Page 18 of The Housekeeper's Secret
‘Davy…!’ Mrs Furniss’s voice was breathy with relief. ‘You gave me such a fright, lurking in the undergrowth like that. Were you waiting for me? Was there something you wanted?’
Davy Wells shrank away, staring intently into a rhododendron bush. His face was crumpled into a scowl, but he nodded.
‘What is it?’
Her voice was gentle. Jem hadn’t heard her speak like that before, and he almost envied Davy. The lad shifted on his feet, folding a rhododendron leaf over and over, snapping it into pulpy fragments, which he brushed from his green-stained fingers. He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from the pocket of his too-small jacket and thrust it out.
‘A telegram? Thank you, Davy. You took this from the telegram boy, today? I expect he was very glad that you saved him from cycling down to the house, but next time that’s what he must do. It says ‘Coldwell Hall’ on the front, you see, so that’s where he should have delivered it.’ She smiled at him kindly. ‘He’s lazy, that telegram boy. He’s lucky you’re so trustworthy and reliable. Thank you.’
Davy nodded fiercely, backing away, then turning and breaking into a shambling run. Mrs Furniss turned the telegram over. The envelope flap was loose. She lifted it and slid out the paper.
‘It’s from Whittam Park—Lady Etchingham’s house.’
Jem watched her. He saw the flicker of shock cross her face and her hand fly to her throat. Her eyes rose to meet his and she handed him the telegram.
LORD ETCHINGHAM DEEPLY REGRETS TO REPORT SUDDEN DEATH OF SIR HENRY HYDE STOP MR RANDOLPH HYDE INFORMED STOP PLEASE MAKE PREPARATIONS FOR MOURNING
Yesterday we were given orders to dig the graves of three Welshmen who were killed in their own trench when an enemy shell hit a box of hand grenades. It was raining and the ground was heavy and wet. As I dug, I thought of the words on that telegram. MAKE PREPARATIONS FOR MOURNING.
It’s astonishing to remember the lengths we went to that summer for one friendless old man who died peacefully in bed. Black drapes and armbands and stopped clocks. Out here the dead don’t even get coffins. The Welshmen were sewn into blankets before being lowered into the mud, and that’s far more ceremony than most of us will get.
No one likes being picked for jobs like that, especially the ones who haven’t been out here long. I don’t mind so much. It turns out life in service was good preparation for life as a soldier. I’m lucky that I’m physically suited to the work, which men from offices or factories often are not. I’m used to following orders, even when I have little respect for those issuing them. I don’t question what we’re told or argue with senior officers.
I don’t have eyes or ears or opinions or feelings.
I know my place.
Chapter 7
The house was a solid slab of darkness in the indigo dusk as they barrelled down the hill, stumbling over tussocks of grass. After the noise and life of the fair the park seemed eerily still, and it was all too easy to believe that Samuel’s ghost might be flitting through the trees as they skirted the woods by the temple. To Susan’s ears, every rustle of leaves, every fox bark and sheep call turned into the sound of his lost soul wandering, and she stayed close to Thomas (though what he could do to protect her from restless spirits she couldn’t rightly say).
Eliza stamped along in front of her, white blouse bobbing palely in the gloom, bad temper stirring the air in her wake. She’d been in a mood since the weather turned, and Susan had pointed out that she should have worn a coat (which was true; there was no need for Eliza to bite her head off). In fact, she’d had a right face on her even before that, ever since Jem Arden had announced he was heading back. Getting soaked had only put the tin lid on it.
When she reached the bottom of the slope, Susan saw her turn and look over her shoulder, to where Joseph trailed miserably behind. He’d eaten an entire quarter of liquorice and a helping of pigs’ trotters and been sick when he got off the gallopers. On the walk home he’d slowed everyone down.
‘Hurry up, for pity’s sake. We’re almost an hour late. She’s going to kill us.’
Thomas flashed a swift grin at Susan. ‘That’d be why we saw that owl this morning.’
‘She’ll understand,’ Abigail said breathlessly. ‘It’s not our fault Joseph was taken bad.’
‘We should have left earlier,’ Eliza snapped.
They all fell silent as they walked round to the stable yard, preparing for apologies and admonishment and a lengthy lecture on trust and timekeeping. The yard was in darkness too (the outdoor staff, not being tied to Mr Goddard’s strict door-locking curfew, wouldn’t be back for another couple of hours at least); but as they passed through the yawning mouth of the archway, the kitchen window spilled light onto the cobbles.
‘Here goes…’ Thomas muttered by the back door.
They filed into the passage, heads bowed. The light of the oil lamp seemed very bright after the dark outside. It made Thomas’s copper hair gleam more brightly and showed up the greenish pallor of Joseph’s face, the shadows circling his eyes. Susan had expected either Mr Goddard or Mrs Furniss to be waiting; to appear with that look—disappointment mixed with chilly disdain—that left you no doubt that you were for it (at least Mrs Gatley came straight out with it), but the corridor was empty. Following Thomas, she and Abigail exchanged a puzzled look.
Jem Arden was sitting at the table in the servants’ hall, his shirtsleeves rolled up and a book open on the table in front of him, an empty teacup at his elbow. He got up when they came in. It was funny, Susan thought; they’d all been at Coldwell longer than he had, but there was something about him that made it seem like he was in charge. Like he had more authority than Thomas even, though he was first footman.
‘Mrs Furniss asked me to let you know that a telegram came this afternoon from Whittam Park,’ he said gravely. ‘I’m afraid it brought bad news about Sir Henry. It seems he died, very suddenly and unexpectedly, while staying with Lady Etchingham. We don’t know any more than that for the moment.’
Susan’s stomach swooped like it had on the swingboats earlier. She felt the beat of the owl’s wings inside her head and its shadow seemed to fall across the lamplit room.
In the housekeeper’s parlour Kate sat up late over her books and her ledger, making lists and writing letters: to Lady Etchingham’s housekeeper, extending her sympathy (she could imagine the disruption to the Whittam Park household), to Jay’s on Regent Street (‘The Mourning Warehouse’) to order armbands and black cotton gloves for the male servants and a bolt of black crepe to cover Coldwell’s numerous mirrors, and to Mrs Bryant in Portman Square to solicit the older woman’s advice on how to run a house in mourning.
She herself had little close personal experience of death. She’d had a brother once, but was too young to remember the loss of the child who had embodied the best of her parents’ hopes and ambitions, much less the etiquette surrounding his burial and mourning. Her parents, as far as she knew, were still alive, although they had been as good as dead to her for the last ten years, on account of their rigid belief that she must remain lying in the bed she had so rashly made for herself.