At least both women had no difficulty understanding what she meant.
‘That’s nice,’ said Meg.
‘Cripes!’ said Mrs Crumble. ‘And gone back to her husband? I thought she was escaping from him.’
Ursula swallowed an involuntary smile. Servants did indeed know everything that went on in the house where they worked, or nearly everything. Then she wondered what Mrs Crumble and Meg knew about her. But what was there to know?
‘As he was the father, she thought it was her duty.’
‘Treat her right, will he?’ asked Meg, frowning in concentration and holding out her hand for the return of the piece of paper. ‘Mrs Peters is nice.’
Ursula quickly memorised the few words on the scrap of paper and handed it back to Meg, watching her return it to her pocket.
‘Wasn’t burned,’ Meg said. ‘So it’s mine.’ Her tone was matter-of-fact rather than defensive.
Well, if Alice hadn’t ensured all her pieces of paper had gone up in flames, then she had to accept the consequences.
Ursula thanked Mrs Crumble for her supper and went upstairs.
Up in her room, she found paper and pencil and reproduced as well as she could the words as they had appeared on the unburned portion of the letter. The first word did not start with a capital letter, which meant the first phrase was only part of a sentence:
‘you, my darling, I have worked it’
‘aniel, I can do it, I know I can. It’
‘readful, but then we can be free for’
‘He will be gone.’
She tore the left-hand side of the paper away, trying to copy the singed bit of the original. How much had been burned? Had the other part of it been wider than her piece, or narrower? With the missing words in place, could it be part of a letter explaining to Daniel that Alice could leave her husband and run away with him, so that they could be free to enjoy their lives together? But what did that last little phrase mean: ‘He will be gone’?
* * *
Ursula had a largely sleepless night, tossing and turning as she tried to make sense of that scrap of paper. It was hopeless, and that last sentence haunted her.
Breakfast was almost over. The last of the other boarders left, finishing her tea standing up before uttering a muttered farewell.
Ursula wasn’t due at Mrs Bruton’s for another hour and was happy to enjoy some more toast and another cup of tea. She was beginning to appreciate this English habit. The brew was a great deal better than the stewed coffee she had had to endure in California.
There was a knock at the door and Ursula looked up in surprise as Thomas Jackman entered, very smart, wearing a brown suit with curved corners to the jacket and a starched wing collar to his blue shirt. His brown shoes were highly polished. His bowler in his hand, he looked pleased with himself.
‘Good heavens,’ she said, smiling. ‘Mr Jackman. Will you sit down and take a cup of tea?’
‘Thank you.’ He placed the hat on the sideboard.
There was a spare clean cup on the table and Ursula poured the tea, adding milk and offering him sugar. He watched her with a slightly puzzled expression. ‘Do you always add the milk after?’ he asked, taking the cup.
Ursula nodded. She had seen the other boarders pour the milk into their cups before adding the tea but she had watched it being done the other way using cream at Mountstanton and it seemed a sensible procedure to her, allowing the strength of the brew to be assessed so the right amount of milk could be added.
‘Are you on your way to Miss Fentiman’s?’
He nodded.
‘And you look as though you are going to accept the commission.’ There was something about the confident way he lifted the cup and drank his tea that told her this. But maybe he always acted in this way. It struck Ursula how little she actually knew Thomas Jackman.
‘Well, now, Miss Grandison, I would be grateful for a little information from you before I take the step of accepting the case.’ He put down the cup and leaned back in his chair, sitting almost sideways on, one arm resting on the table.
Ursula raised an eyebrow at him. ‘If there is anything I can tell you, please ask, but it is unlikely. You know the situation better than I, surely?’
His gaze remained level. ‘Daniel Rokeby,’ he said. ‘What is your impression of that young man?’
‘Ah, Daniel!’ She paused for a moment. ‘What, Jackman, are you actually asking me?’
His hand moved slightly as though her use of his surname disturbed him. It did make her sound as though she thought of him as a servant. She wondered why she had not called him ‘Mr Jackman’, or used his Christian name, as she had started to do at Mountstanton. It would have been more polite and more friendly.
‘Do you, Thomas, think Daniel might have murdered Joshua Peters?’
His bright eyes gave her a sardonic look, as though he understood exactly why she had used his given name. ‘Well, Ursula, Daniel Rokeby had everything to gain by Peters’ death. What I am asking is, do you consider him capable of the deed?’
She looked down at the half piece of toast left on her plate. ‘He’s a bit of a puzzle,’ she said slowly. ‘One moment he seems a charming, intelligent, quite sophisticated young man; the next he’s arrogant, unthinking and immature. But you must have seen more of him than I during your tailing of Alice Peters. What is your opinion?’
He eased the set of his wing collar. Ursula had always thought there could be few more uncomfortable items of male clothing than those collars, starched and fashioned into a knifelike sharpness.
‘Before last night, whenever I have seen Mr Rokeby, he has been lavishing charm on Mrs Peters, who is a very pretty woman.’
‘Would you say he was genuinely in love with her?’
Jackman gave her a sidelong look. ‘Perhaps,’ he said slowly. ‘Together they seemed to inhabit a bubble, cutting out everything around them, no matter where they were.’
Ursula remembered the mention of Millie Rudge during the meeting at his house. ‘You told me you’d made friends with Alice’s maid? Did you ask her what she thought her mistress felt for the man she was constantly meeting?’
‘I did indeed. She thought Mrs Peters was in love in a way she had never been with her husband.’ He leaned slightly towards Ursula. ‘So, do you think Rokeby capable of murder?’
She sighed. ‘How is one to tell? He hasn’t given the impression that a killing instinct lurks beneath the surface. But, maybe, if he wanted something strongly enough …’ She thought of something else. ‘Didn’t you think it odd how he took against you so immediately?’
‘If I was a man full of myself, which I assure you I am not, I’d be tempted to the conclusion he was guilty of the crime and afraid I would nobble him.’
Ursula had thought the same.
‘Do you think he could be that devious?’ Jackman asked.
She gave the question careful thought. ‘My instinct says it is unlikely but, then, I really haven’t seen much of him.’ She remembered his passion the afternoon he had returned from the Lake District and taken Alice out into the square’s garden. ‘I think that devising murder through poisoned chocolates requires a much more malevolent character than Daniel’s.’
Should she tell him about the scrap of singed paper Meg had found? No, she decided, not until she had figured out the exact meaning of what was there. For Alice seemed the least malevolent person she had ever met. There had to be some other reason than the obvious for the words that had been written.
Jackman picked up his bowler. ‘Ursula Grandison, my thanks for your opinion. I shall now visit Miss Fentiman and tell her I shall take the case.’ He put his hat on his head, slightly too far back. It gave him an oddly rakish look.
‘Thomas Jackman, I hope what I said can be of use.’
He gave her a slight bow and left.
Ursula sat at the table for a few more minutes, then realised she ran the risk of being late for Mrs Bruton. Running upstairs to ready herself, she found
not having told Jackman about the bit of paper was becoming increasingly difficult to handle. Why hadn’t she told him? Was it because she thought he would jump to the wrong conclusions? That would mean she did not trust him. But would they be the wrong conclusions? Was she trying too hard to believe Alice Peters could not be guilty of her husband’s murder?
Chapter Twelve
Millie woke with a start. For a moment she thought she’d heard that horror-filled scream that had broken into her sleep ten days earlier.
She had sat up in bed, every nerve quivering. Surely it must have woken the whole household. She rose, pulled on her cotton dressing gown and her slippers then ran down the stairs to the drawing room.
Outside the door, she had hesitated. What if burglars had broken in and were stealing the silver? But it was six o’clock in the morning, and any self-respecting burglar would be long gone. Quietly she entered. Sarah stood rigid in the middle of the floor, the bucket of coal on its side, nuggets and dust all over the carpet.
‘What’s happened?’ Millie cried.
Sarah pointed at the wing chair by the fire, the chair that Joshua Peters always sat in. And there he was, his face contorted with pain, his body flexed into an extraordinary position, his eyes – oh his eyes! Millie thought she would be haunted by the agony in those eyes to her dying day.
She had had hysterics.
* * *
Millie Rudge was born ambitious. Her mother had encouraged her. ‘You’re bright, you can go far. Perhaps even end up housekeeper to a large household,’ she said.
Millie, though, soon singled out the position of lady’s maid as her aim. It had status, was apart from the general household servants, meant you didn’t have to wear a uniform, and brought perks such as beautiful clothes casually donated by a mistress to a loyal maid, who could wear or, more usefully, sell them.
She had always been good with her needle and she set herself to learn the accomplishments needed to make her a skilled lady’s maid: hairdressing – the other maids she worked with proved willing models – the care and washing of special materials such as silks, lace, cashmere and others. She discovered which magazines reported on the latest fashions, made friends with a seamstress and learned how to create patterns that would capture a particular look.
By the time Millie was twenty-four, she reckoned she was fully equipped and took herself off to an employment agency for household staff. They had just received a request from Mrs Joshua Peters for an efficient lady’s maid.
‘I think we shall deal well together,’ Mrs Peters had said at the end of the interview. Millie thought so too. Softly spoken, sweet-faced, with a sympathetic manner, this seemed a mistress from heaven. No doubt the woman had little ways that could make her difficult but Millie reckoned she could deal with them.
Mr Peters also interviewed her and she was not so sure about him. He had dark, brooding eyes and a cold, incisive voice that questioned her qualifications. He wasn’t a tall man but his compact body exuded a sense of power that was unsettling.
‘Fail my wife in any department and you’re out,’ he said, looking at Millie in a way that made her feel like she was up for sale in some slave market. ‘She has the impression you will be the perfect lady’s maid. Prove it and you’ll be rewarded. Understand?’
Millie had dipped a little curtsy and told him she did, hoping she was not, after all, making a major mistake.
The Peters household was not as large as the one Millie had imagined herself joining, and her room was small, but at least it was her own. She never wanted to have to share with another maid again.
‘Hope you’ll be an improvement on your predecessor,’ sniffed Albert after Mrs Peters had introduced her to the other staff.
‘Heard she’d proved unsatisfactory,’ Millie offered, summing him up with one look: too pleased with himself and not much to be pleased about. Medium height, too-close-together pale eyes, sharp nose and carefully slicked-back dark hair. Nor did she think much to his red and orange striped waistcoat. Did he think he was some sort of dandy? She twinkled at him, ‘Shall try my best.’
The female staff were less challenging. Chief was Mrs Firestone, the cook; there was no housekeeper. Her food wasn’t the best Millie had eaten but it was a long way from the worst. And she was efficient and a worker. She organised her scullery maid with a rough kindness that ensured Abby understood what was expected of her and did her tasks to Mrs Firestone’s high standards.
Emily Barker was the senior upstairs maid. Her face might be plain but her character was warm and friendly. Millie felt it was important she maintained her dignity with her, though she was willing to chat in a way that demonstrated she regarded Emily as almost on her level – but not quite. Sarah, the under-housemaid, was another matter. With her, Millie enjoyed paying back the slights she had received at the start of her career in service.
Sam, ‘the Odd Man’, though he was little more than a boy, Millie paid no attention to at all.
Out running an errand for her mistress one day, Millie had tripped in a busy street and someone had run off with her purse. Before she’d had time to shout ‘stop, thief,’ the ruffian had been tackled and her property returned to her. She gave her rescuer a sweet smile.
‘Joe Banks,’ he introduced himself. ‘It seems to me as you need a little looking after, pretty girl like you out on her own.’
He had a twinkle in his eye that was very attractive. Millie had spent a long time fending off fellow staff members in various households, together with disdaining approaches made by such members of the opposite sex as she came into contact with from time to time. Now, though, almost without realising, Millie found herself dropping her guard and accepting Joe Banks’s invitation to a walk in the park on her afternoon off. After all, no harm could come to her in such a public place.
It was not only the delicious combination of Joe’s twinkling brown eyes and the way he married an obvious admiration of her looks with proper respect for her person that was attractive; Mrs Peters had recently stopped taking her maid with her when she went out shopping for fashion accessories, visited charity sales, exhibitions, or just for some exercise. This meant Millie had time to herself and a feeling she was being slightly ill done by.
‘Makes me wonder if she’s not up to something,’ she confided to Joe when he persuaded her to visit a music hall with him a couple of nights later. He was so easy to talk to and it wasn’t as though he had any contact with the Peters household and could pass on any information she gave him. Between the acts he kept her in constant hilarity with jokes and gossip about the performers. Normally Millie didn’t drink alcohol but somehow a glass of champagne was produced and it seemed only polite to drink it.
‘What time’s your lady expecting you on duty this evening?’ he asked as another glass of champagne appeared.
She giggled. ‘She hardly ever wants me to wait up for her, not unless she’s got masses of back buttons. She and the master have gone to a dinner tonight and then on to a ball. Mrs Peters said it was a Guild affair. Said she had to look her best for the master and though I say it as shouldn’t, she looked a picture when I’d finished with her. Her gown fastened in the front so she said she wouldn’t need me when they got back.’
Joe had wanted to know what her master was like.
‘I’ve been there nearly a year but I don’t see much of him. Leaves the house early in the morning, back after I’ve got Mrs Peters ready for the evening. She’s a pleasure to dress, nice figure and knows how to wear clothes. ’Course I guide her over what new fashions will suit her. She told me Mr Peters said as how she looks much more fashionable since I came.’ She drank a little more of the champagne, liking the way the bubbles teased at her throat.
‘Well-matched couple, are they?’ Joe asked.
If it hadn’t been for the champagne, Millie mightn’t have been so frank. ‘He’s much older than she is. She always seems to do what he says but there are times when I think she doesn’t like it.’
‘Rough with her, is he?’
Millie was shocked. ‘Oh, no!’ Then she thought for a moment. ‘There was that time she told me she’d tripped on the staircase and bruised her cheek on the banisters. Almost a black eye she had.’
‘Had she cheeked him?’ Joe joked, then said, ‘My big mouth; shouldn’t have said that.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ agreed Millie. Joshua Peters was a daunting master yet somehow exciting as well. ‘He’s always polite to me,’ she added.
Then, suddenly, it seemed to Millie, events moved so fast she could hardly keep up. First, Mrs Peters disappeared without a word, Mr Peters spent the afternoon looking for her, then Millie had to undergo a blistering interrogation from him. He seemed unable to believe she didn’t know where her mistress was.
‘Please, sir. I promise you Mrs Peters didn’t say a word to me.’ Millie looked at him imploringly. ‘You have to believe me.’
He put a finger underneath her chin and forced her to look at him. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, staring him in the eyes. And suddenly he laughed and spoke in quite a different voice.
‘No, you wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Millie?’
Two days later it was as though he’d forgotten all about Mrs Peters and for some dazzling days it seemed as though Millie’s ambitions need know no bounds. She hardly noticed that Joe Banks was no longer around.
Then, no sooner had her world been transformed than everything changed once again. Her mistress walked in and said she had had to have some medical treatment.
Millie was staggered by the way Mr Peters seemed to accept this story, and how Mrs Peters managed to stick to the details she’d given. Almost immediately, though, it became clear what she had been talking about.
Tightening her mistress’s corset every day as she did, it was not difficult to notice a thickening of a waistline she knew as well as her own.
The woman’s effrontery almost struck Millie dumb. Persuading your husband the child you were expecting was his when all the while it had been fathered by a lover! Alice Peters, she decided, was a bitch of the first water. And Joshua Peters not nearly as bright as she’d thought. How could he be so gentle with his wayward wife? It was as though he had flicked a switch. You’d think his attention had never strayed to another woman.
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