Gaslight

by William Drummond

  If I am sane, I ask myself, then what is Mr. Manningham?

  As you know, I have not your faith in prayer. (I only wish I had!) But I have some faith in the prayers of those who do believe. Will you and Mr. Jameson, to whom please pay my kindest respects, remember me.

  Ever yours sincerely,

  Bella Hickok Manningham.

  She folded the two letters and with difficulty fitted them into the envelope, which she sealed with wax and addressed, this time correctly.

  While she had been writing this letter (which was designed perhaps more for herself than for Minty Jameson), she heard no sound from above. But as she reached the landing, she heard clearly a noise of rapping. There was no significant difference between one lot of raps and another; it was like the tapping she herself had done on desks, trying to find out from the difference of tone whether there was a hidden drawer or sliding panel. The sounds were distinct and methodical.

  She left the gas burning in her bedroom, slipped on a cloak and took the letter down to the drawing room. Stamps were kept in a compartment of a porcupine quill box on Jack’s desk.

  As she went in, Cerberus woke up and seeing that she was wearing her cloak came over, wagging his tail. It was Elizabeth’s night out and Nancy was alone. Bella rang the bell and met the girl in the hall as she came up from the basement. “I’m just taking the puppy for a run,” she said. “When I come back, I shall want you to help me.”

  She wished that it had been Nancy’s night out. Bella trusted Elizabeth more than the girl. Nancy’s desire for betterment might be harmless, even laudable; but Bella suspected the girl cherished ambitions above her station, which she might not be too scrupulous in fulfilling. An older or more sophisticated woman would have found it easier to assess Jack’s gallantries for what they were, the routine exercise of charm by a middle-aged gentleman aware that his good looks were waning quicker than his desire.

  She kept Cerberus on the leash and led him across the road. It had occurred to Bella that if there were someone on the floor above her bedroom, he would need light. The dimming of the mantles in the drawing room argued the use of gas. In that case, it should be possible to see from the street if there were lights on the top floor.

  She had never noticed the balustrade running beneath the windows of the top floor, the embodiment perhaps of the architect’s philosophy that servants should not be able to see, or be seen by, those in the street below. The only place from which the top floor of the odd numbers of Angel Street could be observed was from the top floor of the even numbers.

  Bella walked slowly to the mail box, mailed her letter, putting it well in lest it might become lodged in some cranny of its smooth interior. Then she walked equally slowly back, deliberating how best to have Nancy as a witness to the noises in the room above without a repetition of the fiasco of the previous occasion.

  “Are you good with your needle, Nancy?” Bella asked. They were up in Bella’s bedroom. No sounds were coming from upstairs at the moment.

  “Pardon, madam?”

  “Can you sew?”

  “I dunno, I never tried,” Nancy said. “I can darn.”

  “You ought to learn,” Bella said. “When you are married and have children, you can make clothes for them much more cheaply than you can buy in the shops; and better and prettier, too.”

  Nancy did not seem beguiled by the prospect until Bella produced a gray silk dress from her wardrobe. It was not too out of the fashion and in good repair except that the bottom hem was rent at the back. “I am taller than you,” said Bella. “To cut this down to your size, we should anyway have to discard that hem. You can have it, if you like, to make over.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t, madam,” Nancy said. “I wouldn’t know how.” Her recoil was only partly from the fear of attempting something which she had never done before: even more, it was from her mistress’s manner. Her behavior was not in character. She didn’t seem, so to speak, “all there.”

  Bella did not answer immediately, because she thought that she had heard something; but whatever it was did not continue. She said, “Nonsense, girl. I’ll teach you. The only way to learn is by doing.” She went off to her workbasket. “Take off your cap and apron and dress!” She picked out a box of pins and a cake of tailor’s chalk.

  “Here, madam!” Nancy giggled, the idea was so outrageous to her sense of decorum.

  Above them Bella heard a loose board creak. She waited for a further sound. “Why not?” Bella’s voice was strained because she was listening; but Nancy thought Mrs. Manningham was an odd one, just like the master said.

  “Do you mind if I change in our bedroom and come back, madam?” She picked up the rich gray silk dress and stroked it.

  Bella looked up at the ceiling. “As you prefer, but be quick then!” She had an urgent presentiment that something was going to happen that Nancy mustn’t miss. Sure enough, the girl had no sooner taken the candle and closed the door behind her than there was most distinctly a thump overhead as if something had been dropped clumsily.

  Bella wanted to call out “Nancy” but she knew that she mustn’t. The girl had to hear for herself.

  Clothes may not make the woman; but the gray dress certainly transformed the maid. She had unbraided her hair, brushed it out and piled it in a heap on her crown, adding three inches or so to her stature. The dress fitted her almost perfectly over the shoulders and at the waist. Her breasts swelled the bodice, which had sat modestly on Bella’s chest. Only the skirt was too long and this Nancy had remedied on her entrance, holding it up with either hand. She paraded herself in front of the mirror, holding her head back and looking at her image over her shoulder. “Coo!” she said. “Ain’t I gorgeous?”

  And, horrified though she was by the dread of what was happening above, Bella had to admit that in her way Nancy was gorgeous. She had learned quickly to discard the habits of the tavern for elegancies as superficial. She was a sort of chameleon girl who took color from her surroundings; and probably, like the chameleon, did not change her nature, whatever that might be.

  Bella took the pins and knelt on the floor, behind the maid. There was a new noise upstairs. It was not very loud, but Bella’s ears picked it up clearly. “You have a good figure,” Bella said softly, watching Nancy in the looking glass to see if she had heard anything. But the girl was just looking at her own reflection, raising her arms like a butterfly, its wings newly broken from its chrysalis.

  “Do you think so, madam?” Nancy asked. She lowered her eyelids and looked at her mistress, kneeling behind her. “Do you really?”

  Bella bent down and began to pin up the hem of the skirt, starting at the back.

  Suddenly quite a different noise came from above, this time much louder. Bella immediately knew what it was, the sound of wood being sawn. She crammed pins between her teeth to prevent herself crying out, “Can’t you hear it, girl? Can’t you hear it?” It seemed to Bella so loud that it was deafening, but Nancy was entranced by the vision of herself.

  Bella intentionally pricked the girl’s foot with the last pin from her mouth and she said, “Ow!”

  “I’m sorry,” Bella said, “careless of me!” As she sat up on her knees, the sawing stopped. “Did you hear anything, Nancy?” she asked. Her voice was hoarse with emotion, even though she tried to mask her fear.

  Nancy looked down at her, smiling. “What sort of thing?” She did not say “madam”; indeed with her towering above the mistress kneeling at her feet, it would have seemed wrong for her to do so.

  “Noises,” whispered Bella. “Upstairs. You didn’t . . . ?” She looked up at the girl, so enchanted with the vision of herself that she had heard nothing. The way that she had come to this pass of playing dressmaker to her undermaid in her own bedroom seemed insane to Bella. “But if I do this, promise me, Nancy, you will listen,” she begged. “Promise me, Nancy.”

  Nancy nodded. Then she looked in the glass. “It ought to come up a bit more in the front, madam.”

 
Bella finished the pinning of the hem and there was no further sound from above. With this ploy of teaching Nancy how to sew, she had, of course, established something which could be repeated on other evenings when her husband and Elizabeth were out. Bella did not feel, however, that she could endure another five days until Elizabeth’s next night out. It had to be settled that very evening, whether the noises which she had heard were the product of her own imagination or were audible to others.

  She looked round for excuses to keep Nancy with her. She made her walk up and down so that she could observe the fall of the skirt. It was of course too full in the bosom, but not to the point of indelicacy. In any case it was not a subject to which Bella felt that she could allude. The fit of the hips was another matter. There was still silence from above.

  Standing together in front of the looking glass, Bella pointed out where it needed to be let out and where it could be taken in. A good dress, it had been made with broad seams which allowed for adjustment.

  Bella was an experienced dressmaker. The skill of it always excited her and now it distracted her from fear. She was still partly listening for noises overhead, but even more, she became engaged in creating the dress for Nancy’s body.

  Nancy had not been able to tear herself away from the looking glass for more than a moment or so except when commanded to walk up and down the room. She stood again in front of it as Bella knelt and with scissors took out the seams. “You know, Nancy,” Bella said, thinking of the possibility of sealing the girl’s loyalty to herself against Jack, “I think you could learn a lot about dressmaking from me.” She smoothed the material down over the girl’s hips.

  “It really does look lovely,” Nancy said.

  At that moment the gas flared up, again recalling Bella from her dressmaking dream. She looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to eleven. She drew lines with the tailor’s chalk at the top of the parted seams. “Off to bed, Nancy!” she said. “We’ll finish this off another night. Put it away in your cupboard. I’m going to put out Mr. Manningham’s milk.”

  She went down to the basement, laid the tray and brought it up and put it on Jack’s desk. Quickly she ran back behind her bolted door. Five minutes later Jack came up the stairs. He tapped gently on the door.

  She did not answer.

  He tried the handle.

  She remained motionless.

  He twiddled the draught stop over the keyhole and muttered something, which she could not hear distinctly but it sounded like “you’re cold, cold, Bella.”

  She began to brush her hair methodically, even before he began to descend the stairs.

  It wasn’t until later that she saw that Cerberus was not asleep in his basket.

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Elizabeth and Nancy did not get on too badly, considering the difference in their ages. Elizabeth however, insisted on certain privileges of seniority. She had the bigger of the two chests of drawers and the wardrobe whose door did not have to be wedged with paper and the chamberpot with the handle.

  The cheap alarm clock ticked loudly, so Nancy must have it close to her bed, ready to turn off the bell in the morning. But Elizabeth did not object to Nancy’s wrapping it up in her shift to muffle the noise.

  In return for this chore, Nancy was allowed to lie in for the few extra minutes which it took Elizabeth to wash; Elizabeth considered that as mistress of belowstairs it was her duty to go down first, a view she might not have held if, instead of a gas stove, there had been a kitchener to clean, and light.

  Most mornings Nancy enjoyed that little extra time lying in bed. But on this morning, when the alarm shrilled and shook in the shift like a trapped bird, Nancy switched the alarm off and got out of bed immediately. Before Elizabeth had begun even to massage her bunions, Nancy had taken the gray dress from her wardrobe and was holding it at arm’s length in admiration. “Ain’t it stylish, Liz?” she said. “Real tony!”

  “It’s genteel,” Elizabeth admitted. “See you jauntin’ down the street, yer nose in the air, Bert Booker won’t know yer.” She went over to the washstand and poured cold water from the jug into the basin.

  “Bert Booker!!” Nancy laughed. “This’ll ’ook a bigger fish than what Bert’ll ever be.”

  Elizabeth devoted to face, ears, neck and hands her vigorous attention. Then she said, “Don’t get ideas above yer station, Nancy girl. You mark my words. Pride comes before a fall.”

  “What made ’er give it me? That’s what beats me,” Nancy said. “D’you think she’s daft, Liz?”

  Elizabeth poured the sudsy water into the slop pail. “I’ll daft you, my girl, if you don’t look sharp. ’E wants ’is shavin’ water at seven. Cuppa tea at ten-to.”

  Ten minutes later Elizabeth was going down the stairs and Nancy was slipping her uniform over her head. It was Nancy’s task to clean up on her way down, fold back the bedclothes for the beds to air, clean the pots, empty the slops, draw the curtains and fold back the shutters of the drawing room and bring down Mr. Manningham’s evening milk and biscuit tray. Elizabeth made straight for her domain.

  She unlocked the door at the head of the basement stairs, an inner bastion against burglars who might break in from below. She lit the fishtail jet at the head of the stairs with a lucifer, turning it economically half way down to provide just the illumination necessary to negotiate the stairs. She drew water for the kettle and placed it on a full gas ring, before lighting the mantel which had to be kept on all day except in the height of summer.

  The trays for early morning tea and breakfast had, of course, been laid the night before. All that remained was to fetch milk, bread, butter and the rest from the pantry. She lit a candle with a spill and took it down the passage.

  She knew something was amiss. The pantry door should not have been open. She went into the pantry and took the jug of milk from the slate, removed the beaded muslin fly guard and filled the pitchers, laid ready the night before.

  Then she saw on the flagged floor dark patches like spotches of the syrup from the black cherry jam. But the jam was on its shelf, no jar broken or leaking not a sign of it on the slate.

  She bent down and touched it. On her finger, it was not black. It was red, like blood, half-congealed.

  She looked round. The rat-trap, a break-back, had disappeared. Elizabeth felt sick. She hated rats with unholy dread. Her father had been a cellarman in a tavern and when she was a little girl he had told her a story of a man who had gone down into the cellar and the rats. “Big as little dogs they were come at him like cannon balls!” he said. She was almost as frightened of the break-back traps, with their raised platforms baited with cheese and triggered to release a powerful spring whose wire arch was supposed to break the rodent’s neck. It was so strong it could almost break the finger of an unwary setter, or the toe of someone blundering on it by mistake.

  When Mr. Manningham had started setting these traps in the basement, Elizabeth’s dread had been that a rat would be caught, but instead of being killed, it would be caught by the leg or tail and be waiting next morning, big as a little dog, to come at her like a cannon ball. And now it had happened!

  Elizabeth was not of the stuff from which heroines are made. She left the candle burning on the slate, snatched the milk jugs she had filled and beat her retreat to the kitchen.

  Nancy had not yet come downstairs, so Elizabeth went up to meet her. The rat might after all be anywhere in the basement waiting to attack. She found Nancy in the drawing room with Mr. Manningham’s tray in one hand and the wastepaper basket in the other. “I’m not afraid of no bloody rats,” Nancy said. “You take these, Liz. There’s a bloody great stick in the umbrella stand in the ’all.” The rats Nancy had dealt with in the Lady Godiva had been easier to cope with than many customers on Saturday night.

  She took from the umbrella stand an ash stick with a knotted head like a small cudgel and went boldly down into the basement. “You stay there, Liz,” she said at the head of the basemen
t stairs.

  But Elizabeth came halfway down, where she could see what happened; she was a great spectator. If a rat shot at Nancy’s gullet, trap and all, she wasn’t going to miss it. Dough-faced, tray in one hand, wastepaper basket in the other, she peered over the bannister, watching Nancy’s advance with ash cudgel raised.

  Now there was a sound, half-yelp, half-whimper.

  Nancy ran down the passage and then turned, looking under the stairs. “Quick, Liz!”

  Nancy darted into the pantry and came back with the candle, which she held forward, to illumine the understairs. “Oh Gawd Almighty, Liz, it’s ’er puppy!”

  Elizabeth peered among the things stowed under the stairs. Two bloodshot eyes, from the corners of which had flowed a discharge now caked with dust on the matted fur, and a muzzle as dry and cracked as the toe cap of an old boot, appeared beside a tarnished old coal box. The paw on which the trap had snapped was thrust forward almost as if the puppy, who, now saw them, was saying “Please!” The puppy whined pathetically.

  But Nancy, who had been bold enough to kill a rat, could not release the puppy. “What’ll we do, Liz? What’ll we do?”

  “We can’t tell ’er,” Elizabeth said. “Drive ’er surely crazy, it would. Stay ’ere a sec.”

  Elizabeth went away and came back with a saucer of milk. “Give ’im that,” she said. “This is for ’im to decide.”

  She turned the gas down under the kettle. No point in taking up tea and shaving water, if Mr. Manningham was coming downstairs. Then she ran up, tapped lightly on his door and went in. “I’m sorry, sir. But a terrible thing’s ’appened, sir. The little puppy’s got caught in the rat trap, sir.”

  Mr. Manningham was already awake. “Oh, no!” he said. “It isn’t possible that she . . .” He swung back the bedclothes, then, recalling modesty, he said, “I will come down immediately.” He was so immediate that before Elizabeth reached the ground floor, he had slipped his padded silk dressing-gown over his nightshirt, put on his moroccan slippers, and was following her down.