by Anna Dean
In just crossing the cobbles to the inn door of blackened oak, she fell easily into conversation with an elderly ostler and progressed very naturally from a discussion of his busyness (‘Running about so fast, miss, I reckon I’ll meet myself coming back soon’) to some enquiries about the size and nature of the village (‘Pretty big, miss, but all scattered about, if you know what I mean. We don’t like to live in each other’s pockets in Hopton Cresswell’) to a few compliments about the prettiness of the place and enquiries as to whether they saw many strangers at the inn.
‘Not so many, miss. We’re a bit out of the way for folk driving down to Lyme and the other seaside places.’
‘I see. In that case, you may be able to help me.’ She took refuge on the inn’s doorstep as a boy led past a skittish horse. She smiled her conspiratorial smile at the ostler – a wiry, tough-looking man who was not much taller than she was – and pitched her voice to carry over the clatter of hooves and hobnails which echoed off the walls. ‘There is a man who I think may have stayed here,’ she said. ‘He is an acquaintance of my niece and I ought to remember his name, but it has quite escaped my memory and I do not wish to appear rude when we meet again…’
‘What sort of a gent is he?’
‘A very tall gentleman, with red hair.’
‘Ah, would that be Mr Pollard? A thin gent with very fine white hands? A university man from Oxford?’
‘Yes, indeed, that is the man!’
‘Ah yes, miss, I know him. But he didn’t stay here.’
‘Oh? But I understood him to say that he had hired your chaise.’
‘Ah, he did, miss. But he didn’t take a bed here. He was Mr Blacklock’s visitor. Stayed with him two or three days and left on the London coach the day before yesterday.’
‘I see. And Mr Blacklock is…?’
But unfortunately the door of the inn was now opened by a maid with a very long face and the kind of nervous bobbing curtsy that made Dido feel seasick. The ostler was obliged to return to his business and Dido had to begin her pleasantries all over again. However, by the time she was seated by a coal fire in a dark, low-beamed parlour and had been supplied with tea and muffin, she felt herself to be sufficiently well acquainted with the bobbing maid to venture upon a question or two.
‘Mr Blacklock? Oh, he’s out at Tudor House. That’s three miles up the Great Cresswell road, miss.’
‘And what sort of a gentleman is he?’
‘Well, now.’ The girl considered and Dido suspected that she had been fortunate enough to touch upon a favourite subject of gossip. ‘Well, I wouldn’t know, miss,’ she said with relish, ‘because you see, I never have seen him.’ She nodded meaningfully. ‘He never comes into the village.’
‘Oh? Is he a very old gentleman?’
‘Old? No, miss, I don’t think he’s so very old. But some kind of an invalid, I think.’
‘And has no one in the village ever seen him?’
‘Well now.’ The girl took a step closer, and a slight flush of excitement crept up her thin face. ‘Mrs Potter’s Kate – she’s seen him. She goes up regular with the milk and eggs. Sometimes, she says, he’s sitting out in the garden when it’s fine.’
‘I see. But he never leaves the grounds of the house?’
‘Ah now, as to that, miss, I don’t know.’
‘But you say he’s never seen.’
‘No, miss,’ said the girl with the air of one revealing a great and significant truth to an unpromising pupil, ‘not in the village he isn’t. But there’s a carriage comes to the house from time to time and it’s my belief – and Mrs Potter’s too – that Mr Blacklock sometimes goes away in it.’ She nodded significantly and dropped another curtsy.
‘How interesting! Now, why do you and Mrs Potter think that?’
‘Because of the way his servants carry on, miss. Young Kate says some days when she goes up there, there’s a rare old carry-on – the boot-boy and the gardener kicking a ball about on the drive and the maid standing by laughing and shouting. Now that’d not be happening if their master was at home, would it?’
‘Well, if Mr Blacklock is an invalid, perhaps they feel secure that he will not come out and see them.’
‘Maybe, miss. But he’d hear them, wouldn’t he? No, you mark my words, they’d only carry on like that if the house was empty.’ Her voice suggested that this was a matter only a fellow servant could understand.
‘I see. How very, very interesting.’
The girl smiled, bobbed about like a cork in a storm, and then seemed to decide to tell all. She glanced about the empty parlour and lowered her voice. ‘It’s my belief, miss,’ she said in a rush, ‘it’s my belief – and Mrs Potter’s too – that he might be a-spying for the French.’
‘Indeed!’ whispered Dido in return. ‘And, I wonder… I don’t suppose you can remember what sort of carriage it is – this one that comes to Mr Blacklock’s house sometimes.’
‘Why yes, miss, I can. It’s a small post-chaise with yellow wheels.’
‘Do you know whose carriage it is?’
The girl shook her head. ‘It doesn’t belong to anyone about here, miss, that I do know.’
‘Well, thank you,’ said Dido setting down her cup and recalling poor Catherine paying her visits in Belston. ‘I have enjoyed our chat very much indeed. Now, perhaps you could direct me to the draper’s shop.’
Fortunately, the shop was barely fifty yards from the inn. And before she had even climbed the three brick steps and set the merry little bell jangling on its wire behind the door, Dido knew that she had found the right establishment. For there in the small bow window, between a remarkably ugly puce bonnet and an olive green shawl, was a large roll of blue dimity dress material.
The inside of the little shop smelt of leather and newly cut cloth and it was packed from floor to ceiling with everything that the folk of Hopton Cresswell might wish to wear: from cards of ribbon to shelves full of pattens, bonnets on wire stands and parcels of gloves wrapped in brown paper, tied with hairy string and bearing labels like men’s beavers and York tan.
Behind the counter, squeezed into the smallest of possible spaces under the crowding shelves, was an elderly woman who wore an old, well-mended lace cap and an air of faded gentility. She was not, unfortunately, inclined to chat. All Dido’s attempts at conversation met with short discouraging replies. And, as she took the blue cloth from the window and laid it on the counter, she scowled darkly at it as if she held a grudge against it.
Dido pulled off a glove and felt the quality of the stuff as her mother had long ago taught her to do. It surprised her. In the window it had looked like good cloth; close to it was coarser than she had expected. Almost – but not quite – what her mother would have dismissed as ‘maid’s stuff’. And, she thought, as she pretended to consider buying, there was something else that was strange. The housemaid from Belsfield had seen this cloth in the window last month, so it had been on offer for at least so long. But the roll was still fat – no more than one dress length could have been cut from it.
‘I do not quite know,’ she said doubtingly, rubbing a corner of the blue cotton between her finger and thumb. ‘It is not such good quality as I thought.’
‘It is but three shillings a yard,’ said the woman with a deep sigh. ‘If you wish, I can show you some better stuff.’
‘No, wait a moment.’ Dido laid a hand across the roll to prevent it being removed. There was something in the woman’s manner which suggested that she had heard the same complaint many times before. So this was perhaps why she disliked the blue cloth. It was too poor for gentry: too good for servants. Unsaleable.
And yet it was not quite unsaleable: one length had been sold. Yes, one length had certainly been sold. Looking closely at the end, she could see where the shears had slashed through; a long blue thread came loose upon her finger. But to whom had that length been sold?
Since the shopkeeper was clearly no gossip, strategy alone would get her the inf
ormation she required.
‘I wonder…’ she began thoughtfully. ‘A friend who is unwell has asked me to look about for stuff for the Christmas dole in her household. Now I wonder…’ turning the end of the blue cloth over in her hand, ‘I wonder whether this might do for the upper servants…’
The elderly woman’s manner changed rapidly at the prospect of selling a great deal of an unpopular commodity.
‘Why yes, madam, it might do very well.’ For a moment her look of pale refinement was swallowed up in eager calculation. ‘And if your friend was to buy, say, more than twenty yards of the stuff, I might be able to see my way to only charging her two and six a yard.’
‘Oh, that is kind! Now let me see. What kind of woman might this stuff be suited to?’ She thought of those hands with the healed chilblains. A working woman who had achieved a better post? ‘It might perhaps do for the cook,’ she mused. ‘And then there is the upper housemaid.’ As she named each post doubtfully she studied the shopkeeper’s face hoping for a response or a word of encouragement; but she received nothing but a small nod. She began to wonder how large she could make her friend’s imaginary establishment.
‘And maybe it would do for the housekeeper.’
That brought an encouraging little smile.
‘Mmm, now I wonder about the housekeeper,’ pursued Dido – and she was beginning to rather enjoy her own inventiveness. ‘She really is a most superior woman, you see, and she has been in my friend’s employ for nearly twenty years. I would not wish to offend her.’
‘Oh, I don’t think she would be offended, madam. I think she’d be pleased to get this dimity.’
‘Do you truly think so?’
‘Oh yes, I’m sure she would. You see, Miss Wallis – that’s Mr Blacklock’s housekeeper – she bought some for herself just a few weeks ago. And very pleased she was with it, I assure you.’
Chapter Seven
…And so, you see, Eliza, I am now convinced that the dead woman was actually housekeeper in the house where Mr Montague’s mysterious visitor stayed. This brings Mr Montague dangerously close to the murder and I must own that I rather wish I had not discovered it. It has already lost me Catherine’s favour; she has hardly spoken to me since I told her about it. Of course, it was raining heavily when I reached Belston again, and she assures me that her yellow bonnet is now quite ruined because I was so late in returning with the carriage. But I think that my worst offence lies in mistaking her instructions. When she said that I must find out what was happening here, she did not, of course, mean that I must find out just anything, but that I must discover things that pleased her.
How foolish of me to misunderstand.
However, as somebody says somewhere in Shakespeare – and I believe it is in connection with a murder – ‘what is done cannot be undone.’ And I certainly cannot undo my morning’s work, nor cease to know what I know. I believe that all I can do now is to carry on my enquiries and discover what I may. Though I shall try not to tell Catherine any more until I am quite certain of what has happened here. Perhaps it will all yet work out well and I will discover a solution that Madam Catherine approves. And if not – well, I shall at least have the comfort of knowing that I have saved her from an unfortunate alliance – and, though she may hate me for the rest of her life, she will no doubt recover from the loss of the young man within a few months.
For what, after all, is this ‘love’, Eliza, which can be supposed to arise from such very slight acquaintance and which is often described as being felt before two words have been exchanged with the object? Any girl is authorised to say she ‘loves’ a man she has danced a few dances with and sat beside during a half-dozen dinners. I doubt whether Catherine has ever conversed with Mr Montague upon a serious subject…
But this is quite by the by and I must be wearying you with my strange ideas – and with telling over all the events of my day. But truly I feel that I must tell it all, for I do not know what is of importance and what is not. It is getting late now and if I do not finish soon the bricks in my bed will be cold. Rose has brought me three bricks tonight and I expect to be very snug indeed. It seems that she has had an extremely pleasant day, sitting in the housekeeper’s room and telling her story.
But, before I close, I shall lay before you all the little unconnected questions which keep returning to my mind, in the hope that if I communicate them to you, they will not trouble me so much as to keep me from sleeping. Here they are:
Firstly (and maybe this is not such a very little question), there is the matter which has long puzzled us, and which has particularly troubled me since I have become better acquainted with Belsfield and its ways: why has such a man as Sir Edgar – one who sets more store upon dignity and ancestry than anything else – promoted the match between his son and Catherine – a girl of small fortune and no alliance at all?
Second: why does it pain Sir Edgar to talk about his son?
Third: why did Annie Holmes look so uncomfortable when I asked her if she had seen Mr Montague?
Fourth: why has Annie Holmes’ daughter got such a costly doll?
Fifth: why does Lady Montague seem so languid and yet play such difficult games of Patience? One can, after all, play simple undemanding forms of Patience. When Catherine said this morning that her ladyship was the last woman in the world to be conscientious about business, it occurred to me that she was wrong – that my lady might indeed be very conscientious about something that interested her. And yet she chooses to be so very supine that one almost forgets she is there.
Sixth: is Mr Tom Lomax up to no good?
Seventh: what do the constant looks passing between the Misses Harris signify? They make me uneasy and make me suppose that they have some secret and are determined to play a part or ensure that they tell a story correctly.
And lastly: what exactly was the colonel looking for in the garden yesterday morning?
If you have any answers to offer to these questions, then I hope you will write to me straight away; but I suspect that you will think me ridiculous for worrying over trifles. I cannot help myself though, Eliza, for I believe that the very air of this place breathes suspicion. It seems to be a house of secrets and I see mystery and intrigue wherever I turn.
It rained very heavily during that night, but the morning showed a blue and white sky with raindrops gleaming on the storm-battered roses of the terrace and puddles shining in the worn hollows of the lawn steps.
All the gentlemen were gone to the inquest and the ladies were left with nothing to do but to settle the verdict among themselves without the inconvenience of considering any evidence. By about three o’clock Dido had become weary of their speculations, which ranged freely over burglars and gypsies and highwaymen without any regard for what was probable, or even possible, and she announced her intention of walking into Belston village.
‘You will be ankle-deep in mud,’ cried Catherine.
‘I shall wear my pattens and my old pelisse.’
Catherine looked pained and lowered her voice to a hissing whisper. ‘Aunt Dido, no one but maids and farmers’ wives wear pattens now!’ She glanced quickly around the comfortable room and its elegant inhabitants. ‘Do you mean to shame me in front of everyone?’
‘No, my dear,’ said Dido calmly, ‘I only mean to stop my shoes being spoilt by the dirt.’
‘Well, I tell you honestly that in that shabby pelisse and pattens, you will look like a servant.’
‘If that is so, you will not wish to accompany me?’
For answer Catherine turned away and picked up some needlework. (Which Dido considered to be a mark of how deep her displeasure was; for it must be an extreme emotion which could make Catherine willingly open her work-box and sew.)
Unfortunately for Dido, who had been counting upon a solitary walk, Mrs Harris did not shrink from the shame of being seen in company with a woman wearing pattens. She had a bit of ribbon she wanted to match at the milliner’s and she was sure that an airing would �
��set her up nicely.’
‘For, would you believe, I have not stirred from the house these last two days, Miss Kent,’ she said comfortably as they walked up the drive, ‘and to own the truth, my dear, it doesn’t suit my digestion to be always sitting down. Doesn’t suit it at all.’
Dido was saved from any further details of Mrs Harris’s digestion by the servant’s dinner bell, which rang out from the little tower above the stables just then, and when speech was again possible she began to remark with energy upon the pleasantness of the afternoon. But Mrs Harris was one of those women to whom the notion of friendliness is quite inseparable from confidences and who are determined to demonstrate their regard by sharing the most intimate details of their lives. She was, with the best will in the world, forever boring and embarrassing her most favoured companions and, since she had taken rather a fancy to Dido, it was not long before praise of the day had proceeded to her hope that her eldest daughter would be able to walk out with the colonel later in the afternoon, and that led very naturally to her other hopes upon the colonel.
‘Just between ourselves, my dear, I think Amelia will be disappointed if he does not come to the point during this visit. Poor girl, she will be three and twenty next month.’
‘The gentleman does seem to be very attentive…’
‘Oh, my dear, he is! He is very attentive and quite struck with Melia, I am sure. Though I confess I am rather surprised it is her and not Sophie. For he has been very attentive to her too and, of course, he shares her passion for music. But then, there is no understanding love, is there, Miss Kent?’ she said with an arch smile.
Dido agreed that there was not.
‘Well, I don’t mind telling you, that I shall be heartily glad to see either one of them settled with the colonel, for I don’t know quite why it is, but there seems to be a little difficulty. Not that there is any shortage of beaux – but somehow it seems so difficult to make them come to the point. I don’t know why it should be. They are dear girls and so very accomplished and, bless them, they try as hard as any mother could wish. And they are certainly pretty… Well they are, are they not, Miss Kent? I don’t think a mother’s pride is blinding me, is it?’