The Miss Fotheringays and the Faun
CHAPTER ONE
In which the difficulties of drowning in a lily pond are discussed
“Harry dear, you’ll never guess what I’ve just heard! And indeed I am sure that you will hardly believe me when I tell you that… and to say truth, I hardly know myself whether to believe or not, since it is such… not that I would ever wish to imply that dear old Joseph Masterson is anything but the most honest of men - no, indeed, such a well spoken man, and when you think what his father was like! Well! I remember that our dear mother would always say - but then, it is as much a sin, I think, to repeat after their death the ill things someone has said, as to speak ill of the dead themselves… not that we ever had reason to speak ill of dear Mama, of course Harry. Such a good mother as she was, and sadly missed, even after all this time, but…where was I?”
Miss Harriet Fotheringay smiled up at her younger sister and wondered what thrilling news she had gleaned today in her morning’s shopping. Dear Effie always came back with some juicy tidbit or other that would keep them happily gossiping over their light lunch - an egg nicely coddled, perhaps, with some thinly sliced bread and butter, or a morsel of even more thinly sliced ham. What a blessing it was to those on a slender income that there were some foodstuffs which seemed to gain in elegance as they reduced in thickness.
“Sit down, Effie dear, and tell me all about it,” Harriet patted the cushion of the easy chair opposite her own, carefully positioned to give a good view out of the window of their first floor parlour - for the two ladies rented rooms over - whisper it - an apothecary’s shop! But they had their own front door, as Effie always hastened to point out, and as for the apothecary himself - such a polite gentleman, always ready with a friendly greeting, and of course one never knew when an apothecary living downstairs might not prove to be the greatest of blessings, for although she and her sister had always enjoyed excellent health, there was no saying… “the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”, as dear Reverend Ravilious so frequently quoted; certainly it could not be denied that both their revered parents had passed away…and that sort of thing always ran in families, so it was said.
“But what was it you heard, Effie?”
“The most awful thing, I hardly know how to tell you - but hear it you must, for it is all over town; the talk is all of it, and whatever they will do at the Manor I cannot, for the life of me, think!
“But what is it?”
“Am I not telling you, my dear? If you will just give me a moment to compose my mind! Well…”
There was a faint scratch at the door, which opened immediately after, and a young maidservant burst into the room, her eyes bright and her mouth open to begin speaking as soon as possible… “Miss Fotheringay, Miss Effie, have you heard? One of the maids at the Manor has been found drowned in the ornamental pond!”
“Becky!” wailed Miss Effie, “I was on the very point of telling my sister and now you have taken the words right out of my mouth!”
“I’m sure I do beg your pardon, M’m,” said Becky, bobbing a quick curtsey in apology, “but I heard it down in the town and ran back here straight in order to tell you both,” she added, a little breathlessly.
“But I heard it in the town, too!” complained Miss Effie, her lower lip pouting.
“Never mind, Effie dear,” sympathised Harriet, “I am sure that if Becky has run straight back here with the news, then you have probably learnt many more details than she has been able to pick up,” and she gave the maid a sharp look over her spectacles which clearly said that Becky should keep her mouth shut for the moment.
Effie brightened. “I expect I have,” she said. “For instance…,” she lowered her voice and both her sister and Becky leaned closer to hear, “I understand that the poor girl is daughter to that dreadful old reprobate, Silas Budge.”
“No!” said Harriet, but the maid sniffed.
“If she’s Silas Budge’s daughter then I expect the poor girl threw herself in the pond to get away from him!”
“Becky! What a dreadful thing to say!”
“Well, I’m sorry Miss, but it’s only what everyone will be saying. That disgusting old man made her life a misery, that he did. Took all her wages, they say, and then pis… spent them all at the Rose and Crown.”
“Dear me!” said Harriet, picking up her sewing again, which she had put down when her sister first arrived back. She was occupied with the tedious task of turning a sheet sides-to-middle, since what had been the middle was now worn so thin as to be virtually transparent. “It will be a very sad thing if the poor girl’s death truly is a suicide.”
“Oh yes, what will the Rector do about the burial? For the poor thing cannot possibly lay in consecrated ground, and where else is there? That little patch outside the paling, perhaps, that leads down to the river? There are some charming willow trees there; I have always had a fondness for willow trees, and indeed there is something quite mournful in the way they droop, so that perhaps it would not be totally inappropriate…”
“I don’t see as how a suicide would be any sadder than a murder,” said Becky belligerently.
“Becky! I have told you before about interrupting your mistress… a murder?” Becky thought it wisest to keep silent and merely nod vehemently.
“Surely not!” said Harriet. The two sisters looked at each other in horror.
“An accident?” said Effie hopefully.
Harriet frowned. “One would certainly like to think so, although I must admit it is a little difficult to see how a girl could accidentally fall into the ornamental pond.”
“Perhaps she was leaning over to admire the waterlilies, and overbalanced,” said Effie eagerly. “Such beautiful lilies, I am sure they would encourage anyone to want to get closer - although I believe that, beautiful as they are, they have no smell, no perfume, that is. I am sure there must be a moral in that somewhere - beauty being only skin deep, or something of that nature… but then one has to reflect that the perfume of a rose fades even sooner than the petals, which would be the skin, so to speak; I have often remarked it… one can pick a rose, such a sweet-smelling rose, one morning, and then by the next day the scent has sadly faded - unless one puts it into pot pourri, of course, although even there the depth of the perfume is provided by orris root, as we call it - not that I have any idea why we call it that, since orris is derived from iris, I believe, and I see no reason why the word ‘iris’ should have been corrupted in such a way - but there, corruption is all around us, “death and decay in all we see”, as the poet said. I am not quite sure which poet, but now there is the death of this poor maid, so you see he was quite right!”
“Change and decay,” murmured her sister.
“What did you say, Harry?”
“Nothing my dear, but it occurs to me that a maid would not normally be in a position to fall into the ornamental pond at all.”
“If she were hovering on the brink, as it were?”
“No, I mean she would not normally be in the gardens at all, would she? I am sure her ladyship would have something to say if she found her pleasure gardens infested with servants.”
“Probably order the gardener to spray them like greenflies,” said Becky.
“Becky my dear, is there not something you should be doing at this hour?”
“Yes M’m, sorry M’m, I just thought as how you might like to hear some more details.”
“Do you know any more details?”
“Well, not as y
ou might call facts, M’m, but there’s plenty of gossip in town, I can tell you.”
“We do not listen to gossip, do we Effie?”
Effie stared at her sister. She was, in general, the most agreeable of people, always willing to fall in with other people’s opinions, but to demand her assent to such an outrageous claim as that the two sisters never listened to gossip was simply asking too much - even of her.
CHAPTER 2
In which Lady Weston comes to tea
Harry dear! Lady Weston is coming!
Harriet looked up at her sister with horror and half rose from her comfortable chair. “Now?” she gasped.
“No, no! To our at-home on Thursday!”
“Effie, you wretch, you gave me such a shock, how could you?”
“Oh, I am so sorry Harry, I didn’t mean to shock you, but my dear, Thursday will be bad enough!” Effie’s eyes darted around the little room, cluttered with tables and whatnots, each one of which had its cargo of silver framed pictures, miniatures, little vases holding one drooping rose, pill-boxes, plaster animals and potted plants in cache-pots as well as smaller impedimenta such as thimbles, tiny scissors, a scattering of pins, pencil stubs and pieces of paper covered with spidery jottings. “Oh dear, when did Becky last give this room a thorough turn out? We will all have to set to… and the curtains - when were the curtains last washed?…And the rugs, the rugs should be cleaned, or at least freshened… if it were Winter we could try laying them upside down in the snow, should there have been snow… it is something I always wished to try ever since the dear Colonel told us he had seen it done in…in… somewhere in the East, was it?… Of course dear Mama swore by a mixture of damp tea leaves and lavender flowers, such a wonderful smell I remember… the combination… lavender and tea, so reminiscent, how it takes one back…I can never smell it even now without harking back… possibly good Mr. Pettigrew could let us have some lavender flowers and of course there is no problem with the tea leaves, although if we waited until after the at-home there would be even more tea leaves, but then of course Lady Weston would already have left and there would be no need…”
“Do we have enough tea?” said Harriet, “for if Lady Weston comes, doubtless all our friends will be eager to meet her.”
“Oh dear! I wonder? Shall I look, Harry? Oh dear me, Lady Weston! Such an honour, of course, that she should choose to visit our humble little home, not but what we are related to her on the distaff side…distantly of course, only distantly, but still, there it is! And we must give her a good welcome…noblesse oblige…but there is no denying it will be an expensive afternoon. I had better just run down to the pantry with Becky, if you would be good enough to give me the key, Harry dear, and I will see what we have. Scones, of course…dear Becky has such a light touch with scones and luckily they are quite economical, being mostly flour and water… and if we put out some of our own preserves with them…cheese scones would be nice, only it does take so much cheese to give a really good flavour, and even then people would want butter with them as well..,” said Effie despairingly.
“I wonder why her ladyship should have decided to come to our at-home?” Harriet had been thinking while her sister’s lament washed over her. Effie looked at her, her train of thought jolting over the points to a new direction.
“To be sure, it is rather sudden, isn’t it? For she has not visited us since…when would it be? Some time in the Spring, was it? Yes!” she continued triumphantly, “she dropped in for an hour after the Easter service at St. Luke’s, I remember it perfectly now, we were saying how splendid the lilies from the Manor looked on the altar and how generous it was of her to spare her beautiful lilies… not that I am not convinced she still had plenty left over for her own house, for the hothouses at the Manor were always quite a feature; dear Papa used to say he remembered when Sir William, old Sir William that was, had the pinery installed…set up…he was alive at that time of course, but that is neither here nor there and it was still a generous gesture and they did look so splendid…there is something very spiritual about white lilies, I have always thought. Although, to be sure, one sees the more common sort - madonna lilies, is it? - growing in many cottage gardens, up against the wall where they must be terribly dry, and crowded in with all sorts of perfectly ordinary plants and not a handful of fertiliser from one year’s end to the next…I expect dear Mr. Ravilious could make quite a touching sermon on the subject…we could suggest it to him, perhaps?…Or perhaps not.”
“I wonder if it could be something to do with the death of the maid?”
“Oh, Harry, do you really think so? But how interesting! I wonder what she wants to say? Of course she would know that all the best people in Rotherford come to our at-homes, or, if they do not actually come themselves, they would be sure to hear what had been said…and amazingly quickly, it has always seemed to me.”
“And not only the best people, Effie, for, situated as we are, there is no denying that we do form a sort of bridge, as it were, between the best people and the…”
“The others,” nodded Effie. “Indeed that is true…Mr. Myers, for instance, such a friendly man and an excellent preacher - although rather impassioned at times - and so kind in ensuring that we have good seats when we attend one of their tea meetings.”
“The discourse not always to our taste, of course…”
“But the tea!” Effie threw up her hands in admiration of the sumptuous teas laid on at the Dissenting chapel, “hams and cheeses and cream cakes beyond counting!”
“There is no denying that a Dissenting chapel that can count on the support of the grocers and dairies of Green Street has a distinct advantage over the Anglican St. Luke’s in the matter of refreshments.”
Miss Harriet looked round the room once more. “Anti-macassars!” she said. “If you, Effie, will tidy and dust a little tomorrow, Becky can concentrate on the curtains and rugs and I will wash the anti-macassars - and this evening we will unpick the collars and cuffs on our best silks and I will wash those too, and rinse everything in a little gum arabic water so the lace will look perfectly fresh and crisp again.”
* * *
“Lady Weston, M’m,” said Becky, bobbing a curtsey and rolling her eyes at the two sisters - presumably in reference to the fact that her ladyship had arrived quite a quarter of an hour in advance of four o’clock and the tea table was not yet crowned with its teapots, which were warming by the little range in the fireplace. Becky stood aside and Lady Weston sailed into the room, bosom well before her and the flowers and plumes on her hat nodding graciously.
“Miss Fotheringay, dear Miss Euphemia, how are you both? Well, how pleasant this is to be in your charming little sitting room again, and what splendid geraniums! I always say there is no-one like you for indoor plants, such green fingers as you have.”
Coming from someone with extensive pleasure grounds, flower beds, a rose garden and a dozen or more gardeners to maintain them, Harriet though this was a rather suspicious excess of good manners.
“Forgive my coming a little early, my dears,” continued Lady Weston “but I wanted to have just two words with you both before the rest of your guests appear.” Her ladyship selected the better of the armchairs, where Harriet normally sat, and made herself comfortable. “I expect you have heard of this terrible accident?” The sisters nodded.
“But of course we know no details,” said Miss Effie, hopefully.
Her ladyship sighed. “Such an unfortunate occurrence, and particularly at this moment when I have to bear the whole unpleasantness alone!”
“Alone, Lady Weston?” said Harriet. It was, of course, understandable that her ladyship should ignore the serried ranks of the indoor servants when she spoke of being alone, but where could his Lordship and young Mr. Gervais, her adored son, be?
“Alas, yes,” Lady Weston replied, “Sir William went off to stay with some hunting friends yesterday - a long-standing engagement, you understand, he felt he really could n
ot let them down, and dear Gervais is in Le Touquet - he caught the packet over to Calais last Wednesday and travelled down with a party of friends.”
“Le Touquet!” said the sisters in unison, admiringly.
“How splendid that must be…at, er, this time of year,” said Miss Effie, hoping to give the impression that they knew the place well, in all seasons.
“Gervais says he is enjoying himself enormously, I had a letter from the dear boy only this morning - he writes to me every week whenever he is away, you know. Such a comfort to a mother.”
“I know how much attached he is to you, your ladyship,” said Harriet.
“And such a handsome young man,” fluttered Effie.
“That is very kind of you to say so, Miss Euphemia, and I must admit that, even to a mother’s partial eyes, he does seem…”
“Oh, there is no doubt about it! I am sure he must be very popular with the…the young… it will be quite a relief to you, I expect, when he finally chooses a… not that I mean to say that your ladyship has anything to be concerned about… only that a young man’s fancy can so often…”
“A cup of tea, Lady Weston?” said Harriet, “China or Indian? The kettle is just boiling; you will forgive us making the tea ourselves, but you understand…”
“Oh, don’t stand on ceremony with me, my dears, that would be making a stranger of me and of course we are cousins in some sort of degree. I always tell everyone that the Miss Fotheringays are quite my favourites among my cousins. And I know how much your Becky has to do.”
“How kind of your ladyship, and perhaps a scone? We think Becky makes them very well.”
“Indeed she does, she is an absolute treasure, Miss Fotheringay, an absolute treasure!”
“Mr. Ravilious and Mr. Arkenshaw,” said Becky, from the door, and the Rector, shadowed by his slender curate, surged into the room. “And Mrs. Packard and Miss Packard,” gabbled Becky as the next visitors arrived, and then she left them all to it and went downstairs to cut the cake and arrange it on the best Worcester plates. The rest could announce themselves, she thought, there were more important things to be done than shouting out names. They all knew who they were and who everyone else was, after all - otherwise they wouldn’t be there.
The Miss Fotheringays and the Faun (The Miss Fotheringays Investigate Book 1) Page 1