The Passions of Bronwyn

by Martina Martyn

  ‘Come on run, there’s a trolley bus coming,’ William told them. They all started running and managed to jump on.

  ‘Ooh it’s a cold night,’ complained Betty snuggling up to Ned.

  There was no response from Wyn or William as they only had eyes for each other and were oblivious to anyone else.

  When they got back to the house Ned kissed Betty goodnight as he had to go back to the garage. He was trying his best to get Betty to go back with him but was having no luck. ‘Goodnight Ned,’ she said firmly, ‘thank you for a very nice night.’

  She, Wyn & William walked into the house through the kitchen door. Ned just shrugged, shouted goodnight and walked down to the garage. Wyn, Betty and William were surprised to see Mrs Davis was still up.

  ‘Sit down and have a cup of tea,’ she told them.

  ‘Oh, I need this,’ said Betty, ‘it’s freezing out there.’

  When they had finished drinking their tea Mrs Davis turned to them and told them that Mrs Brompton had decided that, as Mr and Mrs Carter had left and there were no other staff in the house now, she wanted William to move to Mr Carter’s room which was bigger than the one he was in and Wyn and Betty were to have a room each on the servants floor which would get them out of the cold and damp attic room. They could move their belongings in the morning but they could make up the beds in the rooms now and put warming pans in to warm them up.

  ‘Oh my,’ exclaimed Wyn, ‘I’ve never had a room of my own.’

  ‘Well, now you’ve finished your tea, go up and decide which room you want. William, you can move into your new room tomorrow. Goodnight to all of you, I’ll see you bright and early in the morning.’

  Once she had left the room, William went up to his new room and Wyn took the cups and saucers into the scullery and washed them up. She and Betty then left the kitchen and walked upstairs to see their new rooms. They both walked into the first room, which was very nicely decorated.

  ‘This is very nice,’ commented Betty.

  Then they went into the room next door which was also decorated nicely.

  ‘I’ll have this one,’ said Wyn,

  ‘Alright,’ Betty agreed,’ there’s not much to choose between them really. There’re both very nice. It’s going to be strange not having you snuggled up against me. I’ll miss you and our intimate times.’

  ‘I know,’ replied Wyn, ‘I’m going to miss being with you too. We can still have our special conversations while we work though.’

  ‘I know,’ Betty agreed ‘but it won’t be the same.’

  They gave each other a hug goodnight and went into their respective rooms.

  When they had finished their normal duties the next day, they were all called to the drawing room by Mrs Brompton.

  ‘I just wanted to let you know how things are,’ she told them. ‘Now there is so few of us living here, we are more like a family than mistress and servants so I wanted you to know everything. The country house has now been sold and the money I received for it is enough to pay off Mr Brompton’s large debts. The shares he had were also worth a considerable amount of money. I now have enough to keep this house going so it won’t have to be sold. I am also keeping the sugar plantation in Jamaica because, although it isn’t doing too well, at least it gives some revenue. I have appointed a new manager for it so hopefully it will start doing better. Apparently he is a married man with two children and comes highly recommended. His name is Henry Williams, hearing that name made Wyn look up and ask Mrs Brompton if she knew where he was from.

  ‘I understand he was from your neck of the woods, Wales’, was the response. Wyn thought no, it couldn’t be, it’s just a coincidence, there must be lots of Henry Williams from Wales. ‘Do you think you might know him?’ asked Mrs Brompton.

  ‘My half-brother’s name is Henry Williams,’ Wyn told her ‘but it’s such a common name in Wales, I doubt if it’s him.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can find out next time I write to him,’ promised Mrs Brompton. She then told Wyn, Betty and William to start the search of the basement to see what was down there. ‘Although there is enough money so that all the debts can be paid now,’ she said,’ it would be nice to know what is down there. I have never been down there, have any of you?’ They all told her they hadn’t.

  ‘Well, let me know what you find,’ she said as she turned to leave the room, ’and I would like to thank you all for your help’.

  Once they had been to the kitchen to collect lanterns, Wyn told William to go down the basement steps first. ‘You can get rid of all the cobwebs,’ they told him. It was dark walking down the steps even with the lanterns. The basement was very large and felt cold and damp. There wasn’t much down there, just a lot of old rugs and furniture. William went further in and found a large cupboard resting against the far wall.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ he told Wyn and Betty.

  It was very ornate with intricate carving all over it. There was a small chest sitting next to it with the same carving all over it.

  ‘I think these are from China,’ William suggested, ‘I saw something like this in a magazine Mrs Brompton had.’

  ‘Look inside,’ Wyn told him, ‘there might be something valuable in there.’

  William opened the door but there was nothing inside, it didn’t even have a back to it.

  ‘This is very strange,’ William remarked, ‘there seems to be some sort of door behind it, help me move it out of the way.’

  They moved the cupboard to find a large door,’ it’s locked,’ William told them after he tried to open it. ‘We need to find a key.’ He turned to Betty and asked her to go upstairs and have a look around Mr Brompton’s study to look for it.

  ‘Look in the desk under the window, I think I saw an elaborate key in there which looked something like the one that would open this door. I wondered what it would open. We’ll stay here and search through the chest.’

  After Betty had taken a lantern and gone up the stairs, William put his arm around Wyn and kissed her. The kiss got more passionate as Wyn opened her mouth to let his tongue slip in. William undid part of her blouse as his finger rubbed her nipples making them harden, he kissed her neck then moved his mouth down to her breast taking a nipple between his lips then sucking hard on it. Wyn moaned and tried to stop him.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said putting her clothes back in order, ‘Betty will be back in a minute.’

  ‘When can we be together again?’ he groaned, ‘I want to be close to you, it’s not the same doing it to myself.’

  She looked at him in wonder, ‘I never thought of you touching yourself,’ she said. ‘I thought it was just us that did that. You’ll have to show me how you do it next time we’re alone.’ ‘Only if you show me what you do,’ he told her. She just blushed and didn’t say anything. ‘Oh my,’ she thought, that sounds interesting. William moaned in lust at the thought. They heard movement at the top of the stairs so jumped apart and started looking through the chest. There were some lovely bits and pieces of jewellery in there that Wyn took out to give to Mrs Brompton.

  ‘I’ve found it,’ Betty shouted as she started walking down the stairs. She gave the key to William who tried it in the door. It took a bit of effort but William eventually managed to unlock it. It was a thick and heavy metal door that took all three of them to pull open. Once it was open and they put a light near it, they saw that it wasn’t a cupboard but another room that was very enclosed. As they walked in, they noticed a strange musty smell but thought nothing of it as no-one had been in there for a long time. There was no window but there were vents in the top of the wall that let some air in. There were shelves running along the walls with some silver objects on them. There were also some large paintings in very ornate frames resting against the walls.

  ‘These look like they could be worth something,’ remarked Wyn, ‘they look very old.’

  Betty found a small wooden chest on the floor. She opened it and gasped, ‘oh my,’ she said, ‘look at this.’ I
nside it was full of old coins. ‘Where would these have come from,’ she wondered, ‘it looks like a treasure chest.’

  Wyn and William went over to have a look.

  ‘Maybe Mrs Brompton will know,’ William told them.

  There was another level to the chest so they took the top level off to find a document underneath. William opened it to find it was an I.O.U from The Right Honourable Frederick Huxley-Chadwick for the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.

  ‘It’s lunch time,’ Wyn told them, ‘let’s go up and take the chest to Mrs Brompton. She’s going to find this very interesting. We can come back later and finish searching.’

  When they got upstairs they went to find Mrs Brompton.

  ‘We’ve found a couple of interesting things,’ they told her.

  William handed her the wooden box.

  ‘Take a look in here,’ he told her.

  Mrs Brompton looked inside and got quite excited.

  ‘All these old coins, they look like they could be roman, I’ll have to find out where to take them, there must be somewhere that would be interested in them.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ William told her,’ look at the level underneath.’

  Mrs Brompton took the top layer off and looked at the document underneath.

  ‘Now that is something,’ she exclaimed, ‘it must be a gambling debt, I can do something with this.’

  ‘I wonder what she means,’ Wyn thought,’ she obviously has something in mind. Oh well I suppose we’ll find out sooner or later.’

  ‘Did you find anything else down there?’ Mrs Brompton asked.

  ‘We did find some more paintings that look very old and some items of silver. Oh and I found some more items of very pretty jewellery,’ Wyn replied.

  ‘Apart from that, there is just some old furniture but we haven’t finished yet,’ William said. ‘We found the old wooden chest in a room down there that had a metal door. There’s a bit more in there to look at, we thought we’d go back down after lunch.’

  ‘Let me know when you’re ready,’ Mrs Brompton said, ‘I’d like to come down and see this room myself.’

  When they had finished lunch William went upstairs to tell Mrs Brompton they were ready to go back down to the basement. Wyn and Betty were already down there when William and Mrs Brompton came down. William opened the door and they all walked in. Mrs Brompton looked around the room.

  ‘I wonder how long this has been here?’ she commented, ‘my husband inherited this house from his parents so it could have been here a very long time.’ She walked further into the room and picked up a very heavy silver vase. ‘These things must have belonged to his family, she said. ‘I’ve never seen them before.’

  Wyn and Betty were moving the paintings resting on the wall at the back of the room when they saw an old rug rolled up in the corner.

  ‘Look at this Wyn,’ said to Mrs Brompton, ‘how old do you think this is?’

  ‘Very old from the look of it,’ was the reply.

  ‘Bring it out here so we can see it better.’

  ‘Grab hold of the end,’ Wyn told William, ‘it’s quite heavy.’

  They carried it out of the room and laid it down on the basement floor. It was tied up in two places with old rope that had frayed in quite a few places.

  ‘It’s a good thing I thought to bring a knife down with me,’ William said.

  He cut the rope and then started unrolling the rug. The musty smell they had smelt in the room when they first walked in got stronger. They all looked at each other and William stopped unrolling.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked them.

  Mrs Brompton took deep breath and told him to carry on unrolling the rug. William carried on slowly and jumped back when a leg bone fell out.

  ‘Stop unrolling now’ Mrs Brompton told him. ‘We are going to have to tell someone about this.’ Wyn and Betty were looking at the bone in shock. ‘Come on all of you upstairs now,’ Mrs Brompton said. ‘I’ll lock the door and no-one is to come down here until the police have been informed.’

  When they got upstairs Mrs Brompton sent William to the garage to tell Ned to drive to the nearest police station to report what had been found and then come back to the house to tell her what the police had said. When Ned got back he told them all that a couple of police constables would be coming round shortly to have a look at what they had found. Until then no-one was to go anywhere near the basement. Mrs Brompton told them to have a cup of tea then carry on with their normal duties until the police arrived.

  ‘They will need someone to show them where to go and they might need to talk to all of you even though you won’t know anything. It must have been down there a long time,’ she said. Wyn went into the scullery to start preparing vegetables for dinner while Betty went up to the bedrooms to start lighting the fires. It wasn’t long before there was a knock on the door. William opened it to find two policemen standing outside.

  ‘Come in he told them, I’ll take you to where it is.’

  He picked up a lantern and took them down to the basement. There were already a couple of lanterns down there and he lit them. The police constables went over to the rug and looked at the leg bone.

  ‘Can you unroll the rug a bit more but very slowly they told him.’

  William started unrolling the rug and more of the skeleton appeared. When he had finished unrolling he stood back. On the now completely unrolled rug lay a whole skeleton. William looked down at it in shock.

  ‘I think we are going to have to inform Scotland Yard of this’ the constable told him. ‘It’s too big for me to deal with. Come on out now, lock the door and give the key to me. We don’t want anyone being tempted to come down here now.’

  William took them up to see Mrs Brompton to let her know what they were doing and then went down to the kitchen to let the rest of the household know.

  ‘Well I never exclaimed,’ Mrs Davis, ‘I wonder who the poor soul was.’

  ‘They don’t even know whether it was a man or a woman,’ William told them ‘or how long it’s been down there. Mrs Brompton told them that the house had been in Mr Brompton’s family for a long time,’ said William, ‘so it could have happened a long time ago.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next day Mrs Brompton called them together and told them that there would now be detectives investigating the body in the basement.

  ‘In the meantime, she told them, ‘I would like you to search through Mr Brompton’s study thoroughly to find any papers you can about Mr Brompton’s family. Any little thing could be of significance,’ she said, ‘so don’t discount anything. The clue to who it was could be in there.’

  They all felt quite excited about doing it as this was something completely different to their usual tasks. They went into the study which was very opulent. There was an enormous mahogany desk with a padded chair under the window with cabinets next to it and bookcases all around the walls.

  ‘There must be hundreds of books in here,’ said Wyn.

  ‘Yes and we’ll have to look through all of them,’ replied William. ‘You never know what might be hidden in one of them. This is going to take a long time.’

  ‘I love it,’ exclaimed Betty.’

  ‘It’s better than doing the cleaning or preparing vegetables,’ put in Wyn.

  ‘Come on stop chattering, let’s get on with it,’ William told them.

  Wyn pulled a face at him but started looking in the cabinets.

  ‘I don’t really know what I’m looking for,’ she muttered.

  ‘Just take everything out and put it into a pile. Once we have emptied every drawer or cabinet in here, we’ll have a look through it and anything interesting, we’ll take to Mrs Brompton and let her decide what’s important,’ replied William.

  In the cabinet Wyn found all kinds of documents that were dated from the mid 1800’s.

  ‘There’s some really old stuff in here,’ she said as she started making a pile of papers.

>   Betty was looking through the drawers in the desk and found some old pictures.

  ‘Look at these,’ she told the others. ‘I think these are of Mr Brompton when he was young but who’s this boy?’

  ‘I think there was an older brother,’ William told her ‘but I don’t know what happened to him although I expect Mrs Brompton will probably know.’

  Wyn was still looking through the cabinets and pulling things out of them. She came across some newspaper clippings from the Daily News about attacks on young women.

  ‘What would these be doing in here?’ she asked the others.

  ‘That’s very strange,’ commented William,

  ‘Yes, especially as there’s a body in the basement,’ added Wyn.

  ‘Now don’t let your imagination go wild,’ William told her, ‘it might just be a coincidence.’ ‘Hmm,’ Wyn replied, ‘we’ll see.’ She put the clippings on the growing pile of documents. ‘Maybe Mrs Brompton can say something about this too.’

  It was beginning to get dark so William told them to finish what they were doing, ‘we’ll start again in the morning,’ he said. Wyn put the pile of documents on top of one of the cabinets and told Betty to do the same. The pile was quite big, it was going to take a while to go through them but none of them minded. Once the study was tidy they all left and went downstairs to the kitchen. Mrs Davis looked up at them and started moaning about not having any help making dinner.

  She said to Wyn, ‘you can go and peel vegetables,’

  ‘Betty, you go up and make up the table in the small dining room for Mrs Brompton. I know Mrs Brompton wants all of you to search for things, but I need help too so I want you to finish a bit earlier so that you can help me.’

  ‘Alright,’ they agreed.

  When dinner was ready William was told to go and get Ned. He found him just sitting in the garage with the car looking very bored.

  ‘I need something else to do,’ he told William. ‘Can’t I come and help you?’

  ‘I’ll ask Mrs Brompton,’ William told him. ‘It might help keep Mrs Davis quiet.’ William brought him up to date about everything that had happened so far.