by M. J. Trow
‘Well, from what you told me, Georgy took quite a shine to you. Tall, dark, American – that sort of thing. And it’ll give me a chance to talk to the staff.’
‘Ah,’ Grand nodded. ‘The missing menials. Now we’re getting somewhere.’
As the train rattled south from Charing Cross, Grand retracing his steps, Batchelor looking about him at every new, passing mile, they were quiet. They both had their jobs to do and experience had taught them that planning was futile. Whenever questioning anyone, they had found, open minds were the only kind to take into the room. Prejudging never did anyone any good, but especially not an enquiry agent with a reputation still to make. The train remained mercifully Moptrucket-free, although Grand was still miffed that Batchelor refused to believe the name, saying that it couldn’t possibly exist outside of one of Dickens’s own tales. But soon they were at the station and, with no brougham to take them there this time, strolling off in the direction of Gads Hill Place.
Having seen the house before, Grand watched for Batchelor’s look of delight when the building emerged at the end of its short carriage drive. It was symmetrical almost to the point of obsession; every window, every roof tile placed just in exactly the right place to please the eyes. While Grand bounded up the steps to ring the bell, Batchelor made his way around the building, looking for the missing menials.
Grand pulled the bell and heard it jangle deep in the house. After just a few seconds, he heard the tap of a woman’s heel on tile and Georgy Hogarth opened the door. Her housekeeper’s welcoming smile was just a little slow in coming but, when it was in place, Grand took his chance.
‘It’s good of you to see me again, Miss Hogarth,’ he swept off his hat and waited. It had been five days since the funeral and there was to be a commemoration service – two, in fact: one at the abbey and one at the cathedral in Rochester. If someone had murdered Charles Dickens, would his murderer turn up in either place, like a bad penny? Ghouls, Georgy Hogarth had said the last time she and Grand had met; there would be ghouls aplenty in those cloisters, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good, numbered with either the quick or the dead.
‘Do I understand,’ Grand asked her, ‘that the commemoration services are open to all?’
‘They are, Mr Grand.’ She stepped aside and ushered him in, closing the door gently behind him. The hall was beautifully cool and dim after the heat and glare of the sun outside. ‘Charles was universally loved, you see.’ She showed him into the drawing room again and sat him down, taking her seat by the empty fireplace. ‘Will you take some tea with me? I’ll ring and Catherine can send something up.’
‘No,’ Grand said, perhaps a little too quickly. He knew that Batchelor would probably be already in the house, talking to the domestics, and the last thing he wanted to do was to interrupt that. More importantly, he didn’t want some chatty tweeny to bring news of a visitor in the kitchen; he didn’t know Georgy Hogarth well, but she didn’t look the sort of housekeeper to leave that kind of thing uninvestigated. ‘No. I’m really fine at the moment, thank you.’
‘Well, then,’ she said, clasping her hands in her lap. ‘The purpose of your visit?’
‘Tell me, Miss Hogarth, and I apologize for this question in advance: was Mr Dickens in the habit of taking anything for his health? A tonic of some kind; say … laudanum?’
Georgy blinked. ‘I believe he took a little elixir for his headaches. I understand a lot of men do.’
Grand understood that too.
‘You must understand, Mr Grand,’ she went on, using the same word again, trying to control the conversation, ‘that dear Charles had bouts of illness on and off throughout his life. A sensitive man like him, a writer … Catherine used to say …’
‘Catherine, the cook?’
Georgy Hogarth looked a little nonplussed for a moment, and then realized that she had already mentioned the cook’s name. This man missed nothing; she would have to remember that. ‘No. Catherine, my sister; Charles’s wife.’
‘Ah, yes.’ Grand played dumb. ‘I meant to ask: how has she taken all this?’
‘With resolution,’ Georgy said, ‘as we all must. You know, of course, that they are separated?’
‘Yes,’ Grand said. ‘And yet you stayed with him.’
Georgy straightened, ice in her veins for the first time. ‘What are you implying?’ she asked.
‘Implying?’ Grand was innocence itself.
Georgy swept to her feet in a soft rustle of black satin. ‘Come, come, Mr Grand, I am aware of the common gossip; what people said of us. They implied a revolting – nay, almost incestuous – relationship between Charles and myself. People are so cruel.’ She paused in front of the huge window and turned back to him. ‘And so wrong.’
Grand saw his chance and took it. ‘Was there someone else in his life?’
Georgy Hogarth looked at him, stricken. Her eyes were wide and her mouth trembled a little. ‘Mr Grand,’ she said, ‘I really must offer you some refreshment.’ She pulled the bell. She turned to the mantelpiece and looked down into the empty fireplace. He could tell that she was trying to come to a decision and that alone gave him the answer he needed.
The door opened and a pretty little maid in a white cap and apron bobbed a brief curtsy. ‘Yes’m?’ she said.
‘Ah, Emma. Umm … Mr Grand would like …?’ She turned to him.
Grand flashed his most winning smile at the girl. ‘Why, nothing, thank you,’ he said, laying the accent on thick. It worked with most women, but most of all with domestics, he had found. Although he would never have Batchelor’s natural skill with a tweeny.
‘You’re sure?’ Georgy asked, and he nodded. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, then, Emma,’ she said. ‘We won’t be requiring tea. Tell Mrs Brownlow I will be down shortly to discuss the menus for the week.’
With another bob, the girl was gone, closing the door carefully behind her. Grand looked at her with avid eyes – Mrs Rackstraw would have had it off its hinges.
Grand was a man on a mission, so he asked his question again.
For a long moment, she looked at him, but this time, replied. ‘There was,’ she said, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’
‘Who?’
‘I cannot tell a lie, Mr Grand, but I am under no compunction to tell you anything. I have no doubt that the more salacious newspapers are digging around as we speak. Charles will be branded an alcoholic, when all he drank was a little homeopathic cocoa. He will be called a womanizer because he found beautiful women attractive. And because he had so many men friends, he will be touted as a … I’m sorry,’ she shuddered, ‘I do not have the vocabulary for that.’
‘Homeopathic cocoa?’ Grand was a superb picker-up of unconsidered trifles. He also wanted to help her over the molehill of potential homosexual peccadilloes.
‘Yes, I brewed it for him myself. Every day. Poor Charles had gone off tea and coffee. He said it clogged his clarity of mind. And of course,’ she lowered her voice, ‘sometimes Catherine’s cooking does miss its mark somewhat.’
‘Was your brother-in-law a hypochondriac?’
‘No, Mr Grand. He was a genius. Was there anything else?’
Grand knew the rogue’s march when he heard it and he saw himself out. He just hoped that she wouldn’t go down to the kitchen to discuss the menus as quickly as she had promised and catch Batchelor there still quizzing the staff. The thought of an already irate Georgy Hogarth crashing into the kitchen to find Grand’s confederate working on her people made his blood run a little cold.
He walked off down the lawn, sloping away to the road, to the appointed place where he and Batchelor had agreed to meet. They had set their timepieces, allowing an hour to interview their respective quarries; probably not long enough for James Batchelor, but far too long, as it had turned out, for Matthew Grand. On his way, the rhododendrons shivered again.
‘Mr Field,’ Grand stopped in his tracks. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this. Why don’t you come out if you want to talk to me?’<
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There was a long pause, then a rustle of leaves and a spotty youth with red hair shambled into Grand’s presence.
‘Ah.’ Grand folded his arms. ‘My apologies. I mistook you for an ex-policeman.’
‘Peeler? Me?’ The boy grimaced. ‘No fear.’
‘You’re Isaac, aren’t you?’ Grand asked, ‘The house boy.’
‘Yessir.’
‘Do you have a last name, Isaac?’
‘Armitage, sir.’
Grand closed to him. ‘I’m Matthew Grand, Isaac,’ he said. ‘I saw you the other day …’
‘You were wi’ the vicar,’ Isaac said.
‘That’s right,’ Grand agreed. ‘Lovely man, the vicar. And I was a friend of Mr Dickens, back in the day. Sad loss, huh?’
‘You’re not from round here, are you?’ Isaac’s eyes narrowed. He was not naturally suspicious of strangers, being a simple, friendly soul, but he was suspicious of this one. The man was so big, his hat so wide and his clothes so … foreign.
‘No, I’m from Boston, originally, although I lived in Washington when I was your age. You liked Mr Dickens?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Isaac’s face broadened to a grin. ‘He was the best. He used to give me ear money.’
‘Ear money?’ Grand had only been in England for five years; there was much that was still alien to him.
‘Yeah, you know. Er … got a penny, guv?’
Grand ferreted in his pocket and passed the coin to the lad. Isaac slipped it between his fingers and, hesitantly, reached up to produce the penny from behind Grand’s ear. ‘Ear money,’ Isaac said triumphantly, and was about to pocket the coin except that Grand was already holding his hand out. ‘He did that to all the young ’uns, did Mr Dickens.’
‘Er … he did know you were thirteen, Isaac?’ Grand felt obliged to ask.
‘Fourteen, sir, if you don’t mind – that’s how come Mr D used to give me the odd nip of his brandy, too. I had a cigar last Christmas – only I threw up. No, Mr D, he was a big kid himself. I’m gunna miss him.’
‘I’m sure you are,’ Grand nodded. He put an arm around the lad’s shoulders and led him down the lawn away from the house. ‘Tell me, Isaac, did anybody come calling here at Gads Hill, in the days before Mr Dickens died, I mean?’
‘There was always people calling,’ Isaac told him. ‘He was that famous, was Mr D; everybody wanted to see him.’
‘Yes, of course, but anyone in particular. Anyone you remember.’
‘Well, there was that American bloke. ’Ere, I bet you know him. He was surprised when I didn’t, anyway.’
‘He was?’
‘Yes, he said …’ and Isaac launched into what Grand realized was meant to be an American accent, ‘… he said, “Henry Morford, at your service. No doubt you’ve heard of me.” Well, I hadn’t. And I told him.’
‘He wasn’t pleased?’
‘No,’ Isaac remembered. ‘Came over all unnecessary, he did. Anyhow, he wanted to see Mr D, but he wasn’t in.’
‘Did he leave his card?’
‘I dunno. You’d have to ask Georgy … er … Miss Hogarth.’
‘Anybody else?’
‘Well, just the usuals. That Mr Forster. Mr Trollope. Mr Ouvry. They’re always round here. Oh, there was that woman.’
‘What woman?’
‘Stella.’
‘Stella?’
‘Well, that’s what she said her name was.’
‘When did she call?’
‘Ooh, it would have been a couple of times. Three, maybe.’
‘Do you remember when this was, Isaac?’
‘Nah. One day’s very much like another at Gads Hill, Mr Grand. There’s always people here; tripping over each other, they are.’
‘Why do you remember Stella in particular?’
‘Well, I didn’t like her to be honest. ’Course, it’s not my place to say …’
‘You’re among friends,’ Grand assured him. ‘What was it about her you didn’t like?’
‘Well, she was a bit … familiar, you know. Patted my cheek and said what a nice growed-up boy I was. And she, sort of, looked me up and down, you know. Fair made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, she did.’
‘Did Stella stay for lunch or supper?’ Grand asked.
‘Neither as far as I know. She only ever went to the chalet, not to the big house.’
‘Tell me, Isaac. Did Miss Hogarth like Stella?’
The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know that Miss Hogarth ever saw her,’ he said. ‘That was another peculiar thing. She only ever turned up when Miss Hogarth was out.’
FIVE
James Batchelor was good with staff. Anyone watching him trying to deal with Mrs Rackstraw would probably disagree, but with other people’s staff, he was a master of his craft. He never actually said that he was one of them, but he managed to give the impression that Below Stairs was his natural habitat. He went round the corner of the building while Grand was ringing at the front door and kept on turning left until he found the way into the kitchen.
He didn’t even have to knock. As he turned his final corner, he walked into a cloud of fluff and grit as the maid shook a mat right into his face. Coughing, he emerged from the ghibli she had created to see her standing there, rug hanging limp in one hand, the other hand pressed to her mouth. Her eyes were dancing and her laugh escaped from behind her fingers.
‘Oh, sir,’ she said, suppressing her giggles with difficulty. ‘I’m ever so sorry. I didn’t hear you coming through the yard.’
‘No, really, it’s nothing.’ James Batchelor wasn’t as striking to look at as Matthew Grand, but his innate vulnerability got him places where Grand’s looks would only intimidate. But with a feather on a lapel and a large puff of fluff in his hair, no maid could resist him.
‘Come in, come in,’ the girl said, pulling at his sleeve. ‘Let me brush you down.’ She took him down a dark passageway and into a kitchen which, on a day already hot and humid, was like a circle of Hell. The range was burning brightly and Batchelor could feel the blast of heat coming off it right across the room. Laundry was hanging overhead on racks pulled up to the high ceiling, making the room seem low and dark. Under the sheets, at a huge, scrubbed table, a cook was rolling pastry, every now and then pausing to push an errant lock of hair off her sweating forehead.
When she saw the girl and the dust-trap she was towing behind her, she screamed and gestured with floury hands. ‘Get him away; I don’t want fluff and filth in my pastry. Get away!’ She flapped her apron at Batchelor as if he were some vermin she had found in the flour bin.
Batchelor flinched as the flecks of damp, uncooked pastry flew in his direction. He certainly didn’t need to be covered in any more random Dickensian detritus.
‘Ooh, Mrs Brownlow,’ the maid said, standing between Batchelor and the airborne pastry, ‘it’s all my fault he’s fluffy. I shook the mat over him.’
‘Stupid girl,’ the cook snapped. ‘Take him outside and brush him down. Make sure you stand downwind. That’ll be the fourth cap and apron this week, otherwise.’
Batchelor and the maid made their escape back down the corridor and into the yard outside. They could see through the window that the cook had returned to her pastry, dimly lit by the roar of the fire.
‘She never goes out, you know,’ the maid observed, as she brushed Batchelor down vigorously. ‘She doesn’t know there hasn’t been a breath of wind in weeks. She slaves in that hell-hole day and night, and can’t see that her pastry is like lead because the room is so hot. We’ve got a still-room and all, but she says it’s too cold in there. She’s a martyr to her tubes, she says.’
Batchelor squirmed as her brushing became a little intimate and pushed her hand away. ‘I’m not sure any fluff actually got there,’ he said.
‘Sorry,’ and again the girl was suffused in giggles. ‘Here, turn round, let me do your back.’ She brushed him efficiently from the shoulders down, and then, with a final flourish, whipped th
e brush down the back of each leg. ‘There, you’ll do.’ She spun him round again. ‘If you’ll just let me …’ and she reached up and plucked the fluff from his hair. ‘There. Spick and span.’ She stepped back and looked him up and down. ‘Now, what was it you were wanting?’
‘Pardon?’ Batchelor was a little discombobulated, as Grand would have said had he been there. It seemed to him that one minute he had been the efficient if rather undercover enquiry agent and the next a figure of fun. He hitched his jacket into a more comfortable position and began as he had meant to go on. ‘I am a … journalist,’ he said. He held his hand up as the maid took a step towards him, clothes brush raised. ‘I am here to write an article about the staff who worked so tirelessly to ensure that our greatest writer could live so comfortably and not have to worry about a thing. It’s because of you that we have so many masterpieces from his pen.’ Even as he spoke, it sounded hopelessly unconvincing, but then he watched as she swallowed it, hook, line and sinker.
Even so, she had had her orders. ‘We’re not supposed to talk to your sort,’ she said, but didn’t sound very sure.
‘Oh, but I’m not my sort,’ he said. ‘I write for The Servants’ Magazine.’ He had spotted a very thumbed copy on a shelf in the kitchen.
Her eyes lit up. ‘Really? And they want you to write about us?’
‘It will be a freelance article, but they have expressed an interest, yes.’ Even after five years in the enquiry agent business, and being a journalist before that, Batchelor still had trouble with outright lies.
The maid tugged at his sleeve. ‘Let’s go back inside,’ she said. ‘Mrs Brownlow will want the kettle on soon and I’ll have to make the tea for Miss Georgy. I heard the bell go, so she might have company. Come on,’ she tugged again and, much against his will, Batchelor allowed himself to be taken back to the kitchen. He began to sweat almost before they reached the door and the girl turned to him, seeming to read his mind. ‘Mrs Brownlow doesn’t mind if gentlemen take off their jackets,’ she said. ‘She knows she keeps it a bit warm. ’Ere, haven’t got a camera, have you? Only if you have, I need to tidy meself a bit.’