Читать книгу 3-Book Victorian Crime Collection: Death at Dawn, Death of a Dancer, A Corpse in Shining Armour - Caro Peacock, Caro Peacock - Страница 18
ОглавлениеStore Street is not in a fashionable part of London. It lies, as Blackstone had said, near the British Museum, off the east side of Tottenham Court Road. They’d been building the new museum for almost my entire life and were still nowhere near to finishing it, so the streets around it were dusty in summer and muddy in winter from the coming and going of builders’ wagons. It was an area I knew quite well because, being cheap, it provided rooms for exactly the kind of musicians, writers, actors and wandering scholars who tended to be my father’s friends. So when I got down from the Flyer on Monday afternoon, I had no need to ask directions.
In other circumstances it would have delighted me to be back among the London crowds, on this sunny day with the season at its height, the barouches whirling their bright cargoes of ladies to afternoon appointments, the shouts of the hawkers and snatches of songs from ballad sellers, the smell compounded of soot and hothouse bouquets, whiffs of sewage from the river and crushed grass from the parks, baked potatoes and horse dung, that would tell you what city of the world you’d arrived in if some genie dropped you down blindfold. Even now, my heart kept giving little flutters of delight, like a caged bird that wanted to be let out, only the bars of the cage were the memory that this was not how I was meant to come back to London. I should have been walking at my father’s side, laughing and talking about the people we’d soon be meeting again, the operas and new plays we were planning to see. Another reason for sadness was that there seemed to be more beggars in London than when I was last there: not just the usual drunkards or boys holding out hands for halfpennies, but men who looked as if they might have been respectable once, in workmen’s clothes with hungry faces.
My progress was slow because of the heavy bag and I had to keep stopping to change arms. I suppose I should have paid a boy a shilling to carry it – certainly there were enough of them around – but the slowness suited me. It was evening by the time I got to Store Street. Many different families or solitary individuals found living space in the terraces of houses, like sand martins nesting in a river bank. The sound of a guitar and a man singing in a good tenor voice drifted from an open window. From another window on a first floor, a woman’s laughter rang out over a green-painted balcony with pots of geraniums and a parrot in a cage. I couldn’t help smiling to myself. According to one of my aunts, the combination of green balcony, geraniums and parrot were unmistakeable signs of what she called a ‘fie-fie’ – a fallen woman. Well, that woman sounded happy enough and even her parrot looked more cheerful than my aunt’s. Number 16 was blank and drab by comparison. I knocked and the door was opened by a thin, frizzy-haired maid, chewing on her interrupted supper. I gave her my name and said Miss Bodenham was expecting me.
‘Second floor left.’
The bag and I had to bump and stumble up the two flights, so it was hardly surprising that Miss Bodenham heard us coming.
‘Miss Lane? Come in.’
An educated voice, but weary and rasping, as if her throat were sore. She held the door open for me. It was hard to tell her age. No more than thirty-five or so, I’d have guessed from her face and the way she moved, but her dark hair already had wide streaks of grey, and her complexion was yellowish, her forehead creased. She was thin and dressed entirely in grey: dark grey dress with a kind of cotton tunic over it in a lighter grey, much ink-stained, and grey list slippers sticking out under her skirt. The room was almost as colourless, dominated by a large wooden table piled with sheets of paper covered in small, regular script, with stones for paperweights. A small, cold fire grate overflowed with more paper, screwed up into balls. Apart from that, the furniture consisted of two upright chairs without cushions and a shelf of well-used books. The floor was of bare boards and even the rag rug, which is usually the excuse for a little outbreak of colour in even the dreariest homes, was in shades of brown and grey. The place smelled of ink and cheap pie.
‘Please sit down, Miss Lane. Have you eaten?’
I hadn’t. The smell came from half a mutton pie, wrapped in yet another sheet of paper and left down by the grate, as if she hoped that even its fireless state could give a memory of warmth. If so, the hope failed. The pie was as cold as poverty and mostly gristle.
‘There is tea, if you like.’
The tea suited the rest of the room, being cold and grey.
‘I have your letter of application,’ she said. ‘You will need to copy it out in your own hand.’
She went to her bookcase, moved some volumes aside and brought out more written sheets of paper. By then I was so tired from the long day that I could have put my head down on the table and slept, but tea and pie seemed to be Miss Bodenham’s only concession to human weakness. She cleared a space for me among the papers, put written sheets, blank sheets, a pen and an inkwell down in front of me. I looked at the letter I was to copy and recognised the severe and upright hand from the note he’d sent me.
‘Is this by Mr Blackstone?’ I said.
She had already sat down on the other side of the table and started writing something herself. She looked up, annoyed.
‘Who?’
‘The gentleman who sent me to you.’
‘It is not necessary for you to know that.’
‘Why not? Do you know?’
She bent back to her writing. She was copying something too, although the hand was different.
‘Is Mr Blackstone his real name?’
Only the scratching of her pen for an answer.
‘What did he tell you about me?’ I said.
‘That I was to lodge you, assist you in applying for this post, and instruct you in your duties.’
‘As a governess?’
I meant ‘… or spy?’, wondering how much she knew. The expression of mild irritation didn’t change.
‘As a governess, what else? I understand you have no experience of the work.’
‘No.’
‘Then we should not waste time. Copy it carefully, in your best hand.’
The address was given as 16 Store Street, the date the present: 26th June.
Dear Lady Mandeville,
I am writing to make application for the post of governess in your household. I have recently returned to London after being employed for three years with an English family resident in Geneva and am now seeking a position in this country.
The reason for leaving my former position, in which I believe I gave perfect satisfaction, is that the gentlemen who is head of the family has recently been posted to Constantinople and it was considered best that the three children who were my charges should be sent back to school in England. I enclose with this a character reference which my previous employer was kind enough to furnish.
As well as the normal accomplishments of reading, writing, arithmetic, history, geography, use of globes and Biblical knowledge, I am competent to teach music, both keyboard and vocal …
‘Should I mention that I could also teach them guitar and flute?’ I said.
She didn’t look up from her writing.
‘The flute is not considered a ladylike instrument. Keep strictly to what is written there.’
… plain sewing and embroidery. If I were to be fortunate enough to be offered the position, I should be able to commence my duties as soon as required.
Yours respectfully,
Elizabeth Lock
‘Must I use a false name?’ I said.
‘Apparently.’
So even my poor father’s name was denied to me. With so much else gone, I should have liked to keep one scrap of identity.
‘Could I not still be Liberty at least?’
‘Who in the world would employ a governess named Liberty?’
Miss Bodenham stood up, flexing her fingers, and lit candles on the table and mantelpiece. Outside a summer dusk had settled on Store Street. ‘Have you finished? Put it in the envelope with the character reference. You’ll find the address on the back of the letter.’
I thought it was as well to read the reference before I sealed it. It seemed that I had given perfect satisfaction to my previous employer for three years, that my manners were ladylike and my three young charges had become perfect paragons under my instruction. They had parted from me with great regret and could most warmly recommend me to any gentleman’s household. The phrasing had all Blackstone’s stiffness, but it was copied in a flowing and feminine hand. The thoroughness of his preparations scared me and I tried one last attempt.
‘Does Mr Blackstone often perform this kind of service?’
‘Please don’t plague me with questions. I’ve neither the knowledge nor the time to answer them. Seal it up and I’ll deliver it first thing tomorrow.’
She opened a drawer in the table with her left hand and threw me a stubby piece of sealing wax, her right hand still writing. It was all brutally clear. My poor father was judged to be an impulsive blunderer so his daughter was to be used but not trusted. The address was St James’s Square, so presumably Lady Mandeville was at her town house. I lodged the application on the mantelpiece and, with nothing else to do, sat and watched Miss Bodenham copying. She was amazingly sure and quick, like a weaver at his loom. I noticed the pages she was copying from were a horrid mess of scratching out and over-writing, some lines travelling at right angles down the margins, others diagonally into corners. When, around midnight, she paused to mix some more ink, I risked a question.
‘Is it a novel?’
‘Not this time. Political economy. After a while it doesn’t matter much whether it’s one or t’other. Words, words, words.’
For the first time she risked a smile, a little roguish twist to her lips that made her look younger and friendlier.
‘You are copying it for a friend?’
‘I am copying it for money. Printers are very clever on the whole at deciphering an author’s intentions, but there are some writers whose hands are so vile the printers won’t take them. The publishers send them to me to make sense of them.’
The fingers of her right hand seemed permanently bent, as if fixed for ever in the act of holding a pen. Once she’d mixed the ink she yawned and said the rest would wait for tomorrow after all. Nearly unconscious with tiredness by now, I expected to be shown into a bedroom, but she bent down and pulled out from under the table two straw-stuffed pallets with rough ticking covers and a bundle of thin blankets.
‘You can put yours by the fireplace. I’ll go nearer the door because I’ll be up earlier in the morning.’
Quite true. Around four o’clock in the morning, just as light was coming in through the thin curtains, she was up and out, taking with her my letter from the mantelpiece and the cold teapot from the grate. I rose soon afterwards, tidied our pallets and blankets back under the table, and found a kind of cubbyhole on the first landing with a privy, a jug of water for washing and a piece of cracked mirror. With nothing else to do, I looked round her room trying to find some clue to her connection with the man in black, but it was as barren in that respect as the stones she used for paperweights. Her bookshelves were interesting though, old and well-used books, mostly from reformers and radicals of previous generations: Tom Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, even Rousseau himself in the original French. If they were her choice, then Miss Bodenham and I had views in common. It might even account for her caution, since reforming views were no more popular at present than when Tom Paine was threatened with hanging as a traitor.
Before six o’clock she was back with the teapot, a small loaf and a slice of ham.
‘Your books …’ I said.
‘Are my own business.’
She pushed papers aside and we had our breakfast at the table: fresh white bread, half the ham each and cups of blessedly hot tea. She ate delicately in small bites, relishing every mouthful, so perhaps my arrival had brought a little luxury for her. But as soon as we’d finished, that was an end of softness.
‘I’ve delivered your application. She will probably want to see you tomorrow, Wednesday. We have a lot of work to do.’
All that long summer day, with the scent of lime trees and coos of courting pigeons drifting in through the window, Miss Bodenham coached me in my part.
‘The family lived in Geneva, down by the lake. You know Geneva?’
‘Yes. We stopped a week there on our way back from the Alps.’
‘Keep to yes and no whenever possible. She will not be interested in you and the Alps. Your charges were two girls and a boy: Sylvia who is now twelve, Fitzgeorge, nine and Margaret, five. Repeat.’
‘Sylvia, twelve, Fitzgeorge, nine, Margaret, five. Was I fond of them?’
‘It is unwise for a governess to express fondness. The mother may be jealous. You found them charming and well-behaved.’
‘Were you ever a governess?’
‘Yes. But you must cure yourself of asking questions. Governesses don’t, except in the schoolroom.’
‘Is it very miserable?’
‘How old is Fitzgeorge?’
She seemed pleased, in her gruff way, with my speed in getting this fictional family into my head. Less pleased, though, when it came to my accomplishments.
‘She will probably ask you to show her a sample of your needlework.’
‘I don’t possess one.’
‘Not even a handkerchief?’
I eventually found in my reticule a ten-year-old handkerchief which the nuns had made me hem. She looked at it critically.
‘The stitches are too large.’
‘That’s what Sister Immaculata said. She made me unpick it nine times.’
‘It will have to do, but you must wash and iron it.’
She issued me with a wafer of hard yellow soap. I washed the handkerchief in the basin on the landing, hung it from the window sill to dry, went downstairs to beg the loan of a flat iron from the frizzy-haired maid and the favour of heating it on the kitchen range. I was ironing it in the scullery when somebody knocked at the door. The maid had gone upstairs, so I went to answer it and found a footman outside in black-and-gold livery, powdered wig and hurt pride from having to stand on a doorstep in Store Street.
‘I have a letter for a Miss Lock.’
Scented paper, address written in violet ink, seal a coat of arms with three perched birds. Inside, a short note hoping that Miss Lock would find it convenient to call at eleven o’clock on Wednesday, the following day, signed Lucasta Mandeville. I told the footman that Miss Lock would keep the appointment, then fled to the scullery from which a smell of burned linen was rising. Handkerchief totally ruined with a flat-iron shaped hole in the middle. Miss Bodenham sighed as if she hadn’t expected anything better and found me one of her own. It was more neatly stitched, but I had to go through the whole laundering and ironing process again.
In the evening, Miss Bodenham put on her bonnet, bundled together a great sheaf of papers, and said she must go and deliver it to the printers in Clerkenwell.
‘I’ll come with you.’
My head felt muzzy from a long day of study.
‘No, you stay here. I’ll bring back something for a supper.’
I watched from the window as her straw bonnet with its surprisingly frivolous green ribbon turned the corner, then caught up my own bonnet and hurried down the stairs. I was tired of being obedient. Blackstone and Miss Bodenham might think they’d taken control of my life, but I had my own trail to follow. It took me southwards down Tottenham Court Road towards St Giles. It was the busiest time of the evening with the streets full of traffic; at the point where Tottenham Court Road met Oxford Street there was such a jam of carriages that I could hardly find a way through. Wheels were grinding against wheels, drivers swearing, gentry leaning out of carriage windows wanting to know what was going on, horses whinnying. It seemed worse than the usual evening crush so I asked a crossing sweeper who was leaning on his broom, watching, the cause of the commotion. He spat into the gutter.
‘Layabouts from the country making trouble as usual.’
From further along Oxford Street, above the grinding wheels and the swearing, came the funereal beat of a drum and voices chanting, ‘Bread. Give us bread. Bread. Give us bread.’
I went towards the sound and saw a procession of working men in brown and black jackets and caps, mufflers round their necks in spite of the warmth of the day. They were walking and chanting in perfect unison, keeping time to the beat of the drum. Some of them carried placards: No Corn Laws, Work Not Workhouse. Their faces were pinched, their boots falling apart, as if they’d come a long way. Some of the spectators looked quite sympathetic to them, but the London boys as usual were taking the opportunity to shy stones or bits of vegetable at anything that moved. Then, above the chanting, a shrill cry from one of the lads: ‘The Peelers are coming.’ A line of about a dozen Metropolitan Police came pushing past me at a run in their top hats and tail coats with double rows of gleaming brass buttons. They carried stout sticks and their treatment of political demonstrations over recent years had shown they weren’t slow to use them. Ordinarily, I’d have stayed to see what happened, but now I couldn’t afford to be caught up in a riot, so I pushed my way back through the crowd, dodged among carriage wheels and got safely into St Giles High Street. From there it was an easy journey to Covent Garden.
I reached the theatre, as I’d hoped, just before the interval. Carriages were waiting at the front of the house for fashionable people who’d decided that one act of an opera was quite enough. I went round to the stage door, confident that it would only be a matter of minutes before I met somebody I knew by sight. There was not a theatre orchestra in London without a friend of my father in it, and on such a warm night some of them would surely come out to take the air. The first were three men I didn’t recognise, making at some speed for an inn across the road, brass players, by their hot red faces. Long minutes passed and more musicians came out, but none I knew. I worried that the interval would soon be over and wondered if I dared go inside on my own. Then a group of men came out slowly, talking together. I recognised one of them and stepped in front of him, trying to drag a name up from my mind.
‘Good evening, Mr … Kennedy.’
He stopped, obviously racking his brains, then said, in a soft Irish accent, ‘Well, it’s Jacques Lane’s daughter. How are you and how is he?’
Foolishly, it hadn’t occurred to me that I should have to break the news. Because it filled my heart, I was sure the whole world knew it.
‘I’m afraid he’s dead,’ I said.
His face went blank with shock. He asked how and I told him that my father was supposed to have been shot in a duel, only I didn’t believe it. There were a lot more questions he wanted to ask, but already sounds of instruments re-tuning were coming from inside.
‘I’m hoping to send a message to Daniel Suter,’ I said. ‘He was in Paris, and I think he’s still there.’
‘I knew he was going to Paris,’ Kennedy said. ‘He disagreed with the conductor here about the tempo of the overture to The Barber and took himself off in a huff. He should be back soon though.’
‘Yes, Daniel never huffs for long, and then only about music.’
‘Will you ever come in and wait, if I find you a seat? We can talk afterwards.’
‘I’m sorry, I must go. When you see Daniel, or anybody who knows him, could you please ask him to write to me urgently at … at Mandeville Hall, near Ascot, Berkshire.’
The other men were going inside. The brass players came back, wiping their mouths.
‘You must go too,’ I said. ‘But you will ask him, if you can, won’t you?’
Kennedy’s hand went to his pocket.
‘Are you all right for …?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Friends of yours, these people at Ascot?’
I nodded. The truth was too complicated, and somebody was calling from inside for the damned fiddles to hurry up. He squeezed my hand and departed, still looking shocked. I headed back at a fast walk, calculating how long it would take Miss Bodenham to get back from Clerkenwell. Luckily, Oxford Street was clear. All that remained of the unemployed men’s procession was a broken drum, trampled placards and two men squatting beside a country lad in the gutter, binding up a leg that looked as if it might be broken. Back at Store Street, I just had time to take off my bonnet and wipe the dust from my shoes before I heard Miss Bodenham’s footsteps coming wearily up the stairs.
Although my interview with Lady Mandeville was not until eleven o’clock on Wednesday morning, we were up at dawn for more coaching.
‘Where were you educated?’
‘Nearly everywhere. We kept moving quite frequently, you see, so …’
‘Lady Mandeville will not wish to know that. You should say you were educated at home by your father, a country clergyman.’
‘Another lie, then.’
‘That’s for your conscience. Do you want this position or not?’
Several times, bored and rebellious, I came close to shouting, No, I did not! and walking out. If it had been simply a matter of my bread and butter I should have done just that, but I was not so rich in clues that I could afford to throw this chance away.
‘Where did you learn French?’
‘In Geneva, with the family who employed me. Some German, too. Should I mention Spanish?’
‘Only if asked, and I don’t suppose you will be. And don’t speak so loudly. You’re a governess, not an actress. Also, you should look down more, at your hands or at the floor. If you try to stare out Lady Mandeville like that, you’ll seem impudent and opinionated.’
‘These Mandevilles – have you ever met them?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘But you know something about them?’
‘A little, yes.’
‘How?’
She hesitated, then seemed to come to a decision.
‘I am acquainted with a young woman who was formerly a governess with them.’
‘You mean I am taking the place of a friend of yours?’
I wondered if she had been my predecessor as Mr Blackstone’s spy.
‘She was dismissed last year. I believe there has been another since then.’
‘Two in a year. Are they ogres who eat governesses?’
Another fleeting twist of her lips.
‘Sir Herbert Mandeville has a black temper, and his mother-in-law, Mrs Beedle, has strict standards.’
Just as well, I thought, that Mr Blackstone only expected me to stay for a few weeks.
‘I might be wrong in telling you this,’ she said, ‘but you do not seem to me a person easily dismayed.’
I guessed that she was going beyond the limits set for her by Mr Blackstone and even offering me a kind of wary friendship.
‘How many children shall I be teaching?’
‘He has three from this marriage, two boys and a girl. The elder boy, the heir, is twelve.’
‘So there were other marriages?’
‘One. Sir Herbert’s first wife had several miscarriages and died in childbirth. He married his present wife, Lucasta, thirteen years ago. She was then a young widow with two children of her own, a boy and a girl. They are now both of age, live in the Mandeville household, and have taken his name.’
‘And this Lucasta, Lady Mandeville, she will be the one who decides whether to hire me?’
‘It’s possible that Mrs Beedle will decide. Her daughter relies heavily on her opinion.’
‘Why? Surely as the mistress of the house she may engage a governess for herself?’
‘You’ll see.’
‘Was she rich when Sir Herbert married her?’
‘No, but she was regarded as a great beauty in her time. He needed to father a son to inherit the property and title.’
‘And she’d proved she could bear a son. How like an aristocrat, to choose a wife by the same principles as a brood mare.’
‘That is a most inappropriate sentiment for a governess.’
Later, we turned our attention to my appearance, which caused her more anxiety. She discovered my particular curse, that my hair is naturally crinkly and no amount of water or brushing will make it lie smoothly or stop it popping out of pins. In the end, we managed to trap it under my bonnet with the strings tied so tightly under my chin that I could hardly speak.
‘Good,’ Miss Bodenham said. ‘It will keep you quiet.’
We had decided that my lavender dress, worn with the white muslin tucker at the neck, was the more suitable one, though she insisted I must remove the bunch of silk flowers from the waist. My shoes were scratched from scrambling around at Calais, but would have to do, so I must tuck them away under my skirt as far as possible.
‘You can’t wear those stockings.’
‘Why not?’
I was pulling them on carefully. They were my only good pair.
‘Governesses don’t wear silk stockings.’
‘Very well. I’ll wear my blue thread ones.’
‘Blue stockings are even worse. They suggest unorthodox opinions. You’ll have to borrow a pair of mine.’
White cotton gone yellowish from much washing, darned knubbily around toes and heels. I had to garter them tightly to take out the wrinkles and what with that and the bonnet strings felt as thoroughly trussed as a Christmas goose. Miss Bodenham looked at me critically.
‘It will have to do. Be careful of stepping in gutters on the way and make sure you arrive ten minutes early.’ Then she added, unexpectedly, ‘Good luck.’
The house in St James’s Square had the elegant proportions of old King George’s time, an iron arch over the bottom of the steps with a candle-snuffer beside it, stone pots of blue hydrangeas with a thin maid watering them. She couldn’t have been much more than twelve years old and stepped aside to let me up the steps as if she expected to be kicked. As instructed, I was precisely ten minutes early. A footman – the same one who had resented the doorstep in Store Street – opened the door to me and led me to a small drawing room overlooking the square, where I was to wait until summoned. If I had been, as I pretended, a timid applicant for a much-needed post, it would have unnerved me thoroughly. In truth, it almost did. I got back some of my self-possession by reminding myself that I was a spy and that this family, this very house perhaps, could tell me something about my father’s death. I must keep my mouth shut, my eyes and ears more wide open than they’d ever been.
The drawing room told me nothing that I didn’t know already – that the Mandevilles were rich and proud of their ancestry. For evidence of wealth, the room bulged and writhed with marquetry, carving, inlaid work and gilding as if the sight of a plain piece of wood were an offence against society. Swags of golden flowers and fruit, probably the work of Chippendale, surrounded a great oval mirror over the fireplace. Golden, goat-footed satyrs gambolled up the edges of two matching cabinets in oyster veneer with veined red marble tops supporting a pair of large porcelain parrots in purple and green. The chairs, gilt-framed and needlepoint embroidered, looked as comfortable as thorn hedges for sitting on, so I stood and stared back at the Mandeville family portraits that encrusted the silk-covered walls. Hatchet-like noses and smug pursed mouths seemed to be the distinguishing features of the men. There was the first baronet, with his full wig and little soft hands, and his lady who, from her expanse of white bosom and complaisant expression, was probably the reason King Charles gave the family their title. An eighteenth-century baronet stared at the world from between white marble pillars with palm trees to the side, presumably the Mandeville West Indian plantations. One portrait near the door clearly belonged to the present century and seemed more amiable than the rest. It showed the head and shoulders of a beautiful golden-haired woman in a blue muslin dress, hair twined with blue ribbons and ropes of pearls. She was young and smiling, eyes on something just out of the picture. The lightness of her dress suggested the fashion of twenty years or so ago. Puzzlingly, she seemed familiar, but I couldn’t think why. I was still staring at her when the door opened and the footman told me to follow him.
