A Gentleman of Fortune (11 page)

She jumped up and fetched her bonnet from her bedchamber – then hesitated upon the stairs. Mr Lomax might call on them again today – call while she was out. She half-turned – nearly took the bonnet back.

But, with so many important questions filling her head she did not think she could bear to sit quietly at home – even for Mr Lomax… She would not be away long… If he called, Flora would be sure to detain him until she returned.

She put on the bonnet and set off.

Miss Prentice was delighted to receive another visit from Miss Kent: it was so remarkably kind of her to call; she did not know how to thank her enough; it was so very…

As Dido entered the gloomy little parlour, half-blinded after the brilliance of the sunshine, Miss Prentice was sitting at a corner of the large desk and very busy about settling her accounts; but she immediately swept her papers together, put them into the deep, scarred drawer of the desk and, after struggling a moment with its broken lock, succeeded in shutting them out of sight. Then she unhooked her spectacles from her ears and turned gratefully to her favourite seat beside the window.

Dido was particularly glad to follow her and to sit down there, for her chief motive in coming was that she might look at Knaresborough House unobserved. And it was very convenient indeed to sit in the dark room, listening with half an ear to Miss Prentice’s chatter and looking out at the big house.

The sun was shining warmly upon the house-front, and gleaming upon its windows. There were, Dido noticed, three ground floor windows upon each side of the door. They were all casement windows and cut rather low down to the ground. And the one just to the left of the door – the one through which the burglars had broken – was particularly conveniently placed: close to the front steps. It could have been climbed through with the greatest of ease.

As she watched – and Miss Prentice talked about Sir Hugo Wyat’s new curricle and Sir Joshua Carrisbrook’s nuptials – a tall thin workman in a very long white apron appeared at the front of Knaresborough House and set to work upon mending the broken catch of the window. She watched him for several minutes and then took the next opportunity of a slight pause in her companion’s talk to say, ‘My cousin and I were extremely concerned to hear of Mr Lansdale’s latest misfortune.’

‘Ah!’ said Miss Prentice with a little frown. ‘I daresay Susan has told you all about it.’

‘Yes, she has. She was with us before we had finished our breakfast this morning.’

‘Oh dear,’ fretted Miss Prentice, ‘Susan has a thousand good qualities, I am sure, but I wish she was not quite so fond of spreading ill-tidings. It is so very…’

‘It is only her way, I am sure,’ said Dido, seizing upon the opening, ‘but I cannot help but wonder… I wonder whether she may have a particular dislike of Mr Lansdale. She seemed almost pleased to convey this news of the burglary.’

Miss Prentice sighed deeply. ‘I confess, I have thought as much myself, Miss Kent. But I know of no reason
why
she should dislike the young man. For he seems – from everything we hear about him – to be a remarkably
good
young gentleman. We hear nothing against him – his behaviour is unexceptionable and his opinions sound.’ She paused, shook her head. ‘If they were not, if it should appear that he had unsound opinions, or
progressive
ideas, then I should not wonder at her dislike. For she has quite a horror of progressive ideas – she always has. And, of course, I agree… But Mr Lansdale is a very proper young man.’

‘Yes, I am sure he is.’

They sat in silence for a while, Dido watching the workman at the window and Miss Prentice watching a very smart carriage with a coat of arms upon its door.

‘I wonder,’ said Dido at last, ‘whether you happened to notice any strangers approaching Knaresborough House yesterday evening – or anything which might be connected with the housebreaking?’

‘Yesterday evening? No, I do not remember seeing anything at all. But Mary was with me again yesterday evening. She often sits with me after dinner now.’

Dido was about to ask her more, when she noticed that the man had finished repairing the window latch and was beginning to pack his tools away into his bag. She rose hastily, took her leave and was – by only loitering in the street a few minutes – just in time to accidentally fall in with him as he reached the gates of Knaresborough House.

‘I am very glad to see that you have restored the catch of Mr Lansdale’s window,’ she remarked, ‘for one cannot be too careful with such villains about in the neighbourhood.’

‘Ah well now, miss, as to that,’ said the man, shifting his canvas bag of tools from one shoulder to the other and looking exceedingly wise, ‘as to that, I reckon you’re right. Can’t be too careful.’

‘Do you suppose,’ she asked, ‘that it was very difficult to break into the house? Was the catch upon the window very strong?’

‘Well…no… As to that, it’d only take one really good hard push of that window to break the catch.’

‘So,’ mused Dido, ‘the burglar would not have needed any sort of tool to break it open?’

‘No, Miss. There weren’t no kind of tool or bar used to break that open. I’d have seen the mark of it on the window frame if there’d been anything like that.’

‘I see. Thank you very much for explaining it to me.’

The man walked away, but Dido remained in the shadow of the gateposts a little while, contemplating the front of Knaresborough House.

Its shutters were open now that the first stage of mourning was over. In the thick creeper that covered one corner of the building, swallows were busy about their nests. It was a very pleasant, respectable prospect.

But there were secrets hidden here. She was sure of it… There was certainly something very odd indeed about this burglary…

She shook her head at the house. What did it have to hide? And how could one penetrate such respectability, to come at the truth? She dared not approach its door and question its master. Nor could she think of any reason to enter the kitchens and pursue her enquiries among the servants. And how else was she to discover anything? It seemed an impossibility.

However, as Dido’s governess used frequently to remind her, we should ‘despair of nothing we would attain’ as ‘unwearied diligence our point would gain’. And, though there might appear to be little diligence in only sighing over the view of a house-front – or at least none which the redoubtable Miss Steerforth would have valued – Dido almost immediately saw an answer to her question: a means of penetration and discovery.

Kneeling in the shadows by the corner of the house was young Sam, engaged in pulling weeds out of the sweep.

She walked over to him, bade him good morning and exchanged a few remarks upon the warmth of the day, the likelihood of there being thunder before long and the persistence with which groundsel grew in gravel.

‘It makes a great deal of work for you, Sam. Are you employed here all the time now?’

‘Oh no, miss, I only come to do jobs now and then – like burying the dog, and helping Pa fix that new name plate on the gate, and pulling up the weeds sometimes.’

‘Is there no regular gardener employed about the place?’

‘No miss,’ he sat back on his heels and took a welcome rest. ‘There’s precious few servants here at all.’

‘Yes,’ said Dido, recalling the clumsy maid, ‘I had observed as much. Why is the house so ill-served?’

‘Well miss, I reckon the land-agent only keeps on Mr Fraser while the house is empty. And then, when the house is let out, Mr Fraser gets folk in by the day to do the work.’

‘I see,’ said Dido, making the best of her opening. ‘That woman I have seen about here then: a large woman in a grey dress and a straw bonnet. I have seen her here talking to Miss Neville. She comes to help in the kitchen I daresay.’

Sam shook his head so hard the damp hair fell down into his eyes. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that’s Jenny White you mean, miss. Mr Fraser wouldn’t have her sort working in the house.’

‘Oh! Then what is her business here?’

‘I don’t know, miss, honest I don’t. I wish I did.’ He looked troubled. It was a fact which Dido had frequently observed that labouring people did not like to see their betters valuing anyone beyond their deserts. ‘I reckon it’s very odd the way Miss Neville lets her come around here and doesn’t send her away. Because Miss Neville must know what Jenny White is as well as any one else.’

‘And what is Miss White?’ asked Dido with great interest.

‘She’s a bad lot, miss, that’s what she is. She’s been in prison. Been in prison a good long while. And my Pa says she was lucky the judge was a soft one or it would’ve been transporting for sure.’

‘I see, and why was she sent to prison, Sam?’

‘Well, you see, miss, Jenny White is a laundress…’

‘And an excellent name she has for one of that profession!’

Sam gave her a puzzled look. ‘But the point is, miss, every house Jenny worked in got burgled. And at the trial it all came out how she was working for a gang of housebreakers. Telling them all she could about locks and jewels and when the family were going to be away for the evening. That kind of thing you know, miss.’

‘How very shocking!’

‘It was, miss, and Pa says she’d have been transported for sure – or even hanged – but she made the judge believe she was frightened of the gang. Said she only did what she did because they made her. But Pa reckons…’

Unluckily, just at that moment, there came the sound of the house door opening. They looked up and there was Fraser standing on the step – watching them severely.

‘I’m sorry miss,’ said Sam, shuffling a little along the gravel and attacking a dandelion, ‘I’d better be about my work.’

Reluctantly Dido walked away – and felt Fraser’s disapproval staring at her back all the way to the sweep gates. She made her way home slowly, reflecting upon what a very remarkable thing it was, that she should have seen Miss Neville talking with – paying – a woman known to associate with criminals and that, the very next day, they should hear that Knaresborough House had been burgled.

Flora was still above stairs when Dido returned. And there was no sound of visitors. As she entered the hall she looked immediately to the table at the foot of the stairs – to see if any caller had left a card.

There was no card, but there were several letters just come from the post office. She picked them up – and found among them a letter addressed to herself in an unfamiliar hand.

She paused, her bonnet in her hand, its ribbons trailing on the floor, the heat of the morning cooling on her cheeks. She turned the letter over thoughtfully: studied its direction. It was not written in a flowing script, but in separated letters – as if it were the work of a child – or a person of little education.

Frowning to herself, she laid down her bonnet and carried the letter into the bright little breakfast room where everything was fresh and clean from the housemaid’s hands and the french doors stood open upon the garden. She sat down and broke the seal.

There was but one sheet of paper and only a few lines written in the same clumsy letters.

There was no name, no signature.