Sandringham Rose

by Mary Mackie

  When she returned, she brought with her a cloth with which she proceeded to wipe up the water I had inadvertently dripped on to her floor. She knelt by my feet, working round me fretfully. She didn’t mean to be rude; she evidently had an obsession with cleanliness and neatness.

  Taken aback, I said, ‘I’m sorry to have made work for you.’

  ‘It’s no bother. It’s just that if McDowall comes and finds it like this, he—’

  ‘Then you’re expecting him soon?’

  She stopped her wiping, becoming still for a heartbeat or two, then, keeping her head bent, she said, ‘I don’t know where he’s gone. I don’t expect him back before dark. He doesn’t usually get in from work before dark.’ It sounded like a lesson she had learned by rote.

  ‘Is that what he told you to say?’

  ‘That’s all I know, Mrs Pooley.’

  ‘Very well. Then if you see him before I do, please tell him to report to me at the farm office. At once. Whatever time it may be. I shall be at home all day.’

  ‘Can you tell me what it’s about? He’s sure to ask and if I don’t know…’

  ‘Just tell him I’ve spent all day going over the accounts and I’d like to discuss them with him. Oh, and… tell him I had a visit from Sara Mickleborough. She brought me five pounds. I think McDowall will understand.’

  When I left she was still using the cloth to wipe the floor with swift, forceful strokes, though any drops I had left were long since dried.

  * * *

  Later, at the farm, Felicity and I sat by the parlour fire enjoying a pot of tea. Outside, rain still wept from the sullen sky.

  The shoot had ended some while ago, even the most enthusiastic Gun defeated by the relentless downpour. I had half expected to be favoured by an angry visitation, either from the head keeper or some other of the prince’s minions, come to demand an explanation for last night’s excursions, but so far all was quiet. Perhaps they were mustering their evidence.

  As the day waned, early because of the heavy cloud, I rang for Swift to light the lamps.

  ‘Why,’ the maid exclaimed as she went to draw the curtains, ‘en’t that the McDowall boy now comin’? Soaked to the skin, poor mite. He’s a-comin’ to the side door, Miss Rose. ’Scuse me.’

  As she left the room, I got up and went to the window, but the boy had already reached the side porch and was battering with the knocker.

  ‘What is it?’ Felicity asked. ‘What can the boy want?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Usually the McDowalls keep themselves very much to themselves.’ After my earlier encounter with Mary McDowall, this visit from her son was disquieting.

  Going out to the side passageway, I found young Donald gasping out his message to Swift. ‘Got to get Miss Rose! He said I was to bring Miss Rose. Quick.’ Seeing me, he darted past the maid, wringing a sodden cap in his hands. He was a sturdy lad, eleven years old, with an earnest freckled face, and he was wet through, his clothes sticking to him, his hair flat to his head, his eyes wide and wild as words poured out of him. ‘Oh, Miss Rose, will you come? It’s my mam. She’s hurt bad. Very bad.’

  ‘Hurt? How?’

  ‘Her face, and her arm… I thought she was dead – I thought for sure this time he’d done her in.’

  That gave me pause. ‘Someone hurt her, you mean? Who?’

  He stared at me, his face working, then burst out, ‘My dad! It’s my dad! Our Stella said I wasn’t to tell, but I was so scared. I thought Mam was dead! I had to get help, didn’t I, miss? I just ran out without thinking and…’

  ‘Whoa,’ I calmed him as I might have calmed an agitated pony. ‘It’s all right, Donald. You did exactly the right thing. I’ll come right away.’

  ‘Then I’ll go back. I’ll go back and tell them you’re on your way. Thanks, Miss Rose, ma’am.’

  ‘But Donald—’ He was gone. In his wake, damp twilight lapped into the passage through the open door.

  ‘Shall I get your cape and umbrella, miss?’ Swift asked. ‘They’re in the laundry room. They should be about dry.’

  ‘I’ll get them. You fetch your own coat. I want you to come after me. Heaven knows what’s happened, but I may need your help. Tell Miss Wyatt that I shall be back as soon as I can. Tell her to stay here. There’s no point in our all getting wet.’

  In the passageway, I found Mrs Benstead and the boy Jack Huggins agog with curiosity. Judging by the wing of chicken he still clutched in his fist, Jack had been partaking of the cook’s benevolence, as he so often did. But I was glad to see him. I sent him to get a lantern so that he might accompany me, and when he returned he was enveloped in a weatherproof cape and broad-brimmed hat, his rapscallion’s face bright with excitement.

  The rain was not so heavy as it had been earlier. As Jack and I reached the gate a break in the clouds showed a streak of evening sky and the drizzle lessened to a spray borne on a brisk, drying wind. It reminded me sharply of the night I had come home after Victor died.

  Outside Wood Lodge a cart waited, the horse bedraggled and sorry for itself in the damp evening. Then as we approached the house its door opened, showing us young Stella McDowall standing there with a lamp, beckoning me. She was on the edge of womanhood, tall for her age at thirteen. She flushed and bridled a little at seeing Jack Huggins. ‘Come in, Miss Rose.’ She glanced up the stairs, calling, ‘She’s here! Miss Rose is here!’

  A man appeared in the shadows of the landing. For one mad, fearful moment I thought it was McDowall. But he was much bigger than McDowall, and as he came down the stairs I saw the way he limped on a twisted foot, even before lamplight showed me the grave, familiar face of Ben Chilvers.

  ‘You alone, Miss Rose?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Jack’s with me. And my maid, Swift, is on her way. Well, come in, Jack!’ He had hung back, evidently wary of Stella.

  ‘Maybe the boy can go for the doctor,’ Ben Chilvers said, and asked the lad, ‘can you find your way to Ders’n’ham in the dark?’

  ‘Easy! And I know where the doctor lives.’

  ‘Good. We’ll need the constable, too. Send someone to tell the constable to come.’

  ‘I’ll be back afore you know it.’ With which Jack was gone, away into the rainy dark, leaving Stella looking askance at the marks he had left on her mother’s clean floor.

  The carpenter nodded approval. ‘I’m glad you brought him, Miss Rose. I didn’t fancy havin’ to leave you here alone. That McDowall might come back.’

  ‘Do I understand… he hurt his wife?’

  ‘Beat her half to death,’ he said grimly. ‘It appears it’s a reg’lar thing with him. This time, the young ’uns thought she was dead. I was goin’ by in my cart when the boy come out yellin’ that his dad had killed his mam. I’ve got her to bed but that’s all. I’m no medical man. She might have broken bones. Go up and see her, will you, Miss Rose? And you, Stella… come you and help me. Best see that back door’s locked good and tight.’

  As Stella looked at him the light from the lamp she held showed up the yellowing remains of a bruise under her eye. ‘I don’t know what will happen when my dad comes back. When he’s mad… When he knows we’ve told on him… he’ll be so mad. He’ll kill us all!’

  ‘No, he won’t,’ Ben Chilvers said stoutly. ‘For I shan’t let him.’

  As they departed on their errand, I climbed the narrow stairs to where candle-light beckoned from an upper room.

  Mary McDowall lay on her back on the low bed, still fully clothed, with her son keeping anxious vigil beside her. Her face was so swollen it was unrecognisable; blood smeared from her nose, from cuts about her eyes and on her mouth. Her eyes were half closed, nestling in puffed flesh of an angry scarlet and bruise-blue out of which she regarded me with despair. Her hands and arms were bruised, too, covered in weals and marks where blows had fallen as she tried to defend herself.

  ‘I’m here to take care of you,’ I told her. ‘Just lie still. Don’t try to talk.’

  ‘She’ll be all ri
ght, won’t she, ma’am?’ Donald asked, a trace of tears in the corners of his eyes.

  ‘Of course she will.’ I rumpled his hair, hoping to reassure him. ‘Don’t you worry. Go down and tell them I need hot water and towels.’

  Donald hurried away.

  The bedroom had once been as neat and shiny clean as the rest of the house, but now it showed evidence of a bitter struggle. Shards of broken ornaments littered the floor; a chair lay on its side; the tallboy was slightly displaced, as if someone might have fallen against it; a curtain hung torn and an embroidered runner, tossed on the floor, showed the black mark of a man’s boot. There were spots of blood on the floorboards too, and more smeared across the hearthrug.

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was Swift who appeared with the steaming enamel jug.

  ‘Oh, miss!’ she breathed on seeing Mary McDowall. ‘Oh, miss, the poor soul.’

  Once I had reassured myself that Mrs McDowall had sustained no worse than cuts and bruising, we set about undressing her, easing her out of her blood-stained clothes so that we might bathe her sores and soothe them with balm. Her limbs and body bore the marks of many abuses both past and present. Was it any wonder she preferred to play the recluse when she had frequent bruises to hide?

  I wielded a warm wet flannel while Swift held the bowl for me. My ministrations must have been painful, but Mary McDowall bore it all stoically, only wincing now and again. Presumably she had become used to enduring pain.

  ‘He’s not a bad man,’ she muttered at length, her voice thickened and painful through swollen, broken lips. ‘He’s just got a quick temper. This was my fault.’

  ‘It was not your fault!’ I replied. ‘Never in this world.’

  ‘But it was. I shouldn’t have said… I didn’t mean it. I just wanted to stop him.’

  ‘Don’t try to talk.’

  She ignored me. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips and she winced as she found an open sore. ‘When I said you’d been here, he was angry. He thought I’d told on him. So I said if he didn’t stop I would tell. I can’t stand by and let him keep on. But he just went mad. He hit me and hit me. I thought he was going to kill me.’

  ‘Hush,’ I soothed her. ‘No more talking. Not now. Lie still and rest. Where do you keep your clean nightgowns?’

  She indicated the tallboy, from whose drawers Swift extracted a blue cotton nightgown.

  ‘I just don’t know what’ll happen now,’ Mary McDowall wept. ‘There was no need for anyone to know.’

  ‘There was every need.’

  ‘But I feel as if I’ve betrayed him. He’ll never forgive me. I’ve let him down fine and proper this time.’

  She wept bitter tears as we helped her into the fresh nightgown and eased her into bed.

  Stella and Donald had been waiting anxiously outside the door. Now I let them in and they sat one on either side of their mother, like chicks nestling to the comforting warmth of a hen. Mrs McDowall spoke to them softly, reassuring them, for they too were afraid of what might happen. They were terrified of their father, and of what he would do to them when he discovered himself in trouble because they had dared to ask for help.

  After a while, Mary McDowall fell into a doze, and I persuaded the children to leave her. Swift took them downstairs, suggesting games that they might play.

  But just as everything was settling down a loud banging sounded on the back door which lay below the bedroom window. The sound was accompanied by a fierce, deep-throated barking from more than one dog. Mary McDowall came awake with a start and a little cry.

  ‘Damn ye, Mary!’ her husband’s voice yelled above the cacophony of the dogs. ‘Let me in. I’ll teach ye to lock my ain doors agen’ me.’

  Three

  Hearing her husband’s voice, Mary McDowall flung her hands to her face in fright, her eyes wide above spread fingers that choked a cry.

  I leapt up and went to throw the window open. The scent of a rain-washed night met me, while below me faint light from the kitchen window showed the figure of McDowall and the dog he held straining on a leash – a Staffordshire bull terrier, like the one that had been shot in my garden last night. Nor was it the only one. In the shadows behind McDowall I made out at least one more figure with a dog, and there might have been two.

  Had my own steward been working against me all this time?

  Behind me the children pounded up the stairs, screaming, ‘Mam! Mam!’ They burst into the room and threw themselves at the bed, one either side of their mother, who held them to her fiercely, saying, ‘Hush, he’ll not hurt you again. He’ll not hurt any of us any more.’

  At the sound of the opening window McDowall’s dog had started to rear, its great ugly head thrown back as it barked angrily, wanting to be at my throat. I was glad to be out of reach.

  ‘You let me in, or…’ McDowall began, only to stop as he realised I was not his wife.

  ‘Or you’ll do what, McDowall?’ I demanded. ‘Let your dogs loose in my coverts again? I warn you, we’ve sent for the constable.’

  With that the kitchen door opened, spilling more light against which Ben Chilvers’s shadow loomed large. The dogs barked even more furiously, straining their leashes to get at him with their sharp snapping teeth.

  ‘Stay back!’ McDowall shouted. ‘Stay back or I loose the dog.’ He and his confederates were backing away, restraining the leaping, straining dogs. ‘Damn it, Chilvers, d’ye hear me? These animals’ll tear ye to pieces if we let ’em. Close yon door. Close it!’

  The back door closed, cloaking the garden once more in shadow.

  ‘And stay indoors!’ McDowall yelled. ‘Anybody puts so much as a finger out, the dog’ll have ye. D’ye hear me, Mary? I’ll be back, don’t you fret. I’ll be back fer ye. I’ll make ye sorry ye ever peached on me.’

  The children wept harder, huddling to their mother, whose arms held them tight to her. Above their tousled heads she gave me a fierce, bright look that was at once courageous and afraid.

  ‘He may try,’ I said. ‘But he’ll have to go through me to do it. Don’t worry, from now on I shall make sure you’re safe from him.’

  Outside, the sound of barking was now accompanied by thumps and scratchings. But it sounded as if only one dog was left. When I looked out I saw the animal loose in the yard, throwing itself at the kitchen door, snapping and snarling. McDowall and his companions, and the other two dogs, had melted into the dark night.

  Behind me Swift appeared, evidently frightened by the clamour. She closed the door, giving me a wide-eyed look. ‘Oh, miss!’

  ‘Quiet down!’ the sharp order came from the yard below.

  Ben Chilvers had opened the kitchen door and was standing on the doorstep. The dog did not attack, but it continued to bark, making little snarling rushes towards the carpenter. ‘Quiet, I say!’ he ordered again. This time the animal fell silent but remained watchful, ears pricked, every muscle tensed. Ben stepped out from the house, walking softly, talking in a soothing yet authoritative voice while holding something out in his hand. The dog seemed suspicious; but after a while it ventured nearer, sniffing at whatever he held. Without haste, so as not to startle it, he grasped the ropes attached to its collar and, still talking in a sing-song mutter that seemed to mesmerise it, he led it away and tethered it safely in the garden.

  Returning across the yard, he tipped back his head as he saw me at the window, saying, ‘He won’t bother us no more, Miss Rose.’

  ‘How on earth did you do that?’ I asked.

  ‘That? Oh…’ He shrugged. ‘That weren’t nothin’. I’ve yet to meet the dog as I can’t master, given half a chance. Amos taught me that when I was a little ’un. D’you want me to go after McDowall?’

  ‘No. No, let the law deal with him. I’d prefer that you remain here if you would. At least until more help comes.’

  ‘Glad to, Miss Rose,’ said he. ‘Long as you need me.’

  The dog’s whole attention seemed fastened on whatever it was he had left on the
ground near it. Ben told me later that it was a few pieces of meat, sprinkled with other ingredients, some from the kitchen and some which he always carried with him ‘in case of need’, though he refused to reveal their recipe – Ben was as close with his ‘witching’ secrets as ever his father had been.

  As he returned to the kitchen, Mary McDowall’s voice drew my attention back into the bedroom and, realising that I was letting cold air in, I closed the window.

  ‘It’s all right, McDowall’s gone.’

  ‘And the dogs?’

  ‘Safely tied up.’ No need to tell her that other dogs were still at large, along with her husband and his confederates.

  ‘Thank God.’ She closed her eyes tightly for a moment and when she looked at me again there were fresh tears on her lashes. ‘I never thought he’d do it, not really. I never really thought… I should have warned you before. I know I should, only I was so afraid of him.’

  Going closer to the bed, I said, ‘Warned me of what?’

  ‘Of what he was doing. What he was planning. Those dogs…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘They’ve been training them. To kill pheasants. To get you in more trouble. They wanted you put off the farm.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘McDowall and that man Pyke – the one that used to be an under-keeper. The one you got dismissed for lying about your fox-cubs.’

  I had never dreamed of any such thing. My old enemy Pyke and my steward McDowall plotting against me? For how long? My mind was busy, incredulously filling out the picture. ‘Was it those dogs that killed my sheep? Did McDowall set fire to my shepherd’s hut, and damage my ploughs, and—’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she wept, ‘not for sure. He never told me half of it. But I know he got the idea because of the other troubles you’d had – with Ambleford, and the mischief that the unionist agitators were making. He said you’d think it was part of the same thing.’

  ‘He was right. I never suspected anything like this. What can his motive be, Mrs McDowall? Why is he doing it?’

  ‘Oh, he claims he’s working for the union, but it’s more for pure spite. He’s eaten up with jealousy and hate.’ Her fingers swept tears from her eyes, but more filled their place. ‘He hates being given orders by a woman, and being beholden to you as his employer. And he hates the Prince of Wales, too. “Fat German bastard” – begging your pardon, Mrs Pooley, but that’s what he calls him. “Not fit to be our king”, according to McDowall. He thinks all kings and gentry ought to be shot, or have their heads chopped off, every one of them. Leeches. Lazy fat slugs and leeches, that’s what he says.’