A Corpse in Shining Armour

by Caro Peacock

  She suddenly swung her legs on to the bed, pulled the coverlet over herself from waist down.

  ‘And then something woke you?’ I said.

  We were at the heart of her story now, whether it was true or false. The next event must be the entry of the lover who was not her husband.

  ‘No. Nobody woke me. I slept till Suzy came in and drew back the curtains in the morning. There was mist all over the lake, right up to the windows. It was like being on the inside of an enormous pearl, one of those misshapen ones. Baroque, is that what they call them?’

  She stared at me from those eyes that were nearly all iris, as if she were still looking out at a mist. I answered her as gently as possible.

  ‘So nobody came? You slept all night.’

  ‘Yes. I woke up knowing something dreadful was going to happen. I don’t know how I knew.’

  ‘And nobody had come to you in the night?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  I settled back on my heels, wondering if she knew the significance of what she was saying. There’d been no daemon lover. My work was done. The story that had made her sons each other’s enemies and been the talk of society for weeks was no more than an opium fantasy. I could take the North Star back to London in the morning and report to Mr Lomax that I’d heard her deny it. But I knew one thing would stop me: This morning Lord Brinkburn has told me something terrible, terrible. Terrible enough to destroy the rest of her life.

  ‘That morning, your husband came to you and told you something,’ I said. ‘You wrote that much in your journal. What was it?’

  She curled up and turned away from me, scrunching her head deep into the pillow as if in pain. I put a hand on the coverlet over her shoulder, trying to comfort her, but it was like touching stone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It’s all right. You don’t have to tell me.’

  I was angry with myself, both for hurting her so much and taking a hasty step and making her draw back at the last minute. For what seemed like a long time I knelt there, murmuring pointless things that were meant to be comforting. At last her shoulder softened, she gave a shuddering sigh and fell into a deep sleep. By then the sky outside was blue, the birds shouting their morning chorus. I drew the curtains across to keep out the light and sat in a chair by the window in case she should wake again and be scared. Two hours or so later, when there was a knock on the outside door, she still hadn’t moved. I went across the sitting room to answer the knock, pulling the bedroom door closed behind me. Betty was waiting on the landing with a tray of coffee things.

  ‘Is Lady Brinkburn still asleep, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes. What time is it?’

  ‘Half past seven, ma’am.’

  She came into the room and put the tray down on a table.

  ‘When her ladyship wakes up, would you ring and I’ll bring her fresh.’

  I said certainly I would. She hesitated.

  ‘If you please, ma’am, Mrs Bream would be grateful for a word with you when convenient.’

  ‘Mrs Bream?’

  ‘The housekeeper, ma’am.’

  ‘Please tell her I’ll be downstairs as soon as I’ve had a cup of coffee.’

  It was good coffee and I drank two cups at leisure, assuming the housekeeper would have some small domestic business on her mind and, quite possibly, a grudge against me for the inconvenience of making up an extra bed. Before I went downstairs I looked in on Sophia, but she still hadn’t moved. I had no worries about leaving her, now that the household was up and about. When I asked for Mrs Bream I was directed to the linen room, where she was talking to one of the maids. As soon as she saw me, she sent the girl outside.

  ‘You wanted to speak to me?’ I said.

  Mrs Bream was a comfortable pudding of a woman, with frizzy grey hair under her white cap. She looked as if she’d normally have been a cheerful body, but this morning she was worried.

  ‘It’s about your maid, ma’am.’

  ‘Oh dear, has Tabby done something wrong?’

  My conscience was pricked because I hadn’t given her a thought all night. Goodness knows what sins against domestic order she’d committed. ‘I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm. She’s inexperienced but good-hearted.’

  Mrs Bream wiped her hands down her apron.

  ‘The fact is, ma’am, I’m afraid she’s run away.’

  She looked at me from moist round eyes. My first reaction was to comfort her because she could hardly know about Tabby’s wandering background.

  ‘Don’t worry, I dare say she woke up early and has gone out for a walk without telling anybody,’ I said. ‘Quite wrong of her, of course, and I shall speak to her about it when she comes back. Was that all?’

  But she was looking even more miserable.

  ‘I’m sorry to tell you, ma’am, things were said last night that probably shouldn’t have been said, and I think she might have taken them more seriously than was meant.’

  ‘What things?’

  This was more worrying, and I suppose I must have spoken sharply because she was near tears.

  ‘I said they shouldn’t pick on her, but you know what girls are like these days, and how were they to know she’d take it like she did?’

  I tried to make myself sound calmer than I felt.

  ‘Mrs Bream, would you please try to tell me exactly what happened.’

  She took a deep breath.

  ‘It was at servants’ supper. We all sit down when we’ve cleared the dinner things and have a bite or two of what’s left over before the kitchen staff do the washing up. Nothing we’re not allowed to. Lady Brinkburn knows about it.’

  ‘I’m sure she does. But Tabby…’

  ‘I told her to sit down with the others. The housemaids were all right to her at first. They don’t often get people coming down from London, so they were asking her all about the fashions and so on, but she didn’t seem to know as much as they thought she should. Then they started teasing her about the way she spoke and calling her a cockney, and one of them took exception to her table manners because she helped herself to a slice of ham without being asked. It was mostly fat and they’d turned their noses up at it anyway, but when she just grabbed for it…’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  Her table manners needed work, I knew that. I should never have exposed her to the snobberies of a servants’ hall.

  ‘And I know it wasn’t right of our girl to make grunting noises at her, like a pig. But, with respect, it wasn’t right of your girl. either, to do what she did.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘Rubbed the slice of ham in her face.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  ‘Your girl ran out and slammed the door. I told our girls they shouldn’t have behaved like they did, and that was that. I thought she’d go up to bed when she got over her temper and I’d speak to you in the morning. Only this morning, she wasn’t here.’

  ‘Had she slept in her bed?’

  ‘No. We’d given her a bed of her own, in the room with Ruth and Dora. They say she didn’t come to bed all night.’

  ‘Who was the one who made grunting sounds at her?’

  ‘Dora.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t surprising she didn’t want to sleep in the same room as her, was it?’

  I was trying hard not to take out my anger on the housekeeper. It wasn’t her fault. If anybody’s, it was mine for not thinking harder before transplanting Tabby from her home ground. In her place, I doubted if I’d have behaved any better.

  ‘Mrs Bream, I’m very sorry if she upset your girls. The important thing now is to find her. What time was she last seen?’

  ‘It was after eight o’clock when we sat down to our supper, and I’d say half an hour more before she ran out.’

  ‘Into the thunderstorm?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And nobody saw her after that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What time are the doors locked?’

  ‘I lock the kitchen door fro
m the inside before I go up to bed, when cook’s finished. Cook was putting the oatmeal in to soak for the morning, and she and I were talking, so I couldn’t rightly say.’

  ‘Whenabouts?’

  ‘Half past ten, perhaps a bit later.’

  ‘And the front door?’

  ‘I saw Mr Whiteley locking that as I was going upstairs.’

  ‘And nobody checked whether Tabby had come back?’

  ‘No, ma’am. We thought she’d have come back in and gone straight up to bed.’

  ‘And Ruth and Dora didn’t say she was missing until morning?’

  ‘No, ma’am.’

  I thought the two of them had probably lain awake giggling for a while, thinking of the cockney girl getting scared and wet outside. I’d have liked to bang their heads together. If it hadn’t been for the storm, I shouldn’t have been so worried. Tabby had probably slept rough for most of her life and was quite capable of surviving a short summer night in an outhouse. But she wasn’t used to the country and might never have experienced thunder and lightning in the open. She could have flown into panic, run anywhere, with the river only a few hundred yards away.

  ‘I’m going out to look for her,’ I said. ‘Would you please find Mr Whiteley and ask him if any of the gardeners have seen her. You might search the rooms in the house, in case she’s come back in and is hiding.’

  She nodded but looked uncertain. I had no right to give orders in somebody else’s house, but it was not the time to be concerned with etiquette.

  I went straight out to the back of the house and stood by the kitchen door, trying to put myself into Tabby’s mind. She might instinctively make for somewhere that looked like her familiar shed in Abel Yard. The old dairy was still firmly padlocked, with nothing visible through the window but a scatter of wood-shavings. The two doors next to it weren’t locked and opened on to a wood shed and a coal store. Either could have given her a night’s shelter, but if she had been there, she’d left no sign. As I was closing the coal shed, a maid in black and white opened the kitchen door then ducked quickly back inside when she saw me. Dora, I supposed. I’d have liked to tell her what I thought of her, but it would have been a waste of time.

  I stood with my back to the house, wondering what might have caught Tabby’s eye by lightning flashes. The obvious possibility was a tall lean-to greenhouse alongside the wall of the kitchen garden. When I pushed the door open I found myself in heat that was already almost tropical at this early hour of the morning, breathing the yeasty smell of warm earth rising like a gas from freshly watered earth. Dark green melon vines rampaged up strings and hung down in swags, with dozens of ripening melons, each supported by its own miniature string hammock. Further on, velvety red-and-gold peaches gleamed between orderly rows of leaves, so perfectly ripe that even in my worry I found my mouth watering. I might have risked offending by picking one if I hadn’t glimpsed through the leaves an elderly gardener, peering closely at a nectarine tree with a brass spraying machine in his hand. He pressed the spray button and a nicotine-smelling mist set me coughing.

  ‘Dratted greenfly,’ he muttered.

  ‘Have you seen a girl?’

  ‘Made out I didn’t do them proper. I told him, if you can find a greenfly after I’ve been through them with the spray, I’ll eat it, I will. He wasn’t having it though.’

  ‘A young girl, quite small.’

  He shook his head and went on muttering. I left him to his work and walked out to look at a group of brick lean-to sheds, surrounded by orderly stacks of flower pots, nets and boxes. A glance through the window of the first one showed lines of wooden shelves for storing fruit and vegetables, mostly empty now, big metal bins, hessian sacks of root vegetables, stacks of baskets, but no sign of Tabby.

  ‘What are you looking for, miss?’

  The voice was angry. A dignified man in suit and waistcoat with gold watch chain, obviously the head gardener, arrived at a fast walk. I introduced myself and explained I was looking for my maid.

  ‘Well, you won’t find her in there.’

  I insisted on going in to look under sacks, but he was right. When he saw I was genuinely worried he helped me search the other sheds, but was certain that no girl, however small, could have spent a night in his domain without his knowing about it. He’d been out inspecting the garden at first light, in case the storm had damaged anything, and found not a stick out of place. I thanked him and went back to the house, sure now that Tabby hadn’t spent the night in any of the obvious places. Mr Whiteley was in the hall, talking to the housekeeper. I interrupted them.

  ‘Have you found her?’

  He looked apprehensive at seeing me.

  ‘No, Miss Lane. Your maid isn’t anywhere in the house. Might she have returned to your cottage?’

  It was quite a sensible suggestion. Tabby might have sheltered somewhere from the storm, then, rather than go back to the house where she’d been mocked, found her way home as soon as it was light.

  ‘I’ll go and see,’ I said. ‘Please give my apologies to Lady Brinkburn and say I’ll be back later.’

  I decided to go to the cottage along the river bank. It was the shortest way, even though it would be muddy after the rain, but that wasn’t the main reason. The picture I couldn’t get out of my head was of Tabby running out of the house, so humiliated and angry that she didn’t care where she was going, rushing through the storm to the river bank, catching her foot and falling. Her life on the London streets couldn’t possibly have taught her to swim. I walked across the lawn at the front of the house, turning back once to look up at Sophia’s window. Her curtains were still closed, as I’d left them. The path led me down to the landing stage, where the rowing boat that had brought me there was tied. I walked to the end of the jetty. Only a pair of swans on the water, nothing else. They were paddling hard to stay in place against a current that was running fast after the storm. There was about a foot of rainwater in the bottom of the boat.

  ‘It will need baling out before it goes anywhere.’

  I jumped round. Robert Carmichael was standing at the landward end of the jetty. He was wearing light indoor clothes, with no hat or overcoat, hair disordered and shoes clotted with mud. I was sure he hadn’t followed me across the lawn, so must have been walking on the river bank.

  ‘Have you seen my maid?’ I said.

  He shook his head and came along the jetty towards me. He looked tired, deep lines across his forehead and circles round his eyes as if he hadn’t slept.

  ‘Were you looking up at Lady Brinkburn’s room early this morning?’ I said.

  The question came out before I had time to think about it. He stopped, looking startled.

  ‘Looking up from where?’

  ‘From the lawn. She says she saw somebody. She thinks it was the same person who came into her room the night before.’

  He sighed.

  ‘She’s terribly scared, isn’t she?’ I said.

  He nodded, looking at the swans. They’d given up their attempt to fight the current and were letting themselves be carried downriver, very stately, as if that’s what they had intended all along. He was standing close to me, his sleeve almost touching mine.

  ‘It was good of you to stay with her, Miss Lane.’

  ‘I want to help her, if I can. She was asleep when I left. She says you’re concerned that she’s taking too much laudanum.’

  I said it experimentally, wondering if he’d feel it as an intrusion. He looked away from the swans and up at me.

  ‘I am worried, yes. I suppose she took her usual draught last night?’

  ‘About three-quarters of a glass. She said she wouldn’t sleep without it. The storm had brought back memories.’

  Something in his eyes changed. He was alarmed now, as well as concerned.

  ‘Did she talk about them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He held my look, knowing I was waiting for him to ask. He was the one at risk of intruding now. It took him a long time to
make the decision.

  ‘Miss Lane, I hope this doesn’t sound as if I’m expecting you to break a confidence. Believe me, I have a good reason for asking. Did she talk about…’ A long hesitation. ‘Did she talk about an event on her honeymoon tour?’

  His hesitation had given me time to make my decision. Above all, I believed he loved Sophia and wanted to protect her. Soon, all of society would know that she’d changed her story. He had a right to know first, and in any case she hadn’t sworn me to secrecy.

  ‘You know about that night by Lake Como, the other storm?’ I said.

  He nodded and looked away.

  ‘She told me last night that nobody came to her. She slept, she woke up, that was all.’

  ‘Ah.’

  One of the deepest sighs of relief I’d ever heard. His whole body seemed to relax completely. For a moment his hand rested heavily on my shoulder as if to prevent him from falling. Then he gathered himself together and took a step back, apologising.

  ‘Forgive me. Did she say anything else about that night?’

  ‘No. I was clumsy. I asked her a question that must have hurt her very much.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked her what that entry in her journal next morning meant,’ I said. ‘The one about her husband telling her something terrible.’

  I couldn’t read the expression on his face. His eyes were like black stones.

  ‘And did she answer you?’

  ‘No, she was too upset. I shouldn’t have asked it.’ A long pause, then he said: ‘No, you shouldn’t.’ His voice was cold, almost brutal. I felt as if I’d been invited in somewhere then had the door shut in my face.

  ‘I must go and find Tabby,’ I said.

  I walked along the jetty, back to the grass, and turned along the river-bank path towards the cottage. I supposed he was still there on the landing stage, but I didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  When I got to the cottage, Mrs Todd had just arrived to do her morning’s cleaning. Any hope that Tabby might have found refuge with her vanished in our first few words. When I asked if she might be with Violet, Mrs Todd sniffed and said she had no idea. I practically ran to the village and, from Violet’s bleary-eyed look, must have roused her from her bed. She came to the door with her bodice unbuttoned and the baby on her hip.