The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  I felt no enthusiasm for eating my supper with Tilly eyeing me across the table as though I were a black-beetle. Ann noticed her tone, and when the maid had gone, commented apologetically that Tilly could be difficult sometimes.

  “She is becoming a worry. She isn’t very much use to me now, I’m afraid. Her eyesight isn’t what it was. She can see things in the distance but she can’t do much sewing. I need another maid, but we just can’t afford another set of wages, not if we’re to pay school fees for the boys. They really are going to school—did you know?”

  “Mr. Mew said something about it when I arrived.”

  “I think it will be good for them, but we have to find the money somehow, and without throwing Tilly out. She has no family. Besides, well, she’s one of us. Catholic, I mean.”

  I wasn’t sure what to say in answer, but Henry, who was down on the floor with his bricks, saved me the trouble by choosing that moment to try to stand upright, and bumping his head on the corner of a table in the process. He sat down again, roaring.

  “He’s tired,” Ann said. “I’ll see to them.” She gathered up both children and departed upstairs, leaving me to stitch and think in solitude.

  Theading a fresh needle, I shook out the blackwork doublet and took the split seam between finger and thumb to get it straight. It was a well-worn but useful garment, warmly quilted for winter, and it had a couple of practical inside pockets. Something, paper or parchment, crackled in one of them.

  I pulled it out at once and looked at it, hoping, improbably, that I had found a letter to Mason from Mary Stuart, which would answer all my questions.

  I hadn’t, of course. It was a very ordinary piece of paper, folded in quarters, and I saw at once that it wasn’t a letter, just a bill, much creased and written in a florid hand, all loops and swirls, which wasn’t easy to read. The words “To Master Barnabas Mew” were, however, written quite clearly across the top, and this seemed odd. Why should a bill to be paid by Barnabas Mew turn up in Mason’s pockets? It wasn’t in Mason’s writing, which I had seen during my unsuccessful visit to his study. Mason’s hand was neat and sparse and nothing at all like this.

  I moved to a seat nearer the window and examined my find more closely. I made out at length that the bill was for the unusual commodities of copper and tin in bars, as raw materials. The supplier’s name meant nothing to me and there was no address, but the amounts supplied were astounding.

  Sir Thomas Gresham, the financier for whom Gerald had worked, had been sent to Antwerp ostensibly to raise loans for Queen Elizabeth from Netherlands bankers, and to improve her credit standing by any means he could. He had also, under the counter as it were, robbed the Netherlands treasuries by whatever means came to hand, justifying this on the grounds that as a result of various bygone dynastic marriages, the Netherlands were under Spanish and therefore enemy control. They were fair game.

  Gerald had not only served Gresham by finding individuals who could be bribed or blackmailed into forging requisitions to get valuables out of vaults, or divert them before they ever reached the vaults in the first place. He had also, on occasion, handled the stolen goods. More than once, we had had them hidden in our lodgings. Not all of them were in the form of precious metal: we had once hidden a consignment of twenty copper and fifteen tin ingots under our bed for three nights. I knew what such ingots looked like.

  Barnabas Mew was a clockmaker and no doubt used all kinds of metal in his work. He would need these two to create bronze. Normally, however, he would make his clocks on commission and the customer would supply the materials. Mew might keep a modest supply of his own, but not twenty bars of copper and another twenty of tin! Even small-sized bars would be excessive.

  Look out for oddities and coincidences, Cecil had said. I had certainly found them. I had found Leonard Mason frightening his wife with a gliding engine and sending Crichton to buy tapestries which Lockhill couldn’t afford, and both of them lying about it. And Barnabas Mew, clockmaker, of Windsor, where Jackdaw had died, was regularly visiting Lockhill, apparently engaged in large-scale dealings in copper and tin, and his supplier’s bills were turning up in Mason’s pockets.

  There were so many puzzles and they seemed so absurd that I felt a strong impulse to go to the stables for a handful of straw, thread it through my hair and sing “hey nonny no” while dancing dementedly through the topiary garden. Well, why not? It would be no more ridiculous than Mason’s gliders.

  As usual, I was wearing a gown with a hidden pocket and carrying my lock-picks, slate and dagger. I took out the slate and noted the salient points of Mew’s extraordinary bill. I put the letter back where I had found it and went on with my sewing. I would finish it and hand it to Ann before supper. Then I must put my mind to other matters. Tomorrow, no matter how much the prospect scared me, I would search Mason’s study.

  Even if I had to lock half the household in cupboards to keep them out of my way.

  • • •

  Occasionally, just occasionally, the angels smile, even on those who augment their incomes by inspecting other people’s belongings. Barnabas Mew left the following morning, directly after breakfast. Over breakfast, he said that he had urgent work awaiting him, although he hoped to make another visit to coincide with that of the boys’ prospective schoolmaster. “I can’t help but take an interest, Mr. Mason. I hope I’ll be a welcome guest.”

  “Any time, any time. I may be ready to launch my glider by then. I know you’d like to see that,” Mason assured him. He then announced that he intended to spend the morning in his workshop. “Mew won’t be here, so Crichton will have to help me. Send for him, will you, Ann? The boys can spend the morning riding round the fields and inspecting them for me, and the girls can have an extra sewing lesson, perhaps.”

  Ann’s face became bleak at the mention of the glider, but I secretly rejoiced, and rejoiced even more when she said, “Very well, if Ursula agrees. I shall be much occupied. Tilly had a relapse this morning and cannot leave her bed. She can hardly get her breath, and she has such pains in her bones. She did too much yesterday.”

  “Indeed?” I said. Tilly had duly taken supper with us, and spent the meal glowering at me across the table. I wondered if intense glowering qualified as doing too much.

  “I must take her some food and sit with her,” Ann said. “And then I really must spend some time in my stillroom. Ursula, I depend on you to look after the girls.”

  They would all be out of the way, the girls included. I would find something to occupy them. Mason’s study would be empty. The maids wouldn’t go there to dust because only Ann was allowed to do that, and Ann would be busy. I assured Ann that she could depend on me.

  The children had breakfasted early and gone to await their tutor in the schoolroom. Straight after breakfast I went to tell them of the new arrangements, and then went to find Brockley.

  Dale was engaged in shaking out the clothes which had become creased in the saddlebags during our journey back to Lockhill, so I was on my own. Capricious fate at this point decided not to make my life too easy. I found the stableyard empty and made for the stable to see if Brockley were there. Thomas, the lanky groom, emerged from it just as I got there.

  “Good day to you, Mistress Blanchard,” said Thomas. “You’re looking truly bonny this morning.” Then, outrageously, he put an arm round me and attempted to kiss me. I resisted indignantly, keeping my mouth tight shut against his attempts to push his tongue into it, and trying to pull myself out of his grasp. He held on, so I stamped hard on his instep. He was wearing boots, but they were made of some kind of soft hide, and when I ground my heel into his left foot at the point where the toes joined on to it, he hastily let go.

  “Now, now. There’s no need for that.”

  “There’s every need for it. How dare you? If I report you to Mr. Mason, you’ll lose your position.”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so,” said Thomas easily, although I was happy to see that his left foot clearly pained him.
“It’s not a crime to steal a kiss, not from a woman who’s free with them. We’ve all heard the gossip.”

  “The what?”

  “Not that I’m blaming you, mind, don’t you go thinking that. You’re a lovely wench and all alone in the world, I hear, and you’ve your longings, like we all have. And you can do better than make do with a stiff-faced middle-aged manservant.”

  “Make do with a . . . ? What gossip?”

  “It was all round the house before you got here. Mr. Mason didn’t want you to come, but his good lady needed a hand with the girls and she said she didn’t believe the talk. You’d been here before, hadn’t you? She met you then.”

  “What talk? Who’s been saying these things about me?”

  “That I wouldn’t know, but said they certainly were.” Thomas grinned. “And since you’ve been here, well, we’ve all noticed how thick you are with Brockley. Redman saw you coming out of an upstairs room together, with that kind of look on your faces, or so he said. A bit hard on your maid, perhaps, having to share her husband, but then you’re a temptation for him and no mistake.”

  So Mason had tried to stop me from coming to Lockhill, and that had been his excuse for Ann’s benefit. He had pretended to have heard gossip that I was a woman of poor morals. Ann, evidently, had used her own judgement and resisted, but the beastly innuendoes had gone all through the household.

  “See here, Thomas, you shouldn’t pay heed to idle talk. Brockley is my manservant and nothing more. Redman should be ashamed of himself, making up such scandalous tales. Don’t you dare ever lay a hand on me again. Be good enough to spread the news round the household that I’m not quite the lightskirt they think. Where is Brockley, may I ask?”

  “Fetching the ponies from the meadow for the lads to ride.”

  “Good,” I snapped. “I thought,” I added as I stepped away from him, “that you were after Jennet. It seems to me that you’re the one who’s too free with your favours! Those who try to snatch too much sometimes end up with nothing.”

  On this virtuous note, I made for the side gate to the meadows, hoping to meet Brockley. To my relief, he was just coming, perched astride one pony and leading the other two. I didn’t mention Thomas’s behaviour to him. It would have made him angry and I didn’t want him distracted from the business in hand, still less getting into a fight. I would be on my guard in future, and I would not go to the stableyard unaccompanied again.

  I told Brockley what I wanted while I helped him put the ponies in their stalls. Then I went back to the house, making sure I didn’t catch Thomas’s eye on the way.

  Presently, when the boys had gone to saddle up, I settled the girls in our attic room. I set each of them a task and told them that I had an important letter to write.

  “Pen, once again, I leave you in charge of your sisters. Set them a good example, now. I’ll be back within the hour.”

  So much for the girls. I went down to my own chamber and looked out through the window, across the yew garden towards the workshop. It had double doors which I could see were wide open. I glimpsed two figures moving about inside. Good. Mason and Crichton were definitely out of the way. I noted with disapproval that Mason was wearing his newly repaired black and white doublet. Hardly the right garment for manual toil, I thought, hoping he wouldn’t burst my painstaking stitches.

  A further stealthy reconnaissance revealed that Ann had gone to her stillroom, Tilly was in bed, and most of the other servants were in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Redman was in the wine-buttery, rearranging casks, and young Edwin Logan was working in the knot garden.

  I went to Crichton’s empty schoolroom, where I found Brockley waiting with Dale. “All right,” I said. “The arrangement as before. I’ll be as quick as I can.”

  This time, as I hurried through the gallery and anteroom, I did not think about being frightened. The task must be performed, and besides, I was so furious with Leonard Mason for telling lies about me, that for the time being rage had drowned fear.

  In moments, I was back in his gloomy study. Once more leaving the door open in case my sentries called, I surveyed the terrain afresh.

  Bookshelves. Map. Gargantuan cupboard. I stepped across the room and took a quick look in the cupboard, which had no lock, just a simple handle on each door. The right-hand side had shelves, packed with more books. I pulled back the other half of the double door and found that the left-hand side was almost empty, except for a couple of cloaks, presumably an insurance against getting chilled in winter, hanging on hooks at the back alongside a nightshirt and tasselled cap, no doubt for the times when Leonard sat late and slept in the anteroom. A pair of fleecy slippers was ranged neatly on the floor beneath.

  Closing the cupboard doors quietly, I went to the desk. It was as tidy as before. The books Leonard was currently studying were mostly either about music or natural history, with a bias towards birds. The boxes, four of them, were still there, and so were the wooden trays. It didn’t seem as if my lock-picks would be needed after all, for of the many things in the study, only the boxes had locks, and their keys were all obligingly in place.

  Trying to be methodical, I picked up the nearest tray. It held a number of papers. The top sheet was headed “Remarks on the Limitations of the Spinet” and consisted of an essay comparing spinets and virginals with stringed instruments such as the violin—“the which, newly introduced in living memory, is remarkable in that a note, once created, can be raised to a crescendo or be changed between loud and soft, whereas those instruments played by keyboard lack this and therefore lack expression.”

  According to Ann and Barnabas, Mason had tried to design a new kind of spinet. The essay went on to discuss ways by which the drawbacks of keyboard instruments might be amended in very technical language with many abbreviations but there was nothing suspicious.

  Leafing through the papers below, I found another essay, this one on the principles behind chiming clocks, and some diagrams of various keyboard instruments, some quite detailed, some very vague, as though Mason had been playing with ideas.

  One showed what seemed to be a keyboard, but the rest of the mechanism was missing except for some arrows. It could represent a spinet, I supposed, with the arrows showing the ways the squills moved to strike the strings. If so, however, the squills moved very oddly. If this were Mason’s attempt at a new design—well, it was certainly new! Nothing here could concern Mary Stuart, anyway.

  I reached the bottom of the pile and found the name Dawson burnt into the wood of the tray. I already knew that Jack Dawson, the drowned “Jackdaw,” had visited Lockhill. Leonard must have begged or bought a few trays from him to use as a filing system. Had Jackdaw overheard Leonard engaged in some kind of compromising conversation? But . . .

  Something scratched at the back of my mind, and then slipped elusively out of reach as I tried to grasp for it. I puzzled over it for a moment, but then gave up and hurried on. I was becoming nervous again. Another tray held drawings of wings, and notes on the flight of birds and the properties of water when poured over curved surfaces; a third held a copy of a lengthy poem in Italian and a half-completed English translation of it. The translation was smooth and poetic; here, Mason was in his natural element. The fourth and last tray contained sheets covered with figures, rough and ready accounts by the look of them.

  I tried the four boxes. One held correspondence, but of the most mundane kind, to do with sales of wool and corn, exchanges of very ordinary family news with a brother in Devon, and a letter from Mildred Cecil, the one which first suggested that I should come to Lockhill. Another box proved to be where the official account ledgers were kept. One held blank paper and one was empty.

  I took a last look round to make sure I had missed nothing. There were no drawers under the desktop, no hidden cupboards. I even ran my fingers over the wall panelling and the map to make sure.

  Once more, something scratched at my mind, something new. Something—surely—to do with that peculiar drawing of the
keyboard. Looking at it again, I was reminded of something, but I couldn’t think what it was. I was still staring at it when footsteps in the anteroom snatched me from my concentration. I spun round, just as Brockley appeared, looking alarmed.

  “Mason’s coming,” he whispered. “I glimpsed him starting up the stairs and now I can hear him coming through the gallery behind me!”

  There was no time to position ourselves innocently in the gallery, so I pulled open the left-hand door of the cupboard and hustled us both inside, drawing the door to after us.

  We were taking a fearful risk. We would have done better to walk out and face Mr. Mason, with some tale or other about searching for something Ann had dropped. A convincing story to account for our presence in the study would have been easier to invent than a convincing story to explain why Mrs. Ursula Blanchard and her manservant Roger Brockley had been found squashed into Leonard Mason’s carved oak press along with his cloaks, slippers and night-rail.

  Yesterday, I had made a private joke about locking the household into cupboards, but if we were caught now, our presence in this one would be no joke at all. I realised this too late, and so did Brockley.

  “We’ve made a mistake. We should have brazened it out,” he whispered.

  “I know, but he’s here,” I breathed.

  Peering through the crack that I had left open, I caught the flash of blackwork on cream satin as Mason came into the study. Then, afraid that the gleam of an eye, a fold of skirt, might be seen, I shrank away to the further corner of the cupboard, pulling one of the cloaks across me.

  “What’s he doing?” Brockley’s words were a thread of speech, close to my ear.

  By the sound of it, Mason was at the desk, rustling papers, and clicking his tongue in an irritated fashion. Tidy though his habits were, it seemed that he couldn’t find what he wanted. Had I left any trace of my search? Disarranged something?