by Jess Kidd
Bridie squints into the sunlight. With no sign of Ruby at breakfast she takes to the terrace for the morning air and a rousing shoch on her pipe. And there, after a few moments, he is. Standing along from her with his boots unlaced and his topper jaunty, looking out over the grounds and rubbing his great broad chest. Bridie realises that London murk becomes Ruby; the clear country morning only makes him seem dimmer. As Bridie walks over to him the tattoos on his body wake up. The mermaid on his shoulder unfurls her tail and stretches. She catches sight of Bridie and shakes her hair out with a sleepy pout and nudges Ruby with her inked elbow. He turns and nods at Bridie, a gladdening smile beneath his glorious black moustache.
Bridie sets off across the lawn, which glitters this morning with spilled diamonds of dew. The spiders’ webs, too, are made precious; crystalline lacework draped over bushes, strung between branches.
Ruby falls in next to her. He takes his hat off and rubs where the deathblow landed.
‘How’s the head?’
‘Destroyed. Is this for eternity?’
‘The spiritualist crowd would encourage you to depart for your home on high.’
Ruby grins, wickedly. ‘What if my home’s not on high?’
Bridie tightens her bonnet ribbons to hide a smile.
‘Did you sleep, Bridie?’
‘Like the dead.’
‘You don’t know the half of it.’
‘Ruby—’
‘Ah, no, it’s grand, no need to open doors.’
‘Where did you spend the night?’
‘Moaning up and down the passages. Rattling my chains.’
Their eyes meet. His shine. Bridie frowns.
‘So where are we headed?’ Ruby asks.
‘Agnes said that the servants searched the grounds and the lane beyond the gates and found nothing. It would be well to search again.’
‘But if they’ve searched—’
‘They’ll have missed something, they always do.’
They turn down towards the orchard.
‘We’ll concentrate on the back route into Maris House.’ Bridie points to a gate at the bottom of a track. ‘This was the perpetrators’ way in most likely.’
‘You think so?’
‘That’s too high.’ She gestures towards the boundary wall. ‘It runs around the whole estate.’
‘And the main gate?’
‘Too noisy: gravel all the way down the drive. Besides, if Mrs Bibby colluded with them they would have known it was overlooked: the Pucks have rooms facing out over the front of the house.’
The morning is peaceful yet; they walk, listening to bird-song in the clear early air.
Ruby is the first to speak. ‘She’s sticking her neck out, Agnes.’
‘She has reason enough to dislike Mrs Bibby.’
‘With the nurse’s rough manners.’
‘Agnes has greater reason than that. Didn’t you hear what Winnie the kitchenmaid told me?’
‘All that whispering in the scullery?’ Ruby groans. ‘I took it to be affairs of the heart.’
Bridie laughs. ‘You drifted off? And I thought you would be there with your ear through the wall. Well, affairs of the heart it was. Winnie told me that the footman is sweet on Agnes.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Only Mrs Puck got to hear about it and put an end to it, of course. Agnes vowed that Mrs Bibby was behind it. The nurse saw the lovers steal a kiss in the orchard. Poor Agnes cried for a week.’
Ruby pulls a disdainful face. ‘I wouldn’t have thought Agnes the crying kind.’
‘And you’ve never cried yourself, Ruby? When your best dreams were thwarted? When you lost a fight?’
‘I always won my fights.’
‘Or when your love left you?’
‘I’ve had no love, Bridie.’
‘Or when you were a sailor and your ship hit squalls?’
‘There were no squalls, only good driving winds in the right direction. I was a lucky sailor.’
‘I should say. Didn’t you cry when your ship set sail from the coconut beaches?’
‘From the sapphire waters and golden sand?’
‘The same.’
‘You’re right of course, that was when I cried.’ He grins and the tattooed mermaid on his shoulder shakes her head and turns back to her mirror.
Bridie laughs.
‘It’s a terrible thing, a heart torn asunder. I should know.’ Ruby looks at her slyly. ‘A broken pledge; that would do it.’
A smile still dances on Bridie’s lips. ‘Are you here to torment me, Ruby Doyle?’
Ruby’s eyes are bright.
‘I don’t believe you knew me at all,’ Bridie says with conviction, for she has frisked every corner of her mind for a memory of Ruby and found none. ‘You are having a lark.’
‘I knew your name when we met at the chapel-yard!’ ‘I’ll prove it – wait until I remember.’ Ruby closes his eyes and puts his palms together. ‘God grant eternal rest to Mammy, Daddy, James, John, Theresa, Margaret, Ellen and little baby Owen.’
Bridie is overcome at hearing the names of her long-gone family. ‘Ruby, how do you know me?’
‘If I tell, you’ll expect me to go.’
Bridie frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Our agreement on the train; have you forgotten? I promised to leave you in peace if you solved this great mystery.’
‘You telling isn’t me solving.’
Ruby shrugs. ‘You’d uphold it anyway, I’d be banished to the church-yard.’
Bridie studies him closely. ‘Did we not get on, then?’
‘As I said . . .’ Ruby grins. ‘You’re the investigator. You fathom it.’
Past the orchard they follow the track that leads to the gate; it’s a churned mess of wheel ruts and footprints.
‘It shows some traffic. I’ll not be able to read much here.’
The back gates are open. They pass through them and follow the road round, with the high wall bordering Sir Edmund’s estate to their left and the woods to the right. The autumn colours are rich in the early sun, with golden tones and deep reds and startling oranges against a rinsed blue sky. The wood is rowdy with bird-song.
‘Clean air: a tonic to the lungs,’ says Ruby. ‘What does it smell like, Bridie?’
‘Leaf mould, cow shit and this fella’s feet.’
The man sitting by the side of the path tips the brim of his hat and hugs his knees. ‘Alms, miss. For a gentleman of the road.’
He is well wrinkled, with the look of a turkey about him; a gizzardy string of neck rising from a bulked-out breast, achieved by the layering of many weather-stained clothes upon his body. The toecaps of his boots are splitting open like ripe peel to reveal blackened feet.
‘Is herself in, the formidable Mother Puck?’
‘She is. You’ll get short shrift up there.’ Bridie rummages in her pocket for some coins. ‘Here, Father Road, buy yourself a new pair of boots.’
The old man stretches his turkey neck and looks at the money. He takes it and nods. ‘Ingratiated to you, I am.’
‘Not at all.’
‘This house has a cursed aspect.’
‘Go on, Father Road.’
‘A fell spirit stalks the lord of the manor. She stands outside his window, all night sometimes. She trails him on his constitutionals.’ The old man ruminates. ‘She sobs in the bushes and washes her face in the pond.’
Bridie bites back a groan. ‘A ghost, is it, you’re after seeing? Lady Berwick who drowned?’
The old man scratches his head. ‘Ah, no, Lady Berwick was a big auld woman, and this one is a young slip of a spirit. A blue-eyed waif, hair like sun-spun corn.’ He stops scratching and scrutinises his fingernail. Then he bites it. ‘Livestock.’
‘There are no such things as ghosts, Father Road,’ says Bridie, careful to avoid Ruby’s eye.
‘Now I didn’t say the fell spirit was a ghost, did I?’ He pouts. ‘Although, granted, she haunts the plac
e.’ He ponders this, then adds, darkly, ‘She has cause to return.’
‘Tell me – what cause?’
‘That’s the mystery, right there.’ The old man picks his ear reflectively.
‘I’m looking for something, Father Road, not long stolen from the house. Would you have any wisdoms?’
The old man perks up. ‘Let me guess: a pretty parlour maid, a golden spoon, a crown?’
‘None of those things,’ admits Bridie. ‘Do you know the servants, up at the house?’
‘I have had my dealings.’
‘Mrs Bibby, would you have come across her?’
The old man sucks air in with a sudden hiss.
‘Rough manners, bad leg?’
He winds his neck back into his over-stuffed body and pulls his hat down over his eyes.
‘Father Road?’
Not a peep.
She puts another coin in the old man’s open palm. ‘Obliged, Father Road,’ she says.
He tips his hat.
Bridie walks a while. If she were to keep going straight ahead, in a few days she’d reach London. She can’t help but feel that this is where the thieves headed, where she would head, with a stolen child to hide or trade. Woods run parallel to Sir Edmund’s estate. Ruby stands at the edge, watching, shimmering. He takes off his hat and runs his hand over his shorn black hair.
‘Look at those lines there!’ Bridie points at the churned-up mud. ‘That deep arc, that swerve, then the wheels going backwards. The width, the depth of the wheel tread, it was a gig, Ruby. I can see it.’
‘You can?’ Ruby draws nearer, pulling at the side of his moustache. He glances at her doubtfully.
‘The rest of the marks are wagons, carts, see?’ Bridie walks a few paces. ‘But these are different, these tell us something.’
‘They do?’
Bridie crosses back and forth over the road, careful not to step on the prints.
‘They tell us that a gig in a hurry turned out from these gates . . . further down it stopped – suddenly; it was ambushed. No, that doesn’t seem right.’
She goes over to the trees. ‘There are three sets of footprints leading off into the woods.’
The dead man marvels at her.
‘Broken branches, they stumbled there.’ She’s in the undergrowth, touching plants, leaves. ‘They were carrying something awkward, a foot sunk here, and here.’
Bridie casts around, forging forwards, head down. Wading into drifts of leaves, pushing past brambles. Ruby, beside her, strides through tree trunks and fallen logs. They reach a clearing, where stands a mouldering chapel with a mossy roof and an awkward tower.
Yews, full of the squabble of crows, stand in solemn groups. They cast a solid shade. On the path that surrounds the chapel, Bridie’s boot heels skitter on shattered glass; she stoops to examine and then looks up in surprise.
‘The windows have been broken. This glass is fresh on the ground.’
Bridie walks to the porch. The door is ajar; she goes inside.
The chapel is an unwelcoming place. Bridie shivers to think of time spent here, in the hug of cold stone and damp air. Among sagging Bibles and mildewing kneelers, coughing through Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on hard pews. That the chapel has been abandoned for some while is clear, Sir Edmund’s household preferring the village church no doubt, if not for the sermons then for the gossip.
Ruby strays up the aisle with his hat under his arm, stopping to examine the broken font and the candles melted on the altar, or to peer up at the blown windows.
‘It’s all been happening here, Bridie.’
She’s already heading into the vestry.
The room is bare but for a shelf with several smashed lanterns. There are signs of recent habitation: an apple core and a half-eaten meat pie on the windowsill, a chair dragged across the unswept floor, finger marks on dusty surfaces.
But it’s the vestry cupboard that Bridie is looking at intently.
Ruby follows her into the room.
‘In there, Ruby, at the bottom, beneath the vestments.’
Ruby frowns. ‘What is that?’
‘Snail shells, hundreds of them. Remember what Agnes said, about the buckets full of snails every morning up at the house?’
‘What does it mean?’
‘I’ve no idea, unless Christabel is somehow drawing this to her.’
‘You think they brought the child here?’ Ruby deliberates. ‘Surely they’d have wanted to get her as far away as possible?’
‘You’d assume so.’ Bridie touches the walls. ‘They’re running wet.’
‘Like in the west wing.’
Bridie kicks the snail shells out of the way and climbs inside the cupboard. ‘They kept her in here.’
‘What makes you think that?’
Bridie holds up a bent nail. She gestures at the back of the cupboard, a pattern of bumps, wavy lines and circles scratched into the surface of the wood.
‘Do you see what she’s drawn, Ruby? It’s her nursery wallpaper at Maris House.’
Bridie walks between the headstones, the crosses, the covered urns, the plump marble pillows inviting everlasting slumber. At the apex of two walkways is Lady Berwick’s tomb. Stone angels perch on all four corners of her tomb: wings folded and faces impassive, they are giving nothing away.
Beyond the main pathways the memorials are older: cracked and mossed, worn and pitted, tangled with briars and carpeted with last years’ leaves. Bridie clears away the foliage to read names, dates.
‘Bridie.’
Bridie glances up and looks at Ruby. He is pointing beyond a rusted railing. Between two graves, a body lies face down.
The dead woman is lodged between the final resting places of Winifred Godsalve and Robert Swann, obscured by the kerbstones and hidden by brambles. It would be easy enough to pass this corpse by.
Bridie draws nearer. Ruby stays rooted, hat in hand and horrified.
‘On first sight she doesn’t appear to be our missing nurse,’ Bridie remarks. ‘But let’s see what we have here.’
A young woman; small in stature and clearly underfed, so that Bridie is able to turn her, after taking careful note of the surrounding area. Beetles run across the corpse’s muddied bodice. She has lost her bonnet and her fair hair is tangled in the thorns. Her lips are pale. Her blue eyes are wide open.
*
The body is laid out on a trestle table in the vestry of the chapel. The local sergeant has visited at the site of discovery and supervised the removal of the corpse inside, pending the arrival of the undertaker. The district inspector and the doctor have been sent for and a police officer stands guard outside the chapel door.
Mr Puck is in shock. He sits with the young officer in the porch. They drink the tea brought down by Agnes, who has taken the news back to Maris House that Mr Puck has identified the body as a perfect stranger.
For some of the servants this discovery will be the last straw; they have already put up with so much. The locked doors and the snails and the mists and the rumours of Sir Edmund’s abomination in the west wing.
Mr Puck stares into his teacup. He has barely said a word since viewing the body. He is beset by the anxious thought that he has, in fact, seen the poor young woman before. At dusk, flitting between the roses in her dark cape and bonnet. He rather imagined that she was the presence of the late Lady Berwick, in younger, happier times. Mr Puck reasons with his teacup: even if the poor dead woman is not, in fact, the presence of the late Lady Berwick she is still, nonetheless, a stranger. With that part of his testimony ship-shapely, Mr Puck resolves to think no more about it and immediately feels better.
Bridie works quickly in the vestry. Although Dr Harbin is nowhere to be found, the inspector is on his way and the undertaker will come thereafter. This may be her only opportunity to examine the body.
She opens her leather case, puts on an apron and tucks her hair carefully inside a clean scarf. Then she turns to the table, pulling down the sheet, mak
ing an initial assessment of the condition of the corpse. Ruby faces the wall, for the sake of decorum, he says.
‘The cause of death is strangulation,’ deduces Bridie. ‘The bruises on the victim’s neck are compatible with the span of an average-sized man’s hand, I’d say.’
‘The bastard.’
‘On first inspection, there is no evidence that the deceased was defiled.’
Ruby shuffles in the corner. Bridie suspects he’s blessing himself.
‘Her clothes are weather-stained.’ Bridie bends over the corpse. ‘Her feet are calloused, showing that this young woman tramped. She’s very undernourished. She’s been living hard lately.’
‘Poor little soul.’
‘A blue-eyed waif, hair like spun gold . . .’
‘Old Father Road!’ exclaims Ruby. ‘You think she’s the young woman he’s seen around the grounds?’
‘She matches his description.’ Bridie examines the corpse’s hand. ‘Her nails are broken and there is damage to her wrists, forearms, indicative of a violent struggle. I would say that she put up a fight. Her attacker may be injured, scratched, possibly to the face.’
‘That might help us identify them.’
‘They’ll be miles away now. But this is curious: her hands are cleaner than I would expect, much cleaner than the rest of her. It’s possible that the assailant wiped them over, wishing to remove any clues as to their identity.’
‘What sort of clues?’
‘Hair, snagged strands of cloth, perhaps.’ Bridie inspects under the remaining fingernails. ‘There’s nothing left here.’
Bridie searches down the length of the skirts. ‘I thought so. Shesa’s a stuff-pocket sown here. It’s empty now, though, but for a couple of coins.’
‘A stuff-pocket?’
‘An old pickpocket’s trick, I use it too, to hide things in my petticoats.’
‘Of course you do, Mrs Devine. So there’s a few clues on her?’
If I can find them before the inspector arrives and throws me out.’
‘And you here on Sir Edmund’s invitation.’
‘Sir Edmund’s not likely to tell the police why I’m here.’ Bridie pauses. ‘Besides, some people have notions about fitting conduct for ladies – scrutinising dead bodies isn’t seen to be seemly.’