A Mansion and its Murder (10 page)

Grandfather’s loss of the will to live I associate with the events of Uncle Frank’s last night at Blakemere.

I watched his decline over the two years or so following that night: his increasing difficulty in walking, his use of the bath chair, his needing help even with cutting up his food. And eventually, in the last months, his confinement to his own rooms, with Robert as attendant.

Before that happened, I had one conversation with him that remains in my mind. It was a warm summer’s day, and he had been left in his chair on the terrace. His old face was as baggy and blotchy now as Mr Gladstone’s had been ten years earlier, and his body was very much less active. I was playing with Richard, who was on one of his fortnightly visits, where the meadow begins, just down from the terrace. When I first noticed Grandpapa he was looking into the distance, vacantly, but as I came up the steps to talk to him some little signs of life came into his eyes.

‘It’s a curse, old age, Sarah Jane,’ he said.

I considerately refrained from correcting his version of my name. ‘I can see it is, Grandpapa.’

‘That’s obvious, is it? Well, I suppose if you see an old man in a bath chair with nothing to occupy his mind, it must be pretty clear what an abomination old age is.’

‘If you ever want me to read to you, Grandpapa—’

‘Read? What use is reading now? You read to store up information for the future. I have no future, more’s the pity.’

‘I read for enjoyment, Gra—’ He interrupted me angrily.

‘That sort of reading is nothing more than time-wasting … You know, I used to worry about the future. Not any more. The future will have to take care of itself.’ He looked at me hard. ‘Maybe you’re the future, Sarah Jane.’

‘I don’t
want
to be, but I suppose if there’s only me … Grandpapa, has anybody heard from Uncle Frank in Australia?’

‘No! And no one’s likely to, or wants to!’ His eyes looked fiercely at me, and I nearly quailed, but didn’t quite.

‘What is Uncle Frank doing there? Is he crossing the Great Australian Desert?’

He cleared his throat loudly. ‘For aught I know. He may do what he likes.’

‘Because Papa thought he was going to settle
there, and if he met a lady whom he liked, he might divorce Mary, or she him, and he could have an heir for Blakemere.’

Grandpapa looked down to the meadow, and at Richard’s desultory play, then looked back at me, his eyes dim but angry.

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘Frank will have no more heirs to Blakemere. Robert! Robert! Where is the man?’

And Robert came out and wheeled him into the house. I went back to Richard, but I looked across the river to the little wood in the distance. Oh, Frank was Down Under all right, I thought, only he wasn’t ten thousand miles away. It was the first time I remember having a thought of such a grimly humorous turn. My life at Blakemere, my experience of the Fearing family, generated many such thoughts in the future.

I found out later that, some months before, my grandfather had changed his will again: minor bequests apart he left everything to my father and then, failing male heirs to him, to me. No mention was made of the estate’s or the Bank’s future after me. That was left entirely in my hands. I don’t know if that was an expression of confidence in me, or one of total bemusement
as to what was for the best. But certainly it bound me, tight.

My grandfather’s decline was longer than he or anyone would have wanted. He died in March 1896, and my father was head of Fearing’s Bank and master of Blakemete. And I was his heir.

My father decidedly took to running the Fearing empire.

He did not, in those early days, significantly change the routines followed year after year by my grandfather. He spent Monday to Thursday in London, staying at a suite in the Savoy, attending diligently to bank affairs by day, dining lavishly and attending light theatrical performances (that was the appeal of the Savoy) in the evenings. On Thursdays, after the bank closed, he came down to Blakemere and stayed till early Monday morning – enjoying shooting, golf, and the traditional hospitality for people who mattered that the Fearings had always gone
in for. I remember from that time Mr Asquith (as the coming man) and Joseph Chamberlain, as well as an awkward evening with Thomas Hardy and H.M. Stanley, who seemed to have little in common except a love of vast, unpopulated places. I began to attend, you notice, these dinners, though I resisted any attempts to make me Blakemere’s hostess. I intended to go to University. I was becoming a serious, purposeful young lady.

My grandmother decided that she had done her duty by Blakemere and Fearing’s Bank. It had always, I suspect, been duty, intermixed with little pleasure. She decided to spend her last years in charitable work in London, and in pleasure in the south of France and Italy.

My father asked Aunt Jane to be his hostess at Blakemere. It was an uninspired choice but a wise one. Aunt Jane was used to a place some way down the table, but she knew all the routines of the house and its hospitality: its aims and purposes were clear to her and unquestioned, and if she never sparkled she also never put a foot wrong. My father gave her a dramatically increased dress allowance, and if to modern eyes she would look comically frumpish – like, though one can’t say so, Queen Mary today – in
the 1890’s she looked dignified and right.

Who persuaded my mother to leave Blakemere I do not know. Maybe Jane, maybe Grandmama, maybe even my father. Anyway, the embarrassment of her presence was removed: she was set up in an independent establishment in Torquay, and left with a simple ‘goodbye’ to me. She occasionally indulged in whist with other elderly ladies, was now and then wheeled along the Front, but mostly, I believe, she cosseted her invalidism. She was looked after by a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, who I hope was not unkind to her. On the other hand, I can think of no very good reason why she should have been especially kind.

So my father, Claudius Meyer Fearing, the third of his dynasty, rather flourished in his new state. At the Bank, or with other bankers, his opinion was respected – not perhaps as much as my grandfather’s, but respected as that of one who knew what he was talking about. At Blakemere he was assured of automatic respect and obedience, but I soon became aware, through my network of relationships below stairs, that he received a good deal more than that. He was an example of the position making the man. He no longer had the air of being somehow superfluous.
I have just returned from visiting Edith – Miss Roxby that was, Mrs Beale as she became. She is a sad case now, rambling without sense of purpose, now proposing to expound on the Corn Belt in North America, now conjugating irregular French verbs, sometimes sliding on to matters of a more embarrassing kind. This came on quite quickly after Robert died – they were for many years an odd but devoted couple. Seeing her in that nursing home, which tries to be cheery but has an inevitable underlying grimness, sent my mind back to the announcement of her proposed marriage. Now she is eighty-eight, then she was in her late thirties. It was by no means a conventional match – in fact, at the time it was potentially scandalous.

I did not fully understand this in 1896, soon after the death of my grandfather. When Edith told me privately, my comment was unintentionally tactless.

‘I suppose you’re married in all but name already,’ I said.

I was sixteen, but I think I had only very vague ideas about what ‘married in all but name’ might imply. Miss Roxby bit her lip (I think with amusement rather than annoyance) and went on with her explanation. Not a great deal was
needed. I knew, and the whole of Blakemere knew, that she and Robert saw a great deal of each other on their free days; and I knew, and below stairs at Blakemere knew, that even in the house they saw a great deal more of each other than a footman and a governess would normally do. It seemed to me perfectly natural that they should decide to get married.

It was some days before I realised that this was not the general opinion. I think I got the message from the pursed lips of Aunt Jane, reinforced by the raised eyebrows of Cousin Anselm, on a visit with his two sons while his wife was in labour. Both reactions told me there was something odd, off-key,
wrong
about the proposed marriage.

It was, of course, a matter of class. Miss Roxby was in an ambiguous position, somewhere between servant and family, but the official line was that she was a gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, and certainly
not
a servant. Robert had had the minimum education that the state provided, was the son of one of those men who had moved the earth to form the Blakemere estate, and thus was what we now confidently call working class.

‘What will they find to talk about?’ asked Aunt Jane.

Ignorant as I was, I knew enough to go away and have a good giggle.

It was some time before I, too, began to think there was something odd about the marriage, and that it was not a matter of class. Miss Roxby was to start a school in Wentwood, and, after prolonged and anguished suing on my part, it was agreed that I would attend it, both for ordinary classes, and to receive special tuition from a graduate (the word was spoken with bated breath) in mathematics, to fit me for the Cambridge Tripos. It was wonderfully exciting for me, the thought of mixing for the first time with real people (by which I meant not family and not hangers-on).

I realise now that my attendance was also symbolic: it showed potential parents that the project, and therefore the marriage, were approved of (after mature consideration) by the great, the rich, the powerful Fearing family.

‘Isn’t it grand?’ I said to Edith, when I first saw Bankside School, two weeks before the September opening.

‘It has to be quite big,’ said my former governess. ‘We aim to take quite a lot of boarders.’

It was two substantial houses, with a newly
constructed passage between them. The main bedrooms in the second house were large enough to form two substantial dormitories. The classrooms were on the ground floors of both houses, and the living quarters for Edith and Robert were in the upstairs part of the first house. The grounds were extensive, and a tennis court had been constructed. Everything was of the first quality, and it was really most attractive for a school, suggesting that Edith had been planning such an establishment, or perhaps just dreaming of it, for many years.

How could they afford
this?

The question occurred to me after my first two weeks of school, when I had been well taught, well protected, and well fed at my midday meal. I was wandering around on my own – I enjoyed the unaccustomed experience of mixing with other girls, but I needed solitude now and then because I had so often been used to it. I was waiting for the carriage to come and fetch me back to Blakemere. It was not until the next year, my last, that I was allowed to catch the train. I was in the pleasant and well-catered-for grounds at the back of the two houses, gazing pensively up at the two stone structures, marvelling at the extent of the enterprise.

Robert could have saved little from his wages – enough, perhaps, to give him some little pre-eminence in a rural environment, but not enough to contribute anything meaningful to a set-up such as Bankside School. Miss Roxby was well paid by governess standards, a hundred pounds a year, but such free time as she did not spend with her surviving sister she used to go up to London, to plays, concerts, and opera. I did not get the idea that she was a great saver, and even if she were – this?

I talked to Robert when I had got my ideas clearer in my head. Robert was Bankside School’s man – functions vague but various. He could be general handyman when there was call for one, but at any time when parents might call he was well dressed, imposing, and a deferential but confidence-building front. He was the girls’ and teachers’ escort when outside the school. He could also impose order. Many girls fell in love with him, but all hopelessly. Few troublemakers ever got the better of him.

‘Is the school going well, Robert?’ I asked him, as he stood surveying the girls in the grounds during a recreation period.

‘Quite nicely, thank you, Miss Sarah,’ he replied complacently. ‘Two new girls starting
next week. Parents not happy with the school they’re attending at the moment. They’d heard good things about Bankside.’

‘That must be very gratifying.’

‘Oh, it is, Miss Sarah. Mrs Beale is very happy about the way things are going.’

‘How
lucky
you were,’ I said, gushing a little, ‘to be able to set up a wonderful place like this when you got married.’

‘Ah, well, you see, Miss Sarah, Edith and I were a lot later than most in getting wed.’

I said nothing, and he seemed to find the pause awkward. ‘And I don’t mind saying that your family were very helpful, in view of our long service at Blakemere.’

‘That was very generous of them.’

‘A loan, o’ course, but on good terms, and very welcome and timely.’

His manner had less than its usual confidence. I meditated on this, and on his words, during the carriage ride home that day. It seemed to me that Robert would have let me think that, due to their unusually mature years at marriage, he and Edith had acquired the property and equipped it as a school out of their savings if I had not left that pause. It had then occurred to him that he was talking to a young lady who intended
to go to Cambridge to study mathematics, and possibly a future head of Fearing’s Bank to boot. He then amended his account to praise my family’s generosity and then – sensing a degree of scepticism – had amended this once again to describe it as a loan. Interesting.

I considered this whole account, wondering whether my family was really generous to its retainers. Only so-so, I thought, though they were paid well, a fact that was resented by other employers of domestic labour in the vicinity. I wondered, too, whether Miss Roxby’s ten-year service could really be described as ‘long’, and whether Robert’s service, starting low-down and ending as a mere under-footman, was so very special.

But most of all I meditated my waking nightmare of the time of Uncle Frank’s disappearance, and that view from above of a shape that I thought was Robert’s, holding the lantern beside the stretcher that bore a long shape covered by a dark rug.

I found I could not discuss this with Edith: we shared our thoughts on matters of moment, we were unrestrained in each other’s company, we liked each other – yet we were not intimate. And even if we were, could I have approached
a subject that might have amounted to an accusation of blackmail: that they had used Robert’s involvement in the disposal of Uncle Frank’s body to screw money out of my family? It was out of the question.

I meditated, as I say, long and hard. I decided that the only person to whom I might broach such a topic – and then only cautiously – was Beatrice. I waited two days or so, trying to get the situation right in my mind, then went to see her and Richard on a fine Saturday in early October. We had decided to leave Richard with Bea another year, then bring him back to Blakemere. Watching him playing with the South children (another was on the way, as usual) made me sure we had come to the right decision. However, Beatrice sounded a note of caution.

‘It may not be for the best for him to stay here much longer,’ she said.

I looked at her in surprise: she did not often change her mind.

‘Tom is getting cussed.’

‘Cussed?’

‘Bad tempered. Doesn’t like children around his feet the whole time.’

‘Well, he’s got a funny way of showing it,
Bea.’ I said, nodding toward her belly. We both giggled. ‘Anyway, Blakemere is full of cussed people.’

‘But he can be kept away from them. Never need see them. Here he gets upset by the bad atmosphere.’ My heart lifted with love as I looked toward his puffy, slow-eyed face, and saw the consideration of Bea’s eldest as he adapted his play to suit the boy. ‘Mind you, he soon forgets it when Tom’s out of the way,’ Bea went on. ‘And anyway, Blakemere’s a much happier place now, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose so,’ I considered, almost surprised. ‘Yes, something has made a difference, and I suppose it must be Papa, and Mother leaving, and all the changes. But I did want him to come back during the summer holidays, when I have all my time to give him.’

‘But you’ll have another year’s school after that, and then Cambridge. You’ll need someone there to look after him and love him.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, think on’t. Have you considered that Bertha?’

We chewed over this for some time. Typically for Bea it was an instinctive but a brilliant suggestion, as time proved. Bertha looked
after Richard literally as if he was her own. We had ranged in our conversation over that and related matters when finally I said, ‘You should see Edith’s new school, Bea. She and Robert have really done themselves proud. Two large houses with lots of grounds, and “beautifully appointed”, as the advertisements say.’

Bea nodded, unsuspecting.

‘That’s nice. I thought you might find a school pokey, after what you’ve been used to.’

‘Beautiful pokiness!’ I laughed. I added prophetically: ‘If I ever own Blakemere, I’m going to live in the coach house or the gatehouse. Then I’ll let that awful barn of a place to … to …’ But my imagination failed me.

‘The King of Siam and all his wives,’ suggested Bea. We both laughed.

‘It
is
difficult to think who’d want it,’ I conceded. ‘But Bea, how would Edith and Robert have found the money to start a splendid spic-and-span new school like Bankside?’