by Anna Dean
A Woman of Consequence
( Miss Dido Kent - 3 )
Anna Dean
Madderstone Abbey, 1806.
When Penelope Lambe suffers a bad fall in Madderstone Abbey, some are sure she must have seen the Grey Nun, the ghost reputed to walk the ruins. Miss Dido Kent is not convinced, and is determined to uncover the real cause of the accident.
Then events take a sinister turn when a human skeleton is found nearby. The remains are identified as those of a Miss Elinor Fenn, and letters come to light which hint at the reason for her death. But is Miss Lambe's accident connected to this discovery? Did she see a ghostly warning? Or is there a rational explanation? Everyone is relying on Dido to find out.
A Woman of Consequence
ANNA DEAN
Chapter One
Badleigh Vicarage, Wednesday, 8th October 1806
My dear Eliza,
I promised yesterday that just as soon as I had leisure for writing I should send you a full and satisfactory account of Penelope Lambe’s accident at Madderstone Abbey; and so I shall begin upon it. Though I fear I may have to leave off at any moment, for there is a great deal of needlework to be done for the little boys at school and Margaret has already opened her workbox and begun to look at me with displeasure.
In yesterday’s note I was kind enough to hint at some very peculiar circumstances surrounding Penelope’s fall and I do not doubt that since receiving it you have enjoyed all the apprehensions and heightened imaginings which such hints can supply. And I trust my account will not disappoint you, for it was a very strange business indeed – one which I cannot, yet, understand at all.
The first thing you must know is that it all came about because of the ghost – I mean, of course, the Grey Nun of Madderstone.
And, by the by, it occurs to me …
‘Well, Dido,’ said Mrs Margaret Kent heavily, ‘I daresay that when I was unmarried I had leisure for writing long letters.’ She regarded her sister-in-law with the tragic aspect of a saint bound for the pagan arena in Rome. ‘I declare it is more than a fortnight since I touched my writing desk.’
‘Yes,’ said the unrepentant Dido without ceasing to move her pen. ‘It is quite one of the evils of matrimony, is it not?’
… it occurs to me, Eliza, that the Grey Nun is a remarkably important lady. The possession of a family ghost confers such dignity! I believe that every family which has any claim at all to grandeur should have a ghost. I consider it a kind of necessary which should be attended to as soon as the fortune is made and the country estate purchased.
Everyone’s consequence is increased by the presence of a ghost.
For here are the two Crockford sisters, who are no more than some kind of third cousins to the Harman-Footes of Madderstone, but they must walk their visitor, Penelope, two miles across the fields to see the Grey Nun. Well, not perhaps quite her, for she cannot of course be relied upon to be always at home to morning callers – but at least the ruins in which she is reputed to appear.
I said to Penelope, when I was invited to accompany them, ‘It is not enough, you know, that we should entertain you with parties and visits while you are here in Badleigh. We cannot send you back to your school in Bath without first chilling your blood and supplying you with nightmares to last a twelvemonth.’
And she, I discovered, was very grateful for the attention. For she had ‘never set foot in a real abbey before’ and she did ‘most sincerely hope that it was very dreadful and just exactly like what one read about in books …’
Well, she is a sweet-tempered, good-natured girl and so very pretty that I always find great pleasure in looking at her – but I do not believe that she has more than common sense. However, since she is now lying abed with an injured head, I ought not to speak ill of her, and I confess that her eager naivety suits my taste a great deal better than Lucy Crockford’s studied sensibility.
All the while that we were walking to Madderstone …
‘It is a great pity,’ said Margaret loudly, ‘that Eliza is not here. She is a very fine needlewoman.’
‘It is extremely kind of you to say so, Margaret. I shall be sure to pass on the compliment.’
‘And so very obliging. Why, last spring, she sewed three shirts for little Frank in as many days.’
‘Did she indeed? How remarkable!’ Dido resolutely continued with her letter, but a glance across the green baize of the parlour table had shown colour mounting in Margaret’s broad cheeks, her narrow mouth tightening. If there was not to be a state of warfare in the house, she must soon lay her pen aside. As she bent her head further over her page she rather fancied that she felt, prickling through her cap, not only the heat of autumn sunshine magnified by the window, but also a disapproving gaze.
And yet she could not help but try for a few lines more:
All the while that we were walking to Madderstone, Lucy was talking in her slowest, most languishing tones of the ‘extraordinary atmosphere of melancholy which haunts the ruins.’ An atmosphere to which she is herself ‘most extraordinarily sensitive.’ For ‘no one – no one in the world – feels these things more acutely’ than she does. And there have been times when she has been ‘almost overwhelmed by the extraordinary atmosphere of the ruins …’
So those two continued to talk of ghosts, with only an occasional digression in praise of Captain Laurence – who, I suppose, must be considered a secondary motive for our visit to Madderstone Abbey.
And, by the by, I cannot help but wonder that Lucy and Penelope should contrive to be both in love with the captain without any cooling of affection between themselves. Nor can I quite determine whether it argues most for the sweetness of their natures, the weakness of their understanding – or only the insignificance of their attachment to the gentleman.
The sunny silence of the room was broken by Margaret’s searching noisily in the workbasket for a spool of thread. Dido began to write faster:
Harriet Crockford, I noticed, scowled darkly whenever her sister talked of the captain; I do not think she has a very high opinion of him. But I could not prevail upon her to discuss this interesting topic. And, while nuns and the navy were canvassed by the other two, Harriet and I were much less pleasantly engaged. It was roof leads and damp in the kitchen passage all the way with us.
Harriet informs me that there is a hole in the roof at Ashfield which is a yard and three-quarters long and twenty-seven inches broad. It would, I am further informed, ‘break Dear Papa’s heart’ if he could see the hole in Ashfield’s roof. And, if my memory were only a little better, I could relate to you the exact cost of the tiles and lead which will be required to repair it.
Poor Harriet: there are times when she goes beyond being sensible and is downright dull. And it is very disconcerting that a woman who is more than two years my junior can seem so very old. I find myself wishing that she would not wear such a dowdy bonnet, nor such a large and unbecoming cap beneath it; and I begin to despair of her ever having an original thought – I believe she only lives to reflect the ideas of dear dead Papa …
But now I am getting quite off the point. It is such a very great pleasure and relief to ‘talk’ to you, Eliza, that I cannot stop my pen from running away with me.
I must return to that woman of consequence: the Grey Nun. For it would seem that yesterday she was indeed at home to callers! Or so Lucy believes.
There was another, louder, sigh from the other side of the table.
‘Well, well, I suppose you have nothing else to occupy your time,’ said Margaret, ‘but I confess that it makes me quite envious to see you writing away all day.’ There followed some vigorous stabbing at a shirtsleeve. ‘The truth is,’ she continued, ‘that when your cott
age was given up and it was proposed that you should come to live with us, I told your brother: “Francis, my dear,” I said, “I am sure I shall do all that I can for your poor sisters, but I do not know how I shall manage – with all the business I have to attend to – I do not know how I shall manage with having a visitor constantly in my house.”’
It was too much. Reminded of her dependence, Dido bit her lip, set aside her pen – and reached for the workbasket.
Chapter Two
The room which Dido had been given possession of on the attic floor of her brother’s vicarage had not much to recommend it. It was small and cold and airless; it had no hearth, and its ceiling sloped so steeply that anyone lying in the narrow bed might, with ease, place a hand on the plaster. There was but one small window and it could be reached only by kneeling upon the bed. However, the apartment had, in Dido’s opinion, two material advantages: one was the very pleasant scent which crept into it from the apples stored in a neighbouring attic, and the other was the twisting narrowness of the stairs which led to it.
Margaret was not fond of climbing twisting, narrow stairs and only visited the attics when her constant dread of the housemaids stealing food became so great that she must make a search of their bedroom.
Tucked under the sloping roof, her icy feet wrapped in a counterpane, Dido felt herself beyond the reach of interference and was able to continue with her letter as well as her cold fingers would allow:
… Well, Eliza, I am sure that I have now sewn more linen than can possibly be required by two young gentlemen of twelve and ten, and I think that I may now go on with my story.
We had a fine sunny day for our walk to Madderstone yesterday – though with a sharp breeze blowing. And very glad I was to be able to go, for, besides the sewing, there is the bramble jelly to be made – and Rebecca began to pick the damsons yesterday. However, Margaret is as anxious as ever to show attention to Mrs Harman-Foote and, since she does not like to walk so far herself, I am her envoy.
We had a very pleasant walk through the fields and the park, but once we came into Madderstone’s pleasure grounds there was an end to all pleasure in walking! For Mr Harman-Foote is very busy at his ‘improving’ again and there was nothing but dirt and puddles and confusion all along the path which leads from the park gate to the abbey ruins. There are new terraces laid out and half a dozen great oaks and Spanish chestnuts taken down to ‘open up the vista’ and I fancy that the stream is to be turned into a cascade or have its consequence increased in some such way, because the lower pool – the one we have always thought to be the abbey’s fishpond – is drained. The old stone dam is breached below the overflow – and there was a great to-do, when we were there, over catching the carp in nets and putting them into pails.
And, by the by, I should be quite angry about the despoliation of such a fine old estate if I thought Mr Harman-Foote improved only for pride and show – but, knowing his character, I suspect it is rather to provide honest employment for his men after our bad harvest.
Well, it being still quite early in the day, we resolved upon paying our respects first to the Grey Nun and then walking on to the great house to call upon Mrs Harman-Foote. We made our way through the cloisters and came into the ruined nave. Penelope was delighted – for it seems that Madderstone is ‘so very much like a place in a book,’ and ‘one can imagine very horrid things happening in it.’
Dido was compelled to stop, for she was shivering too much to carry on. She unwound her feet from the counterpane, went to the room’s one small closet and took out the shawl which her sailor brother John had brought from the East Indies. Pulling it about her shoulders, she knelt upon the bed and looked out of the window.
The moon – almost full – rode high and very beautiful amid a flying wrack of cloud; its light silvered the meadows and reflected palely on the little stream dividing the glebe from the dark outline of woods.
‘Look to nature when you are troubled, my dear.’ That is what Dido’s governess, Miss Steerforth, had told her many years ago. ‘The beauty, the majesty, of God’s creation, will be sure to set your little worries at nought.’
Dido looked … But, tonight, all the serenity of nature could not soothe her. The moon, lovely and indifferent, had no power to make her forget that she was trapped here for an indefinite period as Margaret’s ‘visitor’, the dear home which she had shared with her sister, Eliza, given up in the cause of family economy. It was so very hard not to feel injured, or to suspect that an injustice had been done.
But she must not allow such thoughts to intrude. The failure of Charles’s bank had involved all her brothers in heavy losses. They had all been compelled to retrench: Edward’s hunters were sold and poor Francis, if Margaret prevailed, might be reduced to taking in pupils again – a practice he had given up with great pleasure when he was presented to the rectory of Badleigh five years ago. In the light of these sacrifices, it was only natural that her brothers should attempt to reduce the cost of their sisters’ maintenance. They had not wished it. They had been very kind and regretted the necessity very much.
Indeed they had regretted it so much that, for a while, everything had hung in the balance and the rent of Badleigh Cottage might have been paid for another quarter, had not Margaret just chanced to remark that, of course she knew nothing about the matter – and she did not regard the cost at all, for she was sure she would divide her last farthing with her dear sisters, but she could not help but say – since the matter was now under discussion – that she had never been quite easy about Dido and Eliza living alone in that house. It had such an odd look, when their brothers had all homes they might be invited to share, which, she must observe, would be a much more respectable arrangement. Though, of course, she did not care at all about the considerable expense of maintaining a separate establishment.
The balance had tipped; the lease had been surrendered at Michaelmas. And now Margaret …
But this would not do at all! Blame and resentment would only make her unhappy – as Eliza reminded her every time she wrote.
The surest escape from misery was mental exertion – that was a maxim of which Miss Steerforth herself would have approved. And Dido had discovered that the very best kind of mental exertion was the solving of a puzzle or mystery.
She tucked her feet under the counterpane again, took up her letter and resolutely turned her mind once more to the strange, inexplicable events in the abbey ruins.
* * *
… We rested a while upon the fallen stones in the shelter of the nave, but the girls were quite determined to climb the narrow old night stair into the haunted gallery.
So up we all went and, as we climbed, the wind whipped about us horribly and we were forced to hold hard to our bonnets. However, we gained the gallery in safety and Lucy began explaining how the Grey Nun appears there to ‘wail and wring her hands whenever there is trouble about to befall the people of Madderstone’, and how, ‘at this very moment’ she herself could scarcely stand for ‘the extraordinary emotions’ which the place aroused in her … And a great deal more of that kind.
And Penelope’s blue eyes grew wider and wider and she exclaimed that it was ‘All quite dreadful! And so delightful!’ And she wondered that anyone should ever have wanted to become a nun. For it must have been so very uncomfortable – and dull too, she did not wonder – for nuns never did anything but walk about with their hands folded in very nasty gowns, and tell their beads. And she did not know what it was that they told their beads – though she had always supposed that it must be their sins.
Meanwhile, Harriet and I stood beside the pillar at the top of the stairs and looked out through the great arch of the east window, across the ruined lawns, the workmen and the wheelbarrows, to the drained pool. After a time, Harriet observed that some gentlemen from the house were come down to see how the work went on; and then I was foolish enough to remark that Captain Laurence was among them. The girls caught at the name, and resolved immediately upon wal
king to meet him. I should perhaps have judged better, Eliza, and held my tongue, for, I suppose, the combination of narrow, crumbling stairs and eager passion is a rather dangerous one.
However, Lucy got down the steps safely and I was next to follow her. When I reached the bottom I looked up and saw that Penelope was just moving towards the stairway. She bent to lift her skirt a little, for the wind was blowing it about her ankles. She went down the first two steps and then she stopped – holding on to the ivy that grows upon the wall with one hand, she turned back as if she would speak to Harriet.
And, in the instant that she did so – when she was turned back and looking full into the gallery – there came such a look of shock over her face. Her mouth opened – she put a hand to her lips – she stepped backward – and lost her footing.
She fell down onto the broken pavement of the nave below – and lay without moving.
There seemed, Eliza, to be a moment in which the world and everything in it stood quite still. Then movement came back suddenly; but not so smoothly as it ought. Everything, including myself, was moving in an awkward, jerking fashion. I was the first to reach Penelope and it seemed as if everything was to be left for me to do. Lucy was entirely occupied in screaming (which at least served the purpose of bringing Captain Laurence and one or two of the men running to our aid). And Harriet was still at the top of the steps, weak and shocked and struggling hard to hold on to her bonnet and cap which were almost blowing away in the wind. I think she was perhaps afraid of falling herself.
I raised Penelope up as best I could and began to rub her temples. But she was heavy and did not seem to breathe.
I called her name.
The eyes flickered and opened for a moment. The lips moved. ‘I saw her,’ she said. ‘It was her …’