Murder in the East End

by Jennifer Ashley

  “I’m glad you’ve come, Mrs. H., no mistake. There’s been a devil of a row upstairs, and the mistress changed the menu at the very last minute.”

  I quickly hung up my sodden hat and coat and reached for my apron. “Did she? Mrs. Bywater knows better than to alter the menu without consulting me. And what row? Goodness, I fear to leave the house.”

  As I spoke I tied on my apron and looked over the meal Tess was preparing. The fresh fish delivered early this morning was nowhere in sight—instead a cod, covered in salt, had been brought forth, and was now dressed for the frying pan.

  “That woman has no taste at all.” I hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but they slipped from my tongue. “A fresh turbot in wine sauce would be far better than salted cod with lemon.”

  Tess snatched up a paper and fluttered it at me. It proved to be the new menu—Tess wouldn’t be able to read it well yet, but Mrs. Redfern or Mr. Davis would have told her what it said.

  The cod, a salad, and cold potatoes. No pudding.

  “Well, I suppose the staff can enjoy the walnut tart,” I said. I’d prepared it the night before, ready to warm after the meal. “But I doubt her dinner guests will be impressed with this menu.”

  “Ain’t going to be no guests.” Tess scowled at the bowl of lettuce she’d torn up. “As I say, a great row. Lady Cynthia has refused to eat with them. She said she’d go out with Lady Roberta and Miss Townsend tonight, and Mrs. Bywater said over her dead body was Lady C. going to gad about in trousers while perfectly good young men she could marry are coming ’round to dinner. So Lady Cynthia said, if she couldn’t go out, she was locking herself in her bedroom. Mrs. Bywater was screeching at her ever so loud, and even Mr. Bywater raised his voice a time or two. Result—Lady C. is barricaded in her chamber, the guests ain’t coming, and the dinner is off.”

  “Oh dear.” My misgivings rose to a frightening height.

  Mr. Davis glided in to hear the end of Tess’s tirade. “Tess has it right, more or less. Within the last hour. Bloody rude, I say. I’ve already uncorked the reds—they’ll be ruined now.”

  Tess perked up. “We’ll drink ’em, Mr. Davis. Have ’em with Mrs. H.’s tart.”

  Mr. Davis looked appalled. “You will not, young lady. They want a trained palate, those wines do.”

  “Then why was Mrs. Bywater wasting them on the insipid gents she wants Lady C. to marry?” Tess asked.

  “I wonder the same thing, young lady, but it’s not my place to say.” Mr. Davis would say plenty to us, however. He’d likely go on about it for days.

  Mrs. Redfern entered, her color high. “Tess, the correct term of address for Lady Cynthia for you is her ladyship. You are not to speak of her in familiar terms, no matter how friendly she is. You’re a kitchen assistant, and you’d do well to remember your place.”

  It spoke of Tess’s respect for the new housekeeper that she didn’t stick her lip out and snap a retort. She merely scowled and said, “Yes, Mrs. Redfern. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Make certain you never say it above stairs, or let it come to Mrs. Bywater’s ears that you have. Mrs. Holloway, I am afraid Mrs. Bywater wishes to speak to you.”

  “Now?” I scanned the kitchen, which was in turmoil, poor Tess trying to cope with entirely new demands at the last moment.

  “I am afraid she won’t wait. She’s unhappy with you for being out past six.”

  It was twenty minutes past. “The weather,” I said quickly. “I could not find a hansom, and—”

  “Mr. McAdam happened to pass?” Tess sent me a cheeky look.

  Mrs. Redfern’s lips pinched. “And make certain there’s no mention of that. Mrs. Bywater is waiting, Mrs. Holloway—”

  Sara, the upstairs maid, darted in, her eyes wide. “No, she’s here. She’s come down.” Sara scurried from the kitchen across to the servants’ hall, barely making it inside before we heard the determined click of heels on the slates of the corridor.

  “There you are, Mrs. Holloway.” Mrs. Bywater sailed in, her imperious glare all for me.

  Tess plunked down her knife and dropped into a curtsy, eyes on the floor. Charlie scrunched into a ball by the fire, trying to remain unseen. Elsie, startled by the woman’s arrival, dropped a plate from her soapy fingers.

  The plate shattered on the floor. Elsie squeezed her hands together, her cheeks going red with mortification as she managed a curtsy. Mrs. Bywater closed her eyes, pained, then opened them to fix her glare on me.

  “If I may speak to you.” She paused, as though the rest of the staff would instantly clear out of the kitchen, but then swung around, marching rigidly to the servants’ hall. I nervously followed. Sara, trapped inside, curtsied hurriedly, mumbling something.

  “Sara, please go upstairs and see if you can persuade my wayward niece to open the door,” Mrs. Bywater said. “Tell her she’ll starve there if she persists.”

  Sara fled. Mrs. Bywater barely waited for her footsteps to fade before she turned on me.

  “Cynthia refused to have a meal with my guests,” she announced.

  “Tess has told me,” I said, trying to sound subdued.

  “My niece defies me at every turn. Defies her parents and runs with lewd women—and who knows what else she gets up to? The best thing for her is to marry, but the company she keeps persuades her otherwise. I include you in that company, Mrs. Holloway. I have told you on several occasions that you and she have become far too friendly, and I will not have that in my house.”

  “I know my place, ma’am,” I said as deferentially as I could. She had indeed scolded me for my camaraderie with Lady Cynthia not long before this. “I have not spoken to Lady Cynthia very much lately.”

  “Not true. She scurried down to the kitchen to see you, and she inserted her artist friend among my domestics. Ridiculous. Cynthia will never obey me as long as she has refuge downstairs, a very odd place for her to find it. She’s a grown woman and ought to have a household of her own.”

  Mrs. Bywater began to splutter, losing the thread of her argument. She drew a breath and fixed a steely eye on me.

  “To that end, Mrs. Holloway, I am dismissing you. I ought to have done so long ago, but I was persuaded otherwise. But no more.” She lifted her chin. “You are to go. I have written to Lord Rankin about this, and no doubt he will agree with me. Lady Cynthia is a trial to him as well.”

  I gaped at her, the world falling away. The suddenness of her statement, after I’d left today so complacent of my position here, my awareness that I worked to keep Grace, left me breathless. To be cast out, to leave behind the friends I’d made—Tess, Lady Cynthia, Mr. Davis . . . Word would spread, and finding a decent house to work in would be very difficult.

  “Please,” I heard myself say. I, the dignified and haughty cook, was happy to beg. “I have no intention of encouraging Lady Cynthia to be disobedient—”

  Mrs. Bywater raised her hand. “I do not wish to have an argument about it. I will write you a reference, as I have no complaint with your cooking, but you ought to remain below stairs and have nothing to do with those above it.”

  At this moment I agreed with her. If Cynthia had not come to the kitchen when I first arrived, thrown herself down at my table, and worried that she’d killed a man with her impetuousness, I would not have been pulled into her world. I’d sensed a soul out of step and unhappy, and had wanted to help.

  “Mrs. Bywater—” My voice was faint, trembling.

  “I will allow you time to put your things together, but out you go, Mrs. Holloway. I am finished with nose-in-the-air cooks.”

  She must have sensed my true anguish, because I saw a flash of remorse in her eyes before she hardened once more. Mrs. Bywater opened her mouth as though she wished to continue her tirade, but then she closed it, turned, and stalked out.

  Utter silence filled the downstairs as her heels clicked once more o
n the slate floor and then on the wooden stairs. The door above slammed as she left our domain and returned to her own, the sound as cutting as the cold February wind.

  7

  My fellow servants, who’d streamed from the kitchen the moment Mrs. Bywater had vanished, immediately surrounded me.

  “She can’t,” Tess began in a near shriek, but Mrs. Redfern cut her off.

  “Hush, Tess. I am afraid she can. Sit down, Mrs. Holloway. You look about to fall.”

  Mr. Davis, rage in his eyes, watched as I collapsed into a chair, then dashed out. I couldn’t wonder what he was about, because I felt nothing at all.

  Elsie sat down across from me, her eyes round. “Oh, Mrs. Holloway . . .”

  “Drink that.” Mr. Davis had reappeared and shoved a glass of something pungent under my nose.

  I lifted the goblet without thought and swallowed the contents, though I could have wished for a cup of tea. I realized, as the liquid burned its way down my throat and into my stomach, that it was Lord Rankin’s best brandy.

  “She can’t dismiss ya,” Tess said with a touch of hysteria. “The master will never stand for it. He likes your cooking. Besides, it’s his lordship what says who stays and goes.”

  Tess had never met Lord Rankin, whose wife had employed me before he’d moved himself to Surrey and invited the Bywaters to run his house and take care of Cynthia, his wife’s sister. I had angered Lord Rankin almost from the first day of my employment, and he found Cynthia a nuisance. I held out no hope of assistance from Lord Rankin.

  I was numb, and the brandy only made me more so. The others crowded around me in concern but made no declarations about standing by me.

  A few months ago, I’d threatened to give notice to Mrs. Bywater over trouble with our last housekeeper, and Mr. Davis had said stoutly he would as well. But this was different. Peace had been restored, a new housekeeper installed. This was a good place with decent pay, and no one was in a rush to leave, including me.

  Tess’s voice was the lone exception. “I’ll go with ya, Mrs. H. I can’t stay here without you.”

  “No.” My voice barely worked. “I cannot guarantee the next house would hire you along with me. You’ll do fine here with the cook who replaces me.”

  Tess pulled off her apron and flung it to the floor. “I ain’t. I works for you, Mrs. Holloway, none other.”

  I was too weary to admonish her. Too weary to think. Rushing about London in the cold rain hadn’t helped, nor did the brandy on top of it. I needed hot tea, a meal, and a good sleep, but I doubted I’d see any of it.

  “I must decide what to do.” I rose, my legs shaking so hard I had to clutch the tabletop to remain upright. “Lodging to sort out. Need a place to stay while I consult with my agency.”

  If they’d continue to have anything to do with me. I was known to be particular, and getting myself dismissed—the reference Mrs. Bywater promised notwithstanding—would not do me well in the agency’s eyes.

  I might have to accept a lesser post, in a house where I was the only menial. Some cooks were required to do all the kitchen tasks plus those of a scullery maid, including shovel her own coal. I was always so proud of my cooking and my ability to command a high wage that I never even considered such a position.

  Pride, went the proverb, goeth before a fall. I certainly felt the sting of that fall, under the warmth of the brandy.

  “You look unwell, Mrs. Holloway.” Mrs. Redfern’s voice cut through the buzz in my head. “You should take yourself to bed. The weather was nasty today. Tess, my girl, weeping and cursing does no one any good.”

  “Makes me feel better,” Tess growled. “She’s right, Mrs. H. You’re all pale and flushed at the same time. Come on. To bed with ya.”

  She put aside her ranting to take me by the arm and lead me out. Mrs. Redfern came with us, and Mr. Davis led the way up the back stairs to open the door at the top.

  “You sleep, Mrs. Holloway,” he said. “Everything will be well.”

  I did not believe him. I tried to break away and walk myself to the next set of stairs, to begin the long climb to my chamber, but Tess and Mrs. Redfern stuck by me.

  It was well they did. I was so weak by the time we reached the top of the house I might have tumbled down the stairs without them. They led me into my chamber, and Tess helped me out of my damp clothes while Mrs. Redfern turned down the bed.

  Somehow, I had on my nightgown, the garment warm from hanging next to the chimney all day. Tess bundled me into bed, tucking me in.

  “You have a sleep, Mrs. H. The mistress can’t turn you out when you’re ill. We won’t let her.”

  The mistress could do anything she pleased, and well I knew it. I’d witnessed servants, even the old and infirm, turned onto the streets for lesser crimes than becoming too close friends to one of the family.

  For the moment, I had this bed in the little room I’d come to call my own.

  An illusion—none of it belonged to me. I hired out my cooking skills to others, and they gave me room and board and a very small salary in return. Nothing was mine but the talent I had for putting together a meal. If no one valued that, I would be out in the cold indeed.

  My own fault. I ought to have put my head down and done my cookery and not interfered with Lord Rankin or Mrs. Bywater, or had anything to do with Lady Cynthia and her friends. I should have kept on with my chopping, basting, and simmering and let the world do what it would.

  Even in my stupor I knew I could not have. Had I done nothing, a maid might have been ravished, a poisoner allowed to remain loose, and a kind Chinaman hanged for a crime he did not commit. I could not have stood by and done nothing. It was not my way.

  But Grace would pay if I could not keep my posts and do my work. The Millburns were kind, but they had four growing children to care for, and Grace was another mouth to feed.

  These troubled thoughts stayed with me as my exhausted and too-cold body took over and plunged me into sleep.

  I woke to find Lady Cynthia sitting on the foot of my bed.

  At first I thought I was dreaming—I had been lost in a whirl of Grace, Lady Cynthia in her stunning ball gown, and Bobby leaning down in front of the gates of Kew Gardens to hand Grace a coin.

  The dreams dissolved as I blinked my hot eyes open, my head aching. The room was dark but for the lone candle on my bureau, the simple light too bright.

  “Poor Mrs. H.” Cynthia, in a dressing gown, pressed a damp cloth to my head. The cool of it was so soothing I wilted. “This is my fault,” Cynthia continued. “But you’re not to worry. I’ll see to it.”

  “My doing,” I croaked. “Your aunt is right.”

  “She’s not—never say so. She’s furious with me, and punishing you. Mrs. Redfern told me you were ill, and I said to Auntie that if she turned you out and you took sick and died she’d be forever branded with it. She worries about her reputation among her cold-stick lady friends, so she’ll let you recover before she sends you to the pavement.”

  I floated back to wakefulness. “If you’ve come to cheer me up, this is hardly the way to go about it.”

  “Forgive me. I am trying to joke because I’m so bloody angry.”

  I was too tired to take umbrage or chide her for her language. “The mistress is right. I should not have got above my place.”

  “Rot that. I should be able to speak to anyone I damn well please, and take a cup of tea with them without my relations condemning me and sacking you. Ridiculous that a man can share his deepest secrets and best malt whisky with his valet, but I can’t have a chat with the cook without endangering us both.”

  “More than having a chat. We have become friends.” My voice was weak, but I knew in my heart this was true. “Your aunt warned me months ago that I was becoming too familiar with you, that I should cease. She threatened to dismiss me then, remember?”

  “
Why shouldn’t I be friends with you? Never mind you work in a kitchen and I live off my family and can’t afford my own boots. If minds are companionable, the circumstances of the bodies should not signify.”

  I smiled shakily. “You have been speaking to Mr. Thanos.” It sounded like something he would say.

  “He talks a lot of sense, does Elgin—I mean, Thanos.” Her flush was obvious, even in the darkness. “What shall we do to mend this? I am certain you can find work in any house you like. I can ask about, find a good friend you can cook for who won’t mind me popping in to speak with you.”

  “Not so simple if I am dismissed,” I said sadly. “Word gets ’round. I won’t be trusted.”

  “Absolute nonsense. Any road, Rankin won’t let you go. You know too much about him and the family scandals to be let out in the world. Auntie misjudges him. But anyone with a title impresses her, including my own scoundrel of a father. Auntie is ecstatic that her husband’s sister—my mum—married an earl, never mind dear papa is one step above a confidence trickster.”

  Not much above, from what I had gathered. Cynthia’s father had tricked his way into the earldom—he’d been in line for the title, yes, but a bit further from it than he’d pretended.

  “Aristocrats are descended from the worst thugs in history,” Cynthia went on. “But apparently, speaking to a cook is a far worse crime than beggaring serfs. So is remaining unmarried.” She heaved an aggrieved sigh.

  Now we’d come to the crux of the matter. “Your aunt believes I encourage you to remain a spinster,” I stated.

  “You have nothing to do with my choice, which is what I try to explain to her. If I wish to be a spinster, I should be left to it. But spinster is considered such an ugly word. Don’t know why. No one thinks bachelor a horrible term. But when a woman is a spinster, she is suddenly hideous, shriveled, and unwanted.”

  Tears glittered on her cheeks. Cynthia was not one to break down, but I could see she’d been pushed to her limit.