Mist of Midnight (29 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

E
arly next morning I told Mrs. Blackwood that we were leaving to go to Southampton and that she should not expect us until late that evening. I assured her that Daniel would come along to protect us. Strangely enough, Mrs. Ross raised no objection at all to our going into a rather rough neighborhood; instead, she seemed to relish the adventure. It must get dull, I thought, sitting in her room or waiting upon the occasion to accompany me someplace. Perhaps, being more local, she understood that the locale was gentler than I knew.

Once at Southampton, Daniel went to find some lascars. I spoke with one in Malayalam and he told me that, yes, there had been an ayah delivered here late last year, which was most unusual and why he'd noted it. He would make quick inquiries.

A few minutes later he returned. “The woman you seek was taken to London. We don't have many Indian women here, you understand, so it was easy to remember her.” He called over another Indian man, who spoke only Hindi, which I spoke haltingly. It was enough for me to understand that there was indeed a home in London, near the West India dock, for Indians who
were stranded here, and that all were helped with food, money, and arrangement for work to earn the money to return home if they so chose. It was called the Strangers' Home. I thanked him and returned to the carriage.

“Can you lodge the carriage and horses in town overnight?” I asked Daniel.

He nodded. “For a fee.”

I withdrew my leather wallet from my account folio, which Mrs. Blackwood had given me before we left, and went to purchase train tickets. Before closing the folio I noticed new papers had been slipped into the accounts. I would look at them on the train.

I paid for a note to be delivered to Mrs. Blackwood so she would not worry.

We made our way into the carriage. The seats were softly upholstered in supple leather that hissed in exhalation as Mrs. Ross settled her considerable self upon one. The train began to pull away from the station, and I wondered, as Daniel had asked, what I hoped to achieve.

I want to know who the maid was.

I want to know who impersonated me.

I want to clear Luke's name from the whisperings and innuendo that he had a hand in her death. For his sake. For mine.

The train chugged through the Hampshire countryside, autumn clear churned to autumn fog and smoke. I opened up my wallet: an invoice from the dry goods store, marked paid, and one from the poulterer; the invoice behind it was attached to a note from Mr. Highmore. I withdrew it, too, and as I read, was stunned. I read it twice, just to ensure that I had not made a mistake, but I had not. The enormous cost of repairing, remodeling, and bringing Headbourne current, as well as this year's taxes, had
been paid in full by Captain Luke Whitfield. All other monies due him as a matter of course had been duly and permanently discharged.

My breath caught and my hand trembled. I had asked to see the truth of the man with my own eyes, and I had.

Luke had paid my bills expecting nothing in return. I would have at least a year, perhaps two or three, now, to discover how I might acquire enough funds to keep Headbourne. Or, perhaps having paid for it, Headbourne deserved to be his. My heart swelled with love and urgency to complete my mission and return to him. “Luke,” I said softly.

“Ye'll not find another one like him,” Mrs. Ross said from across the aisle.

A short while later we pulled into Waterloo Station. It was my first time in London—that I could recall, anyway. I longed to explore the city, but at the moment, I was on a mission. Daniel met us and we commissioned a hackney carriage.

“I'd like to go to the Strangers' Home,” I said. “West India Dock Road. Do you know where it is?”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “The Prince himself laid the cornerstone for it. It's not . . . not a place for ladies, miss, if you don't mind my saying so.”

I let out a big puff of air. “There aren't women there, then?”

He shook his head. “No, ma'am, it's a home just for men. India men, other sailors who be far from their home. The London Missionary Society runs it.”

Pride surged; I, of course, had come from a family that had given its life to the work of that organization. “But what about the women?” Had we come all this way for naught?

“They'd be at the Ayahs' Home,” he said. “That's not too far away, neither. In Whitechapel. On Jewry Street.”

“Take us, please,” I said. He cracked his whip and his team took off toward the Ayahs' Home.

We soon turned down Whitechapel, a street of mismatched buildings; tidy homes, crumbling bricks, bakeries that sent out sweet smells, breweries that sent out bitter ones. There were women loitering, dressed in garish makeup and evening wear so early in the day. My heart went out to them, for when they had no other means by which to make their way, they sold themselves. It happened in India, too.

“Shall I wait here, then?” the carriage driver asked me as he pulled in front of a tidy brown terraced house. I knew it would be costly to have him wait but there was no other place for Daniel to remain, and I was not at all certain that another carriage for hire would come out here to get us.

“Yes, please,” I said. “I shall pay your complete fee upon our return to Waterloo.”

He nodded and we walked up the steps to the narrow house. It looked to have about four floors, typical for London, I'd heard, but it was much tidier than the other houses in the area. This being Saturday, I would have expected more activity, but there was little going on outside. We walked up to the door, and I knocked sharply. A young Indian woman opened the door.

“May I help you?” she asked in thickly accented English.

“Yes, my name is Rebecca Ravenshaw,” I said. “Is there a house mother here?”

She shook her head. “I'm sorry—speaking too quickly. Please, try again?”

I switched to Malayalam and hoped she spoke it. “My name is Rebecca Ravenshaw. Is there a house mother I might speak with?”

“Oh, memsahib speaks Malayalam!” I knew that most English women stationed in India never learned the local languages, pre
ferring instead to learn only the few words required to communicate with their servants. My mother, and indeed most mission­­aries, had been exceptions.

She suggested we sit down in the front room. It was but steps from the door, and sparsely, but comfortably, furnished.

“Here we have ayahs who traveled from India with their En­glish families,” she said. “The families normally purchase tickets for the return trip and hand them over to the Missionary Society, which keeps them until the ayah can be engaged with a family leaving England for India,” she said. “But because of the recent . . . trouble . . . not many families have returned to India in the past year. So”—she waved her hand toward the upper floors—“about forty of us still remain, although many are sailing soon, now that English people are returning to India. There are a few of us,” she said in a hushed tone, “whose family did not buy them a return ticket. They must hope for someone to engage them who is willing to do so.”

Forty ladies and a house mother lived in this small house?

“I see,” I said. “No, I am not in need of an ayah.” Her face dropped. “But I have come to see if there is anyone here who knows an ayah who would have come here last winter, in December. The girl would not have been coming from a ship, but from a home in the country.”

The woman carefully rearranged her hands. “There were one or two women who were in a situation like that. It happens, sometimes, the family brings an Indian servant to England but one or the other doesn't adjust.”

“I would guess not many people were arriving during those months,” I said. Because there were fewer ships leaving India during the early months of the Rebellion.

She shook her head.

“Would there be anyone here that was attached to an English lady who died unexpectedly?”

“There is no one like that here,” she said, and now it was my face that dropped.

All this way to find nothing!

“But there is a woman, her name is . . . Sattiyayi. She was friend to a maid like this.”

Oh! “May I speak with her?”

She shrugged. “We are not friends, and I do not know her well, as she keeps to herself. I can go upstairs and ask.”

“Thank you very much,” I said. She left, and I looked at the room around me—pretty and personal, with books and scriptures in many Eastern languages.

In a moment, the woman came back down the stairs. Alone. I took a deep breath.

“She says she will join you, please, in the garden at the back?” She continued to speak in Malayalam. “Alone.” She nodded toward Mrs. Ross.

I nodded. Mrs. Ross nodded and remained in the sitting room.

I followed the young woman out to the small area at the back, which was chilly, but in a protected area, and there were some well-worn chairs to sit in. A few minutes later, a beautiful young Indian woman came out.

The first thing she did was look at my hands, which I had ungloved for a moment to fix my hair.

“Henna?” She spoke Tamil, and she sat down across from me. She was beautiful, her eyebrows newly shaped and threaded, her hair gently curled in a traditional style. She had a thin gold ring through her nose and a ready smile, although she looked wary.

I nodded and responded in Tamil. “Yes. Thank you for speaking
with me. I am looking for someone who may know the ayah to a woman who called herself Rebecca Ravenshaw. The one who claimed that name, that is, who died by her own hand last December.”

“I knew this maid,” she confirmed. Her face remained serene. “We were friends.”

“Oh, that is wonderful,” I said. I could not believe that, through fortune, boldness, and certainly divine intervention, I had made my way to someone, somewhere, who knew the maid connected with Headbourne. “I am the actual Miss Ravenshaw.”

At that, her eyes opened wide and although she worked hard to contain her shock, I could see that she was stunned.

She swallowed hard and then spoke. “The daughter of the missionaries?”

I smiled. She had indeed known the maid! “Yes, yes, that is me,” I said. “I arrived back in England in the spring. My parents, unfortunately, died, but by the grace of God I survived.”

She took all this in. “The house mother told us all about the Ravenshaw family when this maid arrived, as the London Missionary Society supports us as well as the missionaries in India, but we thought all were lost. I am certain that the ayah in question would have been delighted to hear of this. All of us connected with the Society will be.”

“I am hoping to find out more about who the young woman was who pretended to be me,” I said. “And also to learn, well, if the man who was to have inherited my house, if he was involved in her death in any way.”

Sattiyayi shook her head vehemently. “Oh, no, memsahib,” she said. “Of this I am quite certain. The man who was at the house, the captain, he did not try to harm that English lady. It was very much the opposite. He didn't know it, but
she
was attempting to murder
him
.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“M
urder him!” I pitched forward in my chair. “How do you know?”

She backed up and crossed her arms. “My friend, she told me everything. Do you want to know this?”

“I'm very sorry for startling you,” I said. “Yes, yes, please do go on.”

“My friend is from Ceylon,” she began. “She was an ayah there. Last year, her mistress went to Kerala to visit friends, and after they arrived there, they learned some missionary friends had died in the Rebellion. There was, as you know, considerable unrest in the north, but in the south, ships were regularly sailing still. My friend's memsahib said she wanted to go to England, to visit, and needed an ayah. There were other English women traveling who could serve as chaperones for the trip. My friend agreed. She was promised a great sum of money and a return ticket to India. My friend does not speak English.”

I nodded. Many English ladies in India did not like to employ English-speaking maids so they could keep their personal discussions private.

“Did your friend know what this woman's name was?” I asked her.

She nodded. “She did not speak English, but when they were arranging for traveling papers and tickets, she heard her called Violet many times.”

“No,” I breathed out. No. Could it have been a coincidence? It could not have been. Could not have been my friend, my lifelong friend, my Violet. And yet it must have been. Violet had known every detail of our lives. She had nothing to lose, really, as she had no family nor a future of any value, as she could see it, in India.

My skin prickled and I squeezed back the tears. “Please continue.”

“I'm sorry, I do not mean to upset you.” Sattiyayi looked nearly as distraught as I felt.

“You have done nothing wrong,” I said. “I can listen without interrupting you again.”

She pulled her shawl more tightly against the wind. “So my friend came to England. They went to the grand house and all was well for some time. Although she didn't speak English or have any time alone, she did begin to notice that at first people were very warm to the young miss, but then began to treat her oddly. Especially the captain began to treat her with . . .” She hunted for the word.

“Skepticism?” I offered and she nodded. “Yes, I'm sure he would have begun to notice things,” I said. I recalled the left-­handedness.

“And then soon, my friend began to notice that people were calling the memsahib ‘Rebecca' and not ‘Violet,' if not ‘Miss Ravenshaw.' She said the memsahib began to take the sleeping medicine more and more, that the French maid had brought her quite a bit but only because memsahib was asking for it and the French
maid seemed to think it helped to calm her, which it did. Violet was much agitated during the day. One night, my friend noticed that the memsahib had two bottles of malaria preparations. You know of it?”

“Dr. Warburg's Tincture,” I said.

“That's it. One day she came upon her in the shed where the cutter tools for the trees and shrubs were kept and it looked as though the memsahib was putting some powder into one of the jars.”

The glove. She had taken one of Luke's gloves and used it so she would not poison herself by touching it. Then she must have been startled and left one glove behind.

Sattiyayi continued. “The memsahib was very angry with my friend and told her to leave, immediately. She slapped my friend's face. She was very upset.”

At that, the maid touched her right cheek and flinched in sympathy. “This tin the memsahib had been taking it from looked like the same powder my friend had seen the cook in the kitchen use to kill mice. The lady became upset when she saw that my friend had noticed her doing this, and appeared to be frightened. I now know she was scared they would find out she was not you. And perhaps that my friend would find some way to tell the captain.”

I drew my shawl around me.

“And then?” I asked.

“And then memsahib spoke with the French maid, pointed to one of the bottles, and said the captain's name. The maid took one of the bottles. Earlier, when the memsahib had left the room, my friend saw that the bottles looked to be the same, but one of them had a little mark in the label, like that left by scraping a fingernail. That was the one that was taken.”

How could this have been Violet,
my
Violet?

“The French maid, she did not know that memsahib had put something into the bottle so she might have given it to the captain. My friend took that bottle and hid it away in a bureau drawer that memsahib never used, planning to retrieve it later, when memsahib left the room, and dispose of it where it could hurt no one. My friend said that the memsahib became more and more melancholy after the captain, he told her that a friend of her brother's was coming to the house to visit. My friend told her that she should be happy, but she screamed that she didn't have a brother. She was greatly distressed that the captain had mentioned something about a constable.”

Violet knew Dunn could find her out, she'd be caught, she would have nowhere to go; worse, she would most likely be imprisoned for impersonating a dead person and stealing money and lands. I could imagine her despair; I'd seen her despair when her own mother had died, when her father had moved her to Ceylon and taken up with a native woman, ostracizing them from English society. She had no hope after that. No friends, no suitors. Could not even be taken on as a governess. Her letters in India had not indicated the depth of her pain, but perhaps I could have questioned more, reached out sooner.

“She did not have time, now, to poison him. It drove her to desperation,” Sattiyayi continued. “Shortly, my friend found her, arm hanging off the bed. The whole bottle of the sleeping poppy juice the French maid had given her had been drunk as well as one from the housekeeper. She was dead.”

Oh, Violet. Violet! I grieved for her, for me. Tears streamed down my face.

“You knew this memsahib?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “She was my friend.” I knew Violet had taken my money and tried to take my home, but she thought I was dead and
could not have imagined it would do me harm. Suddenly, I was very, very glad she was buried on my land. It was a family plot. “She was like family.”

Now Sattiyayi looked truly horrified. “I'm sorry to have told this to you.”

“I am not. But I have a very important question. Why didn't your friend dispose of the bottle, later?”

“It was shortly after the memsahib had self-murdered and the household was distressed. The captain's driver took her to the station, with some money and a note, and he forced her to leave immediately. Later, when she arrived here, she asked someone what the note said and it was instructions to help her travel back to India with another family. But the lascars and their English friends stole the money before leaving her here and there was not enough money for passage. And no families returning for some time, due to the Uprising.”

“There was a proverb, in henna, in the room.”

She nodded. “My friend wanted to make sure that people understood that Violet's own evil, wanting to kill a man, taking what did not belong to her, had brought this on herself. But she does not write in English.”

“I'm very sorry this happened to your friend.”

“I, too,” she said. “But there are also good English people. An Englishman, the captain, made sure she got quickly away. Very often it is the stranger, the foreigner, who is blamed for these things. People mistrusted Indians, especially after the Troubles. We know that now, since we have lived here, at the Ayahs' Home, with many other Indian maids. The home is provided to us by caring English people. So there are good people, and bad people, everywhere, Miss Ravenshaw.”

I nodded. “That is true. Will you return to India, like your friend did?”

She nodded. “Very soon. I have been saving some money, I have some valuables to sell, and there is a family who would like me to come with them on the ship to India. The memsahib speaks Malayalam, just a little, not like you.” She smiled.

I stood, feeling a compelling need to return, immediately, to Hampshire and talk to Luke. She walked me to the door, where I joined Mrs. Ross and opened my leather wallet.

“Please, do not sell your remaining valuables,” I said. “I cannot help the maid who was hurt in my home, by my friend, but I can help you.” I handed her a sum of money, realizing, now, how foolish and naive I'd been to travel with that much money, but thinking it had been perhaps divinely appointed. I could afford it now, because of Luke's generosity. “Will this be enough?”

She tried to push it back at me. “It is too much.”

“No. It's what I want to do.”

“
," she said.

“I hope that is true,” I said, pleased that she knew the scripture.

“Many of us have profited by your father's work. My brother, he has a good job and their house has a roof and they have food because of your father's work in teaching them to read and to keep accounts, and he now has a situation with the English tea planters. His life, your mother's life, it was not in vain.”

I was warmed by her reassurance and glad to have provided her passage back to India and we offered the
Namaste
sign to one another.

We met Daniel at the hackney carriage. The driver assured us that, if we hurried, we could take the train from London to Hampshire that very day. I told him, “All speed,” and extra if he could get us to Waterloo in time. He took me at my word.

As we blazed through London, I mentioned my giving the maid enough resources for her return trip. Mrs. Ross put her hand on mine. “That was a nice thing ye did,” she said.

“She needs to get home,” I said. “I understand that more than anyone.”

She nodded. “They'll know ye by your love.”

I turned toward her. “Why, yes, that's just what the young Indian maid said to me, too! In Tamil. Were you . . . did you serve in India, Mrs. Ross?”

She grinned and nodded, and then turned aside to watch London fly by. Well, much more about her began to make sense. I should speak with her of this later. For now, I looked out of the window, consumed with grieving for Violet, both resolved and distressed to know at last who lay in my grave.

I needed to get to Luke before he sailed.

S
ome hours later we pulled into Southampton. Daniel left us there on a bench, while he went to fetch the carriage. It took some time longer than I expected before he returned.

“One of the horses is not well,” Daniel said. “We shall have to travel slowly, and I will attend to her once we return to Headbourne House.”

“Thank you,” I said. I wanted, if at all possible, to speak with Luke that very evening. He had said he was leaving soon. Not the next night, or the night after, but soon. However, he had been vague and I didn't want him to go without knowing the truth.

Actually, I simply didn't want him to go.

We made our way home from the station, though it took hours. Time seemed to have stopped for me and I wished to urge the poor horses on.

“Fear not,” Mrs. Ross said, echoing the angels in the Bible, before being swayed to sleep by the carriage.

But I did fear. I feared being too late, too wrong, and perhaps having misunderstood many things all along. When we arrived, I asked Daniel to pull directly into the carriage house so he could attend to the lame horse.

It was all but empty. There was one horse still, in the back.

“Notos?” he said with surprise. “She was not here when we left. Perhaps Captain Whitfield is here?”

Oh! But that he were. My breath and pace both quickened. I went directly to the house and Landreth met us at the door.

“Is Captain Whitfield here?” I asked.

He smiled, and by his smile, I knew that my enthusiasm for Luke had shown through. Landreth shook his head. “No. But he was here earlier, inquiring after you. We told him you'd gone to London and didn't say when you'd return.” He looked at me with a reprimand. “He left Notos, though.” By his expression I knew he found that unusual. As did I.