Death at Bishops Keep scs-1

by Robin Paige

  "She does not suit we," Aunt Jaggers said flatly. "But you needn't worry about the details. I have already written to the steamship agent in London to arrange return passage for her. As soon as possible." Her triumphant look at Kate said, How do you like that, miss? as plainly as if she had spoken the words.

  "You are challenging me in this way," Aunt Sabrina said, "because you know how I feel about what you did yesterday. After that disgraceful business with Jenny, I told you that your power to discipline the servants did not extend to physical punishment or discharge. What happened with Nettie sickens me, Bernice. I intend to-"

  "Be careful what you intend, sister." Aunt Jaggers's voice was flintlike, her words barbed. "Remember what I know."

  Aunt Sabrina seemed to flinch and turn away, and Kate was startled to see something very like fear come into her eyes-fear and hatred. What could Aunt Jaggers possibly know that could make Aunt Sabrina afraid? What secret could be so compromising that it would force her to submit to her sister's tyranny? Kate was stunned. Aunt Jaggers was a blackmailer! No wonder Aunt Sabrina hated her.

  Aunt Sabrina's face was white, without expression. When she spoke, her voice was so low that Kate had to strain to hear the words. "You may use your ill-gotten knowledge once too often for your own welfare, sister."

  "Perhaps I have not used it often enough," Aunt Jaggers retorted, "for my own welfare." She felt she had the upper hand; Kate could see it in the confident lift of her head and the aggressive line of her jaw. "Perhaps I should use it with your dear friend the vicar as well. Perhaps he would be willing to-"

  Aunt Sabrina's hand moved so fast that Kate almost didn't see the slap. But she went cold inside as she heard the smart smack of flesh against flesh, and heard Aunt Jaggers's shriek.

  "You struck me!" she cried furiously, her hand going to her cheek.

  Aunt Sabrina's shoulders slumped suddenly, all the rigidity gone out of her, and a look of self-disgust crossed her face. It was as if having stooped to physical violence, she had lost the high ground of her moral position. "I am… sorry," she said, struggling for control. "Forgive me, Bemice. I did not intend-"

  But Aunt Jaggers's eye had fallen on the Golden Dawn tarot deck. "Fortunetelling cards," she shrilled. "Oh, Sa-brina, how low you have fallen!" Her nostrils flared at the painted figure on the card. ' 'I see the mark of the cloven hoof in your forehead!" She was shouting now, fixing all her inflamed morality, her burning hatred, upon the pieces of cardboard.

  Aunt Sabrina took a step forward. "Don't touch those cards, Bernice," she said. "They are not mine. They belong to-"

  "The Devil!" Aunt Jaggers shrieked. And with one wild gesture, she swept up the cards and hurled them onto the blazing fire. As Kate stared in paralyzed horror, the thin pasteboard cards flared brightly in the flames, curled into ash, and were gone.

  "Bernice!" Aunt Sabrina whispered, horrified. "What have you done?"

  Aunt Jaggers seemed to have taken strength from her action. "I have done what I should have done weeks ago. I have taken a stand against evil." She raised her hand in a commanding gesture, her eyes like silver coins. "Mark me, sister. I have burned your cards. And unless you banish the

  rest of this deviltry, I promise you I will burn it, as well!" She stepped smartly to Kate's alcove and shoved Kate's box of letters onto the floor.

  Aunt Sabrina straightened her shoulders. She seemed to be grappling within herself. "If you don't get out, Bernice," she said between clenched teeth, "I will… I will-"

  Aunt Jaggers lifted her chin. "You will do what, sister?" When Aunt Sabrina did not answer, a thin, triumphant smile crossed her face, and she turned to Kate. ' 'I will let you know when arrangements have been made for your departure," she said.

  In the fireplace, the flames flickered brightly.

  30

  "It we believe a thing to be bad… it is our duty to try to prevent it and to damn the consequences."

  — LORD MlLNER

  Aunt Sabrina left the library a few minutes after Aunt Jaggers, saying only that she was going to her room and did not wish to be disturbed. Feeling as if she had been caught in a furious crossfire (as perhaps she had), Kate retrieved two or three cards that had escaped the flames and picked up the correspondence that Aunt Jaggers had flung on the floor. She noted that it contained a recent, already opened letter to Mrs. Farnsworth from Mr. Mathers, from Paris. The letter, marked "Private and Confidential," must have been inadvertently ineluded with the correspondence of the Order, which Mrs. Farnsworth had given to Aunt Sabrina.

  Kate put the envelope on Aunt Sabrina's desk and busied herself with the typing of the cipher transcript for Mr. Yeats. Given Aunt Jaggers's threat to deport her, it was difficult to concentrate on her typing. But Kate pushed her worries to the back of her mind as best she could, and simply let her fingers do their mechanical work. If Aunt Jaggers was determined that she should not stay, there was hardly anything she could do to prevent her.

  Kate was not surprised that Aunt Sabrina did not reappear when it was time for luncheon. The argument with her sister had been bad enough, but the loss of the tarot deck must be even more cruel. To members of the Golden Dawn, Mr. Mathers's precious deck of cards was a spiritual document, a map of the journey to self-transcendence and transformation. The cards were literally irreplaceable, their destruction inconceivable. Kate could not imagine how her aunt would explain it.

  When Kate went at one o'clock to the kitchen to make herself a roast beef and pickle sandwich, the house was a tomb. Aunt Jaggers had ordered luncheon brought to her room; Aunt Sabrina was still absent. Mrs. Pratt was stonily silent, Harriet crept about like a mouse, and poor Nettie was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had been exiled again to the cellar, Kate thought with a feeling of sad helplessness. Amelia and Mudd were somewhere abovestairs, going invisibly about their work.

  It was another gray, misty day. After she had eaten, Kate pulled on wellies, wrapped herself in a shawl, and went with an umbrella into the garden, where stalks of purple asters vied for pride of place with mounds of yellow chrysanthemums and fragrant lavender. But not even the wistful autumn loveliness of an English garden could keep her mind from Aunt Jaggers's threats, and she turned them over uneasily in her thoughts. What hold did the woman have over Aunt Sabrina? Could she really compel Kate's return to America? And what was that odd business about the vicar? What role did he play in the lives of these two women?

  After a while Kate came back inside and built up the library fire once again, noticing that Aunt Sabrina had been in the room and had taken Mr. Mathers's private letter to Mrs. Farnsworth from the desk. Ten minutes later, as she was settling down to work, she heard the sound of wheels on gravel. She opened the French doors that led onto the terrace outside the library, and saw that Pocket, a mackintosh cloak thrown over his shoulders against the rain, had brought the carriage round.

  Kate turned away from the French doors as Aunt Sabrina came into the library, wearing a coat and fur hat. There was a wild, almost frantic look about her.

  "Why, Aunt," Kate said, immediately concerned, "whatever is the matter?"

  "I must go out," Aunt Sabrina replied distractedly. She was holding Mr. Mathers's letter in her hand.

  "Must you?" Kate asked. "It's chilly outside, and wet. If you wish to return Mr. Mathers's letter to Mrs. Famsworth, I'm sure I could do it for you just as well."

  Aunt Sabrina was trembling. "What I have to do, / must do," she said, almost incoherently. "Only I can prevent-" She stopped. "It is a matter of the utmost urgency."

  "Then permit me to go with you," Kate said, beginning to be frightened by her aunt's strange behavior. "If you will wait just a moment while I get my-"

  "No," Aunt Sabrina said, disregarding Kate's hand on her arm. She pulled on a glove, dropping the other in her haste. "My errands may take some time, Kathryn." She picked up the glove and yanked it on. A button snapped off and bounced across the floor, but she did not notice. ' 'I shall likely not be home until after tea."
>
  Kate stepped back, dismayed. What could be so urgent about Mr. Mathers's letter that it had to be returned on such an inclement day? Why did Aunt Sabrina herself have to do it? And what did she hope to prevent?

  Perhaps, though, the letter was not the real purpose of her errand. Perhaps it was Aunt Jaggers's wanton destruction of the Golden Dawn tarot deck that she was in such haste to communicate to Mrs. Farnsworth. Kate moved to the fireplace

  and stood, watching her aunt. It was only conjecture that Aunt Sebrina was going to Mrs. Farnsworth's. Perhaps she was going to see someone else. Who could it be?

  But Aunt Sabrina's white, thin-lipped face made it clear that there would be no answer to this question. Kate reluctantly bade her goodbye and went to the French doors to watch the carriage depart, Pocket giving an encouraging chirrup to the wet horse. When the drive was empty, she returned to her chair and resumed her typing. But while she tried very hard to focus on her task, she could not help worrying about Aunt Sabrina, driving through the rain to some unknown destination, to fulfill some unknown purpose. She could not help worrying about herself, too, and her mind kept returning to the question she had asked herself in the garden. Could Aunt Jaggers actually compel her to leave Bishop's Keep and return to America?

  In spite of her troubled thoughts, Kate managed to finish the transcription of the cipher manuscript by teatime. She wasn't quite sure what use Mr. Yeats would make of it. The magical rituals were fragmentary, not very interesting, and actually rather silly. As far as she could see, its real value was not in its hocus-pocus, but in its history: it was, after all, supposed to be very old, written down by some long-ago secret society and passed from one adept to another, carefully safeguarded by its communication in cipher.

  Well, Kate thought, putting the transcript aside, whatever the value of the document to Mr. Yeats, it was typed, and neatly, too. At least he would be able to read it clearly. Her next task- and by far the most important she had undertaken so far-was to translate the letters Fraulein Sprengel had written, in German, to Dr. Westcott, giving him the authority he needed to establish the Order of the Golden Dawn. She was looking forward to the work, for she enjoyed translating. While she was not expert in German, she felt she knew it well.

  But as Kate began to work, she discovered something that both surprised and puzzled her. Fraulein Sprengel was supposed to be an educated German woman, but her letters contained several very elementary mistakes in grammar, not to mention numerous spelling errors, the sort usually committed

  by English speakers with an imperfect knowledge of the language. For example, the word adressiert-address-was spelled with two d's when it should have had but one; the English word secretary appeared in place of the German Sek-retar, and "Lodge" had been used instead of Loge. Kate pressed her lips together and shook her head. If she had not been told differently, she would have guessed that the letters-which were of vital importance to anyone concerned with the Order's legitimacy-had been written by an Englishman who was only superficially acquainted with German! This guess would have been further supported by the fact that Fraulein Sprengel's name and modern address were part of a document which purported to be quite ancient.

  But the business of the cipher document seemed academic. Kate had a larger and more immediate problem to worry about-and, anyway, it was getting late and she was tired. She folded the letters and put them back in the box, her mind returning to her own dilemma. What would she do if Aunt Jaggers insisted that she leave and Aunt Sabrina had neither the will nor the strength to withstand her sister?

  Kate stood up and went to the French doors to look out at the afternoon. The rain had stopped, the clouds were clearing away, and a pale, translucent light seemed to suffuse the landscape. She rested her cheek against the cool glass and stared out at the rain-wet trees.

  What could she do to prevent Aunt Jaggers from sending her back to America? She had been at Bishop's Keep only a few weeks, but already she felt at home here, and the idea of leaving was surprisingly painful. She twisted a lock of hair around her finger, considering what she should do. Unfortunately, there did not seem to be many choices. She suspected that Aunt Sabrina might find it easier to let her go than to confront her sister, whose threat of revelation-revelation of what? — had almost seemed to annihilate her. And without Aunt Sabrina's protection, she would be, like Jenny Blyly, homeless.

  But not, Kate thought, helpless. She straightened her shoulders and her lips firmed. Aunt Jaggers might be able to eject her from Bishop's Keep, but she could not force her onto the

  boat. In the circumstances, Aunt Sabrina would probably be generous in the matter of severance pay. She would have what she had earned so far, and Beryl Bardwell was due a payment from Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly when she delivered "The Conspiracy of the Golden Scarab." She might be able to find a cottage to let in Dedham or in Colchester, where she could see Aunt Sabrina from time to time.

  Kate stepped back from the window, already beginning to feel better. No, she could not prevent Aunt Jaggers from doing whatever she chose to do. But she was not by nature one who surrendered easily. If she were forced to leave, she was resourceful enough to fend for herself. Unlike Jenny Blyly, she knew she would survive.

  31

  "A prudent mistress disciplines without resort to the whip, for a servant violently dealt with will respond in kind."

  — MRS. AUGUSTA MANNERS, The Arts of Household Management, 1886

  A half hour later, Kate finished her work, set her desk in order, and covered the Remington with its black oilcloth shroud. Aunt Sabrina had said she wouldn't be home for tea, and Kate, who was not yet accustomed to having people wait upon her, hated to put the servants to the bother of doing something she could do perfectly well for herself. She left the library to go down to the kitchen and find something to eat.

  But the kitchen was the scene of chaos. Harriet was huddled in a heap on the floor, her apron pulled over her head. Aunt Jaggers, cap, hair, and face streaming water, was shrieking in fury at Mrs. Pratt. And Mrs. Pratt, her cheek and eye reddened as if from a smart blow, was holding the half-empty slops pail at the ready.

  "Slut!" Aunt Jaggers cried. "Fat, lazy-"

  "Hold yer tongue!" Mrs. Pratt cautioned fiercely, raising the bucket. "Or I'll douse yer again. Th' nerve o'yer, hittin' a pore child with yer fist!"

  "You are dismissed, Cook!" Aunt Jaggers shrilled. She raised her hand and stepped forward as if to strike Mrs. Pratt another blow. "Pack your bags and-"

  "Stop, both of you!" Kate commanded sharply. "What in heaven's name has happened?"

  "She hit Harriet i' the face with her fist," Mrs. Pratt said in a tone of outrage, "an' then she hit me. The woman's out o' her bloody mind!"

  "I won't have brazen insolence in my house!" Aunt Jaggers cried. "The girl is impertinent."

  " 'Tis not yer house," Mrs. Pratt retorted with great dignity. " 'Tis yer sister's house, and none o' yers."

  Aunt Jaggers stamped her foot, her face livid. "Send Pocket for the constable, Niece Ardleigh. I want this woman jailed for assault."

  Mrs. Pratt's eyes were narrowed, her glance steely. "As to assault, 'twas Jaggers who struck th' first blow, against pore Harriet. All I did was-"

  Aunt Jaggers pointed a trembling finger. "You threw a bucket of slops on me!"

  " 'Twere a half bucket," Mrs. Pratt replied calmly. "An' if need be, I'll use th' rest of it, an' th' bucket besides." Her mouth tightened. "An' as fer packin' me bags, it was a Ardleigh wot hired me an' it'll be a Ardleigh wot sacks me."

  "I think," Kate said firmly, "that we had all better calm ourselves." She looked at her aunt. "I do not believe this is a matter for the constable, Aunt Jaggers. My uncle O'Malley is a policeman, and I know that they are reluctant to intervene

  in domestic matters. And there would be the embarrassment of-"

  "Who asked you to intervene, miss?" Aunt Jaggers's face was wrathful. ' 'When the constable comes, I will order him to-"

  But Kate did no
t discover what order her aunt intended to give the constable, for Mudd came into the kitchen at that moment, carrying a coal scuttle. Aunt Jaggers, apparently feeling outnumbered, choked off her threat, glared balefully at the three of them, and stamped out. Crooning words of comfort, Mrs. Pratt bent over the sobbing Harriet and lifted her to a chair. With a savage look at Aunt Jaggers's departing back, Mudd thumped the scuttle on the hearth and went outside, slamming the door behind him.

  "Do you think we should summon the doctor?" Kate asked worriedly, with a look at Harriet. The girl's cheek was heavily bruised, and her right eye was beginning to swell.

  "No," Mrs. Pratt said, smoothing Harriet's hair away from her face. "I'll make a comfrey poultice. Th' doctor culd do no better." She went toward the pantry.

  Impulsively, Kate bent over the frightened girl. ' 'It will be all right," she said, touching her cheek gently, but she was at once swept by a feeling of sad helplessness. How could she promise Harriet that Aunt Jaggers's brutality would be restrained, when she herself was vulnerable to the woman's whims? If Aunt Sabrina would not do what should be done, no one could protect the servants.

  Biting her lip and wishing she had not offered such an easy comfort when there was none to be had, Kate turned away to prepare her tea. She kept her eyes on what she was doing, but as she heard Mrs. Pratt moving about the kitchen, preparing Harriet's poultice, a gnawing apprehension, a kind of fearful expectation grew in her mind.

  "Jaggers is who killed Jenny," Mrs. Pratt had said bitterly. "All o' us knows it. All o' us hates her fer it." Kate could not escape the terrible feeling that a hurricane was about to strike abovestairs, and a volcano to erupt below, and that both events would leave behind a scarred and barren landscape that none of them would recognize.

  There was a soft knock at the back door. With an unreadable glance at Kate, Mrs. Pratt moved toward it. "Who's there?" she called out quietly.