Hearts and Diamonds (27 page)

Eliza’s smile froze.

‘Yes, ma’am. Of course, ma’am.’

After much fussing and fretting, and the establishment that I was really no more than bruised, accounting for the gash on my hand, David sat grave-faced opposite me in the drawing room.

‘I shall send for the girls,’ he said.

‘Oh, they will deny it
. . .
’

‘I know.’ He sent for them and, when they stood before him, told them of his intention to send them away to school.

What alarum, what sobbing and wailing and protestations of innocence followed. But David was resolute. They even tried to appeal to me, but I could no longer bear to look upon them. What they had done could have killed me, or caused the loss of my child. It still might. What sympathy I had for them is now gone, and can never return.

‘God, this is awful,’ muttered Jenna. ‘What a household.’

‘Harville life,’ said Jason. ‘Born under bad stars, the lot of them. So I’m guessing the girls are innocent then, if they get sent away. They couldn’t have killed her.’

‘Maybe in the vacation? Or perhaps they manage to stay at home. Though I do find it hard to believe that two such young girls would . . .’

‘What about the jug though? That could’ve killed her. They were lucky not to be up for murder.’

‘It could just as easily have been an accident.’

‘Why would they have taken the jug over to the window? Leave it out.’

‘No, I suppose it’s a bit unlikely. Oh dear. Perhaps a prank that went wrong?’

‘Anyway, my money’s on his lordship himself. How many more entries are there? Are we getting near the end?’

Jenna looked ahead. There were only two more entries. She swallowed, her eyes flicking away from the looping script as if it might taint her with guilt by association.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But there’s still no guarantee it’ll give us an answer.’

‘It might give us another clue.’

‘Yes. All right. Let’s finish it.’

May 23rd

What an altered atmosphere is in this house! The girls left a week ago, for Miss Marsham’s Academy for Young Ladies in Buxton, and there is such peace. I relish the simple pleasures of taking a turn in my garden without having to look over my shoulder or all about me for signs of ambush. No giggling in obscure corners, no fear of assault.

David is at once more affectionate and he speaks incessantly of the baby’s arrival and how he shall be welcomed to the world. But his affections are sometimes too much for me, especially in the bedchamber. I do not welcome them there, for I fear damage to my child. He tries to persuade me otherwise but we have kept to our separate bedrooms these past few nights.

Truth to tell, I am so excessively bilious that I can scarcely go two hours together without requiring a basin in which to expel the contents of my stomach. It is extremely difficult to maintain the appearance of elegance and grace in these circumstances, and I know the servants laugh about it behind my back.

Unfortunately, their demeanour is no less surly than it ever was. Once the child is born, I will insist on David speaking to them about it. I feel that, once he has his son, he will deny me nothing.

‘Not many clues there,’ admitted Jason. ‘Unless he kills her for not putting out.’

‘At least he isn’t a rapist,’ noted Jenna. ‘Some husbands wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.’ She shuddered. ‘Awful times to be a woman.’

June 10th

All is over. Everything is done with. My life has changed beyond comprehension and will never be the same again.

‘Oho.’ Jason sat up. ‘Now we’re getting to it.’

Jenna’s heart raced. She was surprised at how sick to the stomach she felt, and her fingers trembled on the flyleaf of the journal.

‘God, I’m not sure I can read this,’ she whispered. ‘I feel as if I know her now.’

Jason stroked her arm.

‘I know what you mean. I’m kind of dreading it myself. But we have to know the worst. Perhaps, when we know it, we can get a decent burial for the poor cow.’

‘That’s a good point. Right.’ She took a long, deep breath and read on.

My existence now will be one of mourning and of evasion. In one stroke, I am reduced once more from lady to nobody. Worse than nobody. A fugitive.

Last night, the evening being excessively hot, I had difficulty in sleeping. I tossed and turned in perspiration-soaked sheets, using a bedpan to relieve my nausea. I think I was a little feverish. I fell into half-sleeps, with broken dreams in which my child was born a monster.

Waking, sobbing, from one such nightmare, I resolved to put off the search for sleep until my mind was clearer. I got out of bed and thought I would go outside and walk in the moonlit garden until my senses were less fogged and my skin cooled.

But as I walked along the corridor past David’s room, I heard the sound of voices. His voice, low as it is when he is amorous, and then a woman’s, languid in tone.

I could not move, or breathe, or think.

Why was a woman in my husband’s bedchamber? Was he ill? Did she attend to him?

I clung to a dozen such tenuous explanations, but in the end I could not deceive myself.

I bent and put my eye to the keyhole.

Little could be seen, but what I could see was damning.

I saw my husband’s back and his rear perspective. He was crouching over another body, the legs of which were over his shoulders. He lay on top of her. They were kissing, and as they kissed, he thrust forwards then retreated, over and again.

There was nothing else they could be doing.

I could not see who she was but I was determined to find out.

Shaking and fearful of giving myself away by uttering a cry or bending over to retch, I hid myself in a curtained alcove and waited.

The heat of the night was now my ally, for it kept me from wanting to move or wrap myself up. I could wait and wait, and while I did, my head cleared, my heart slowed and I was able to consider my position.

I had an unfaithful husband. In that, I was not unusual.

But I had an unfaithful husband who felt able to commit his infidelity in this very house, while I lay in my bed mere yards away.

What wife could bear such humiliation? Not this one.

And yet, what could I do? I could reproach him with it, but his reply would be that I had deprived him of his conjugal rights and thus had no grounds for complaint if he sought relief elsewhere. Many would agree with him and say that the blame lay with me. Perhaps it does.

Nonetheless, adultery is adultery, and a vow is a vow.

I heard their cries, his grunts, her cackling laugh. It pierced me deep, and I wondered if my child felt the pain of it through me, in his innocent sleep.

I stood in my place and held myself still until at last the door handle turned and a woman in a coarse white gown came out. I saw her plait dangle down her back as she turned to kiss my husband a fond goodnight.

Eliza.

I did not come out of my hiding place until the door was shut and my husband out of view. I followed Eliza, softly, barefoot, down the back stairs. I had thought she might go to the attic, but she descended instead to the kitchen and went out into the garden, just as I had intended before coming upon the adulterers.

The thought that she, too, needed to cool down, entered my head, enraging me beyond endurance.

‘Eliza.’ I spoke from the kitchen doorway, taking a grim pleasure in the little squawk of shock she uttered before turning to face me. ‘Does your own bed not suit you tonight?’

A look of blank surprise was superseded by a hateful smirk.

‘Why, no, ma’am,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It’s ever such a hot night and a body needs the cool air after all that sweating.’

‘You
. . .
’ I could barely speak. ‘Hussy,’ came eventually on to my tongue.

‘Oh, me, is it? Me that’s the hussy? When you’re the one what came into this house and turned his head away from me.’

‘What do you mean?’ I came down from the doorstep and let my soles feel the grave cool of the patio flags. It was helpful in its way, giving me a sense of being anchored to the ground. Before, I had had the strangest feeling of weightlessness, as if I might fly up into the sky like a balloon.

‘Me and David. We’ve been lovers a long time. Ever since I first came here as under-housemaid. He was still in mourning then, but I soon soothed him. Years, I’ve loved him. Years, I’ve lived in hope, or as much as I dared. I suppose I knew, deep down, that if he married again it wouldn’t be me. Some fine lady, some rich widow. And then
. . .
’ She choked on the words. ‘You! A bloody governess. A nobody, no better’n me.’

‘You
. . .
You’re jealous?’ All sorts of intrusive thoughts crowded into my head, precipitated by the expression of naked hatred on her face.

‘I’m wronged,’ she said. ‘And I’m robbed. Robbed of what’s mine by right.’

‘You mean Lord Harville? Oh, then the girls
. . .?
’ I said, hideous light dawning.

‘Poor mites,’ said Eliza with a bitter laugh. ‘They ain’t done nothing to deserve what they’ve got in life. Let me show you something.’

‘Show me what?’

‘Wait.’

She went over to the round iron cover that concealed the entrance to the wine cellar and performed some kind of manoeuvre to open it.

‘I’ll show you something that’ll make you see,’ she said.

‘What can you show me? I already see,’ I said. ‘I see that you are the one responsible for all those horrible tricks, and you intend to steal my husband from me once again. But it will not work. I can give him a son, born in wedlock, and that is his heart’s desire, far more than to bed some servant girl whenever he wants.’

With a suppressed cry of fury, she rushed at me and knocked me to the ground, where we struggled desperately, hand against hand, with much scratching and biting and pulling of hair. I got free of her and rose again to my feet, but she launched herself once more, and her arms and legs flailed at me with such murderous intent that I feared for my life.

I cannot recall exactly how it came to pass, but somewhere in the milling chaos of fingernails and teeth, I pushed her off me with the last vestiges of my strength.

She went backwards, over the cellar opening and fell headlong into its gaping maw.

For a moment I could do nothing but stand there with my hand over my mouth. She made no sound. I called her name, tentatively. Still, silence.

I went into the kitchen for a lantern and took it with me, down the slippery cold rungs of the ladder. Halfway down, I shone it into the darkness. Eliza lay there, her neck at a sickening angle. I had killed her.

I went down to sit with her. I know not why. I sat with her for an hour, perhaps two, even three, then I realised I had this diary in the pocket of my nightgown and I thought to write it all down and leave this testimony with her.

I leave it now. I place it beside her and I leave this cellar, this house and this town. I will pack a bag and be away from here with the morning mail.

What will become of me, and my child, I cannot say.

I place our destinies in the hands of a merciful God. He will need no diary to understand my motives, for He will see what is in my heart, and so, farewell.

Jenna put the book aside and for a moment neither of them spoke.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jason at last, with feeling.

‘So the body wasn’t hers,’ said Jenna. ‘God. What a mess.’

‘And guess what,’ said Jason, sounding so savage that Jenna turned to him in concern. ‘The only one who gets away with it all is Harville.’

‘Oh, well, but does he? He loses his wife and the son he longed for. So, not really.’

‘You think he wouldn’t go out and remarry straight away?’

‘How could he? Frances was still alive. He’d need her death certificate before he could do that. Although, maybe a divorce on grounds of desertion? But I’m shaky on divorce law back then. I’m sure it took a very long time.’

Jason shook his head. ‘But what the hell happened to her? Them? I mean, if she had the baby. She might have lost it, what with all that fighting and stress.’

Jenna leant her head back against the wall, her brain working furiously.

‘I don’t know. But I think we need to dig deeper. I can’t just let it end like that. I need to know what happened to them all – to Frances and the baby, to Lord Harville, to those poor girls. And Eliza’s family! Did they know? Were they told? Everything suggests that it was totally hushed up, since Eliza’s body has lain there ever since. The cellar was sealed and it was left that way. Although . . . somebody put all those boxes of papers down there. Harvilles have known, all the way down the years.’

‘How the hell are we supposed to find out though? We can’t exactly bring any of ’em back to life to ask them.’

‘I don’t know. Parish records. Births, deaths and marriages. I’m going to look into it, Jay. Just as soon as this exhibition’s off my hands.’

‘Yeah, I think it’s got to be done. I’ll help you.’

They clasped hands, each looking for some comfort from the other from the awful story they had just read.

‘We’ll sort this out,’ said Jenna, and they embraced.

LATE AUGUST HAD
come to Bledburn, and with it the first break in the weeks of summer heat that had tyrannised the town since Jenna’s return from London.

On the day of the exhibition, the skies were darker and fat raindrops fell singly or in pairs before changing their minds and withholding the ever-promised cloudburst. The uncertainty did nothing to help Jenna’s mood, already jittery, as she rushed around the house and garden supervising the final touches.