Much against the grain, he had to include the little chambermaid’s sighting of Teresa Kelly on the day in question seeing as Lady Blackshaw was making no secret of putting a sinister construction on it. He had to keep reminding himself that Her Ladyship was so overcome with grief (though to look at her dry eyes no one would guess, so well did she disguise her feelings – all those centuries of breeding) she needed to clutch at straws. Or save face, the memory of the voice of the unimpressed young constable chimed in. One small consolation: Teresa, on the other side of the world, need never know her name had been blackened. She hadn’t left an address with her brother or anyone else as far as he knew, so if she chose to stay out of touch, which he suspected she would, there would be no way anyone could get word to her, thank God.
After he had transcribed Lady Blackshaw’s initial account of her daughter’s disappearance, dated it the day before – 7th July 1917 – and signed and stamped the report, he re-read all the interview notes and felt proud, as a fellow villager and neighbour, of the high regard in which Teresa was held.
No one had had a bad word to say about her. Considering the short time she had been employed at the Park, she had left a good impression. What particularly interested him, and what he didn’t include in his report, was how each servant said more or less the same thing: the only person who would really, deeply miss Victoria was Teresa Kelly. Not Lady Blackshaw, who hardly ever saw her daughter, certainly not the absent Lord Waldron who had seen her briefly only once, and not Nurse Dixon who, according to quite a few servants, wasn’t very nice to the girls when she thought no one was looking.
This last observation was disbelieved by the young constable, who immediately spoke up in the nanny’s defence. The remarks were inspired by jealousy of the nanny’s good looks, he argued. When Nurse Dixon was being interviewed, she had shown so much patience with the uncooperative Charlotte, and had been so kind to her, that he was sure she was genuine – no one could put on an act as convincing as that if they were pretending – and the inspector wrote a note to that effect on the report.
Edwina’s neighbours reported back from Queenstown. Only one passenger boat had departed from there during the last four days, and none was due to depart for the next week. The number of sailings was reduced because of the war. When they asked about passenger lists, they were told the authorities weren’t at liberty to disclose any information about them. And no, they hadn’t seen a middle-aged lady with a child or a middle-aged lady on her own anywhere near the port on or after the 7th of July.
The search continued. Families spent their Sundays after Mass walking along the banks of the river or beside the harbour walls on the south coast, staring into the Atlantic. Bathers sifted the sand along the shore. Fishermen scrutinised their nets. Sid concentrated on the outbuildings on the estate. Manus continued to search the seven miles of river, now returned to its normal depth, in the early morning and late evenings, tending to the horses in between times.
Nothing was found – not a fragment of flesh, bone, hair or white linen fabric, nor any part of a porcelain doll with red hair or any shred of its emerald-green dress.
Those who knew Teresa Kelly well were outraged by Edwina’s kidnapping theory, though as time passed many came to entertain it, more from hope than conviction.
Edwina had written to her husband three days after the disappearance. Waldron wrote back from London to say how frightfully sorry he was, but at such a critical time there was no question of his taking leave from the War Office, even for a short period. She must, as a member of a military family with a long and proud history, appreciate the fact that the loss of one small girl, no matter how significant to one personally, was of little consequence compared to the welfare of a million soldiers, all under his jurisdiction.
Edwina had expected exactly that response.
Alone, she continued to puzzle over the anomalies in the Teresa Kelly story.
Every day she contacted the inspector to see if there had been any response to the circulated description, to be told each time with regret there was none.
This brought up another quandary for Edwina. Could she trust the police, port authorities, villagers or even Manus to relay information about Teresa, one of their own, to her, an interloper? Her friend and neighbour, Lady Beatrice, a woman in her sixties, had laughed at the astonishment on Edwina’s face when she told her that the Blackshaw family might have lived in Tyringham Park for over four hundred years but they would never be considered the rightful owners. Those who had to labour out of economic necessity as tenants on the Big House estates around the country regarded the land they worked on as their own – it had belonged to their forebears, and one day they would drive out the imperialists and reclaim it.
“It is something you should be aware of, especially with Waldron’s position in these troubled times,” Lady Beatrice had warned.
Edwina presumed she meant his position in the British army.
She came to the conclusion that concern for the missing child was as genuine as the dearth of information about Teresa’s whereabouts was deliberate, and if she wanted results, she would have to obtain them herself.
The steward accompanied her and a maid to Dublin to question the port officials there but, as in Queenstown, passenger lists for sailings were classified and no amount of argument produced them. The clerks were sympathetic, but they had to be especially vigilant after the Easter Rising of the previous year. A trip to Belfast produced the same negative response, and she returned to Cork frustrated and downhearted.
The search was officially called off.
7
Miss East kept her eye out for Charlotte. Normally you could set your clock by her. Five past two, on the dot, she would pass by the window on the way to the stables, sometimes on her own, often accompanied by Nurse Dixon, who didn’t need to take her but wanted the excuse to make eyes at Manus – eight years on, she didn’t seem to have made any headway in that department and, with her blatant flirting, had turned herself into a bit of a joke among the other servants.
There had been no sign of either of them for two weeks now. Miss East became agitated – not only had Charlotte lost a sister, but an adult she loved and trusted in the person of Teresa Kelly. With a preoccupied mother and only Nurse Dixon for company, there was no one to see how she was faring. Miss East checked with Cook who told her meals were being delivered as usual to the landing outside the nursery by a maid, and taken in personally by Nurse Dixon, who later put the empty trays back on the landing to be collected by the same maid. There was never any leftover food on either tray, Cook said proudly. There never had been in all the years she had been cooking.
Miss East became even more uneasy when she discovered that the chambermaid who was supposed to clean and dust the nursery once a week had been told by Dixon to stay away until further notice as she was doing the cleaning herself.
“Why didn’t you report that to me?” Miss East asked her.
“I didn’t see the need,” answered the maid. “Dixon said Miss Charlotte needed peace and quiet and she would get me back as soon as she was feeling better.”
Miss East took it upon herself to go to the nursery, even though that wing of the house was not under her jurisdiction, a rule made specifically by Lady Blackshaw, she knew, to try to undermine and humble her. There would be no point in approaching Lady Blackshaw to ask permission to visit Charlotte over Nurse Dixon’s head – she would be refused.
“What are you doing here?” Nurse Dixon asked, opening the door a few inches and glaring when she saw who was standing there.
“I’d like to see Charlotte.” Miss East tried to keep her voice confident and steady. Dixon’s aggressive attitude unnerved her. She could only imagine what effect it had on the children in her care.
“What for?”
“Just to see how she is. I haven’t seen her around lately.”
“She’s asleep. You don’t have to check on how she is. That’s what I’m here for, Lily,
as if you didn’t know.”
“Under the circumstances . . .” Miss East gave the door a push, and before Nurse Dixon could make a grab for it to pull it closed behind her, Miss East had glimpsed a white, thin face staring at her from the bed.
The two women were now facing each other on the landing. Miss East took a step back.
“What is wrong with her?” she asked.
“Did Lady Blackshaw send you?”
“No, she didn’t.”
“Then you’ve no business snooping around this wing, asking questions. You know I’m in charge here, not you. Why don’t you take yourself off and stop poking your nose in where it isn’t wanted?” She turned as if to dismiss the older woman.
“Charlotte doesn’t look at all well,” Miss East persisted, even though she was beginning to feel weak. “Would you like me to call the doctor?”
“She don’t need a doctor. And I’d be the one calling him if she did. Go on, get off with you. Shoo!”
Miss East descended the first set of stairs.
“Just tell her I was asking for her,” she called up.
“‘Just tell her I was asking for her,’” mimicked Dixon in a taunting manner, and then said loudly as she re-entered the room, “The old witch thinks you’re ill. Shows how little she knows. Now get yourself off that bed this instant and tidy up those crayons.” A pause. “Did you hear what I said?”
Miss East covered her ears and hurried on down the stairs.
The next day Lady Blackshaw informed Miss East that she needed to go to London to see her husband on urgent business and was entrusting the running of the house to her. She would be away for a month.
“Don’t contact me unless there’s news of Victoria, in which case send a telegram to Lord Waldron’s office. Otherwise, deal with everything yourself.”
“Everything?”
“Yes, everything. The business of the Park isn’t exactly high on my list of priorities at the moment.”
Minutes after Lady Blackshaw was driven to the train, Miss East rang Dr John Finn and asked him to come up to the nursery to see Charlotte. She then walked to the steward’s house and told him Nurse Dixon would be leaving the employment of the Park that day and could he sort out any wages due to her, and payment in lieu of notice, if that applied.
“Bad business, that,” he said sympathetically.
Miss East didn’t answer, letting him presume the nanny was leaving because of the heartbreak over Victoria.
“I’ll sort that out for you straight away, Miss East, and have it sent up to you. Lady Blackshaw get away all right?”
Miss East sent a maid to inform Nurse Dixon that Dr Finn would be calling shortly. When Dixon began to object, the maid said “Lady Blackshaw’s orders,” as she had been instructed to do.
While Miss East waited for Dr Finn, she couldn’t settle to any occupation. The day she had looked forward to for eight years had come at last.
8
The doctor dreaded seeing Victoria’s cot, empty now for seventeen days. He paused on the landing to prepare himself and to catch his breath after running up the three flights of stairs. He considered himself fit for a man of sixty, but the stairs were steeper than he remembered and he should have had the sense to take them at a slower pace.
After the darkness of the stairwell, the bright light in the room blinded him when he entered. He reached sideways automatically and it was the cot that steadied him until his eyes adjusted to the glare. He kept his head facing to the front while he regained his vision, but then found his eyes drawn to the contents of the cot: a rumpled red blanket, and a white linen sheet that was smooth at the outer edges and wrinkled towards the centre.
From the opposite side of the vast room the young child in the bed stared at him.
“I was told to leave it exactly as it was. Not to touch a thing, I was told,” said the nanny, standing beside the child’s bed.
“You did well, Nurse Dixon.” Dr Finn smiled in the direction of the young woman he’d always thought of as “nervy” even though she stood straight and still with her hands clasped in front of her; a picture of calm. Maybe it was the hurried way she spoke or the constant blinking that hinted at an uneasiness beneath the surface.
He wondered if it was the police or the mother who had given the order to leave the cot exactly as it was. Whoever it was had neglected to ensure young Charlotte was moved to another room where she wouldn’t have to look, on a daily basis, at the emptiness behind the bars of the cot.
The girl in the bed kept her dull eyes on the doctor and didn’t smile or speak as he crossed the room. He hoped that the concern he felt on seeing her looking so ill didn’t show on his face.
“Well, how is my favourite girl?” he asked her, before shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with the nanny, who immediately reverted to standing straight with her eyes cast down and her hands clasped in front of her. “Now let me have a look at you, Miss Charlotte, and we’ll see what the problem is.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “Tell your old friend what the trouble is.”
“She isn’t talking, Doctor,” said the nanny. “Not one word since the baby disappeared. And not eating neither. I keep saying if you don’t eat you’ll lose your strength. I keep telling her that.” Her eyes closed as if for emphasis.
“Thank you, Nurse,” he said. “How long has she been in bed?”
“Four days, but she were poorly before that. Ever since . . . well, you know. Gets out to use the commode then crawls right back in again. Won’t let me help her neither.”
He checked Charlotte’s pulse, temperature, throat, eyes, heartbeat and abdomen, all the while calling her his pet and his brave girl. “Now your lungs,” he said as he helped her into a sitting position, noting how much weight she had lost since he last saw her.
“Take a deep breath and hold it, there’s a good girl.” He lifted her nightdress and saw the large fading bruises in a line across her back.
“Oh dear, that looks nasty. I thought that you’d given up falling off horses.”
The nanny’s head bobbed down. “It weren’t the horses – it were horseplay on the bed, more like. Gets overexcited and don’t know when to stop.”
“Will you ever forget your broken arm last year when you couldn’t ride for ten weeks? Now that wasn’t much fun, was it?”
Charlotte looked at the doctor, then the nanny, and then finally, as she slid back onto the pillows, the ceiling.
The doctor noticed that the nanny cast her eyes down when he spoke to her, but watched him when she thought he wasn’t looking. With his peripheral vision, the doctor noted the bobbing head and the blinking eyes.
“Will I ask Manus to find you a quieter pony?” asked the doctor and was pleased to see Charlotte smile as she shook her head. “I saw him on the way up riding your Mandrake. What a big horse for a little girl of eight. He’d frighten the life out of me.” The smile grew wider. “Manus told me months ago you’re well able to handle Mandrake. He says you’ve got a special talent and you’re nothing short of a champion. Actually, if I told you all the good things he said about you, you’d get a big swelled head.”
Charlotte continued to look pleased but, as the doctor began to pack his black bag, a look of disquiet replaced the smile on her face.
“And what’s this I’m told? That you’re not eating? Would I be right in saying that?” The doctor noticed out of the corner of his eye the nanny lifting her head. Charlotte glanced at her before looking back at the doctor and nodding.
“We’ll have to do something about that or Cook won’t be too happy, will she? And what about sleeping? Are you getting plenty of sleep?”
Charlotte shook her head.
“She’s awake half of the night and when she is asleep she’s tossing and turning around and opening her mouth all weird like,” said the nanny.
“We can’t have that,” said the doctor. “Exhausting for both of you. Is it nightmares you’re having, Miss Charlotte? Is that the trouble?”
The doctor sat for a long period before asking softly, “Are you dreaming about little Victoria?”
He noticed her lip trembling as she nodded.
“I think we’re all having bad dreams about her,” he said, taking her hand. “It’s only natural. It’s hard to think of anything else. Of course your dreams are disturbed. How could they not be?” His other hand patted her arm. “Who knows, she might still be found. We can only hope and pray.” He turned to Nurse Dixon. “It’s important that Charlotte isn’t left alone at night even for a minute.”
“There’s no need to tell me that, Doctor.”
“Of course, Nurse. I wasn’t suggesting you needed telling, I was thinking of your isolation up here – no one even in earshot. So high up and so far away from the rest of the house. Perhaps you should ask another member of the staff to stay.”
“I wouldn’t trust no one else, especially not now. I can manage, Doctor.”
“I’m sure you can, but I’d hate to see you wearing yourself out with all that broken sleep and no time off. It must be lonely for you at all events. And you must be missing Teresa Kelly.” He looked over his half-glasses. “Have you heard from her yet?”
“No, she’s only been gone three weeks. She won’t have arrived yet.”
“Well, I hope when she gets there she’ll do well in her new life. She’s a great girl and deserves to.”
The doctor stood and crossed the room to look out one of the windows which was fitted with iron bars high enough to prevent a child falling out accidentally. “Spectacular view,” he said, admiring the green fields disappearing into the oak and beech forest in the distance. “Pity to see you missing this sunshine, ladies. God knows we get little enough of it.” He turned. “We’ll have to see how soon we can get you out of this bed, Charlotte, and then back into the fresh air with the both of you. I’ll have a chat with Miss East and we’ll see what we can do.” He smiled down at Charlotte. “It’s a pity that I can’t take you home with me. Mrs Finn would love a dotey little girl like you to fuss over. But we couldn’t take you away from Nurse Dixon, could we?” He looked up at the nanny. “You’d be lost without her, wouldn’t you, Nurse?”
Tyringham Park Page 4