The Governess (Sisters of Woodside Mysteries Book 1)

by Mary Kingswood

  He was about to laugh at the absurdity of her words, but then the implication of them hit him in full force, like a dousing in icy water. “Even to you?” he said, his voice harsh suddenly. “I did not murder my wife, Annabelle, trust me.” He found he was shaking. If she had the slightest doubt of him—!

  “It is not a matter of trust,” she said, dropping her gaze. “I believe implicitly in your innocence, naturally. Everything I have seen of you, everything I understand of your nature confirms it. But perhaps my judgement is faulty, for which of us is perfect? Or perhaps you are such a persuasive hoaxer that you have convinced everyone of your honour while secretly hiding a black heart. Such things have happened before. I do not know — I cannot know — what is truly in your heart. No one can. Only God sees and understands all. We mere humans must go by appearances only. So although I cannot — I do not believe that you murdered your wife, there is still the tiniest sliver of doubt in my mind, and so it will always be, until the true murderer is unmasked. Forgive me, but it cannot be otherwise.”

  He was silent for a long time, as rage tore through him. How could she doubt him? And how could they possibly marry with such mistrust hanging between them? It was impossible… She was lost to him now… And then his anger melted into grief. She would never be his, never sweeten his life and walk by his side through the years to come. His delightful daydream fizzled into nothing.

  “Allan…” she said timidly, and to his surprise she reached out and willingly took his hand. “There is only one way to get past this obstacle, and that is to find out who truly killed your wife. I will do everything in my power to help, because only thus can we move forward and begin to consider the future.”

  “But what can anyone do?” he said. “It is up to Willerton-Forbes now. If he decides that I am a murderer—”

  “Then we must help him to decide otherwise,” she said crisply. “And we must share whatever we find out ourselves, and bring our own powers of logic to bear on the problem, as we have done here. I believe in your innocence, Allan, but I want to prove it, too.”

  He nodded, and gave her a tremulous smile, but he had never felt so helpless in his life.

  ~~~~~

  The next day, Annabelle was in the schoolroom with the girls, working on some Latin with Dorothea, while Florence and Felicity practised scales on the pianoforte. For several days the heat had infected them with summer torpor and little had been achieved, but today the skies were grey and damp, and they all had more energy for their labours.

  A sharp rat-tat-tat on the door was followed by the smiling face of Captain Edgerton, who had returned from one of his mysterious journeys the day before. “Miss Winterton. Lady Dorothea. Lady Florence. Lady Frederica.” He executed ostentatious bows to each in turn. “My deepest apologies for the disruption, but might I have a word with you outside, Miss Winterton?”

  She followed him out onto the landing.

  His voice dropped, abruptly becoming serious. “We have Miss Hancock here, the late Lady Brackenwood’s lady’s maid, but she will not agree to be interviewed by three gentlemen without a lady present. I wonder if—?”

  “Of course, but… would it not be better to call upon someone Miss Hancock knows? She must have friends amongst the staff.”

  “You are the only person we can be sure has no connection to the death of Lady Brackenwood.”

  For an instant she was taken aback. The only person? Surely not. But there was no time to consider what his words might mean. “Very well, then. How long will this take?”

  “I cannot say. Several hours, perhaps.”

  “Give me a few minutes to arrange for the nurse to keep an eye on the girls, and then I shall be at your disposal, Captain.”

  And for once the serious face remained, and he had no flippant answer to make.

  Miss Hancock was a solidly built woman approaching fifty, with the first hints of grey in her hair. She nodded curtly to Annabelle as they were introduced, her eyes raking her up and down.

  “The governess, eh?” she said with a sniff. “I wouldn’t have guessed by your appearance.”

  “Miss Winterton is a gentleman’s daughter,” Captain Edgerton said. “Lord Brackenwood is very fortunate to have engaged her services.”

  Miss Hancock sniffed again, then settled herself in the chair indicated by Mr Willerton-Forbes. Captain Edgerton placed a chair for Annabelle nearby, arranged, she noted with interest, so that she could observe Miss Hancock’s face. Then he himself lolled in the window seat, apart yet watching with keen interest. Mr Neate, the lawyer’s valet and secretary, sat at one end of the table, his pen poised over the paper to record Miss Hancock’s words.

  “Miss Hancock,” Mr Willerton-Forbes began, “pray tell us first about your employment. You had been with Lady Brackenwood for a number of years, I understand.”

  “Since she was born,” Miss Hancock said, lifting her chin proudly. “I was a nursery maid, just fourteen years old, when Miss Eloise was born, and never left her. Nursery maid and chamber maid for twelve years, then her personal maid after that.”

  “Would you say you were friends?”

  “Friends? Not my place to be friends with my mistress,” she said with another sniff. She had a strong Welsh accent, and Annabelle wondered if the late Lady Brackenwood had had a hint of it too, despite her gentler birth.

  “But you were loyal to her,” the lawyer said. Miss Hancock inclined her head regally. “Yet she was about to turn you off for stealing from her.”

  “Ha! Not her!” Miss Hancock said, a grim smile on her face. “She knew me better than that. I’d never steal from her. That were just Mrs Hale misunderstanding.”

  “Oh? Yet she found you with Lady Brackenwood’s purse open and the coins in your hand.”

  Miss Hancock sighed heavily and rolled her eyes, as if irritated by some particularly unintelligent child. “Of course I had her purse in my hand. I took care of all her money. If she wanted to buy something, I took the coins for it and brought the change back later. She never left Charlsby, poor lady, her health being so uncertain. So I used to do all her shopping for her.”

  “So why did Mrs Hale think you were stealing?” the lawyer said blandly.

  “How should I know? You should ask her. She’s always had it in for me, although I don’t know why. I’ve never done anything to her.”

  “So you were not in any fear of being turned off?”

  Miss Hancock gave a bark of mirthless laughter. “Never! Miss Eloise couldn’t manage without me, she said so often enough. ‘You’re indispensable, Lena,’ she’d say to me. ‘Quite indispensable.’ No, she’d never have turned me off.”

  “So you were very much in her confidence, I suppose?” Mr Willerton-Forbes said.

  “Of course!”

  “You must have been a great comfort to her ladyship during her years of illness,” he said.

  Miss Hancock smiled knowingly. “Ah, her illness! She wasn’t so ill as all that, not when she didn’t want to be. If it was something his lordship wanted, or the dowager, no, Miss Eloise was too ill for that. But if it was something she wanted to do, she’d be well enough. Not that she was putting it on, or anything of the sort. It was just that certain things weighed on her, and she could barely leave her room then.”

  “We have been told that she was too much of an invalid to pay calls or to entertain, is that correct?”

  “That’s true enough. Sometimes callers came here, but she gave up on returning their calls. She’d be in bed for a week afterwards. She never liked the gentry round about. They looked down on her, they did. Talked about her behind her back. Said she wasn’t fit to be a countess. Spiteful, they were. And the London folk were worse. No, she kept herself to herself, that was the way she liked it. Nice and peaceful, and no one wearing her out. But she’d go for long walks through the woods. There were days when she was well enough for that. Out for hours, she’d be, and come back with roses in her cheeks, looking as lovely as a girl. But this house got her d
own, what with the dowager telling her she’d failed her husband, and him not caring tuppence about her, and the servants whispering about her. That’s what made her ill. She’d be lying on her daybed for hours, the curtains drawn against the sun. Poor lady! She had a terrible life.”

  “Were you familiar with her medicines?”

  “Oh, no. She saw to all that herself. Well, her and Dr Wilcox. She never stuck to what he prescribed, though. She’d take something for a day or two, then decide it wasn’t working or she felt better, so she’d leave off that one. Then, a week or two later, there’d be something else she’d try. She used to send away for things, too. Tonics and such like advertised in the London Post or the Chester Chronicle. There were always things arriving in the mail.”

  “Do you recognise this bottle?” Mr Willerton-Forbes said, dipping into a drawer and producing the bottle labelled in Lady Brackenwood’s own hand.

  Miss Hancock sniffed disparagingly. “I never took no notice of such things. If she left them out, I’d tidy them away so the maids didn’t run off with them. They’re a light-fingered lot, they’d lift anything not nailed down, they would.”

  “So you have no idea what she was taking just before she died?”

  Miss Hancock shook her head firmly.

  Mr Willerton-Forbes sighed, and obviously decided to change tack, for he said, “How did Lady Brackenwood get along with her husband?”

  “Oh, him! She had no time for him. Not much of a man, she said. Of course, he married her for her money, everyone knew that. Set himself up nicely, he did, but he never cared what happened to her. I’m sure he was glad when she died. Mind you, I’ll say this for him, he did his duty by her as a husband, right to the end.”

  “Did he?” Mr Willerton-Forbes said in neutral tones.

  “Aye, that he did. Got her with child again, didn’t he?”

  “Really? No one else has mentioned such a possibility,” the lawyer said, with an edge of surprise in his voice.

  “Well, she never said nothing about it, but a mistress can’t hide that sort of thing from her own lady’s maid. I knew, all right. Miss Eloise was with child when she died.”

  19: A Walk In The Woods

  Mr Willerton-Forbes and Captain Edgerton both raised their eyebrows, exchanging surprised glances. Mr Neate’s pen hovered in mid-air, a drip of ink poised to fall and blot the page.

  Annabelle wondered at their surprise. Despite the description of her as an invalid, Lady Brackenwood did not sound terribly ill, and she could not have been much above thirty. It was hardly surprising, then, that she had been blessed with another child. Did it make a difference to the question of murder? Not if no one knew about it, perhaps. But if Allan had known… yes, that would take him off the lawyer’s list, surely? He could hardly be suspected of killing his unborn child. But George…

  No, that was foolish. Even if George were minded to dispose of a threat to his inheritance, the murder of Eloise would merely free Allan to marry again. It was illogical. But then murder was illogical. Who would care so passionately that they would kill? And what could arouse such feelings? Was anything worth the risk of being hanged?

  “Miss Hancock, that is all we wish to discuss with you for the moment, but we shall have more questions, I am sure. Are you prepared to stay here for a few days?”

  “Aye, my new mistress is very happy for me to assist you gentlemen. I can stay until Monday next, if required.”

  “Thank you. You may go now. And Miss Winterton, also. Thank you both for so graciously giving us your time.”

  Annabelle found herself unexpectedly free. Finding that the girls had gone out for a walk with the nurse, she took the opportunity to do the same and clear her mind after the sourness of the maid’s words. Such an unpleasant woman! She liked no one, and had little respect even for her own mistress. Perhaps she truly was stealing from Lady Brackenwood, and undoubtedly she listened at keyholes and picked up all sorts of hearsay and lies. Allan had said something of the sort — that Lady Brackenwood sent her maid to dig up rumours. And now, presumably, she would relate everything about the investigation to her new mistress and the story would be everywhere.

  She walked briskly across the lawns and across the bridge between the two lakes. Somewhere around the lower lake the girls’ high voices could be heard, but they were hidden by the shrubbery. Smiling, she walked on, across the park, the wet grass soaking her boots, and up to the woods. The trees still dripped after the rain and the air was humid but pleasantly cool.

  The exercise was refreshing but it did not succeed in its objective. Her head was still full of the interview she had witnessed, and the impression it gave her of the late Lady Brackenwood as a sad, disappointed woman, finding very little to enjoy in her life. Her husband, her mother-in-law, the neighbours — all had displeased her. Mr Willerton-Forbes had not enquired into Lady Brackenwood’s feelings for her daughters, but then he had read her schoolroom notebooks too, and could see for himself how little patience she had with them. No, she was not a maternal woman.

  Yet she had conceived another child, and perhaps it would have been the son that everyone expected of her. Allan had said that he was quite content with George as his heir, and Annabelle believed him, but still, he would have been pleased to have a son of his own, surely? And she wondered again if he had known about the child. The maid thought she was the only one to know, but perhaps Eloise had told her husband? It would be perfectly natural to do so. And if he had known, then no one could suspect him of murdering his wife. But if he had not known, then he must stay on the list…

  With these thoughts, a terrible idea struck her. She did not believe for one moment that Allan had murdered his wife, but supposing he had? Her stomach churned at the thought, but she had to consider it dispassionately. If he had murdered his wife, then he could not possibly have known that his wife was with child. No man could kill his own child. If he now discovered that there had been a child, what would he do? An innocent man would be overwhelmed by grief for the loss of his unborn child, but a guilty man would at once see that all he had to do to demonstrate his innocence was to claim that he had, in fact, known of it.

  And, understanding this, she knew that she had to tell Allan of this new discovery and see how he responded. If he were grief-stricken, she would know once and for all that he was innocent of the dreadful accusation levelled at him, and she would be free of this ache inside her whenever she saw him. It was the horridest feeling in the world, wanting to trust a man absolutely, yet having no notion whether he was a good man or a murderer. She wanted so badly to put her faith in him, to surrender her freedom to him… to surrender her heart. More than anything in the world, she wanted him to be a man of honour, worthy of her confidence. Worthy of her hand and her love.

  It was so difficult.

  She had been so engrossed in her own thoughts that she had walked further than she had ever ventured before. She had reached the end of the woods that fringed the estate, and had come to the fields that separated it from the village of Charlsby Wooton. A little distance to her right, the lane to the village wound through the fields. To her left, she could see the smoky haze of Kenford away in the distance. Just in front of her was a small cottage, seemingly abandoned, for its garden was overgrown and there were no signs of habitation — no smoke from the chimneys, no chickens scratching in the dirt, no washing laid out to dry. Yet the path from gate to front door was free of weeds, and there were recent hoof prints in the muddy track that connected the cottage to the lane.

  And the garden was ablaze with familiar pink flowers. She could reach over the wall and pluck them at will to confirm that, as she had suspected, this was the flower dried and preserved so many times in Lady Brackenwood’s notebooks. So she had come here, then. Miss Hancock had said that her mistress liked to take long walks, and this place, clearly, was one that she visited, picking a flower or two as she passed by as a reminder of a pleasant outing, perhaps.

  Annabelle picked a large bunch of
the flowers to take back to the house. They would brighten up the schoolroom, and the girls could practise their skills with the brush and paint them. She toyed with the idea of walking back by the lane, but decided it would be too muddy after the rain and turned instead to retrace her steps through the woods.

  She had not gone far when a rustling in the undergrowth was followed by the familiar shape of a panting dog. He came straight up to her and flopped at her feet.

  “Hello, Dusty!” She crouched down to pat the creature, who was immediately joined by his fellows, bouncing around her excitedly. “Blackie, Lively, good day to you. Are you out with Henderson today or—”

  She had her answer immediately, and it was not Henderson the under-groom who was smiling down at her with that look on his face that made her rather flustered.

  “Good afternoon, Miss Winterton. I see you have been past Drummond’s Cottage.”

  “Good afternoon, Lord Brackenwood.” She jumped up and dipped a curtsy. “Drummond’s Cottage? Oh, the flowers! I have never been there before and they were so pretty… Mr Drummond will not mind, I hope. There were so many…”

  He laughed and shook his head. “He will not mind. He has been dead these… oh, twenty years or more. The original Mr Drummond was gamekeeper to the estate, but the last of that name was assistant to Mr Wilcox’s predecessor and bequeathed him the cottage when he died.”

  “So Mr Wilcox owns it now?” He nodded and she pondered that. “But no one lives in it?”

  To her surprise, he went rather pink, but shook his head. “There was a woman living there for a while but she left a few years ago. Are you walking back to the house? I am just about to turn back myself, so perhaps we may walk together?”

  She acceded to it, and he offered his arm. It was agreeable strolling along together in that comfortable way. He was just the right height for her, she decided, not so tall that she had to twist her neck to look at him, yet tall enough to be a comfortable support. The dogs bounded on ahead, snuffling in the undergrowth, and digging through the half-rotted heaps of last year’s leaves. This was how it would be, she supposed, when she was his wife — pleasant walks in the woods, then home in time to dress for dinner and an evening when she would no longer have to sit in the corner with her stitchery, but could play cards if she wished or simply sit with a book. She heaved a sigh of pleasure.