanism for lowering the sides and for folding back the top, and a catch to keep them securely closed.
Bridie finds rings welded onto the metal struts. ‘These are for restraints.’
Agnes looks horrified. ‘They kept her in this? Why would they do that?’
‘I don’t know,’ answers Bridie in dismay. ‘But it hardly seems humane.’
Bridie opens the door to an adjoining room, motioning for Agnes to follow her. Ruby, shaken by the surroundings, stands guard in the nursery.
The nurse’s room is simply furnished. It holds a chest of drawers, a bed and a desk.
‘We need to ascertain if any of the nurse’s things are missing, Agnes.’
Bridie pulls a trunk out from under the bed while Agnes searches the drawers.
‘There is no sign of her travelling things,’ notes Bridie. ‘No shawl, or bonnet, or sturdy boots.’
‘Then she was dressed and ready for the robbers, ma’am. They didn’t drag her out of the house by the hem of her nightie.’
There is a single shelf of books. Mrs Bibby’s personal reading consists of a Bible, a worn encyclopaedia and a novel from Mudie’s Select Library: The Mill on the Floss, Volume 2, two weeks overdue.
Bridie studies a slip of paper used as a bookmark. ‘Our nurse left a reservation ticket behind.’ She pockets the novel.
Bridie returns to Christabel’s room and, taking the lantern, shines it on the wallpaper. ‘It’s peculiar, like being underwater.’
‘Look at it too long and your eyes start to go funny, ma’am,’ says Agnes. ‘The seaweed starts to dance.’
Bridie checks the door. ‘The locks show no signs of being forced, which supports the idea that Mrs Bibby was part of the plan, the one who slipped the bolt, unlocked the doors to the west wing and the nursery.’
‘Begging your pardon, Mrs Bibby was in the thick of it, ma’am.’
Bridie looks around her. ‘There’s no sign of a struggle, or of leaving in haste.’
She pushes a nightstand a fraction of an inch and examines the indentations on the Turkish carpet. ‘The furniture has been moved, or else the rug is fresh down. Help me, Agnes.’
Together they move the furniture and roll back the rug. A smell rises, like sump water.
Agnes covers her face. ‘Oh, suffering Jesus, the reek of it!’
On the floorboards there is a patch, a shape, an outline.
Bridie gets down on her hands and knees: the floorboards are sodden. ‘It’s sea-water, I think. It has left some kind of silt or residue, but it has behaved very strangely.’
Agnes draws forward. ‘How do you mean, ma’am?’
Bridie traces along the edge of the darker patch. ‘It hasn’t spread like a puddle ought to, as it would if you spilt your mop bucket. The lines are sharply marked.’ Then she sees it. ‘It is the shape of a person, an exact print – lying down, arms to the side.’
‘It is, ma’am!’ exclaims Agnes.
‘If a corpse lies undetected for long enough it could rot into the floor, leaving a stain of sorts,’ muses Bridie. ‘
Had that happened in this case, we would have smelt it coming up the stairs.’
‘Blessed Mother of Christ, let me get out of here,’ says Ruby and paces through the wall into the passage outside, rubbing his temples.
The clock in the entrance-hall chimes. They hear it faintly.
‘We haven’t got long, ma’am,’ urges Agnes. ‘I need to return the keys. Mrs Puck will be home directly and then Mr Puck will do his rounds.’
‘Let’s get this furniture back.’
They straighten the room and extinguish the lights.
Bridie picks up the lantern and then she sees it: a large stoppered glass jar, nestling on a shelf among the story-books.
The heart in her turns crossways.
Chapter 6
Bridie locks the guest-room door and pushes a chest in front of it. She takes her pepper-box pistol, loads it and puts it under her pillow. Then she steps slowly around the room, tapping the walls and scrutinising the joins in the flock wallpaper.
Ruby watches her quizzically. ‘What are you doing, Bridie?’
‘Hidden doors,’ she murmurs. ‘We know the library has them.’
‘Why the barricade?’
‘A precaution.’ Bridie glances over at him. ‘This house feels full of wrong.’
Ruby sits down at the dressing table.
A cloth covers the jar that Bridie took from the bookcase in the nursery, and Ruby is thankful of this. For the contents have the ability to rearrange even a dead man’s sense of reality. As with all terrible, wondrous sights, there is a jolt of shock, then a hypnotic fascination, then the uneasy queasiness, then the whole thing starts again; the desire to look and the desire never to have looked in the first place.
Bridie, satisfied that all the walls are solid, pulls a chair up next to Ruby. She unwraps the cloth.
And there it is. Reflected in the mirror of the dressing table, an assault on the mind and the eyes and the heart.
Bridie leans in closer, touching the cold glass with her fingertips.
A jarred baby, of all the things in the world!
A perfect newborn with furled fingers and tiny nails, a wee button of a nose and the sweetest, most delicate shell-like ears. The skin is perfectly preserved, with the look of carved marble, but there’s a softness that describes something very human: the tender pods of the baby’s closed eyes, the plump spot under its chin, its dimpled arms.