by Issy Brooke
“London’s not so bad,” Cordelia said, smiling.
“I mean Eagle Street. She had a house there … oh, begging pardon, m’m…”
“It’s perfectly all right,” she reassured him. “I am aware of the nature of her business there.”
“It was a respectable one, such as it can be, though, from what I did hear,” he said. “A bad one but not as bad as some might be, is all.” He trailed off and dropped his gaze, and she let him lead her out into the garden once more.
“Have you herbs here?” she asked.
“Aye, for the kitchen,” he said, and took her closer to one of the back doors. That made sense; they would have to be accessible for the cook. “We have all the herbs and flavours that any cook might need.”
“And plants for the sickroom also,” she said, noting the feverfew and lavender. “I suppose that Mr Hawke had little cause to ever call the doctor, though.”
“Oh, I doubt we should ever see the likes of him here. As a professional man, I mean. Who the master chooses to invite to his dinners, however, is his own business.” Ralph’s face was closing up once more.
“The doctor strikes me as an unusual man…”
“Aye.” The single word was bitten off. He stared off past her again, pointedly looking towards the rhubarb patch.
She took the hint, and thanked him profusely for his time. She walked slowly back along the crunching gravel, her head now whirling with information. She had no confidence in the constable to get to the bottom of matters. Doctor Donald Arnall was intriguing her more and more.
Furthermore, the tour of the kitchen gardens had given her a new idea – a possible new outlet for her energy and time – which was making her quiver with its potential. She would not think of the ending of her time at Clarfields. She would think only of the future.
A trip to the Post Office was going to be essential. She felt dizzy with the excitement of being at the starting line of a new project, and smiled as she skipped up the steps to the house.
Chapter Twelve
The afternoon was wearing on but Cordelia was keen to put things into motion. She hurriedly wrote her letters at her small travelling box, opened out on the table in the day room of her suite. The windows were open and the fire unlit, and the summer air flowed into the room. Ruby busied herself in the background, rustling through from the sitting room to the bedroom and back again, preparing a suitable outfit for Cordelia to wear on her walk into town. She refused any offers of company, and brushed aside Ruby’s indignant protests.
“I shall be highly surprised to find I have any honour remaining that might be compromised,” she told the maid as she swapped her shoes.
Ruby cocked her head and looked about to reply. Cordelia stopped her, rising to her feet and saying, firmly, “No.”
“I didn’t say–”
“You were about to. Has the ham arrived?”
“Yes, my lady, and Hugo’s cook is arguing with Mrs Unsworth.”
“I would doubt the sanity of anyone who did not argue with Mrs Unsworth,” Cordelia said drily. “Now, I shall not be long.” She tested the letters and found the ink was now quite dry, so she folded them and sealed the envelopes. “You may relax; attend to your Bible, or do some mending, perhaps.”
She knew that it was not the sort of thing that Ruby would call “relaxing.” With a merry wave, she left her maid to get up to whatever sneaky trysts she could manage, and headed along the road to town once more.
* * *
The Post Office occupied one half of a general store; the calmer, less crowded half, she discovered. In the shop side, people crowded around the counter, waiting as the shop keeper and his boy fetched their items and packed them, but the half containing the Post Office counter was devoid of people. The walls were a pleasant cream which showed the polished woodwork nicely. Behind the post office clerk were a range of shelves with a few items proudly displayed, unlike the general chaos of the shop part of the business.
The post office clerk was short and round, with bushy white whiskers. He smiled broadly and leaned forward as she approached, looking behind her for her companions. He had enough polite breeding to let only a sliver of surprise show on his face when he learned she was unaccompanied.
No doubt he thinks me the finer sort of jade, she thought, and almost giggled to herself.
“Good afternoon, sir. I wish to send two letters,” she said, pulling them from her bag as she reached the counter.
“With pleasure, madam.” He took them and studied the addresses. “London and … where is this?”
“My estate in the county of Surrey,” she said, and he took a pen to add the county name to the bottom of her envelope. The words stuck in her throat.
“Very good. One penny each, if you please.”
“I still marvel that it costs the same for any distance,” she said as she paid.
“Indeed, it is a wonder. And much work it has caused for me and my assistants; not that I am complaining, no, indeed!”
“Work?” She indicated the empty room.
“Oh, I take your meaning,” he said. “But all my boys are out, meeting this stage or that train, with their letters and parcels and errands. Quite the rush we’ve had on, today, I must confess.” He leaned his elbows on the counter and affected a confidential tone. “And folks I do not usually see here more than once in a month! And sending such a slew of letters! There must be something in the air.”
He wasn’t just gossiping, she realised. He was inviting her to partake of his gossip. Well, working in a communications office was perfect for a garrulous and inquisitive man such as he seemed to be. And what a refreshing change from earlier, when she had had to tease out scraps of information from Ralph Goody the gardener.
“Oh, really?” she replied, leaning forward slightly herself, and lowering her voice. She met his eyes and tried to sound coquettish.
“Now, you’re not from round here…” he said.
Oh, so it was to be a trading of information, she thought. It was his currency. “I’m staying with Huge Hawke,” she told him.
He nodded; he already knew. Everyone did.
She had to tell him more. “I have been widowed these five years past,” she said. “And as such, my life is constrained and narrow. But dear Hugo was my late husband’s trustee and he has been kind enough to invite me to stay so that I might see a little of society.”
She dropped enough insinuation into her words to set the clerk’s mind whirring away like a clockwork automaton. She smiled as if in perfect innocence as she conjured up the beginnings of a scandalous rumour for him. “I have lacked for all male company lately. Hugo is so very dear to me. And Mr Ewatt Carter-Hall, too, has been most attentive. I cannot express my gratitude enough for his ministrations!”
“Oh, yes,” the clerk agreed, his eyes sparkling with rumour upon assumption upon simply more rumour. “Mr Carter-Hall has always been noted for his propensity to render assistance to the female sex. Indeed, he was one of the men with a curious number of letters to send today.”
“Did he really?” she murmured. “I suppose he must have an awful lot of frightfully important work…”
“I rather think he must be planning a trip abroad,” the clerk said. “Mind, he said nothing of it to me, directly. But when one works in an office such as this, one does become an uncommonly good reader of people.”
Oh, are you? she thought, amused, but she let him continue in his self-importance. “For example,” he said, his pudgy finger beating the points on the counter in rhythm to his words, “one of his letters was to a shipping company in London and another to a broker there. Furthermore, he had letters to France – one to an agent and one to a property company. There, you see! With those morsels of information, one can read all a man’s intentions, can one not?”
“Quite,” she said. “Quite so. And who else has been unusually active in here today?”
“There is a doctor in these parts…”
“Doctor A
rnall. Yes, we met at a dinner.” And over a corpse, she added silently.
“Doctor Donald Arnall,” the clerk said. “Indeed. And he is not a local man, either. A strange one. He reads newspapers altogether with too much intent.” A good man would not sully himself with politics, was the insinuation, one often expressed by the established churches.
“Where does he hail from?” she asked.
“Liverpool,” the clerk said. “Though his voice is not as odd as the natives there. But it is Liverpool where all his letters were going!”
“That is not so very strange,” Cordelia pointed out. “His family might well be there, and his friends remain there also.”
“Indeed, it would have not been strange at all – if his letters had been going to friends and family!” the clerk declared with a flourish. “But no! Not a private house among the addresses. He wrote to hospitals – not one, but many! Prisons, also. What do you make of that?”
“Goodness.” She had not expected to be surprised but she straightened up and stared in wonder. “I have no idea what to make of that. How curious. And he gave no intimation as to the contents?”
“None at all.” The clerk shrugged. “I am not privy to the man’s confidences. I rather doubt that anyone is.”
“But he is married, is he not…”
“He is. Happily, so they say,” the clerk added, as if warning her off.
She smiled. No doubt there would be some scurrilous rumours about to take wing now. “Thank you for seeing to my letters,” she said, and gathered her shawl more tightly about her shoulders. “I must be returning.”
* * *
She sorted through the new information in her head as she strolled back along the lonely road to Hugo’s house. So, the doctor came from Liverpool – what had prompted him to write to hospitals and prisons there? And Ewatt, well, she could imagine that he did travel a lot. So his letters were not so strange at all. The clerk was finding gossip in the smallest of things.
A trip to Europe, though, she thought. How exciting! I should travel. Maybe the loss of my house will be freeing for me. Would Ewatt take his distractible wife? She had the attention span of a kitten, and the appealing looks of one, too. No doubt she was as distracting as she was easily distracted.
Perhaps, instead, Ewatt would leave her at home, and travel alone. Or, more thrillingly, with a mistress.
She was intrigued for a moment. What would that be like? The offer was there from him. She could travel on the arm of a rich man, laughing and drinking their way through the respectable haunts of the continent, perhaps even pretending to be a married couple. It was often done so. She knew of society ladies who had fallen into such a life. Some had regretted it, but others professed not to. Many doors were closed to them, but perhaps that only meant that other doors were open to more exciting places.
Her words to Ruby earlier had been a lie. She had claimed she had no honour to lose. In truth, she knew that a fall from what unsteady grace she currently held would be catastrophic for one such as her. For Ewatt would tire of her; he would cast her off; and then, alone, she would truly be ruined.
There would be no more invitations to houses such as Hugo’s, she reminded herself. He would not marry her. No one would.
She picked up her pace. She would now await the replies to her letters. One, she had sent to her house, informing them that she would be absent just a little while longer while matters were arranged.
The other was to her literary agent in London, and it assured him of the details of her amazing new plan for success.
Chapter Thirteen
Hugo was pleased that Cordelia declared her intention to accept his offer of a longer stay. He assured her they would “settle the matter” soon. He also happily gave her directions to Ewatt’s house, and advised her that Freda Carter-Hall was often “at home” and would likely be grateful for a visit.
“I fear she misses the whirl of London,” he said. “She is a young girl in an old man’s house.”
“He is your friend!”
“He’s an old goat – as I think you know,” he said. “Be wary of him, Cordelia. Also, he is a terrible poker player. I empty his pockets on a regular basis.”
It was a pleasant walk and once again, Cordelia courted scandal by going alone. Both Geoffrey and Ruby grimaced and exchanged glances. Cordelia knew that Geoffrey expected to be hauling her dead and robbed body out of a ditch at the rate she was carrying on. She ignored their protestations and sallied forth just after lunch.
She took her parasol, light long gloves, and a bag that rested in the crook of her arm. In the bag was a lurid novel and also her notebook.
For Freda Carter-Hall was to be the first of her interviewees, and her new project was beginning right now.
* * *
The Carter-Halls lived in a fine old house, with a sweeping driveway through a tall pair of gates which stood open. She walked up the steps to the portico, admiring the two bay trees in terracotta pots that stood either side of the door. One tree half-masked a locked letterbox attached to the wall. She rang the bell and stepped back, smiling and ready to be convivial and social.
And waited.
She expected a steward or butler, but it was a woman with a pointed nose who opened the door at last. She was dressed in dark, sombre clothing, and had a bunch of keys by her belt. She looked Cordelia up and down, and did not speak.
“Good afternoon,” Cordelia said. “I wonder if Mrs Carter-Hall is at home?”
The housekeeper blinked in surprise. “Oh. I don’t rightly know. I shall enquire. Wait.”
And she disappeared, leaving Cordelia in shock on the doorstep with the door shut in her face.
She wavered. She had some calling cards in her bag, which she might leave on the hall table – if she were given the chance! She began to pull one free when the door was opened once more.
“She says she is here,” the housekeeper said. “So, please, come in. Who might I say is calling?”
“Cordelia, Lady Cornbrook.”
Using her title had the same effect as a slap in the face from a dead trout might have done. The housekeeper appeared to grow seven inches and her face went rigid. “Immediately, my lady. Sorry, my lady. Yes.”
Yet it was still fully five minutes before Cordelia was shown into a day room. It was opulently furnished, evidently to demonstrate the Carter-Halls’ riches to visitors. Unlike the restrained elegance of Hugo’s regency-inspired room, this was a place that screamed “Look! Money!” There were large portraits of the family on the walls, framed in heavy moulded gilt, all clamouring for attention in a higgledy-piggledy scramble, and a rash of spindly-legged tables that bristled with vases and ornaments. The overall colour scheme was “burgundy with a dash of gold” offset by “dark mahogany and rich green”, and it was a place that would induce headaches in the frail and elderly within moments.
Somewhere among the frippery and lack of taste was a female figure, dressed much like the fireplace in unnecessary layers of bows and decoration. She was at an angle across a sofa, so that she was almost lying on it, and she half-rose but sank back almost straight away, exhausted. Her repose showed she was clearly unlaced. “My good lady Cordelia,” she whispered throatily. “How awfully nice of you to come to see poor little me.”
“Freda,” she said, trying to match up this current vision with the flighty and lively woman she’d met at Hugo’s soiree. “Are you quite well?” If she was unwell, the housekeeper should have declared her to be “not at home.” But then, Cordelia thought, the housekeeper ought to have known her mistress’s intentions right from the start, without having to check. Was it even the housekeeper? Or some random vagabond wandered in from the highway?
“Oh, yes, Cordelia, quite well,” Freda whispered. “Do, come over, sit down here near to me. Mrs Vale will be back with some refreshments soon. I hope.”
Cordelia found a wide pink chair and dragged it to Freda. She still wore her bonnet and gloves and should have kept them on f
or a visit like this, but the room was stiflingly hot. Somewhat awkwardly, she stripped them off and laid them on a nearby table. She could overlook the improprieties. It didn’t seem as if Freda would note it, or mind at all. If she could lie there without a corset, Cordelia could turn cartwheels through the room, really.
Freda was pale, but her eyes were sparkling and rimmed with red. She had a familiar languidity about her that spoke of laudanum or some cordial or elixir that contained the popular medicine. Nevertheless, Cordelia decided to press on with her plan.
She said, “Freda, I’ve come to you because I think you might be able to help me. I have a new direction! I am to become a woman of letters. I am embarked on a project to collect the regional recipes of each part of Britain. I have noticed, as I have travelled, that different areas–”