by Annis Bell
“I’m not squeamish, believe me.” Holding her head high, she determinedly followed Draycroft as he led her through the kitchens. From there, they went down a set of steps into a vaulted cellar complex, where the household’s food was stored in various rooms. Apples and potatoes were kept in large sacks; rice, flour, and jars of preserved fruits and marinated vegetables sat on shelves; and there were pantries for game. The smokers were outside, but hams and sausages hung in the cellars in readiness for the long winter. In earlier times, these same vaults had no doubt held prisoners awaiting their final fate. “How are Lady Charlotte and Lady Alison?” Jane asked the butler.
“They are well. Please wait here.” Draycroft gestured toward a bench standing alongside a whitewashed wall.
The floor was made of large, coarse stones, and iron rings were set into one wall; Jane did not like to think about what they may have been used for in the past.
“My dear Lady Jane!” A moment later, Sir Frederick appeared from one of the cellar rooms, followed by Draycroft. “Such a tragic piece of news to digest the moment you return. Please, we can talk upstairs. Draycroft, really, why did you bring Lady Jane down here at all? This is no place for a woman’s sensitive disposition.”
Jane stayed where she was and peered over Sir Frederick’s shoulder. “Is that where the poor girl is lying? I spoke to her mother in Crookham. Would it be asking too much to see her?”
Her host’s expression froze. “You were in Crookham? I thought you were going to visit Berwick at the coast?”
“It was on my way, and as it turned out, Rachel’s parents were home,” Jane replied. She moved as if to pass him, but he stepped uncompromisingly in her path.
“That is no sight for a lady!” he thundered.
The heavy wooden door behind him swung open with a creak, and Dr. Cribb stepped out. He looked pale and exhausted and was carrying his doctor’s bag. “Oh, my lady, this is not an opportune moment.” Wearily, he wiped the back of his hand across his forehead.
Jane could see that she wasn’t going to make further progress into the room, but that did not mean she was going to give up. The entire story stank to high heaven! “The poor girl! Did you know, Doctor, that a similar tragic story played out at Rosewood Hall at the start of the year?”
Sir Frederick led the way back upstairs, and Jane walked alongside Dr. Cribb, giving him a brief account of the events surrounding the orphan girl at Rosewood Hall. The doctor gazed at her with surprise and admiration.
“My lady, I must say I’m impressed at your courage and willingness to help. Still, I would not advise you to view the young woman’s body.”
Jane lowered her voice and slowed down, and the doctor slowed down with her. “The girl was scared, Doctor. Are there any signs that it was not an accident?”
The doctor’s brow furrowed. He had bushy, gray sideburns that brushed the corners of his mouth and made him look older than he probably was. Jane could not understand the new fashion for beards and found most of the hirsute creations of the day laughable.
“I should probably not be telling you this, but there is, in fact, a wound to the head. It might have come from a fall. It may be that the girl ran in the darkness, stumbled, fell, landed badly, and . . . that was that. One does not always have to assume the worst, my lady.”
“Have the police been informed?”
“No, nor will they be. There is no serious evidence that this was anything other than an accidental death.” Dr. Cribb stopped walking and looked intently at Jane in the dim light. “You would do best to stay out of this, my lady. This is not your house and not your maid. Sir Frederick can become very unpleasant when someone pokes their nose into his affairs.”
“And if a crime has been committed? Are we supposed to leave it unatoned, just because Rachel was half Roma and came from a poor family?”
“Where are you, Cribb? My lady?” Sir Frederick had stopped, turned, and walked a few steps toward them. “Is there a problem?”
Jane hesitated, but the doctor quickly said, “No, everything is fine. My lady feels a little weak, that’s all. A bowl of soup and you will soon be as right as ninepence, won’t you?”
“Yes, Doctor,” Jane replied.
Sir Frederick looked at her skeptically.
Once upstairs, Jane went straight to her room, where Hettie was waiting for her. “Ma’am! Did you see her corpse?”
Jane had Hettie help her out of her coat, then pulled off her gloves. “No, they would not let me in. But Dr. Cribb told me that Rachel had a head wound. He—and Sir Frederick, too, of course—assume that Rachel stumbled and fell. That it was an accident.”
“But she was so afraid of something here!” Hettie cried and handed Jane a damp cloth to wipe her face. “And she was found a long way from here, near a lonely hut!”
“Where exactly was Rachel found? And who found her?”
“I heard from Gladys, Lady Charlotte’s maid, that O’Connor found her.”
“Gladys, you say?” Lady Charlotte’s maid was a quiet, unprepossessing woman who stayed in her mistress’s shadow.
So the gamekeeper had returned to the hut on the moor after they had ridden there to find out for certain that Rachel was not hiding inside. If only the girl had sought refuge there, thought Jane. What Rachel had written to her mother was not reason enough to explain her death, though. More must have happened. What had she seen or heard?
“Yes, ma’am. Gladys heard O’Connor and Sir Frederick arguing when he and two other men brought the body back on a cart.”
“Interesting, very interesting . . . and how is Charlotte?”
“Oh, I almost forgot. Gladys hasn’t been Lady Charlotte’s maid for long, but she says she could have landed worse. Her mistress is decent enough, but often very moody, especially when she gets her dizzy spells and headaches. Just after we left, Lady Charlotte fell ill again. And unfortunately she was outside with the children when the cart carrying the body arrived, so she saw everything. Since then she’s been hiding in her room, beside herself.”
“I need to put on a fresh dress,” said Jane. “Then I’ll pay Charlotte a visit.”
It took a lot of knocking before she heard any movement from inside Charlotte’s room. Finally, there was a rustling on the other side of the door, which then opened a crack. “My lady does not wish to be disturbed,” said Gladys in a hoarse whisper.
The maid’s thin face was marked by faded pox scars. Her pale-blue eyes looked both frightened and alert, and Jane suspected that more lay behind Gladys’s nondescript appearance than she would admit. “Please tell Lady Charlotte that I wish to speak to her urgently.”
“Yes, my lady.” Gladys left the door ajar, and Jane heard a whispered exchange between Charlotte and the maid.
“Jane! Come in!” Charlotte called from inside.
Gathering up her dark-green dress, Jane walked in past a screen, where she found Lady Alison’s cousin lying on a day bed in front of the fireplace. Everything about her, from the way she held herself to the look of suffering on her face, was a picture of despair. But there was nothing theatrical about it; Charlotte looked seriously ill. Jane could not tell if it was her body or her soul that was more in distress.
Jane went over and took Charlotte’s small, cool hand in her own. “Oh, my dear, what is happening with you?”
Her skin, already so pale, had taken on a grayish tone, and her breathing was shallow and irregular. Jane felt her pulse, which seemed to be skipping.
“Nothing. It will be gone again in a moment. It was simply the sight of that poor soul. Rachel was a beautiful girl, so young, so full of life. This accursed moor sucks the life out of everything close to it.” After speaking so quickly, Charlotte broke into a wheezing cough. A long strand of red-brown hair fell across her forehead and curled at her neck. Jane could clearly see the veins beneath her thin skin.
“Oh, Charlotte, don’t say that. I . . . Gladys, would you please bring us a strong cup of tea and two glasses of port?”
She w
aited until she heard the door latch click. “Listen to me, Charlotte. Rachel did not simply have an accident. She ran away from someone or something because she was scared! I’ve been to see her parents. I did not learn much from her father, but her mother showed me a letter that Rachel had sent. In the letter, she wrote very clearly that she was afraid of something in this house. Charlotte, please, do you know any more? Are you also afraid?”
Charlotte repeatedly and anxiously glanced toward the door. “No, no! Why would I be? It’s just the air, the moor, that’s making me sick and giving me nightmares. I have to learn to control my hysteria. Dr. Cribb says the same.”
“Nightmares? What kind of nightmares?” Jane asked, stroking Charlotte’s hand. She noticed that Charlotte’s pupils were unnaturally wide. “Did the doctor give you any medicine?”
Sighing, Charlotte lay back against the pillows, her lilac-colored dress cascading over the side of the bed. She appeared almost ethereally delicate, like a painting in a museum. “Laudanum . . . but that doesn’t make me sick, if that’s what you mean. It just calms my nerves, which is good.”
A little blue bottle sealed with a cork stood on a side table. Beside the bottle lay a teaspoon. Jane, who remembered Lord Hargraves’s morphine-addicted sister Violet only too well, said, “Be careful with that, Charlotte.”
“Jane, your concern is lovely, but I know what I am doing.” She sounded irritated. “I would like to rest now.”
“Of course, but you can’t shut your eyes against reality indefinitely.” Jane stood up, but Charlotte grasped her by the wrist.
“What makes you say that?”
“Think about it! Rachel was afraid. She was a pretty girl who did not balk at leaving her position with the Cunninghams, although she would have known perfectly well that it would have been difficult to find another post after that. But she was defending herself from the advances of Cunningham’s son, who is a notorious philanderer. That in itself I find admirable, but you have to keep in mind that she was also half-Roma!”
“Roma? I did not know that.” Charlotte was having trouble focusing her eyes, because the opiate was beginning to take hold. Her hand dropped slackly to her side.
“Her mother, Zenada, is Romany. If Rachel was anything like her mother, then she had a solid moral center along with a strong will. Someone like that does not go around saying she is scared, not without reason. Do you understand? She was not some hysterical kitchen maid throwing herself at whatever man came along.”
“Zenada . . . the things you know, Jane. That’s a nice name. It sounds so exotic . . . but I’m tired. Let me sleep.” Charlotte’s eyes drifted shut, though she fought to keep them open.
“What is it you’re afraid of, Charlotte?” asked Jane softly, not expecting an answer.
“Of . . . ,” Charlotte murmured before nodding off completely.
Jane sighed and gazed at the numbed, sleeping form before her, patting her small hand. “Of whom, Charlotte?”
When Gladys returned with the tea, Jane drank a mouthful, sipped at her port, then excused herself.
She next visited Alison, who was waiting for her. Despite her reddened nose and a light cough, her pregnant friend looked radiant. Jane immediately embraced her.
“Jane, tell me everything! I’m dying of curiosity!”
Obliging, when Jane came to the part about Rachel’s death and her doubts about the course of events surrounding it, Alison nodded. “That isn’t normal! But perhaps she had a lover after all? She might have been pregnant and he didn’t want to marry her.”
“That would certainly have been possible, but the letter she wrote to Zenada doesn’t make it sound like that was the case . . . I’m going to speak with the stablehand again. He knew more about Gubbins.”
“Mrs. Gubbins was completely infatuated with Eunice, but would she hold a grudge against Charlotte for that? I don’t think so.”
Nora, who was sitting in a corner mending a seam on a blouse, glanced up. “Excuse me, my lady, but Della said that Mrs. Gubbins has a picture of the late mistress hanging in her room.”
“Really? And what does Mrs. Gubbins have to say about Lady Charlotte?” Jane asked.
“As far as I know, all she says sometimes is that the first Lady Halston could make Sir Frederick laugh nonstop and that she was very popular at parties and gatherings.” Nora looked down and focused again on her sewing.
“Thank you, Nora,” said Ally, who then leaned forward so that only Jane could hear her. “You don’t think that Mrs. Gubbins is . . . poisoning Charlotte?”
When she said “poisoning” almost inaudibly, Jane took a deep breath. “That would be terrible, and how would she manage it, anyway? No. Besides, it would have to be somebody who is around her constantly.”
“Gladys?” Ally said automatically, lifting one hand to her heart.
Jane was reluctant to suspect someone of such a perfidious act without solid evidence. “Would Gladys have a motive? That’s the crux of the matter. Who would consider Charlotte an obstacle?”
“Nobody! She is such a lovely person and always has been. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. Really, just look at her son—he runs rings around her!” Perched on the edge of her bed, Alison was no longer whispering.
“Her husband?” Jane wondered aloud.
“Oh, all Frederick thinks about are his precious orchids. Charlotte gave him an heir, and that’s all that mattered to him. Besides, he’s not the kind of man to go looking for love affairs, and Charlotte brought a large inheritance with her.”
“An inheritance that Frederick may be spending on expensive orchids.” Jane helped her friend to her feet.
“Which is no reason to rid himself of her!” Alison pressed her hands into the small of her back, pushing her swollen belly out. “I am truly happy to be bearing this child, but I will be especially glad to hold it in my arms. It’s damned heavy!”
“Then it will be a boy,” said Jane.
“Anything but twins again.” Alison grinned.
A gong rang from below. “Dinner. A pity that you can’t come along, Ally, but it looks like we’ll have Dr. Cribb in your place.”
“Jane,” Alison said, her voice earnest, “you do think something about Charlotte isn’t right, don’t you? I haven’t just been imagining it?”
“No, Ally, definitely not.” She kissed her friend on the cheek and left the room.
Dinner was a quiet, uneventful affair. Neither Sir Frederick nor Dr. Cribb mentioned the dead maid, and Charlotte sat as silently as a waxwork figure, poking at her food with no appetite.
“Where are the children this evening?” Jane asked as the cheese was being served.
“Miss Molan is eating with them. Cedric didn’t complete his arithmetic,” said Charlotte disinterestedly.
“Which is precisely why it’s time for him to go off to a decent school.” Sir Frederick set down his glass with a loud clang. “Loughborough in Leicestershire is an outstanding institution and will make a proper young man out of him. He’ll be heir to Winton Park one day, after all!”
“He is still only a little boy, and if he has a tutor here at home, then he can stay with us another year.” Charlotte’s voice tightened. “Miss Molan has already recommended someone, and he is presently on his way here to introduce himself.”
Dr. Cribb came to Charlotte’s aid. “A male teacher is exactly what the boy lacks. Cedric is intelligent and is trying to test limits. Everything he learns here will serve to make him stronger and will make life easier for him at school.”
Sir Frederick twisted his mouth disparagingly, drank a mouthful of wine, and said, “Let’s meet the man and then decide.”
Jane woke in the night because she thought she heard someone crying. Throwing back her blanket, she slipped into her robe and tiptoed barefoot across the room. Carefully, she cracked open the door and peered down the hallway. Everything was dark. Feeling her way along the wall, she crept down the corridor, following the muffled sobs. She left the guest wing, slid alo
ng a banister, and stopped at the entrance to the family wing. The sobbing was clearly coming from Charlotte’s room. Suddenly, Jane heard a dull thud, like someone had fallen to the floor, and the sobbing abruptly stopped.
Jane waited, wondering what she ought to do. Then came a suppressed scream, and steps approached the door from inside Charlotte’s room. Jane darted back into the guest wing and pretended that she was just leaving her own room as Gladys stepped out of her mistress’s chamber.
“Can I help with anything, Gladys?” Jane called, but Sir Frederick appeared at that moment from the room next door to Charlotte’s.
“Fetch Dr. Cribb, Gladys, and be quick about it!” he snapped. When he saw Jane, he muttered grimly, “Go back to bed. This has nothing to do with you.”
With a few short strides, he reached the end of the corridor and slammed the door shut that marked the entrance to the family wing.
The next morning, before breakfast, Jane drafted a telegram to David.
13.
Winton Park, Northumberland, December 1860
The northbound train was a considerable improvement over making the trip by horse and coach. David had read up on the subject of orchid breeding during the voyage. When he finally met Sir Frederick, he at least wanted to be able to keep up his side of the conversation. Pushing The Gardeners’ Chronicle into his bag, he wondered how an orchid keeper looked after his plants in the winter.
A bitter wind rose to meet David when he reached the station at Durham. On the platform, a chestnut seller touted his wares, and a gaudily made-up woman touted herself. David had no interest in either. It was early in the afternoon, and he wanted to continue his journey without pause. Several coaches were lined up along the street, but many of the horses did not look as if they could make it all the way to Allenton. One young coachman and his obviously well-tended vehicle caught David’s eye. After negotiating a price with the man, David had his bags loaded aboard.
During the drive, David returned to his study of orchids, beginning to understand why it was so difficult to get the exotic plants to bloom in England. It had taken years for growers to discover what temperatures and how much moisture the plants needed—and when. Apart from a few aristocrats, it was the businessman John Day who had made a name for himself in London with his unusual flowers. Sir Frederick was mentioned in a number of articles, but the recognition that he was no doubt seeking had so far eluded him.