by Joan Smith
“No, Bobby,” I said. “Cut it up.” I noticed he had no knife, nor fork for that matter. No wonder he ate like a savage, if all he had to eat with was a spoon. I cut the meat for him, but when Molly came to take the tray away, I told her I would like proper cutlery for Bobby at the next meal.
“The last girl tried that, miss, but soon gave it up.”
“Bobby is older now. We shall try again.”
“Mogo now?” he asked, as soon as he set down his glass.
“We shall go for a walk first, Bobby.”
This pleased him. He darted off to his room, and was soon back to throw his coat and hat on the floor at my feet. “Pick them up and put them on,” I said firmly.
“Tummy dress,” he ordered.
“Miss Bingham, not Tummy. You are four years old. You shall dress yourself if you want to go out.”
“Tummy dress!” he repeated, his face coloring up in anger.
“No walk today then,” I said, and began removing my own bonnet.
“Bad Tummy,” he muttered, but he picked up the hat and coat and put them on, struggling with the buttons, and making a very indifferent job of them. We walked through the park, looking for rabbits and birds and generally stretching our legs. Bobby was well entertained, which allowed me time to consider my job.
There was clearly something amiss with a child of more than four years who had mastered so little of the language. But his problem, I thought, was aggravated by everyone’s assuming that because he could not speak, he could not do anything else either. He was fed, dressed, catered to to such an extent that he was fast becoming a tyrant.
I would insist he undertake to perform for himself any duties he was capable of. He was no moonling. His drawings showed it. The carriage trappings, harnesses and so on were done in detail, accurate detail. Suddenly he darted around a large holly bush. I called after him, but he did not come back. Not responding to orders was a part of his tyranny, which forced his elders to be forever galloping after him.
I called louder, running forward to look for him. He certainly heard me, but he did not stop. Becoming very vexed, I let out a bellow that brought his flying feet to a halt. He looked around, but uncertainly, toward the house, whereas I was off toward the road. It took him a minute to find me. Twice this had happened, and both times it left me confused, wondering if I credited the poor child with more brains than he possessed. He began his hints for Mogo again. I was more than ready for my respite, so I took him to the stable and turned him over to the groom.
At last the time had come to start questioning the servants to see what I could discover of Rosalie. My duties as nursemaid left me little time in which to pursue my true goal here. I must make use of every minute. It was this, rather than the whistling, cold wind, that hastened my footsteps toward the house.
Chapter Five
I had chosen my hour for a tea break well. The others were at the table when I entered, Molly, Bess and Cook. The blue pot was on the table between them, a pile of scones steaming from the oven. “I have taken Bobby to the stable for a while, to rest my aching muscles,” I explained, sliding onto a vacant chair.
“A body needs a rest after chasing the monkey, and that’s a fact,” Cook told me, hoisting the pot and pouring the deep amber liquid into my thick cup. This was, curiously, the part of being a servant I disliked most, the thick cups used. Aunt Harriet had a collection of beautiful, dainty Wedgwood cups, of all shapes and patterns. Taking tea at Grosvenor Square was an art form.
“The other girl, Miss Thompson, used to take her tea with us at first, then she started having it above, in the nursery,” Molly mentioned.
“What was she like?” I asked, in a casual manner.
“She was nice. I liked her,” Molly answered, with a challenging look to the others which suggested Rosalie had not been a general favorite.
“She was sly,” Bess said.
“Aye, she was a sly one,” Cook agreed. “She conned us all with her ladylike airs and graces. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, but she was caught with her fingers in the mistress’s jewel box for all that. She took a ring that didn’t belong to her.”
“What kind of a ring?” I asked, trying to conceal my rampant curiosity, and the surging anger at these charges. She wants to give me a ring for my birthday, a great, dark ugly thing....
“The Palin mourning ring,” Cook replied.
“Did they report her to the police?”
“She ran off before they could get the constable out here, the vixen,” Bess said.
“The master wouldn’t have pressed charges,” Cook stated. “But she would have been let go for a certainty. It wouldn’t be easy getting another post with that on your record.”
I made some commiserating noises, unable to utter an intelligible word against my sister. “She wasn’t suited for the post in the least,” Cook rattled on. “Too high and mighty, with the fancy gowns more suited to a mistress than a maid. She had a round dozen of them. I’d give my ears to know who she was.”
“She was a Miss Thompson, was she not?” I asked. “I think that was the name Mr. Palin mentioned.”
“Mr. Palin would know, I should think,” Bess said, in a significant voice.
“Why, Bess, you’re just jealous he’ll never give you the time of day,” Molly answered sharply. “There was nothing between him and Rosalie. He only went to the nursery to see Bobby. I liked Rosalie.”
“She was good with the child,” was the only good word could be rung from Cook on her behalf. Of more interest was Bess’s hint of some closeness between master and maid. Rosalie was a full-blown romantic, and Mr. Palin was dangerously attractive, but surely he would not set up a flirtation with his nursemaid? He was a man of the world, an older man, with an extremely pretty wife.
“Are you hinting there was something between her and Mr. Palin, Bess?” I asked.
“I know Mrs. Palin took her in acute dislike for some reason. What else could it be? They used to get on very well when the girl first came.”
“You were jealous of that, too,” Molly charged. “Jealous because the madame started giving her castoffs to Rosalie, instead of you.”
“Who discovered about the ring Miss Thompson was supposed to have stolen?” I asked, to steer the talk back into revealing channels. I could not ask why it had been offered as a gift, if the madame disliked Rosalie.
“Mrs. Palin noticed it was missing from her jewelry case and had all the rooms searched,” Bess said, rather happy to spread the story. “Miss Thompson had it, hidden beneath her silken petticoats. I wonder where she filched them from. Her last employer, I expect, though she let on she’d never been out to work before. Why would a girl with a rich aunt bother to go out to work? She was a liar—a liar and a thief.”
“Why would she bother to steal that ugly old ring?” Molly asked. “What would she want with it, when there were lots of prettier ones, if it was only a ring she wanted?”
“Then she ran away when they threatened to call the police?” I asked, wanting to get the story straight, though I did not believe for a moment Rosalie had stolen anything.
“That she did, bag and baggage,” Cook confirmed, her bulky shoulders straightening in justified grievance. “Next morning when Molly went to waken her, the room was empty.”
“That must have taken some doing; to get twelve gowns packed and removed she would need a trunk,” I pointed out.
Molly was nodding her head in agreement. “And a carriage,” she added. “How could a little thing like her lug a trunk down the road to catch the coach? She didn’t run off with her young man, either, for I saw Mr. Rupert in the village the next week, and he didn’t know a single thing about it.”
“What did the Palins say about her disappearance?” I asked, for I felt the story interesting enough to justify my curiosity, without giving away my particular concern in the leading character.
“They didn’t say much,” Molly answered, dissatisfied.
“I think Mr.
Palin took her somewhere,” Bess mentioned. “She didn’t walk away with a trunk on her back, and no carriage came here to pick her up. The only vehicle that left the house that night was Mr. Palin’s carriage. His largest carriage, big enough to carry her trunk. It wouldn’t surprise me much if he had her set up in a love nest somewhere. Tor Bay, maybe, where he goes so often, getting his summer house prepared.”
“You’ve got a filthy mind, Bess Burack,” Cook told her. “And she’s not there either, for Mrs. Palin goes with master half the time when he goes to Tor Bay. Why, it’s for her he’s fixing the place up. He dotes on her, gives her everything she wants, and more. I can’t say I’m fond of the woman, but she’s good for master. Distracts his mind from April and Bobby.”
“Who is April?” I asked, my ears flapping with all this background.
“Why, April, his first wife. I knew her when she was a child in pinafores, but I ought to call her Mrs. Palin now.”
“You ought to call her the late Mrs. Palin now, Cook,” Bess mentioned.
“Aye, so I should.”
“You think Mr. Palin drove Miss Thompson away, then, do you, Bess?” I confirmed.
“She didn’t fly, and she didn’t walk. Her trunk and all her things were gone. He must have.”
“It would be like him to have driven her to the coach stop,” Cook told me. “He liked the girl because she was kind to Bobby. The child cut up something wicked after she left. Went straight off into tantrums, and was in his bed screaming for two days.”
“That sounds a very strong reaction!”
“It upset the wee soul badly. The master had to bring in a man to handle him after that, but the fellow turned out to be a brute. He hit the lad, and when master caught him at that, he was gone within two minutes. You must have heard the hollering in London, Miss Bingham. The air was blue. Mr. Palin don’t often lose his temper, but when he does, the windows rattle from his shouting.”
“There was no shouting when Miss Thompson was discharged?” I asked, unwilling to let go of the subject.
“No, he was very silent that night,” Molly told me. “I had to go to the study to give him a message from Mrs. Steyne, and he was just sitting at his desk with a bottle of brandy beside him, drinking and looking at the wall. He didn’t say a word. Not even thank you. He usually says thank you.”
“He’d have been sorry to have to turn the girl off, as she was good with the lad,” Cook thought. “Then when the fellow he hired worked out so poorly, he decided to hire another girl while he was in London. I’m sure we’re all satisfied with you. Have another cup of tea, dear.”
I could not prolong these reminiscences much longer, but there was one more point to verify. “When did all this happen? When did Miss Thompson leave?”
“The middle of September,” Molly replied. “It was right after her birthday, remember, Cook?”
“Shortly after, yes. Around the middle of the month.”
“Did Rosalie make any excuse for having the ring?” I asked, risking just one more question. The date satisfied me. Her last letter, dated September 12, had mentioned madame offering her the ring, but did not say whether she had accepted it. It occurred to me that if Mrs. Palin wished to be rid of her, she might have pressed it on her, then turned around and claimed it had been stolen.
“I wasn’t talking to her myself,” Cook said. “She was ashamed to show her face belowstairs, as you may imagine. She just stayed up in her room with the door bolted.”
I looked to Molly, hoping for more details, but she was frowning into her teacup, a set of wrinkles creasing her brow. “I heard her moving around in her room, packing her trunk I suppose, but she wouldn’t answer me when I knocked. I thought she’d say goodbye to me at least.”
“She and Molly were close,” Cook explained, with a sympathetic took toward Molly. Bess snorted, then laughed. I did not like Bess. She had the expression of a cat, self-seeking, sleek, sly.
Mrs. Steyne came down to the kitchen just then. Finding me free, she offered to show me the house, as she had promised the night before. I eagerly hopped up to accompany her. I had some idea of the general appearance of the place from my short trip to Mr. Palin’s study. It was certainly a fine home, large, well furnished, with all the trappings of the wealthy.
There is no need to give it in minute detail. Only two points are of interest now. The first is that, despite the grandeur, there was no feeling of warmth, as of a home. Each piece of furniture, each sofa and chair and table, was set in its proper niche, balanced, unimprovable. The rooms presented works of domestic art rather than spaces for living in. Did a chair never get moved an inch, to sit closer to a companion or the fire or a light for reading? Were the pretty bibelots on table and cabinet tops never lilted, admired, handled? I did not think they were. No newspapers or magazines were in evidence either, no embroidery frame, knitting—no single sign of life.
The rooms invited soft steps, hushed voices, as though they were part of a museum. I was careful not to touch anything, and noticed that Mrs. Steyne too stood at a distance from the objects whose excellencies she extolled to me. She spoke of the history of the home, its age, its having been in the family for several generations, with various Palins adding features.
“It means a great deal to Mr. Palin,” she explained in a rather sad aside. “It has become practically a child to him, the house. He makes his plans for it, to try to forget....”
“It is lovely. Beautiful,” I complimented, but after a few repetitions, I ventured to suggest, “It seems rather lifeless somehow, don’t you think?”
“It is brighter in the summer. The light is dull now in autumn, and those yew trees in front don’t help. They want trimming.”
“Yes, I expect it is the season that robs the house of some of its charm.”
“We usually have flowers as well. I must get some flowers from the conservatory. The hellebore is blooming.”
I nodded, pretending to believe this would work the change, but it would take more than light and flowers. The place needed noise, people, at least some slight disturbance of the awful order.
The other item of interest was found in the picture gallery, a rectangular space closer to a wide hallway than a regular room. It was lit down one side with a series of windows. The walls were of ivory-colored plaster, a welcome relief from the paneling found in much of the house. I am not one of those with a great penchant for paneling. We had a saloon of it at home in Mecklenberg Square. My mother always complained of the difficulty of lighting the room. The wood soaks up the beams from sun or lamp, rather than reflecting it as a lighter wall will do. But here in the gallery there was no paneling. The pale afternoon light fell on a row of portraits, highlighting the gilt frames and the features of the sitters.
It was necessary to walk closer to discern individuals. They dated back to the sixteenth century, when a Palin ancestor had posed in the contemporary regalia of the Tudors. Some resemblance, certain features, could be traced through the centuries back to this ancestor. The same dark, brooding eyes were to be found in the present Mr. Palin’s face, and something too of the general facial shape, with the high narrow brow and lean cheeks. I found the females of the family more interesting, both because of the variety of types, and because several of them were very pretty, in some cases downright beautiful.
“The Palin gentlemen always had an eye in their heads for a pretty woman,” Mrs. Steyne mentioned.
I noted mentally that the present one was no exception, to judge from his wife. The family had decided to have the ladies in each generation pose in a similar manner. From the sixteenth century to the present, they stood in three-quarters profile, painted full-length beside some favorite object. The Tudor lady rested her white fingers on a map of the world, one of those from the days of Queen Anne touched a vase, and one from the recent past stood beside a statue of Venus.
Many of them wore the same necklace, which I judged to be a family heirloom. It was fashioned of diamonds and rubies, an old-fas
hioned, heavy piece. I noticed too that from about the middle of the row of pictures, which would occur chronologically at some point around the end of the seventeenth century, a peculiar ring began to appear in some of the portraits. It was large, dark and ugly.
“These pieces of jewelry,” I said, pointing to the necklace and ring, “are they family heirlooms?”
“Yes, the Palin diamonds and the Arnheim mourning ring,” she told me, then heaved a weary sigh upon mentioning the last-named. “There is a history connected with the ring. The Mrs. Palin who wears it there in the first portrait died shortly after her marriage. She was an Arnheim, hence the name of the ring. She and her husband were in Italy on their honeymoon when she received word of her mother’s death. There was a clause in the will leaving her money for a piece of mourning jewelry. She chose a ring, bought it in Italy. She was dead before she got home to England. Her husband blamed it on the ring, and refused to allow his next wife to wear it. But it was a valuable piece—that is a tablet of black diamond you see there—so it was never got rid of, as it should have been. There are a few tragedies connected with it. You will notice most of the Palin ladies will not wear it. Of the few who did choose to wear it, two died suddenly and tragically. The first lady there actually died while her portrait was being done in Italy, and it was finished from memory. The other to die was our Mr. Palin’s first wife.”
“Does the present Mrs. Palin wear it?” I asked, remembering Rosalie’s letter.
“Yes, she favors it.”
“How did Mr. Palin’s first wife die, Mrs. Steyne?” I asked. The words echoed through the narrow, still room with a sepulchral sound.
“Madame was frail. She had a weak heart. There she is, the last picture.”
We hastened to the end of the row to gaze on April Palin. She was a small, blond lady with blue eyes, wearing the modest, high-cut gown made fashionable by our queen. Her chosen object to pose with was not a bibelot, but a pug dog. “She does not look frail,” I mentioned.