Savage Magic (9 page)

Jealous is still waiting.

‘Yes. I want to know who visits this house. I want to know who his friends were. Now get to it, Jealous. I’ll wait for you in here.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Jealous departs. Helplessly, Graham’s eyes are drawn back to that awful painting.

THORPE

The servants, who had hidden from him the previous day, are brazen in their presence when Horton emerges the following morning. Mrs Graham, though, is nowhere to be seen – ‘missus has taken to her bed today, very tired she is,’ says Mrs Chesterton the housekeeper, a short bustling creature with a head and body so spherical she looks like a preliminary sketch for a Hogarth caricature. Horton asks if it was she whom he had heard the previous night talking to Mrs Graham in the drawing room. The housekeeper confirms it was with some reluctance and ill-hidden irritation, as if Horton had been spying on the house in its fitful, noisy slumbers. Which, he supposes, he had been.

Mrs Chesterton is one of Thorpe Lee House’s seven servants. They have come out into the new day like mice creeping out after the death of a cat. But there is no bustling order to the house as it wakes up; tasks are gone about with indifference. Horton searches the faces of the staff for signs of sleeplessness when he talks to them, but all he sees is a kind of mild defiance in the younger ones, and a puzzled dislike in the older, as if he carries with him a slightly unpleasant smell. And yet last night they had dreamed noisily and restlessly.

Horton finds himself wondering what the staff’s ramshackle appearance says about the state of Sir Henry’s finances. From his first view of the gardens the previous day, he has been struck by how the appearance of the house itself teeters on the edge of respectability, just as the domestic arrangements of Sir Henry and Mrs Graham teeter beyond the edge of social convention. Abigail would have been as scandalised by the dust as by the relations between the master and mistress of the house, and the food Horton had been served at dinner and then at breakfast was both cold and unappetising.

There is also something pointed about the way the servants talk about Mrs Graham. It is an amalgam of contempt and anxiety. This is personified by the butler, Crowley, who gives as little away on the second day of Horton’s acquaintance as he did on the first. Horton speaks to him in the library. The man refuses to sit, despite Horton’s entreaties, and remains upright with a wall of books rising behind him. He sweats profusely, despite the lack of flesh on his poorly dressed bones, and his bald head shines and drips like a crystal ball smothered in hot wax.

‘How long have you been in Sir Henry’s service?’

‘Coming up to ten years, Mr Constable.’

Crowley has settled on this appellation for Horton, who has let it pass.

‘And Sir Henry has lived in Thorpe Lee House for how long?’

‘About the same amount of time, Mr Constable. Before that, Herefordshire.’

‘Ah, yes, Herefordshire. Where I understand his wife hails from. It is she who supplied his fortune, yes?’

‘So people say, Mr Constable. I do not know nor have any view on the matter.’

‘And where is Lady Tempest now?’

‘I cannot say, sir.’

‘She is still alive?’

‘It is not my place to comment on such matters.’

‘Well, then, Crowley. Can you comment on the events that have alarmed Mrs Graham?’

‘Events, sir?’

A sly look of defiance creeps over Crowley’s thin face. It is an expression Horton will come to recognise and despise as the day unfolds. Mrs Graham’s name sparks a sour response.

‘Yes. The events which have culminated in the illness of Miss Tempest Graham.’

‘I don’t quite understand the events you speak of. Perhaps you could be clearer about your question, Mr Constable?’

‘Well, perhaps this will make it clearer. Do you believe Thorpe Lee House is bewitched?’

‘No, sir. I don’t be holding with that.’

The man looks offended, as if Horton had accused him of being a Roman Catholic.

‘But you must agree there have been unusual occurrences?’

‘Aye, there were, sir. August was particularly bad, of course. But there’s been nothing for a while now. Not since we got rid of the cook.’

‘You think all the events were her doing?’

‘Stands to reason, I think, Mr Constable. We found instruments of mischief in her kitchen. She left. The mischief ended.’

‘Well, not quite. Miss Tempest Graham fell ill after the cook left, did she not?’

‘Oh. Aye. She did. But that’s just females, ain’t it?’

‘In what way?’

‘Well, they react in different ways, do they not? Hysterical, some of them get. Some of them get ill. Some of them do lunatic things.’

‘What kind of lunatic things?’

‘Well, smashing looking-glasses. That’d be lunatic, wouldn’t it?’

There is nothing sly in Crowley’s face now. He knows he has said something he shouldn’t, because he sees the surprise in Horton’s face.

‘Who smashed their looking-glasses?’

‘Well, no one. I was speaking hypothetically, like.’

‘Listen to me, Crowley. This is an important matter, and I am perfectly capable of bringing a charge against you, if I am not given the help I need.’

This, Horton knows, is almost certainly untrue, but it works with Crowley. Like most people, he has never been threatened with such a sanction before.

‘Someone smashed the lady’s looking-glasses.’

‘Mrs Graham’s?’

‘Yes. Every one of them.’

‘When?’

‘Few days after Miss Ellen fell ill. Perhaps a week ago.’

‘And who do you suspect of doing such a thing?’

‘I don’t suspect anyone, Mr Constable.’

‘Could someone have got into the house?’

‘Of course, that’s possible, Mr Constable.’

‘What time of day did this happen?’

‘We cannot say. Mrs Graham discovered them just before dinner.’

‘She was upset?’

‘Wouldn’t you be? And I’ll tell you this: broken mirrors make for bloody insane women. Bad luck, they all said. Weeping and wailing and gibbering. They wouldn’t go anywhere near the glass, neither. Guess who had to clear that lot up?’

Horton ignores the complaining tone in Crowley’s voice, and wonders why the broken looking-glasses do not appear on Mrs Graham’s list of the miseries experienced by Thorpe Lee House.

Working his way down the list of staff, Horton speaks to the housekeeper Mrs Chesterton (‘widder, sir, I was barely married two minutes when the Lord took my Jack from me’), who weeps profusely when she tells Horton of the matters which have taken place, particularly when she speaks of ‘the poor hounds’ which had been slaughtered.

‘Lor’, that sent the mistress into a proper frenzy,’ says Mrs Chesterton. ‘Right disturbed, she was.’

‘The dogs were definitely killed? There was no chance that they attacked each other?’

‘Well, they might’ve. But I don’t believe that. The bitch killed ’em, didn’t she?’

‘The bitch?’

‘Cook. The one ’oo was sacked. She done it all. Stands to reason, don’t it? She wrote those nasty bloody words on my cupboard, ’n’ all. Bitch. Devil’s bitch.’

Horton is taken aback by the spite in Mrs Chesterton’s words. She looks like she might happily snap the neck of Elizabeth Hook, if she were in the same room as them.

‘Why is it so obvious to you that Elizabeth Hook did these things?’

‘Well, it all stopped after she left, didn’t it?’

‘Not quite. Miss Tempest Graham fell ill a good few days afterwards. And the looking-glasses . . .’

‘Oh, don’t remind me of
that
, sir.’

There is no reasoning with Mrs Chesterton. For her, the sacked cook is at the root of every evil which has befallen the house. The narrative is fixed in her mind. Though Horton notes that neither she, nor Crowley, nor Mrs Graham seem able to understand
why
Elizabeth Hook should indulge in such matters. Crowley seems to be able to hold two opposing ideas at the same time: that Hook is causing mischief to happen, and that there is no such thing as bewitchment.

The lady’s maid is a thin, ugly Yorkshire girl who gives her name, incongruously, as Béatrice. She pronounces the word with deliberate emphasis and care, as if she has been schooled in it.

‘It’s a French name, thou know’st,’ she says in her strong northern accent, and Horton acknowledges that this is so before asking her about the house’s mishaps. She lists the events already given by the butler and the housekeeper, leaving out the mirrors. When Horton raises this, she looks horrified.

‘I am shocked that Mr Crowley would reveal such a thing,’ she says, her small eyes opened wide. ‘It is a private matter for Mrs Graham, surely?’

‘But it happened, did it not?’

‘Why, yes, but I assumed . . .’ And she stops at that.

‘Assumed what, Béatrice?’

‘Well, that the mistress had done it herself.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘I cannot imagine. But she is not a happy woman, sir.’

‘She is not?’

‘No, sir. She weeps a great deal. And she is terribly afraid for her daughter.’

‘Afraid of what?’

‘I cannot say. For me, I think Miss Ellen is a strong girl, and she will overcome whatever ails her.’

‘You mean the illness?’

‘Yes, sir. You must know what I mean.’

‘I’m not sure I do. Is there something more than illness?’

She crosses her arms and draws her mouth into a thin little line and refuses to say anything else at all. Horton does not pursue it; he has no authority to (after all, no felony has yet been committed), and he believes he will be able to talk further to her.

The footman, a lad called Peter Gowing, comes in with the scullery maid, Daisy Webster, and although they sit apart Horton can see that the girl, in particular, is desperate to reach out and hold the boy’s hand. Gowing stares fiercely at her whenever she speaks, and even more fiercely at Horton whenever he asks a question, as if he might stand and strike out at anything he perceives as a threat.

The girl acknowledges that all the events described by the other servants – the cows, the dogs, the lawn, the shed, the mirrors – had taken place as described. She becomes particularly agitated when talking about the dead rat in the dining room.

‘It was
enormous
, sir. Such a terrible, awful thing. I see it in my dreams, every night. ‘

‘You must have had rats before.’

‘Oh, but not like this. We get the occasional one that shows its face, and we have to make sure the cupboards are closed tight at night. Mice, too. But you don’t often see these creatures; they’re shy, and I don’t imagine there’s that many of them. So it were proper horrible to see such a monster. And how
malicious
to leave it like that, where she knew I’d see it? I didn’t sleep for days, did I?’

This to Peter Gowing, who frowns at her inadvertent revelation, and turns his now-bright-red face to Horton’s, daring him to ask. Horton, though, can see all he needs to know.

‘And what about Mrs Graham’s mirrors? Did you see them?’

‘No, sir,’ the girl begins, but the boy interrupts.

‘They was in her chambers, wasn’t they? We’re not allowed in there. Only Jane gets in there.’

‘Jane?’

‘The lady’s maid.’

‘You mean Béatrice.’

The boy smirks.

‘Oh, she calls herself that because the mistress tells her to call herself that. Quite the fashion, French maids, ain’t they? But in short supply these days, what with us having been fighting their fellas in Spain and France. Doubtless they’ll be flooding over here now it’s all over.’

The boy’s implication – that Mrs Graham is a somewhat desperate follower of fashion – is clear.

‘So her name is Jane?’

‘Of course her name is Jane. She’s about as French as I am.’

‘And she’s the only one allowed in Mrs Graham’s chambers?’

‘Well, apart from Sir Henry.’

‘Peter!’ This from the maid, who is amazed at her beau’s indiscretion. Peter for his part grins and blushes at the same time. The grin is wiped away by Horton’s asking about the witch-bottle.

‘Witch-bottle?’ he says. Daisy looks at her hands, and sniffs defiantly.

Horton says nothing. He doesn’t have to wait long, but it is Daisy, not Peter, who breaks the silence first.

‘Something needed to be done,’ she says, and glares at Horton as if he himself were a consort of the Dark One. ‘No one was doing anything at all, and I knew how to deal with such matters. We had a witch of our own, see, back home. You take some of their
piss
, their witch’s
piss
, and you put it in a bottle with some hair from her head and you bury it in the woods. So we did. It was my idea. Not Peter’s. So if I’m in trouble, it’s on my head, not his. Understand?’

During this little speech, Peter leans over to her and tries to place a placating hand on her arm, but she constantly slaps it away, glaring at him as if he were an annoying child.

‘And it bloody
worked
, didn’t it? It bloody
did
. She got ill, she did. Stomach pains, just like the cunning-man back home said there’d be. Shooting, stinging pains in her stinking witch’s belly. And that’s when people started seeing her, for the first time, for what she was. But I knew. I knew
all the time
.’