The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  But one night things had gone wrong and she had left the house in disgrace, without wages or a reference, rescued only by a coincidental house guest – a businessman with a motorcar who happened to be visiting from London.

  I had learned of this night from Dad; when I had shown him the peony from Peter’s wheelbarrow. He could barely remember a maid of that name, he had said, nor the nature of the disturbance that she had caused. He knew that it had all happened at some point during the Great War but he could not recall who the businessman was – he just did not know.

  But I did. There had only ever been one businessman who had dealings with the Grange, only one who would have been old enough to have been around at the time, and only one rich enough to own a motorcar. It was the man who had owned half of Missensham, the man who had built the Sunningdale Estate, the property developer, Clement Walker, and long ago in my early childhood, I had known him.

  Mr Walker had been a frequent visitor to the Grange in my childhood. He was a grand-looking man with a shiny silver motorcar. He had a close relationship with Dad and I sensed a long history between them, but when the documents would come out among the tea service, it was always my mother that he would look to, it was her that he spoke to and I sensed some connection, some respect that he did not have with my father.

  The talk of business and banking would often stretch into suppertime and I would sit at the table bored and glum, poking at my roast beef as Mr Walker spoke of payments and interest rates, always looking to my mother for approval. Sometimes he would tell stories about his business ventures – anecdotes about how the owners of his modern homes would still wash their sheets in the baths or how his factory workers coped with the rise of ladies’ hemlines. But there was one of his stories that he told often and I remembered well. It was a story about my mother and her refusal to sell her land until well after the Great War. She had saved the Grange and his business from ruin, he would say, winking at me, and I would imagine him sat at our table in rags, eating a crust of bread.

  His company address was not hard to find among mother’s old paperwork and I wrote to him.

  Mr Walker’s letter arrived back almost by return of post. It was typed on thick velvety paper with a gold crest at the top and signed by the company secretary. The secretary had spoken with Mr Walker and passed on my request for information about the young lady in question, Rosalie. Mr Walker had responded by sending his best regards and a wish for Dad’s speedy recovery to health. There was no mention of my mother, who he had once held in such high esteem, but by this I was not surprised. He went on to say that he remembered he had found the young lady employment and lodgings at one of his establishments, a garment factory in Oxworth, with rent to be deducted from her wages. He remembered being at the Grange on the night in question but could not comment further about the ‘disturbance’.

  I got out the stationery to write to the factory but somehow I didn’t imagine getting a response and considering the imposition of further enquiry and postal times for a reply to arrive, I thought that, if I was to walk to the postbox, I might as well walk all the way to the station and visit the factory in person.

  I had dressed in some of my mother’s old clothes – a tweed skirt and jacket. When I had put them on, I had felt like a little girl in fancy dress, but when I looked in the mirror and saw my mother looking back at me, I felt as if she still inhabited the suit and I noticed the scent of her perfumed soap on the fabric and found her calling card still wedged in the pocket.

  The station was cold and empty but the train was on time and I gazed out the window as it rattled through the estates of Missensham with their large gardens and birch trees then out into the fields and marshes where the trackside brambles coiled like barbed wire, their fat berries taunting all who sped past.

  When I arrived in Oxworth, I asked the way to Mr Walker’s factory and was directed to an old red-brick building just off the high street. I walked through a metal arch and into the courtyard where a new delivery van was parked and made my way to the workroom door. ‘Walker’s Fine Garments’ was painted on to the brickwork, with a picture of a grinning socialite extending a dainty arm gloved in red velvet. Jets of steam escaped from a skylight and the whole building seemed to hum with the noise from within.

  The workroom jumped to the clatter of sewing machines. There were four long trestle tables stretching the length of the room, with about thirty women at each. They sat hunched over, frantically feeding fabric through their shiny black machines, not one of them raising a head when I entered and I fancied that they were mere automatons connected to a giant mechanism.

  ‘May I help you, Miss?’ A gangly office boy weaved his way between the tables and greeted me in a newly broken voice. ‘We’re taking on new ladies at the moment. With the military contracts, steady work is guaranteed, but the pay ain’t quite up to what it used to be.’

  ‘No,’ I said, quickly. ‘Actually I am trying to trace a woman who worked here.’

  The boy looked back frantically at the busy tables. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘I can’t help. This ain’t a good time.’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘I have come all the way from Missensham.’

  He blinked as if he had never heard of the place, but that alone was enough to convince him that I must have suffered a long journey. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘but we will need to use the office and be quick before the foreman gets back from lunch and catches me away from my post.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  I followed the boy past a dressmaker’s dummy in dull army uniform and up a short flight of steps. The office he spoke of was a small and sparse room with large windows which overlooked the women at their tables. The boy gestured me to sit at a large desk and shut the door behind us, blunting the din of the machines to a low hum.

  ‘So you are looking to trace someone who worked here?’ he said, pulling a chair up to the desk and resting his elbows on the table.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid you might be my only hope. You must be too young to know much of the last war but it was a turbulent time – official records are hard to come by because of the chaos.’ I spoke the lines as I had rehearsed them in my head, then smiled politely.

  ‘A relative then?’ he said.

  I feared my voice would betray the lie, so I nodded.

  ‘Well, the Great War would make it a very old record then,’ he said. ‘I can’t promise we still have the book. What name are you looking for?’

  ‘Rosalie,’ I said, suddenly realising how foolish I sounded.

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘And the family name?’

  ‘Um…’

  ‘So this Rosalie ain’t actually family then?’ he said with a little scorn in his voice and I noticed how his manner had changed.

  ‘I meant to say that we were close, like family,’ I said, feeling my cheeks warm. ‘I called her Aunty Rosalie when I was a child, I forgot that she was not real family.’

  He looked through the glass, back at the women who were still working furiously, and checked his watch.

  ‘Please,’ I said quickly. ‘I just thought that it was quite an unusual name, so it would be easy to find. You would only need look in the years that cover the Great War. Couldn’t you try for me?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss,’ he said. ‘Records are kept alphabetically by surname, maybe if you could tell me why you are looking for this woman it might help.’

  I did not think that it would help my cause if I told him that my mother had murdered Rosalie, and I feared that my search had come to an end. ‘It probably doesn’t matter much to anyone any more,’ I said. ‘It was all a long time ago.’

  Then I remembered how my mother had always said that servants who were dismissed without reference would struggle to get work – how word got around the big houses when a maid was sacked and some could only find a new position under a different name. The factory was no grand house but Rosalie had worked as a maid and might have been familiar
with the practice. There was a chance that she could have given a name that was not her own, something that sounded reputable, something that, if her education had been poor, she would have seen written out over and over as she collected deliveries and paid the tradesmen at Missensham Grange.

  ‘Would you mind trying to look for her under the name “Bewsey”?’ I said.

  ‘Bewsey,’ he echoed dully and disappeared into the back room.

  I watched the factory girls at the tables. The short flight of steps we had climbed gave an elevated view of the workroom, and I saw now how tightly the women were packed, each with barely enough space to turn and collect the fabric from her basket. The room had no windows, only sooted skylights set high in the vaulted ceiling. The worktables were lit by the yellow auras of electric lights, suspended from long flexes, which gave the whole thing the appearance of the opening scene of a theatre performance. Almost a quarter of a century must have passed since Rosalie had worked here, but the scene still looked like something from Edwardian times, and I felt I could imagine the machinists with long dresses, their hair rolled around their temples and gathered in loose buns.

  The waves of fabric that covered most of the tables were not the red velvet of the socialite’s gloves, nor even the fine garments that the factory sign spoke of. It was a dull green, all of it, a dressmaker’s dummy clad in army uniform the only clue as to why such sombre clothing would be manufactured on such a scale.

  I put my face to the glass and tried to get a better look at the women at the tables; to see their ages, their faces, and try to imagine what Rosalie might have looked like, but none raised their heads, their hair all set identically, in the way that was so popular, their clothes shrouded by brown work coats, and I realised that I would not find a face for Rosalie here.

  Then the office boy returned with a large book, which he opened on the desk, tracing a bony finger down the page. ‘No,’ he said bluntly.

  So Rosalie had not used my family name and I did not know her own and I thought there would be no way to find out more. Then I remembered that she had left the Grange during the Great War so there was another name that she could have chosen.

  ‘Could you try “Paxton”?’ I said.

  He turned over more pages and smoothed the divider down the centre.

  ‘Yes, here she is,’ he said, looking up from the book, ‘but you seem surprised.’

  ‘I am,’ I said. ‘You see she was sacked by my family and so I thought she may have given a false name. I just didn’t know what it would be.’

  ‘How unkind of your family to sack poor Aunt Rosalie,’ the boy said, the scorn returning to his voice.

  I suddenly regretted giving so much away, so said nothing further, just smiled and shrugged.

  ‘Well Aunty Rosalie Paxton is no longer with us, I am afraid,’ he continued.

  ‘I know that,’ I said flatly but had no desire to explain the irony of his statement.

  ‘In fact it seems that she wasn’t with Walker’s Fine Garments for very long at all, barely two months.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, disappointed.

  ‘Does it say where she went? Maybe she gave a contact address?’

  ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Is there anything else at all you can tell me?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘This is just a wage book and we have some shared rooms for workers and it appears part of her wages were spent on rent there, but we’ve no more records of her before she was dismissed.’

  ‘Dismissed?’ I repeated. ‘You mean she got the sack?’

  ‘It would appear so,’ he said. ‘She seems to make a habit of it then!’

  ‘But why might that have happened here?’ I said. ‘Were many others let go around that time?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘At that time, it does not appear so. But wait,’ he raised his finger and waggled it above the page. ‘There is a note in the margin. It would seem that your Aunt Rosalie was found to be with child.’

  ‘With child?’ I echoed.

  ‘Well, I can’t tell you no more than that except that married ladies ain’t permitted to work here, we need the jobs for ladies that are unsupported and still able to work, and anyway, it would appear that your Aunt Rosalie was registered as a “Miss”, which I don’t need to explain to you would mean—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Well we don’t allow that kind of thing here. You see, it might encourage more immoral behaviour among the other workers.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Well there you have it,’ he said and shut the book.

  ‘She had a family,’ I said to myself quietly.

  ‘I’m sorry to have upset you, Miss,’ he said, and I realised from the change in his tone that my face must have worn the expression of the child I now thought of, the one whose mother did not return home one day in the spring of 1931.

  ‘I’m sorry but I can’t tell you no more than this,’ he continued quickly. ‘I do apologise if that has caused distress and I am sorry that you had a wasted journey.’

  ‘Please don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I am not upset at you because I found out too little…’ then my voice seemed to crack. ‘I am upset because I think I might have found out too much, more than was good for me perhaps.’

  ‘Look,’ he said kindly, ‘We sometimes keep a different record if someone is dismissed. It won’t tell you much more than what we know already but I can have a look. It will have to be when I have more time though, I will need to open up the basement store.’

  ‘I would be very grateful,’ I said and then reached into the pocket of my mother’s old suit and handed him her calling card.

  ‘Thank you, Millicent,’ he said, reading the name on the card. ‘Millicent Bewsey – now that name does sound familiar for some reason.’

  ‘Oh I can’t think why!’ I said quickly, a response I had got used to giving over the years. ‘Bewsey is a very common name in some parts of Hertfordshire.’

  ‘That must be it,’ he said and we shook hands.

  I walked back to the station and arrived just in time to board the Missensham-bound train. I found an empty carriage and sat back, watching the fields become farms and then cottages and housing estates as if the train was rattling through time itself.

  I thought of Rosalie again and what I now knew of her: the maid scrubbing the pans in the kitchen, the seamstress in the dull work coat amidst the bustle and noise of the factory and the office clerk in the smart suit with the expensive bag. Then, as the train drew into Missensham and I got out onto the platform, I fancied that I saw her again, as she had been that day, standing on the edge of the platform, but there was nothing more to see after that. That was where her journey had ended.

  Chapter 27

  October 1940

  ‘Here it is at last!’ Audrey swept into the drawing room waving a newspaper like a lasso above her head. ‘The Missensham Herald with a front-page retraction as promised, and it has only taken them five months! Ah, here we go: “The Missensham Herald constantly strives for quality journalism,”’ she rolled her eyes dramatically, ‘oh blah blah blah… “we apologise to the Bewsey family of Missensham Grange for any…”’ She flung the newspaper on to the sofa. ‘Missensham Grange in print on their front page again! And this time in a larger typeface – oh the shame!’ She sunk down on to the sofa, with her hand draped over her forehead like a dying maiden in a sentimental oil painting. ‘Oh, Kate, what are we to do?’

  I did not answer her, just gazed out the drawing room window. I thought of how we had sat together on my bed just two months before as I had sorted through the suitcase of my mother’s notes. She had talked of herself and my mother as children and tried in her own awkward way to comfort me and I had forgotten her shallow snobbery. I had been reminded that she was not just a visitor but family and, at that moment, no matter how brief it was, I had felt some kind of a connection to her. I longed for that intimacy to return but now I felt sure that it w
ould not.

  ‘Kate!’ she said. ‘You must have been miles away because I don’t think you can have heard me.’

  ‘I heard you, Aunt Audrey,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think there is anything you can do about it.’ I had thought her meddling with the newspaper foolish before, but after our conversation on my bed, I thought that maybe she had my best interests at heart and was trying to protect what remained of her family and her childhood home, so I added hopefully: ‘But I appreciate you are trying, I know you are family and that you care.’

  ‘I do,’ she said, nodding earnestly, the waves in her hair bouncing. ‘I do, and you must know that it is not just my reputation that I care about, it is yours also.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said softly, although I wondered whose reputation she thought the more important. I opened my mouth but found myself hesitating as I wondered if she would give up the secrets that Dad would not. ‘Aunt Audrey,’ I said at last, ‘do you remember that week before Jemima’s party, when you came to my room and sat with me on the bed and we talked about you and my mother and the way you were together as children?’

  ‘Of course, I remember it, sweetheart!’ she said, her eyes widening dramatically.

  ‘Well, on that day you said that you had reasons for not talking about things from the past.’

  ‘I did say that,’ she said, ‘but—’

  ‘Well,’ I said quickly, fearing that my courage might fail me. ‘The murder is not really the first family scandal you have tried to cover up, is it, Aunt Audrey?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ she blurted and I fancied that her reaction was so quick that it was almost a reflex, as if denial was the natural answer to any innocent query about the past.