The Buttonmaker’s daughter

by Merryn Allingham

  ‘’Tis Eddie. My God, ’tis Eddie.’

  Then all was flurry and haste. Joe and a companion lowered themselves gingerly over the edge of the lake rim. The water was only shoulder high but neither could swim and they were nervous. But the dead man was one of their own and they put their fears behind them. They waded out to the statue, one of them taking Eddie by the shoulders, the other by the feet, and together towed him back to the side of the lake. The third man grabbed hold as soon as they were within reach and, with much effort – Eddie’s clothes were sodden and weighed very heavy – they pulled their companion out and laid him on the paving stones.

  ‘Best get up to the house and tell them to call Dr Daniels,’ one of them advised, dripping pools of water across the flagged pathway.

  ‘He don’t need no doctor,’ said the man who had stayed on land.

  Joe squelched his way around the prone figure and got ready to lift him. ‘Doctor’s important. He needs to sign a certificate,’ he said knowledgeably. ‘We must carry him up anyways and tell Master. But quietly, mind. Ivy can’t know.’

  ‘Not yet, leastways,’ his comrade said gloomily.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Elizabeth was up and dressed when she heard the commotion: voices, some of them loud, carried through her open window. She ran down the stairs and into the morning room. From here there was a good view of the terrace and of the lawn beyond. Craning her head around the open window, she saw a number of the gardeners huddled together and then her father coming out of the house and looking down at something and shaking his head. His expression was unutterably sad. What was going on?

  She ran from the room, along the landing, and down the last curve of the oak staircase. Then across the drawing room, in her haste sending to the floor a hefty biography her father was reading, and out through the glass double doors to join the group on the terrace.

  ‘Go back indoors, Elizabeth,’ her father commanded. ‘This is not for you to see.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘Go indoors!’ he barked, ‘and make sure you keep Ivy with you.’

  ‘Ivy? But…?’ She had moved closer and could see now what the men were gathered around. A man, a very dead man, it appeared. And then she realised what, who, she was looking at and the full horror of discovery burst over her. Eddie. Eddie Miller.

  Her heart had risen in her throat and was beating so strongly that she found it difficult to speak. Dear, kind Eddie. Her father was right though. Ivy mustn’t see. But why was Eddie lying dead on the terrace? She saw the runnels of water leaking out from beneath his body and that his clothes were saturated.

  ‘Drownded, miss,’ one of the gardeners said.

  ‘In the lake?’ Her voice, when she found it again, hardly seemed her own.

  ‘Fell in, poor bugger,’ another muttered, and received a stony glare from Joshua.

  What was Eddie doing by the lake? He hardly ever went into the gardens. The motor house was his domain, the car his god. He spent every spare hour tending its needs, damp cleaning its leather seats, dusting its chrome, polishing its bodywork. But he hadn’t been at the motor house last night, had he? He’d gone to meet Ivy in the gardens to show her his wedding outfit.

  She looked at the clothes dousing the flagstones wet. They were his wedding clothes all right: Aiden’s new jacket and the trousers Eddie’s mother had made. All very smart, or they would have been if they had never seen lake water. Aiden’s jacket. The phrase stuck and then repeated itself: Aiden’s jacket. Something made her push past Joe, who was keeping a ceremonial guard over the body.

  ‘Come back here this minute!’ her father shouted. ‘Do as you’re told and go inside!’ But she had bent down to Eddie, now face up on the terrace and very gently moved his head to one side. He was so young, she thought, so vulnerable, and there was a large red wheal on the crown of his head.

  ‘Look!’ she said. ‘He didn’t drown. Or at least, he was hit before he went into the water.’

  The men crowded around. A low angry murmur erupted. ‘’Tain’t no accident,’ one of them said. ‘He were hit. Some poacher or summat did this, and him about to marry, too. We’m must get the police.’

  She noticed that her father had turned a ghostly white. ‘There’s no need for the police,’ he said. ‘The doctor is all we need. Miller must have hit his head on the stone rim as he fell.’

  The men exchanged a look. It was clear they weren’t sure of this version of events, but the gaffer had spoken and his word was law.

  Elizabeth walked slowly away, back through the drawing room, up several flights of stairs, and into her bedroom. She was feeling very ill but she knew she must stay strong. She must keep Ivy away, keep her from seeing such an appalling sight on her wedding day. She’d barely sat down to think what best to do when there was a tap on the door and Ivy herself appeared on the threshold.

  ‘My word, you’re up early, Miss Elizabeth,’ she said brightly.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Nor me,’ the maid confessed. ‘I’m that excited. But there’s plenty of time now to get ready. I’ve brought my dress with me – I hope that’s all right.’

  She said nothing. How was she to tell the girl?

  ‘Is summat wrong?’

  ‘Yes, Ivy, I’m afraid it is.’ Her voice shook. ‘There’s been an accident. Eddie—’

  She had hardly spoken the name when Ivy flew past her and down the stairs. She was beyond Elizabeth’s reach in a matter of seconds, and it was only a few seconds more before she heard the girl’s anguished wails. She must go to her. Get her to bed, stay beside her until the doctor arrived. Alice would need to know as soon as possible. And the vicar must be told. The whole village must be told. Action, that was what was needed. Action to stop her hands shaking and her mind from flying apart.

  *

  When all was done and the house was left brooding in the heat of late morning, she shut herself away in her bedroom, slumping into the old nursing chair, her heart full of tears. Eddie had been part of Summerhayes for as long as she could remember. He’d come as a young boy, as under-groom to the frightening maestro who then ruled the stables. In time, he’d become head groom himself, but had stayed the same kind, sweet-natured man. How often had he tried to help her conquer her fear of horses? How long had he spent teaching her in secret to ride a bicycle? And after he’d swopped horses for engines, he’d stayed the same cheerful friend, driving her whenever and wherever she chose. A decent honourable man, a man of whom to be proud. And now he was no more.

  She’d left Ivy asleep in Mrs Lacey’s room – the doctor’s medicine had seen to that – before watching the ambulance leave for the mortuary, bearing its poor, broken cargo. The doctor had signed the death certificate, death by drowning. An accident. There would have to be a post-mortem, but it was clearly an accident, he’d said.

  It wasn’t though, was it? And her father knew that. It would be well nigh impossible to hit the crown of your head falling from the side of the lake. If you lost your balance and overtoppled, you would fall outwards, straight into the lake and since the water was four-foot deep at the most, even if you couldn’t swim, and she didn’t imagine Eddie could, you could get to your feet and wade to the side. But not if you were unconscious. If you’d been struck a blow on the back of the head and pitched forward face down into the water, you would drown as certainly as morning followed night. Someone had deliberately attacked Eddie. One of the gardeners had mentioned a poacher, another a vagrant, but she knew without thinking that this was no unknown person who had found his way through the old, hidden entrance. It was someone who knew where that entrance had been, had unblocked it sufficiently to slide into the gardens with the intent to kill. And succeeded.

  But why Eddie? What kind of enemy had he made who would want to do this to him? None that she knew of, and if Ivy were able to talk, the girl would be as dumbfounded as she to think of Eddie having enemies. It wasn’t supposed to be Eddie though, was it? Throughout thi
s morning, as she’d gone through the motions of advising, consoling, arranging, she’d been pushing the truth away as far as possible. But really she’d known, ever since she saw the jacket. Aiden’s jacket. He was the intended victim, not Eddie. And Aiden did have enemies. Or at least he had one, and living on his doorstep. There had been silence from Amberley ever since she’d refused Giles Audley and now she knew why. The silence had felt sullen, sinister even, though she’d taken herself to task for fanciful thinking. But she’d been right. Summerhayes had been waiting for the strike, and here it was. Her uncle – my God, her uncle! – or someone under his direction, had walked into the garden last night with a large piece of wood, had seen the jacket and had struck.

  The agitation she’d so far managed to suppress took hold and she began a restless walking from door to window and back again. But how would they have known anyone would be there? They wouldn’t, not for sure, that was the answer. To be certain, they’d had to be keeping a regular watch. They’d expected Aiden to return, to meet his sweetheart in the place the lovers usually met – in the Italian Garden. No wonder she had thought herself watched. It was because she had been. And whoever had been watching them then, had watched last night and thought they’d eliminated the one obstacle that stood in the way of her marriage to Giles Audley.

  It was as Aiden had prophesied all those weeks ago when William was first attacked. The trouble had started then, around the time that Audley had been suggested as a possible bridegroom. For years, her uncle had seethed impotently while an old Fitzroy home was demolished in favour of modernity, and ruined Fitzroy lands transformed into a profit-making farm and a riot of pleasure gardens that was the talk and envy of the county. Henry had succeeded in isolating the family at Summerhayes, cutting them off from the social connections natural to them, but that had never been enough for him and he’d kept his malice warm. This summer he had found the perfect focus for the resentment that ate away at him. It must have seemed that at last he had the chance to recover his birthright, to recapture the power his family had relinquished. It was hardly possible to believe that Henry would kill to gain his own ends, but she knew it now for the truth.

  Her parents had released a maelstrom in their attempt to find her a husband. One that beneath the sound and fury was driven by a plan as cold as it was precise. She did a quick calculation. Her father was a good deal older than Henry Fitzroy and, in the normal run of things, he would die years before his brother-in-law. Even now, he was not a young man and his temper was erratic. Anything could happen to him at any time, leaving his son vulnerable to whatever manipulation Henry intended. It would be too easy. Already William’s heart had been weakened, his confidence lowered. And she – she would be married to someone Henry could exploit, too, perhaps not through weakness but through blood ties. She would be pressured and pressured until she agreed to marry a man of her uncle’s choosing. And if Giles were too much of a gentleman to persist, Henry would find another willing relative.

  It was a startling realisation. That last night the man she loved had been the intended victim and any man not of Henry’s choosing who came too close to her would meet the same fate. That was the warning implied in Eddie’s death. The attack had been mistaken, but as a threat it worked nearly as well.

  She stopped her pacing and tried to order her thoughts. No wonder her mother had been happy to keep a distance from Amberley. Henry Fitzroy was an evil man and this summer they had invited him into their midst to wreak the havoc he chose. It had been the plans for her marriage that had been the catalyst for so much wickedness and had led, inevitably, to death. Would news of the tragedy reach Kingston? Would Aiden know what had happened? He would be immeasurably sad when he heard, but it would not change his mind. Tonight he would make his way to Southampton, as he’d promised. In hours, the man she loved would be setting sail for a new world, while she stayed to protect her brother.

  She walked to the window and gazed out at the landscape she loved, but her eyes saw nothing. How would staying protect her brother? The question leapt into her mind unbidden, but once it was there, she couldn’t lose it. How would it put a stop to the terror unleashed on Summerhayes? It wouldn’t, that was the truth. She would still be menaced with a marriage she didn’t want and William would still face threats to his well-being. Even if she fell upon her sword and married the man Henry Fitzroy chose, her uncle would stay William’s enemy. And marrying as Henry dictated, she would become his puppet. He would have the power to pull her strings, to arrange her world as he saw fit. She would be his prisoner, and if she were ever to try to cut the ties that bound her, she could expect no mercy. Her uncle had shown himself ruthless. He may not have killed Eddie Miller with his own hands, but he was as guilty of sending the poor man to his death as the hired thug who had bludgeoned on his orders.

  The genie had escaped the bottle. Henry had found a way to control her future and, worse still, her brother’s. William was a fragile boy, no match even when fully grown for such a man. This summer, Oliver had gifted him an extra strength, but Oliver wouldn’t always be there. Her father wouldn’t always be there. And then what? Their uncle would seize his chance and strike. There was no way out. Unless…

  Slowly, the thought came. There might just be. What if she were no longer here, what if she married far away and had children that were beyond Henry Fitzroy’s reach? She could give Summerhayes heirs, but heirs that her uncle could not intimidate. Their presence in the world would ensure the estate would never be his, no matter what happened to William. That was it! If she were to leave, the threats to William, to her family, would surely stop. They must. There would be little point in Henry continuing the vendetta if she had a husband and children he could no longer control. The idea took her breath away. For months, she’d told herself that she must stay to keep those she loved safe. But it wasn’t so, was it? To be safe, she needed to be a very long way away. To keep her husband safe, too. Above all, to keep William safe.

  But did she have the courage to go? Was she brave enough to hazard her fortune with a man of whom she knew little, except that she loved him. She grasped the windowsill between her two hands. She had to have the courage. It wasn’t just for her now, it was for her brother, for her family. She wished she could take William with her, but she knew he would not come, and she doubted he would be strong enough to make the journey. He would fare far better at home with Alice to nurture him. She must find him now, make him understand what had been happening and why she must leave. And ask him one last favour, him and Oliver.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It took only minutes for William to decide what he had to do. He’d always hated being a messenger for his sister, knowing his parents would be outraged if they discovered what he was doing. It seemed to him underhand, not quite cricket, to go against their wishes in that way. But overnight the world had changed, everything was different, and he was convinced now that Elizabeth’s future depended on a single message reaching its destination. His own future, too. He could save his sister from disaster and save himself at the same time. She had talked to him and what she’d said had made perfect sense. The shock of Eddie’s death was still with him. He’d been bewildered by the news: he hadn’t understood why the chauffeur had been in the gardens last night or how he’d fallen into the lake and drowned in a few feet of water. Eddie was young and fit and healthy. Then his sister had told him of the wheal on Eddie’s head and her belief that the young man had been murdered, not because he was Eddie but because in the muted light of evening he had looked like Aiden. The chauffeur’s untimely death was a spur, if he needed one, to counter whatever wickedness their uncle was planning next.

  He must take her message to Aiden Kellaway, for there would be no wedding today, no church where Elizabeth might meet him. Kellaway was staying at an inn in Kingston, well over two miles away, and he wasn’t sure if he had the strength to cycle there and back. But he was the only one who could do it. A bicycle was the sole way of reaching the village a
nd it was essential the trip stayed secret. He could travel unnoticed, while a young woman in a tight skirt wobbling her way through country lanes would give rise to unwelcome interest. Aiden was leaving, Elizabeth had said, and her brother must get to him before he vacated the inn.

  He had thought Oliver would see the mission as an adventure, as a rare chance these days to have fun, but he found his friend strangely subdued and his reluctance evident.

  ‘Don’t you want to come?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not sure we should be doing this.’

  He had never before heard Olly sound so uncertain, and it left him grappling. ‘Why not?’

  His companion kicked the bedpost, then kicked it again. ‘You know what happened to Eddie Miller – just a few hours ago. We might be stepping into danger.’

  He hadn’t thought of their errand as being dangerous, but even if Olly were right, he wouldn’t let it stop him. It seemed odd that for once he appeared the braver of the two. ‘We’ll be fine,’ he said bracingly. ‘No one will even know where we’ve gone. We’re just taking the bicycles out for an airing, aren’t we?’

  Olly stopped kicking the bed and sat down hard on it. His eyes were worried, his forehead creased into small lines. ‘Think about this, Wills. There’s something bad going on here. Someone knew that Eddie would be in the gardens last night. If they were watching him, they could be watching us,’ he said darkly.

  He had no wish to explain Eddie as a case of mistaken identity, but he could see the chauffeur’s death had upset his friend deeply, and he tried to reassure him.