‘It was something he told me about a skeleton that was discovered in the garden of a house near to a place where I once stayed the night when I was eleven. It gave me a turn, you see, because…. Well, I can’t really tell you the secret, Emily, but it’s left me worried ever since. If that policeman comes back with more questions, what shall I do?’
Emily thought to herself: whatever the secret is, she’ll tell me when she’s good and ready. But we want no trouble here in Aston Road. This is a genteel area, and if I give satisfaction, I hope I’ll stay with the Robinsons for life. Unlike some other servant-girls in this street, I don’t want to work in a telegraph office, sitting on a stool, and pushing wires into sockets.
‘Well, mum,’ said Emily, ‘if I was you, I’d tell them the truth. Whatever part you played in the secret, it couldn’t have been much, if you were only eleven. You tell them the truth, mum, and then you’ll have nothing to worry about. I’d better clear in here. Mrs Winchester will be here by ten.’
Tell the truth? Yes, Emily was right. But as far as she could tell, it was a furtive, lying business altogether. All her success in life had been based upon a deception, and now – oh, God! – they had found a child’s skeleton buried in the garden of that hateful, gloomy house. What did that portend? Adrian knew nothing of her secret.
She had no interest whatever in her past. She was wrapped up in her husband and her children, and this beautiful modern house, which had a bathroom, and water plumbed to the kitchen taps instead of to a hand-pump over the sink. And she loved her wise little maid, who had long ago become her confidante. None of this must be challenged or changed.
Towards eleven o’clock, a heavily built man in a brown suit with matching blocker walked up the path of the Robinsons’ house, and knocked on the door. Emily, who was looking out of the landing window, saw the man, and hurried down the stairs to answer the door. Maybe he was from the gas company, or perhaps he was a new shopkeeper drumming up trade. She’d certainly never seen him before.
When she opened the door, she saw that a uniformed constable was standing at the garden gate, and her stomach turned over in alarm. The man held up some kind of card for her to read, and said that he was Detective Inspector Jackson of the Warwickshire Constabulary. He had come to see Mrs Helen Robinson, and would brook no denial. Emily made no reply, but led Jackson to the back sitting room, where Mrs Robinson was sitting on a sofa, reading the paper. She announced the visitor, and left the room, closing the door behind her.
Jackson had come prepared to attack and if necessary intimidate. This lady looked to be a nice, attractive person, but the time for prevarication had passed.
‘You are Mrs Helen Robinson, née Walsh, also known as Helen Paget?’ he said, and saw the colour drain from the woman’s face. ‘I believe you to be an imposter, and that, as a child of eleven, you collaborated with others to take the place of the true Helen Paget, who was then murdered. Recently, the skeleton of that poor child was discovered, and those pathetic remains lie exposed for the world to see, crying aloud for vengeance—’
Helen Robinson rose from the sofa with a cry of anguish, putting up a hand as though to ward off Jackson’s denunciation. At the same time the door was flung open, and Emily came into the room. She rushed to her mistress’s side and gently persuaded her to sit down again. Helen Robinson pulled the girl down beside her on the sofa, and held her hand. The mistress had burst into tears, but the maid, dry-eyed, stared at Jackson with unconcealed defiance.
‘A fine man you are,’ said the maid, ‘coming into a lady’s house and frightening her while her husband’s away at work. What have you been saying to her? I tell you, I’ll not leave her alone with you in this room. Why have you stood a policeman at the gate? Do you think this is a den of thieves?’
Jackson wilted under the young girl’s diatribe. It was always like this. Bottomley could wheedle any information he wanted from girls and women, but he, Jackson, always managed to create scenes like this. He must calm this girl down, otherwise he would fail in the purpose of his visit, which was simply to hear Helen Robinson’s childhood story.
Still clutching her maid’s hand, Mrs Robinson made a tremendous effort to master her fear before speaking to Jackson.
‘What do you want of me?’ she asked quietly. ‘Are you saying that I am a murderess? You accuse me of collusion. I tell you, I knew nothing of this other child. I never saw such a child. And I was only eleven years old when I went to that hateful place.’ She repeated her original question: ‘What do you want of me?’
Jackson sat down in an armchair facing the sofa, and the action seemed to lessen his intimidating air. He smiled at the two women, and some of the tension began to be leached from the air.
‘I want you to tell me the truth about your origins, Mrs Robinson,’ he said, ‘and I want you to tell me all you remember about your visit to Mayfield Court over thirty years ago. I have not accused you of murder – no, certainly not that. But I know that you are guilty of collusion in a deception, and that you must have been willing to pass yourself off as the child Helen Paget, who was then murdered. Tell me all.’
‘My husband knows nothing of all this,’ whispered Helen Robinson. ‘Must he be told? And will you arrest me?’
‘You were only a child at the time of this murder,’ Jackson replied. ‘If you tell me all, without deceit or subterfuge, I will keep your story confidential, and will take no further action. Your husband need never know. As for you, young lady,’ he continued, looking sternly at young Emily, ‘I’d advise you to keep a civil tongue in your head. Meanwhile, if your mistress is agreeable, you can stay to hear what she has to say.’
Jackson saw how the mistress clasped her maid’s hand once more to indicate that she was to stay. There was obviously a strong bond between the two. Helen Robinson released Emily’s hand, clasped her own hands in her lap, and after a few moments’ silence, she began to tell Jackson her story.
‘My name, in the days of which you speak, was Margaret Gates. I lived with my mother, Beulah, in a cottage on the fringes of the village of Newham Ford, a few miles to the south of Bicester. Mother was a seamstress, employed by a lady of quality, a Mrs Arabella Paget, who lived in a house in the main street of the village. I had known her since I was a very little girl, Mr Jackson, as I often accompanied my mother on visits to return the sheets and pillowcases that she had hemmed for Mrs Paget.’
‘Was there a Mr Paget?’ asked Jackson.
‘There was. I was afraid of him, because he was vaguely menacing – or so he seemed to me. He went completely in awe of Mrs Paget, who was a handsome, well-educated woman. Mrs Paget had two young children by her first husband, a boy and a girl. I believe they were away at school somewhere, or living with a relative. She had known Mr Paget as a friend, and married him very soon after her first husband’s death.
‘Mother was very poor, her husband – my father – having died of drink when I was two years old. He was an agricultural labourer, she told me, kindly enough in his way, but a slave to gin. Mother eked out a living by her sewing, and by bouts of domestic service in the neighbourhood.
‘I went to the village school, and very soon showed evidence of great natural ability for learning. I could read and write by the time I was six, and the schoolmaster declared that there was nothing much more that he could teach me by my ninth year. He was a good, devoted man, who gave me many books to read, and encouraged me to write essays and stories. He gave me a dictionary, I remember, and I would spend hours looking up words, and pondering over their meanings. Of course, I was destined, like my mother, for humble service, and neither of us thought otherwise. People of our class were not born to aspire to things beyond our station.
‘And then, in the summer of the year 1864, when I was just eleven years old, Mrs Paget called upon us in our cottage – a thing that she had never done before – and told my mother that she and her husband were moving to a house called Mayfield Court, in Warwickshire. “I shall have no further need
of your services, Mrs Gates”, she said, “but I am going to make you a proposition which you would be very foolish to refuse.”
‘Mrs Paget turned towards me, where I was sitting on a stool beside the fireplace. She gave me such a long, appraising look that I became embarrassed, and turned away in confusion. “Margaret”, she said, “I hear from the schoolmaster here that you have become an exceptional scholar. How would you like to go to a first-rate private school for girls, with all your fees and expenses paid?”
‘I heard my mother gasp in surprise, and from the look of joy on her face I knew what my answer to Mrs Paget should be. “I should like it more than anything else in the word, ma’am”, I said, and you’ll understand, Mr Jackson, that I spoke with utter sincerity. “Well”, said Mrs Paget, “here is what you must do. It involves telling a little fib, and sticking to the story that I shall tell you. You, Margaret, will call yourself Helen Paget, and when the time comes, I myself will school you in what you have to say and do. In return, you will go to one of the best girls’ schools in England. You will be able to see your mother during the holiday periods, but you must keep her identity a close secret. Will you do this?”
‘What else could I say, Mr Jackson, but “yes”? I did not like Mrs Paget – she seemed to me to be a cold, heartless woman – but I had no intention of thwarting her in her desires. She was offering me a way of escape from a life of rural drudgery.
‘Then she turned to my mother. “Mrs Gates”, she said, “I will tell you also what I want you to do when the time is ripe. And as a reward for your co-operation, I will give you three hundred pounds in sovereigns.” And there and then, she went out to her carriage, and bade her coachman to bring in a valise, which contained the fortune in sovereigns that she had promised my mother.’
Mrs Robinson paused for a moment. All her previous agitation had disappeared. Telling her story evidently had a cathartic effect. Emily, the maid, sat round-eyed beside her. Jackson, too, seemed lost in thought.
‘What happened next, Mrs Robinson?’ he asked.
‘What I have told you, Mr Jackson, occurred in the late August of 1864. On the twentieth of October, Mrs Paget called upon us again. We were to travel in a hired coach on the twenty-sixth of the month to the village of Mayfield, and stay in a cottage set in a coppice on the far side of the road from Mayfield Court. It would be rough and ready, she said, but we would only be there for a couple of days. Then I was to be “spirited away” – those were the words she used – to my new school, and my new life. I was overjoyed, and forgot myself as far as to try to hug my benefactress. But she put me firmly aside. As I have told you, she was a cold, distant woman.
‘After this, she began to teach us what we had to say. She had written it all down, and made us repeat what she had written until we were word-perfect. Then she burnt the paper in the flame of the candle which was lit on the mantelpiece. What she said, was—’
‘Let me guess what she told you to say,’ said Jackson. He was tremendously excited. Not only did all this mean that the skeletal remains at Mayfield were indeed those of the true Helen Paget, but that the woman whom Mrs Robinson was describing was surely her murderess. He began to speak, and it was soon his turn to be the object of Emily’s round-eyed wonder.
‘She told you to call yourself Helen Paget, and if anyone questioned you in the future, to say that your parents, whose name was Walsh, had both died. You were being looked after by relatives, who were anxious that you should receive first-rate schooling, and wished you to adopt their name of Paget. You were to tell anyone who enquired that you had travelled by coach to Mayfield Court, and that you had stayed there for one night, before being sent to school. In fact, you never set foot in Mayfield Court, did you?’
‘I did not. Mother and I arrived at the secluded cottage on the twenty-sixth, and found that it had been provisioned ready for our arrival. Mrs Paget had told me to say to anyone who asked me questions in the future that I didn’t like Mayfield Court, and that I didn’t like her! She laughed when she said this, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. She told me the name “Rose Potter”, and told me that she was the housekeeper at Mayfield. I was to say that I liked her, because she was kindly and compassionate. But I never saw Mayfield Court, and I never saw the woman called Rose Potter.’
‘But you met her later, didn’t you? About ten years ago.’
‘Yes, I did. It was pure coincidence, and I won’t tire you with explaining how the meeting came about. She introduced herself to me, and of course, although I had never seen her in my life, I pretended to recognize her. For her part, she seemed quite happy to accept me for who I was. I gave her my card, and we parted quite amicably. She was a pleasant, good-natured woman.’
‘And then, I suppose,’ said Jackson, ‘the night of the twenty-eighth came, and you were told to get ready to leave. A coach came late that night to convey you to Meadowfield School. You said farewell to your mama and got into the coach. Did it stand on a main road?’
‘No, it was waiting in a narrow lane near the cottage where we were staying. As we moved away, the branches of the trees scraped the roof.’
So Bottomley’s old gypsy, Solomon Williams, had been right. The coach had been there, but not on the Warwick Road. How clever that woman had been to keep the two Helens apart! Rose Potter would have known nothing about the whole matter, and was innocent of any complicity. Meanwhile—
Jackson rose from his chair, and looked down at mistress and maid. There was nothing that he could do to make this woman atone for her complicity in a great and wicked deceit. She had been a child – a little girl – who had seen the road to freedom beckoning, and had seized the means of stepping out on to that road. But something had to be said, if only for the dead child Helen’s sake.
‘Thank you for telling me your story, Mrs Robinson,’ he said. ‘You were only a child in those far-off days, and cannot be held culpable. Besides, I don’t suppose you knew that there was a real Helen Paget, also aged eleven, and that on the night when you set off for your new life, that other Helen was sleeping in a first-floor bedroom at Mayfield Court.
‘As your carriage rattled away to take you to a new life, the real Helen was either poisoned or smothered, and her dead body was thrust into a crevice in a ruined wall in the garden. Helen Paget, aged eleven, murdered by your benefactor, and concealed, still in her nightdress, for the rats to gnaw until she became the little skeleton that Mr Bottomley discovered only days ago. I will prefer no charges against you, but I leave that part of your story for you to ponder on in future years.’
Minutes later, the now-subdued Emily was showing Jackson out. They could both hear the hysterical sobbing of Mrs Helen Robinson in the sitting room.
‘You’re close to your mistress, aren’t you?’ he said gently to the maid.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, when she’s recovered, tell her to confess the whole story to her husband. He’ll know that something’s wrong as soon as he comes home. Let there be an end to ancient secrets. For his sake, as well as hers, she must tell him all.’
‘Bella, my dear!’ cried Sir Leopold Carteret, looking up from his newspaper. ‘So you’re back. It’s been ten days. How— How was Town at this time of year?’
Sir Leopold Carteret regarded his wife with unconditional affection. What would he have ever done without her? What a splendid woman she was, with enough personality to spare for both of them. He’d always been a faded sort of man, but Bella was the kind of person who created a stir wherever she went.
It was impossible to believe that she was sixty-five. Her expertly coiffeured hair was still dark, and her complexion flawless. Lady Carteret moved in the highest echelons of county society, and sat on many committees. She had always been ruthless about anything, or anyone, standing in the way of her ambitions, which made her a valuable addition to standing committees, and to the more progressive Boards of Guardians. He and she were bound together by ties of affection, and by their knowledge of things long forgot
ten, and known only to them.
Of her life before their marriage he knew only what she had chosen to tell him, and he was content with that. From unguarded remarks that she had made during their twenty years together he gathered that she had been married before, but he never alluded to the matter. It was none of his concern.
‘Town, Leo,’ said Lady Carteret, standing in her outdoor clothes at the parlour window, ‘was hot, humid, and decidedly not the place to be in August. There was absolutely no one there. Still, my business there was soon concluded, which gave me time for a few pleasant visits. I lunched with Lady Kennedy last Saturday, and she regaled me with some of the latest gossip from Court. And yesterday I was able to go to the Army and Navy Stores, and then to Harrod’s.’
Lady Carteret looked out of the window and gave a little hiss of annoyance.
‘Hopkins,’ she said, ‘will you see that those parcels are taken upstairs immediately? And tell Andrews to move the carriage off the front drive at once. I see no point in having a coach house if we leave our conveyances exposed like that to vulgar view. And I’d like some tea – and biscuits, or cake, or something. See to it, will you?’
The butler gathered up the parcels and left the parlour. Lady Carteret removed her outer coat and flung it across the back of a sofa. She sat down beside her husband, and gently removed his newspaper from his lap. She put it down beside her on the carpet.
‘And now, Leo, what, if anything, has been happening here since I went away? Do tell me. That is, if you can drag yourself away from your newspaper for five minutes.’
‘If you don’t like me reading The Times, dear, I can always change to The Morning Post. Was Dr Morrison happy about the arrangements?’
Bella Carteret laughed, and looked at her husband with a kind of amused regard. It was a way of his to counter a question by asking one himself.
‘What choice does he have? Doctor Morrison has everything in hand, and Lucas will … will see to the matter tomorrow. So what’s happened here since I went up to London?’
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