by Joan Aiken
The children tiptoed on.
‘Bonnie,’ said Sylvia rather fearfully after a few moments, when she judged that they were well out of earshot of the library and its inmates. ‘what did Miss Slighcarp mean when she referred to the event? And why was she burning my uncle’s will?’
‘I am not certain,’ confessed Bonnie, who was pale and frowning over this new evidence of Miss Slighcarp’s knavery, ‘but it is plain that she means nothing but wickedness.’
Sylvia glanced in a troubled way at her cousin. It was evident that Bonnie did not wish to pursue the matter, and they went on in silence for a while. They came to another spyhole, which looked on to a passage, and then they found themselves up against a blank wall. The secret corridor appeared to have come to a dead end.
Even Bonnie’s heart sank, for the candles were perilously low, when they heard the clink of dishes, and a familiar voice, that of James, broke into song so close beside them that they might have been touching him.
‘As I was a walking one morning for pleasure, I spied a young—’
‘Knock on the wall!’ Bonnie whispered to Sylvia, and both children began banging on the panel as hard as they could. The song broke off abruptly.
‘James! James! It’s us, in here behind the panel! Can you let us out?’
‘Laws, miss, you gave me a fright,’ James’s voice said. ‘I thought it was the hobgoblin for sure.’
They heard him fumbling on the wall, and tapped again, to show him where they were. Suddenly there came a click, and bright cold light and icy air rushed into their hiding-place.
‘I always wondered why that great knob was there on the wall,’ James said. ‘Well, laws, miss! To think of your really finding the secret passage. That’s champion, that is!’
They stepped out, and found themselves in the dairy, a brick-floored, slate-shelved room with several sinks, where some of the dish-washing was done. An outside door led from it to the stable-yard, and they could see the whiteness of the new-fallen snow.
Since this entrance, too, appeared to have no means of opening it from the inside, James arranged to leave it open, artfully moving a tall cupboard so that it partly obscured the doorway, and hanging a quantity of horse-blankets and other draperies to hide the remainder.
‘Now at least no one need get shut up inside,’ said Bonnie. ‘The bother of it is that we can do nothing of the sort in the schoolroom. It would look too queer. The person in the passage will simply have to knock on the panel until somebody in the room lets them out.’
‘But supposing it was Miss Slighcarp in the room!’
‘Goose! Of course we should have to make sure before knocking that she was not in the room. I dare say there is a spyhole.’
‘Do you go back along the passage now and look,’ suggested Sylvia, ‘and I will return to the schoolroom by the back stairs and let you out.’
This was agreed to, and Sylvia hastened away, glancing, as she passed the open door, at the stable clock to make sure that they would not be late for their meeting with Pattern. But it still lacked half an hour of five o’clock, the time appointed for the meeting.
Most unfortunately, as she neared the schoolroom door, she saw the gaunt, bony form of Miss Slighcarp approaching from the other direction, carrying in her arms a pile of linen. Sylvia was greatly alarmed when the governess swept before her into the schoolroom and deposited her burden on the table. What if Bonnie, not realizing that the governess was in the room, should have the imprudence to knock on the panel and ask to be let out of the secret passage?
‘Now, miss,’ said Miss Slighcarp coldly – since the departure of her employers she had made no slightest pretence of being pleasant to either of the two children – ‘since I am at present too busy to occupy myself with teaching you, I have brought you a task so you shan’t be idle. All these sheets and pillow-cases require mending. To work at once, please! If they are not finished by tomorrow you will come under my severe displeasure. Small stitches, mind.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said Sylvia, trembling, trying to keep her eyes from wandering towards the fireplace.
‘I have a good mind to set that insolent child in the cupboard to this work too …’ Miss Slighcarp muttered. She moved to the cupboard door, feeling in the reticule attached to the sash of her dress. Sylvia gasped with fright. ‘How very provoking! I gave the key to James.’ Sylvia let out a long, quivering breath of relief. ‘Miss Green!’ the governess said, rapping on the door of the cupboard. ‘I trust you are repenting of your outrageous behaviour?’
There was no reply from within the cupboard.
‘Spirit not broken yet?’ Miss Slighcarp moved away from the door. ‘Well, it will be bread-and-water for you until it is. On thinking the matter over, the light in that cupboard would not be sufficient to permit her to mend the linen.’
This was no more than the truth, Sylvia reflected, for it must be pitch dark inside the cupboard.
Just as Miss Slighcarp was about to leave the schoolroom a loud, unmistakable rap sounded from inside the fireplace. Sylvia, pale with fright, sprang to the fender and began rattling the poker and tongs noisily, pretending to poke up the fire and put a few more pieces of coal on it. The governess paused suspiciously.
‘What was that noise?’
‘Noise, ma’am?’ said Sylvia innocently.
‘Something that sounded like a tap on the wall.’
‘It was this piece of coal, Miss Slighcarp, that fell into the grate.’ Sylvia spoke as loudly as she could, and rattled the fire-irons more than ever. Miss Slighcarp seemed convinced, and left, after a sharp glance round to make sure that James had obeyed her command to pack up all the children’s toys. Fortunately this had been done. The schoolroom and toyroom looked bleak and bare enough with all the gaily-coloured games and playthings removed, but Sylvia comforted herself by recollecting the hidden store up in the attic.
As soon as Miss Slighcarp was safely gone, Sylvia ran to the secret panel and with trembling hands pressed the carved deer’s head, praying that she had remembered the correct prong on the antlers. To her unbounded relief the stone panel slid back as before, and Bonnie, black, dusty, laughing, and triumphant, fell out into her arms.
‘Oh, is not this fun? Oh, what a narrow squeak! I had quite thought you were alone in the room, for neither of you had spoken for several moments before I tapped. Is it not provoking, there is no spyhole in this room? The first one looks out on the upstairs landing. But it is possible to hear voices from inside the passage, so long as somebody is speaking. What a mercy that you were so clever with the poker and tongs, Sylvia!’
6
AT FIVE O’CLOCK the two children stole cautiously to the little blue powder-room, which, luckily, was in a remote wing of the great house, where Miss Slighcarp was not likely to make her way. Pattern was there already, and greeted them with tears and embraces.
‘Oh, Miss Bonnie, Miss Sylvia, my dears! What’s to become of us, that’s what I should like to know, with that wicked woman in charge of the house?’
‘We shall be all right,’ said Bonnie stoutly. ‘She can’t do anything very dreadful to us, but oh, Pattern, what about you? She will have you sent to prison if she catches you here.’
‘She won’t catch me,’ said Pattern confidently. ‘I crept in by the apple-room door when the other servants left, and I’ve fixed myself up in the little south attic on the fourth floor as snug as you please. My fine lady will never set foot up there, you may be certain. And I’ll be able to creep down from there and help you with your dressing and put you to bed and look after your things, my poor lambs! Oh that I should live to see such a wicked day!’
‘But Pattern, how will you live?’ Bonnie was beginning, when James came quickly and quietly into the room.
‘What a lark!’ he said. ‘The old cat nearly caught me – met me in the long gallery – and asked what I was doing. I said, going to see all the windows were shut for the night, and she said, “Yes, that’s right, we want no thieving
servants creeping back under cover of dark.” Thieving! I’d like to know what she thinks she is!’
The children told him Pattern’s plan and he approved it heartily.
‘For I don’t trust Miss Slighcarp not to starve these young ones or do something underhand if we’re not there to keep an eye on them,’ he said. ‘I’ll look after their meals, Miss Pattern, if you see they’re snug and mended and cared for. But, Miss Bonnie dear, you’d best write off to your papa’s lawyer the very first thing, and tell him what’s afoot here.’
‘But I don’t know his address, James!’
‘Eh, that’s awkward,’ said James, scratching his head. ‘Who can you write to, then?’
‘How about Aunt Jane?’ Bonnie suggested to Sylvia. ‘She will surely know Mr Gripe’s address, for I have heard Papa say that Mr Gripe is in charge of her money.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Sylvia doubtfully, ‘but Aunt Jane is so old, and so very frail, that I am afraid the news would be a dreadful, dreadful shock to her. It might make her ill, and then she is all on her own …’
‘No, you are right,’ said Bonnie decisively. ‘It is not to be thought of. I know! We will write to Dr Morne. He promised that he would come from time to time, in any case, so there would be nothing odd about asking him over. And very likely he will know Mr Gripe’s direction in London.’
‘Or perhaps he can get the magistrates to commit Miss Slighcarp to prison,’ said James. ‘That is a champion notion of yours, Miss Bonnie. Do you write the letter and I will ride over with it as soon as I get a chance.’
‘I will wait for a few days,’ suggested Bonnie, ‘just so that Miss Slighcarp shan’t be suspicious, and then will pretend to have the toothache.’
A distant bell sounded, and James sprang up. ‘There! The old cat wants me for something and I must run. I’ll be up to the schoolroom by and by with your suppers.’ And he hastened away.
Left with Pattern, the children told her how they had discovered the secret passage leading to the schoolroom, and she Was delighted.
‘I can come up that way to dress and undress you, and take your things away for washing,’ she said. ‘What a mercy of providence!’
‘Only you must take care never to tap on the panel unless you are sure Miss Slighcarp is not in the room,’ Bonnie said chuckling.
‘In any case, let us hope it need not be for long. Dr Morne will soon settle her when you tell him what’s going on here.’
‘Hark! There’s the stable clock chiming the hour, Sylvia,’ said Bonnie. ‘I believe we should go back to the schoolroom so that presently James can come and let me out of the cupboard. It would be terrible if Miss Slighcarp were to accompany him and find me not there!’
During the next few weeks the children became half-accustomed to their strange new life. They hardly saw Miss Slighcarp and Mr Grimshaw, who were too busy discovering what they could make away with from Sir Willoughby’s property to have much time for the children. James and Pattern cared for them, bringing their meals and protecting them from contact with the other servants, who were a rough, untrustworthy lot. Several times the secret panel proved exceedingly useful when Miss Slighcarp approached the schoolroom on her daily visit of inspection, and Pattern, busy performing some service for the children, hastily darted through it.
There was little enough to do. They dared not be seen skating, and the snowy weather kept them near the house. But one day Prout, the under-groom, finding Bonnie crying for her pony in the empty stable, whispered to her that he had not sold the ponies, only taken them to one of the farms on the estate, and that when the weather was better they might go over there and have a ride. This news cheered Bonnie a good deal; to lose her pony, Feathers, and the new one that had been bought for Sylvia, on top of everything else, had been almost more than she could bear.
At last she decided that she could write to Dr Morne without incurring suspicion. For a whole day she went about with her face tied up in a shawl, complaining that it ached, and that evening she crept up to the attic where her little desk was hidden and composed a note in her best handwriting, with advice from Sylvia.
Dear Doctor,
Will you please come to see us, as we don’t think Papa would like the things that are happening here and we can’t write to him for he is on board Ship. Miss Slycarp, our wicked Governess, has dismissed all the good old Servants and is making herself into a Tyrant. She wears Mamma’s dresses and Mr Grimshaw is in League with her and they drink champagne every Day.
Yours respectfully,
BONNIE GREEN AND SYLVIA GREEN.
Alas! next morning when Bonnie gave James this carefully written note a dreadful thing happened. James had the note in his hand when he met Miss Slighcarp – who seemed to have the knack of appearing always just where she was not wanted – and her sharp eyes immediately fastened upon it.
‘What is that, James?’
‘Miss Bonnie has the toothache, ma’am. She wrote a note asking Dr Morne if he would be so kind as to send her a poultice for it.’
‘I see. There is a heavy deed-box in the library I want moved, James. Come and attend to it, please, before you deliver the note.’
Unwillingly James followed.
‘Put that note on the table,’ she said, giving Mr Grimshaw, who was in the library, a significant look as she did so.
While James was struggling to put the heavy box exactly where Miss Slighcarp required it, under a confusing rain of contradictory instructions, Mr Grimshaw quickly glanced at the direction on the note, and then, with his gift for imitating handwriting, copied the address on to a similar envelope with a blank sheet of paper inside. When James’s back was turned for an instant he very adroitly exchanged one note for the other.
‘There, then,’ said Miss Slighcarp. ‘Be off with you, sirrah, and don’t loiter on the way or stop to drink porter in the doctor’s kitchen.’
The instant James was out of the room she opened the letter, and her brow darkened as she read it.
‘This must be dealt with,’ she muttered. ‘I must dispose of these children without delay!’ And she showed the letter to Mr Grimshaw.
‘Artful little minxes!’ he exclaimed. ‘You are right! The children cannot be allowed to stay here.’
‘When can we move them? Tonight?’
He nodded.
James hurriedly saddled one of the carriage horses that remained in the stable, armed himself with a pair of pistols in the saddle-holsters and one stuck in his belt, and made off at a gallop for the residence of Dr Morne, who lived some five miles beyond the park boundary.
Unfortunately when he reached his destination it was only to discover that the doctor had been called from home on an urgent case – a fire in the town of Blastburn in which several people had been injured – and was not expected home that evening. James dared not linger, though he had been intending to reinforce Bonnie’s note by himself telling the doctor how bad things were at the Chase. He could only deliver the letter and come away, leaving a message with the doctor’s housekeeper imploring Dr Morne to visit Miss Bonnie as soon as possible. Then he made his way homewards. A wolf-pack picked up his trail and followed him, but his horse, its hoofs winged by fear, kept well ahead, and James discouraged the pursuit by sending a couple of balls into the midst of the wolves, who fell back and decided to look for easier prey.
The dull, dark afternoon passed slowly by. The children worked fitfully at their tasks of mending. Bonnie was no longer locked up, but Miss Slighcarp made it plain that she was still in disgrace, never speaking to her, and giving her cold and sinister looks.
The sound of a horse’s hoofs had drawn both children to the window on one occasion, when Miss Slighcarp came suddenly into the room.
‘Back to your work, young ladies,’ she said angrily. ‘Whom did you expect to see, pray?’
‘I thought – that is, we did not expect –’ Sylvia faltered. ‘It is James, returning from his errand.’
‘So!’ Miss Slighcarp gave them again
that strange glance, and then left them, after commenting unfavourably upon their needlework. She returned to the library, where she rang for James and gave him orders that utterly puzzled him.
‘The carriage?’ he muttered, scratching his head. ‘What can she want the carriage for, at such a time?’
Dusk, and then dark, came, and bedtime drew near. The children had long since abandoned their sewing and were sitting on the hearthrug, with arms entwined, in a somewhat sorrowful silence, gazing at the glowing coals which cast their dim illumination over the bare room.
‘It is too late, I fear. Dr Morne will never come today,’ Bonnie said sighing.
There was a gentle tap on the secret panel.
‘Pattern! It is Pattern!’ said Sylvia, jumping up, and she made haste to press the spring. Pattern came bustling out with a tray on which were two silver bowls of steaming bread-and-milk, besides little dishes of candied quince and plum.
‘Here’s your supper, my lambs! Now eat that while it’s hot, and I’ll be warming your beds and night-things. Thank the good providence old Pattern’s here to see you don’t go to bed cold and starving.’
When the last spoonful was eaten she hustled them into their warm blue flannel nightgowns, and saw them tucked up in bed. ‘There, my ducks! Sweet dreams guard your rest,’ she said, and gave each a good-night hug. At this moment they heard Miss Slighcarp’s brisk heavy steps coming along the passage.
‘Lawks-a-me!’ gasped Pattern. She snatched up the tray and was through the secret door in a flash. Just as it clicked behind her Miss Slighcarp entered through the other door, carrying a lamp.
‘In bed already?’ she said. She sounded displeased. The children lay wondering what fault she could find with such praiseworthy punctuality.
‘Well, you must just get up again!’ she snapped, dumping the lamp on the dressing-table. ‘Get up, dress yourselves, and pack a valise with a change of clothing. You are going on a journey.’
A journey? The children stared at each other, aghast. They could not discuss the matter, however, as Miss Slighcarp remained in the room, sorting through their clothes and deciding what they were to take with them. Sylvia noticed that she put out only their oldest and plainest things. She herself was given none of the new clothes that Pattern had been making her, but only those made from Aunt Jane’s white curtain.