by Mary Mackie
‘Mrs Pooley!’ the shout came from the front door. ‘Mrs Pooley. Get down here!’
Taking my lamp into the darkened hall, I approached the door and called, ‘What do you want?’
The door reverberated under a fist. ‘Open this door! Open it, in the name of the Prince of Wales!’
Carrying my lamp behind my head, I opened the door enough to see who they were. It was the keepers – an angry knot of them with equally disturbed dogs. They had been keeping watch, guarding their precious birds for tomorrow’s slaughter. In the darkest hours someone had invaded the preserves, marauders with dogs bent on destruction.
‘They came this way!’ the keeper named Twistle said angrily, his eyes bulging in his red face. ‘This way! Towards your house!’
‘And what are you suggesting?’ I returned. ‘That they came to me for shelter? I’m here alone but for Miss Wyatt and three maids.’
‘Then what about this?’ another man put in, and as the group parted he dragged something up my steps and dropped it to lie there.
Blood and brains spilled across my porch. It was a dead dog – a Staffordshire bull terrier, one of those stocky, muscular dogs with huge jaws, bred for strength and vicious temperament. But this one would fight no more. It had been shot at close range by a gun that had torn its head apart and left one eye hanging by a thread of flesh.
The sight brought acid nausea to the back of my throat. ‘How dare you bring that to my doorstep?’
‘Is it yours?’ Twistle demanded.
‘Of course it’s not mine! I never kept a dog like that, as you know very well. How dare you come to my house in the middle of the night and accuse me without evidence? The prince shall hear about this.’
‘It’s you that’ll hear from him. When he finds out about this…’
But before he could complete his threats there came a shout from the drive. ‘Hark! There’s more dogs! In the woods. They’ve come back. They’re after the birds! Let’s go!!’
Dogs and men turned heel and merged into the night, only their voices, and the fading twinkle of lanterns, drifting back. In my porch they left the bloody obscenity that, not many minutes before, had been a powerful dog.
‘Rose?’ Felicity was at the head of the stairs, a pale shape on the edge of the light from my lamp. ‘Whatever is it?’
I closed the door, not wanting her to see what lay outside. ‘Poachers in the woods, apparently. It’s nothing, Felicity. Go back to sleep.’
Never at her best in the small hours, Felicity retired, yawning.
In my own room, I leaned from the open window, feeling rain mist on my face as I watched lanterns dance in Poacher’s Wood. Men shouted, dogs barked. Twice came shots. All of it interspersed with the distracted cries and flutterings of disturbed pheasants. Some of them came across the garden, half running, half flying, squawking and croaking pitifully. Frightened so badly, they would not come back, not for days, if ever. Poacher’s Wood would not provide its expected tally towards the prince’s ‘thousand brace’.
I got dressed and went down, found a sack and wrapped it around the heavy, lifeless body of the dog before dragging it to one of the outhouses where I left it for the night. Then I got a bucket and a brush and scrubbed my porch until every trace of mud and blood was gone, all the time wishing bitter vengeance on the head of whatever enemy was doing this to me.
I should be blamed for it, I knew. Someone was determined to ruin me.
Sitting back on my heels in the porch, I admitted defeat. I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t face it alone. I needed someone… No, not just someone – I needed Geoffrey. ‘I’m there, if you need me,’ he had said. ‘Just send for me.’ Was that still true? Perhaps now was the moment to find out.
I wrote a note to him, asking him to come and see me; I said I was anxious to talk to him. Just before dawn I went down to the stables through seeping rain and told Jack Huggins to take the note over to Ambleford first thing in the morning.
‘Get it to him as soon as you can. I’ve got to see him, Jack.’
* * *
As was usual during a shoot, all fieldwork was suspended in order to avoid hindering the sport in any way. Not that the weather was conducive to outdoor work, or to comfortable shooting; the prince’s thirty-second birthday dawned dismal and wet, and as the day progressed the weather grew steadily worse.
Anyone else might have called off the shoot, but not Prince Albert Edward. Not even the weather was to be allowed to thwart his triumph.
Keepers and beaters gathered in the yard at first light. I saw them head off towards the coverts, and heard the whistles and calls that helped them communicate. And then I saw the caped figure of the head keeper, Mr Jackson, striding up the drive.
Anticipating his errand, I was at the door before he reached the porch. I said, ‘If you want your evidence, it’s in my outhouse. Do you know your men left it on my doorstep? A dead dog, Mr Jackson. Shot through the head. They came here in the middle of the night and…’
‘Yes, Mrs Pooley, I know,’ he replied with sympathy from under the brim of a deerstalker hat. ‘And I’m sorry. I’ll have someone collect the dog as soon as we have a spare minute. My men overstepped the mark. All the same, your name is being loudly mentioned in connection with all of this. The birds were badly disturbed. Poacher’s Wood’ll provide poor sport. You can’t expect His Royal Highness to be happy about it.’
‘But why does he always blame me?’ I demanded. ‘Oh… never mind, I don’t expect you to answer.’ With an effort I contained my temper. Mr Jackson was doing a difficult job with a difficult master behind him. ‘Did they manage to catch any of the perpetrators?’
‘I’m afraid not. They weren’t after catching the birds, it seems, only killing or frightening them – and then they made off before my men had time to re-muster. Your man McDowall heard them go by his house. The noise disturbed him and he was up and about when we got there, so he was able to point us in the right direction. But the villains had gone. Clean away.’
‘Do you think they’ll be back?’
‘Probably so,’ he said. ‘But not here. No, they’ll move on to other preserves if they come at all. After today, there’ll be precious little game left on Orchards. Well, good day to you, ma’am. And again – please accept my apologies for any inconvenience my men may have caused.’
At least I knew there was one member of the prince’s staff who believed in my innocence.
Shortly afterwards, horses and carriages arrived, bringing the Guns to take up their first positions despite the continuing rain. Because I had no choice – and because I was too angry to stay in hiding – I went out to greet my royal landlord and his sporting gentlemen friends and offer the usual hot toddies, which my maids distributed.
The party was all excitement. Journalists asked questions and took notes, and a photographer had set up his equipment under a large umbrella to record the great event. He had the prince and his most illustrious friends pose with their guns, and Mr Jackson and a dog or two, in the lee of my barn.
There were policemen about too, patrolling and keeping watch. Some of them seemed to have orders to watch me and my house.
The prince, jovial and expansive among his companions, was evidently determined that nothing should spoil his day. He didn’t speak to me, but from the way he looked at me I knew it was not over yet. The matter of the violated preserves was simply in abeyance until the shoot was over.
Well, I too would have something to say when this day was ended. I was tired of being unjustly accused.
They did not stay long. The conventions attended to, they were anxious to get to the cover of the woods.
Trying to ignore the sound of guns, I sat in the farm office going over the accounts, which had been kept in my absence by McDowall. My thoughts distracted me and I kept making mistakes of calculation, obliging me to go over and over the same figures.
A knock on the side door startled me. What now? More trouble with the pheasants? The passage door o
pened and I heard Finch muttering, ‘All right, all right. Give a body time to get her apron on!’
A few minutes later she was tapping on the office door, informing me that, ‘Miss Mickleborough’s asking for you, Miss Rose. Says she won’t come in but she’s got to see you. Proper state she’s in, too.’
Hurrying down the passage, I found the woman waiting in the rain. She was in her thirties, thin and bedraggled. Her clothes, and the shawl drawn tightly round her head, were soaked, and water dripped down a face in which her eyes glinted with bitter fury.
‘Goodness, you’re wet through!’ I exclaimed.
‘So would you be if you’d been kept waiting in this rain for half an hour,’ she said sharply. ‘The marshals wouldn’t let me through on account of the shoot.’
I started to ask her to come in, but she interrupted brusquely: ‘No, thanks, I won’t stay and hinder you. I just came to bring you this.’ She thrust her hand towards me. ‘Well, take it. It’s all there. Five pound – wasn’t that what you wanted?’
‘Five pounds?’ I stared blankly at the coins she held out on her wet palm. ‘For what?’
‘For a rotten old cart and a load of rubbish!’
I had forgotten all about the things I had let old Milky have, an age ago, last June.
‘Well, take it!’ she repeated, trying to force the money into my hand. ‘Now that my poor old Dad’s pawned every last thing he owned, take it! Count it. Five pound.’
‘But I never asked him for money!’ I exclaimed.
‘No – you sent your steward to do that piece of dirty work. Dad paid him, eventually. Scraped all his bit of savings together, even what he’d collected towards his burial. But your man came back, demanding to be paid again. Reckoned he’d never got the first money. Huh! Forgot to give it you, more like! And Dad hadn’t the sense to ask for a paper to prove it. You should be ashamed of yourself, hounding a poor old man. It’s made him ill, all the worry. But between us we’ve managed it. See? There it is. Five pound. And this time I want a receipt. I want it from you, yourself.’
By this time I too was angry, though not with her. I asked her in and sent for towels and hot tea while I calmed her and made her repeat her story over more coherently. I had given her father that old cart, expecting no payment. And I had certainly not authorised McDowall to extract payment by what amounted to threats and extortion.
‘Give your father his money back,’ I said, going to my cash tin, taking out another five pounds. ‘And this, too, since McDowall had the gall to take it. I’ll stop it out of his wages if necessary.’
She gaped at me. ‘But he’ll not admit it, will he? Harassing a poor blind old man. Taking money off him twice… He’ll say it’s not true. I’ve got no proof. How do you know I’m not lying?’
‘I just know,’ I said. I knew McDowall. At least, I was beginning to know him at last. My instinct had been right about the man all along. ‘Apologise to your father for me. Tell him I knew nothing about this but that I’ll see McDowall never bothers him again. Look… come to the kitchen and have something to eat. Mrs Benstead’s been stewing some mutton. You look as if you could do with some.’
She seemed grateful to accept and when she left she took a big jug full of mutton stew to share with her father.
Meanwhile, with my instincts all in full cry, I returned to my ledgers and discovered that the anomalies were not caused by my inability to concentrate: there were in fact a succession of minor adjustments, so well hidden that I might never have found them if I hadn’t deliberately set myself to the task in order to forget what was going on outside. Evidently McDowall had been practising petty fraud, leeching himself extra cash here and there.
Damn the man! I should have got rid of him long ago. This was one thing that could not wait for Johnny. I had to tackle McDowall now, while I was still angry enough to say what must be said.
Donning a waterproof cape, I took my umbrella and went down to the yards through lashing rain.
A few of the men were in the barn, chopping feed for the animals and oiling tools. In the bullock pens, Benstead was mucking out soiled hay while Plant and the boy Jack were in the stables grooming the horses and cleaning tack. None of them had seen McDowall since early morning. They assumed he was with the shoot somewhere.
Or perhaps he had gone home, where he could be warm and dry, not expecting me to check on him in such weather. I wondered if I had been guilty of neglect, even before the accident, becoming ever more immersed in my personal problems and letting the farm go. If this was the way McDowall had been going on then I should have noticed it before. I should have done something.
As I went out to the streaming yard, Plant came after me. ‘’Scuse me, Miss Rose,’ he said, tugging at the brim of his hat. ‘Can I have a word?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’m afraid I shall have to give you my notice.’
Nothing could have dismayed me more. ‘You want to leave us?’
‘Not “want to”, Miss Rose,’ he assured me gravely. ‘But it seem as how Mr McDowall en’t satisfied with my work and—’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ I exclaimed. ‘Your work has always been exceptional. Mr McDowall has said nothing to me about this.’
‘No, miss. He wouldn’t.’
With a glance behind him at the stable, he moved further away from other ears, obliging me to follow him until we were under the shelter of the covered walk between the bullock pens. The beasts in their stalls looked at us curiously, blowing through their nostrils, and at the far end of the pens Benstead went on with his work.
‘Truth is, Miss Rose,’ said Plant in an undertone, ‘Mr McDowall and me hen’t seen eye to eye for long enough. It’s not my place to speak ill of my betters but there’s things… well, I’ve not been happy about things.’
‘What things?’
But he was reluctant to admit what was on his mind. I could gather only that he did not approve of some of McDowall’s methods and that ‘things’ were getting so bad that he felt he couldn’t stay any longer.
‘In view of what I’m discovering,’ I said, ‘it may be McDowall who goes. And if that happens, Plant, I shall ask you to take over as steward. How would you feel about that?’
His mouth dropped open. He was astounded. But as he clutched at his hat and stammered an incoherent answer I could see he was pleased.
‘Did McDowall ever ask about that cart, and those oddments that we gave to old Milky?’ I asked.
‘Why… yes, he did. To be honest with you, Miss Rose, he wasn’t best pleased to think you’d let that go for nothin’. He said he could have got a couple of quid for it at least.’
‘Did he indeed? Well, thank you, Plant. That’s most helpful.’
Buoyed up on a wave of righteous anger, I strode on.
‘Miss Rose!’ The boy Jack was coming after me, hopping from tussock to tussock among the mud. For a crazy moment I thought he was going to say that Geoffrey was coming, but, ‘The gentleman wasn’t there. Been away from home for a while, so they said. But they expect him back at any time.’
‘Today?’
‘P’raps today. P’raps not. They’re not sure. Anyway, he’ll get your message soon’s he comes. I left the note with the scullery maid.’ His cheeky grin made his face look elfin. ‘’S’all right, she won’t tell nobody. She’s good at keeping secrets is Becky. She likes me.’
Geoffrey was away – why hadn’t I thought of that possibility? Why had I been so sure he would come running at my call, simply because I needed him so badly? Even when he received my note, he might choose not to come. Farmers’ daughters couldn’t reckon on happy endings. Farmers’ daughters had to be strong in themselves.
The centre of the lane was clogged with mud churned up by wagons and horses. The verge was thick with soaking grasses. I tried to keep to the edge between, where the grass was flattened, but still my skirts brushed in mud and wet, while rain dripped through a canopy of ragged autumn leaves. By the time I reached Wood Lodge
I was thoroughly damp and ill-tempered.
My knocking brought no reply. Then, as I stepped back to look at the house, I saw the lace curtain in a room above the porch drop back into place. Someone was spying, waiting for me to leave. Irritated, I knocked the harder.
Eventually I heard a bolt being drawn. The door opened a few inches, enough for Mary McDowall to peer out at me, her free hand clutching her shawl about her. She was pale, slight, her black hair already touched with grey. Brown eyes regarded me apprehensively.
‘We don’t often use the front door,’ she said. ‘I was busy. I didn’t hear you at first. What can I do for you, Mrs Pooley?’
‘You might let me in out of this weather,’ I replied.
She hesitated, then with evident reluctance opened the door further. I shook my umbrella outside as best I could before stepping on to the doormat, but Mrs McDowall looked askance at the drips from my cape that spattered her clean linoleum. The narrow staircase hall smelled strongly of soap. Every polishable surface gleamed – mirror, banisters, brass doorknobs and fittings, even the treads of the uncarpeted stairs. Peg rugs, freshly washed, lay on scrubbed linoleum. There was nothing out of place, no hint of untidiness, no speck of dust… Yet somehow it was not a welcoming house.
Mary McDowall did not invite me further inside.
‘Is your husband here?’ I asked.
‘My husband?’ She clutched the shawl tighter, her eyes darting. ‘No. No, he’s not here. Isn’t he at the farm?’
‘I would hardly have come here in this weather if I had found him where he ought to be. Where is he, Mrs McDowall?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. He doesn’t tell me anything. Please… will you excuse me a minute? I must get a cloth. Wait here.’
She hurried away, down the passage and into a room which I guessed to be a kitchen from the glimpse I had before she closed the door. All the doors in the hallway were closed, making the place gloomy; the strong scent of carbolic soap made my nose itch.