Dear Laura (14 page)

‘I think you’ve got somethink of a heavy cold coming on, sir, myself. The Hon. Mr Prout, as I was nursemaid to his children, was a martyr to heavy colds. Could you not rest yourself, sir, this morning?’

‘Impossible!’ Looking at her sideways for contradiction.

‘Well, sir, I hope you don’t think as I’m speaking out of my place, but I believe you should. A stitch in time saves nine.’

His dark face intent on business appointments which must not be broken.

‘At the very least, sir, you should come home early and I’ll make you a blackcurrant cordial.’

‘I was to have taken Mrs Crozier to the theatre this evening.’

‘Why, sir, Mrs Crozier would be the quickest to say as you must care for yourself first. If you caught a chill atop of that cold, in the night air …’

*

‘Where did you expect that my sons would find an
education
, madam? At home in the parlour?’

‘Fräulein Walther is most competent. I feel that Edmund has changed so since he left home, and Lindsey cries every time he thinks of it, Theodore.’

‘No boy was ever taught by a governess beyond his early years, Laura. And you should not indulge Lindsey’s tears. He is too much inclined to weep. He must be a man. If it were not for Miss Nagle’s training I should have been presented with
three
daughters.’

Children locked in a cupboard. Perched on a table which leered below the short legs in a long fall. Favourite books, cherished toys, placed too high to reach. Lying in bed with the blinds drawn for punishment, while outside the sun shone. Weeping in the compulsory dark of night. Sitting down to bread and water, while the kitchen feasted on roast mutton and college pudding.

*

Between five and six o’clock they entered a forbidden Eden: all the dearer because of its brevity, already retreating from them as they grew older.

‘Do not shout so, Edmund dearest. You must not be so noisy. Show me what you have painted.’

Blood and rifles, soldiers slain by the dozen, misery and destitution.

‘It is the Battle of Waterloo, Mama.’

All the violence that he could not wreak.

‘Are you not going to sit by me, Edmund?’

Torn between the need for proximity, and the male pride which forbade it, the boy perched a foot away from her on the edge of the sofa. But Lindsey burrowed a fair head on her shoulder, and Blanche climbed on her knee, still.

‘What shall I read to you?’ Laura asked.

‘Not
Struwwelpeter
,
Mama,’ Lindsey begged, who dreamed dreadfully of having his thumbs severed by scissors.

‘No, indeed, that is not one of my favourites.’ Nanny Nagle read it, and quoted constantly. Theodore approved of
retribution
, of great vengeance for little sins.

‘
Alice
in
Wonderland
,
Mama, if you please,’ Blanche whispered.

‘That’s a girl’s book!’ cried Edmund accusingly.

‘We will read
Alice
another day, my love. What then? Quickly, or it will be six o’clock and we shall have read nothing.’

‘
Gulliver’s
Travels
,
Mama?’ Lindsey suggested.

Edmund did not disapprove. Blanche loved the Lilliputians. Laura reached for the book.

‘Why did they not torture him, I wonder?’ said Edmund curiously. ‘He was tied down.’

‘They were not cruel people,’ Laura replied, disquieted. ‘They were merely curious because they had never seen a giant. They must have been afraid of him.’

The two fair heads, one on each shoulder, were very still. Dark as his father, inscrutable, deprived, Edmund thought of men buried to the neck in anthills, lidless eyes shrivelled by the sun. He loved Lindsey, because the younger boy was dependent on him, and therefore he must punish him. Lindsey lived in Edmund’s world of imaginary nightmare, and clung to the tyrant who might protect him from all others.

‘How happy we are together in this pretty room,’ said Laura, momentarily content.

Lindsey’s grey eyes met Edmund’s opaque brown
beseechingly
. Mollified by this tribute to his power, the elder boy winked reassurance. Much she knew about life, they thought. Much she knew, who could throw up no mightier shield than soft arms and gentle heart.

Blanche closed her eyes, and two fingers wandered towards her mouth.

‘No, dearest,’ said Laura. ‘Nanny will be cross with you.’

M
RS
H
ILL
copied the anonymous letter more slowly, received her warning against gossip with a heightened colour, and sought to placate Lintott from the outset. Her small black eyes fixed on the curtains, she recited her particulars.

‘Beatrice Hill. Fifty-one year of age come March. Seventy pound a year as cook-housekeeper and all found. Been with the family fifteen year and never a wrong word. The master give me a dress-length for Christmas – a nice blue it was. I respected the master, he was good to me. Yes, Mrs Crozier is a kind mistress.’

‘You don’t hold a grudge against her, then?’

‘Why should I?’ said Mrs Hill roundly. ‘We’ve never
interfered
with one another. She was only a slip of a girl when she come here first. She didn’t know a kettle from a quart pot. Not that that didn’t suit me better,’ the cook added honestly. ‘I could do my own way – though I treated her with respect. And when she learned how to manage alongside, as you might say, she didn’t come the high and mighty. No, I’ll say that for the mistress. Always a thank you when I’ve done somethink extra, and her compliments. Very easy and proper.’

‘What about Mr Titus? Is he well-liked on the whole?’

Her mouth screwed up. She pondered between discretion and the inspector’s flat gaze, and decided for the latter.

‘Not by me he isn’t and wasn’t, sir. I’m quite a judge of character. I may say I’m known for it.’

‘Now that’s lucky,’ said Lintott. ‘I’m something of a judge of character myself. Shall I tell you what I’ve thought and
then you can tell me? Mr Titus is an amiable gentleman with a weakness for the ladies. Free with money, whether his own or others. Civil until his temper’s roused. A good talker and makes it sound right. Women spoil him, and what he can’t get from one he gets from another. A fine figure of a man until you need him, and then he turns into a suit of clothes. Lean on him and he’s not there. Am I right, Mrs Hill?’

She nodded, lips compressed.

‘What sort of man was your late master?’

‘Why, sir, I think I may say I knew him better than the other servants did – though Miss Nagle worshipped the ground he walked on. He was a Christian gentleman. He can’t speak up for hisself now, God rest him, and I know as they’re making out he was a hard gentleman, but I know different.’

Interested, doodling with his pencil, Lintott asked, ‘How do you know, Mrs Hill?’

She paused, embarrassed, and then replied. ‘I’d been ill, sir, for quite a time afore I came into his service. I hadn’t got no job and my last mistress give me no reference.’

‘Why was that, I wonder? You were – how old? –
thirty-four
or five?
How long had you been in
her
service?’

‘Five year, sir. But I had to leave sudden, on account of my complaint, and she took agin me in consequence.’

‘What was the nature of your complaint, Mrs Hill?’

The cook said delicately, ‘Female trouble, sir.’

‘You cast yourself on Mr Crozier’s mercy?’

‘Yes, sir. I saw he was a-advertising and I went along. I was pretty near desperate, sir, and I spoke out honest and begged him to give me a chance. It’s a serious thing, sir, to be given no reference. She could as well have snatched the bread from my mouth and let me starve. And I’d had enough of worriting and sickness without that!’

‘Quite, Mrs Hill. But your late master took you on trust?’

‘He did, sir. He said as we was all here to help one another and he’d give me six month on trial. We started off together, so’s to speak, and I thought as we should end off together – the more’s the pity.’

‘Were your master and mistress happy together, my dear?’

She hesitated, and then said, ‘No sir, they wasn’t. They was civil enough in public, only – living in the same house – you can’t help noticing what goes on in private.’

‘Did he treat her harshly, would you say?’

‘Well, sir, he did and he didn’t, in a manner of speaking. Mr Crozier and me knew where we was with one another. He’d say, “I don’t like this or that, Mrs Hill!” Outright. “Very well, sir,” I’d say, “you shan’t be, troubled by it no more.” Or else, if it was somethink as he’d overlooked, I could say, “Excuse me, sir, but have you noticed such-and-such?” And he’d say, “No, Mrs Hill, I had not, but now you mention it we’ll say no more.” Straight out, sir. But the mistress – I’m not a-blaming her for it, it was the way she was brought up – she’d never come right out with anythink. Always coaxing him, or hiding things from him, and that he could never abide. So they never understood each other, in a way, sir.’

‘Ah!’ said Lintott. ‘An upright man. How do you account for this mistress of his, then? That wasn’t very Christian behaviour, was it?’

‘Well, sir, if you don’t get nothink but coldness at home you look for it outside. But it may not have been him, sir, it may have been Mr Titus. He’s been in many a corner, what with women and money troubles, and Mr Crozier got him out. Besides, I’ve a niece as works for Mr Titus. She goes in every day and cleans his rooms. Though I warned her, and she keeps herself pure. Not that he’d fancy her, anyway. She’s a good girl, but she’s got a strawberry mark all down one side of her face. But what she’s told me about him’d make your hair curl!’

‘Do you think he and your mistress were over-warm towards each other?’

‘Not to be truthful, sir. Oh, we all gets round the kitchen table of an evening and has a chat and a laugh and that. But, no. I was here at the beginning and they was always jolly together, like a sister with a favourite brother. There’s no more to it than that, and she looks to be admired.’

*

‘I never seen such a pair o’ babies in all my born days!’ said
Mrs Hill to her stockpot, but the comment was not unkind.

This new household, a fortnight old, already rolled sedately under her management. A new and awkward housemaid promised to do well enough, but must be snapped to perfection. Fortunately, May’s quiet prettiness enabled her to act as
parlourmaid
too. And when Mrs Hill could find no fault in May there was always the new kitchenmaid, whose background and competence left most things to be desired. Then the mistress, eighteen and already sickly with her first, had been grateful for guidance.

‘I’ll just take the menu upstairs, May,’ said the Cook, ‘and see if Mrs Crozier approves.’

‘They’re a-playing with a jigsaw, Auntie.’

‘
Auntie?
’
Outraged.

‘I mean,
Mrs
Hill
,
Auntie. I keep forgetting.’

‘Well, just you remember in future.
Auntie
,
indeed. What’s this about a jigsaw, then?’

‘Mr Titus found one of them big old jigsaws in his boxes in the lumber-room, and he’s spread it all out on the parlour floor and the mistress is a-directing of him with the pieces.’

‘I must see this,’ said Mrs Hill, mounting the stairs. ‘They’ll have to clear it away afore the master comes home!’

*

Laura was in her old element: cosseted because of her
condition
, and even presented with a playmate to while along the hours.

‘I have not done a puzzle for years,’ Titus said,
concentrating
on finding straight-edged pieces. ‘And this is a
confounded
difficult one, Laura, there is so much sky.’

‘Is it a pastoral scene? There is the head of a crook.’

‘Pastoral in the extreme, with a moral in the shape of a lurking wolf.’

‘I do not care for the wolf, Titus.’

‘He shall be kept out, if you so command, madam.’

‘But there will be a hole in the jigsaw, then.’

‘Better an unfinished picture than that you should be
disturbed
.
I have been given orders only to amuse you, and all fearful things are to be kept from your mind, Laura.’

The knowledge of the coming child, unmentionable, lay delicately between them.

She considered his russet head and absorbed face, the
elegance
of his attitude: a graceful dandy sprawling at her feet, paying compliments.

‘You are so unlike Theodore in every way,’ she observed. ‘Did you, perhaps, take after one parent and not the other?’

‘I am a changeling,’ said Titus with satisfaction. ‘All our family are, or were, honest and upright and sober. I am none of those things, Laura. My late mother named me Titus Alexander, no doubt expecting me to conquer new worlds. I assure you I shall do no such conquering. The present world is good enough for me.’

‘Do you not desire to rise in it, Titus?’

‘Not particularly. In fact not at all. But no doubt Theodore will see that I acquit myself in some aspect. I owe that to him at least.’

‘I think he is fonder of you than anyone.’

You
seem
the
only
person
of
whom
he
is
genuinely
fond.

‘His heart has been captured by another, and I do not blame him for that!’

I
had
not
thought
his
taste
was
so
excellent.

‘I fear that you must find it very dull to stay at home during your vacation, and entertain me. I beg you will not deprive
yourself
of gayer company.’

Do
not
leave
me,
for
you
are
all
I
understand
in
this
strange
new
life.

‘I wish for no more charming lady, and for no other
occupation
than to fashion her a wooden scene upon her parlour floor.’

I
shall,
in
any
case,
be
going
out
this
evening
to
find
less
spiritual
companions.

‘When I am better we must have a musical evening, Titus. And as a good sister-in-law I shall endeavour to amuse you with a circle of pretty young ladies who are unattached. I must matchmake, now I am married! I shall be an assiduous
matchmaker
!’

I
am
not
jealous.

‘I shall reject a thousand beautiful young ladies, since there will be none among them to compare with you, Laura.’

I
have
no
intention
of
settling
down
with
one
when
there
are
so
many.

‘You are a tease, Titus. Let me help you with the jigsaw, pray.’

‘You are not allowed to stir from your sofa, my dear sister-
in-law
, and I am doing uncommonly well by myself.’

‘Indeed, you are not. That piece does not go there but
elsewhere
. Besides, I wish to set the flowers in.’

Titus gave the offending squiggle a smart slap with the palm of one hand, and it shot into Laura’s lap.

‘You see?’ she cried, delighted. ‘You are quite hopeless at such an intricate occupation. I demand to be allowed to help. Pray assist me.’

Carefully he settled her on the floor beside him, and watched the ballet of her fingers. Knowing, without looking, that he was admiring her, she smiled round at him.

‘Is it not pleasant that we agree so well? Relatives do not always do so.’

‘You do not know me yet, Laura. I get into fearful scrapes, and often annoy Theodore – though he comes to, in the end. You will become a respectable matron in a few years, and order me from the house!’

She laughed, and cried, ‘I shall never change towards you, Titus!’

‘Promise me that, Laura. Here,’ prising a small gold coin from his watch chain, ‘here is your pledge. Heaven knows what will befall you if you break your word! I tremble to think!’

‘I shall put it in my jewel box,’ said Laura, enchanted.

‘And do not tell Theodore,’ said Titus ruefully. ‘He will think me a perfect fool, and so I am.’

‘Then let us be foolish together. That will be our secret.’

*

‘Ours is a big family, and very close,’ said Mrs Hill, smiling. ‘I know what it’s like to be over-fond of somebody, but no harm in it. My nephew, George, is going for a drummer, sir. The day
as I see him in the Queen’s uniform’ll be the proudest day of my life.’

Her face shone. Inspector Lintott considered her, but without the acid speculation he had bestowed upon Miss Nagle.

‘You’re ruining my case for me, my dear,’ he said in a jocular manner. ‘I can’t see who should do away with your master, or for what! You make it all sound so fair and reasonable. Come now, admit that these pleasant evenings over the kitchen table spoiled your judgement! You think a great deal of
your late master, and don’t want to say that he made a fool of himself with a trollop – and took his life out of remorse, perhaps?’

Her face changed.

‘Mr Crozier never died by his own hand, sir. What do you
want
me
to say?’

‘I want you to be as honest with me as you were with your master. You must think
someone
murdered him. So who, and why, and how?’

‘Mr Titus, sir. My niece told me he nearly had the bailiffs in. They’re holding off now, seeing as he can get at the firm’s money. Mr Titus was training for a doctor when I first started here, but they sent him down in his second year. I don’t know why, but I can guess, sir. So he’d know all about poisoning.’

She had worked it out: rolling her light pastry, mixing her rich cakes, stirring her savoury sauces, ruminating.

‘He was the one that took the port decanter upstairs, and give Mr Crozier a glass or two. He put them pills in the port wine.’

‘Oh, we’re back to that gritty decanter, are we?’ said Lintott, amused, good-natured. ‘And you call yourself a judge of
character
, my dear. I’m surprised at you! Have you ever met a poisoner? No, I thought not. I have. They work in the dark, as you might say. Cool sort of folk. Secretive, calculating, clever, and capable of lying you blue in the face. Is that your Mr Titus?’