01 - Murder at Ashgrove House (4 page)

‘Edith!’ She looked up sharply. Harold was beginning to lose patience
now, she could hear that irritated edge to his voice. ‘You didn’t hear a word I
said, did you. You always seem lost in a dream world these days, I can never
keep your attention. Sometimes I don’t think you’d notice if I wasn’t here,
indeed,’ he added bitterly, ‘perhaps you’d prefer it that way.’

No, she wanted to say, no, I wouldn’t. She wanted to get up from the
table, overturn it and watch the breakfast things scatter and hear the
satisfying smash of crockery. She wanted to look at the mess of egg yolks and
toast as they congealed together on the floor, to see the tea spilling out of
the cups and staining the slightly faded emerald green rug that she had always
hated, but which Harold’s mother had given them for a wedding present and so
she’d always felt she could not get rid of. But most of all she wanted to rush
over to her husband, to take his two hands in hers and hold them to her as if
she would never let him go. But she couldn’t, she knew, because he would see it
as another sign that she was unstable. She wanted to shake him and scream that
she would be all right if he would only let her talk about
him
, the
person she had loved more than anything else in the world. If only he wouldn’t
pretend that he had never existed, that what had happened had never occurred,
oh, if only he would talk about it!

She looked at him, her lips trembling and wondered, what do you
really
feel? You must care. Why do you have to keep it all bottled up. Why don’t
you scream and shout and cry and be angry with me? Why don’t you either tell me
you hate me; that I ruined your life, or take me in your arms and tell me that
everything is going to be alright, that it will get better? Why don’t you tell
me that at least we have each other?

But he didn’t say or do anything, he never did, that was the trouble.
Instead he just looked hurt, hurt and concerned. She could see the tell-tale
vein throbbing in his forehead. If only he would stop being so nice, so nice
but so very dull.

‘It will do you good, Edith,’ Harold was saying, trying hard now to make
light of everything, trying to pretend that they were a normal married couple
and that their marriage wasn’t falling apart around them.

‘What will?’

‘Going to Ashgrove to stay with Constance. You hadn’t forgotten, had
you?  You’re going this weekend. You arranged it a while ago. The country
air will do you good, bring a bit of colour to your cheeks, you’ve been looking
awfully pale you know, old girl.’ 

‘Am I? Yes, I suppose I am.’ She put her hand up to her face as if she
could feel the greyness of her skin. If I go to Connie’s I can walk and walk,
she thought, walk and walk in the gardens, in the parkland, in the woods
beyond, go down to the river ... I can walk and walk until I’m so tired that I
can’t walk anymore, and then perhaps I will collapse with exhaustion and
forget, just for a few glorious moments, and if I do then perhaps I will be
able to sleep, a deep sleep untroubled by dreams.

She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment as she imagined the blessed
relief. But her eyes flew open almost at once. No, of course it wouldn’t be
like that at all. She would have to listen to Constance, or at least pretend to
listen to Constance, as she talked on and on about her silly pointless things:
how good Stafford was, and how difficult it was to get and keep decent servants
these days since the war, how the gardens never looked quite as good as they
used to in the old days when they had an army of gardeners not just the head
gardener and garden boy, how cold it was considering it was September and it
looked so sunny, and a hundred other useless, trivial, meaningless things.

 ‘I wish you were coming with me, Harold, couldn’t you? It would do
you good too to get away from London. It would give us a chance to talk about
things like we used to, do you remember?’

‘No, Edith, I’m sorry, I can’t. It’s quite out of the question, I’m
afraid, I’m far too busy at work.’ 

She felt him recoiling from her. What he means, she thought bitterly, is
that he won’t. It’s got nothing to do with work. He won’t come because he
doesn’t want to and he certainly doesn’t want us to talk about it, he wants to
forget and he wants me to forget too. He wants me to forget that
he
ever
existed, to act as if nothing happened, as if our lives have not been
shattered, as if we are not living a sham.

‘I had better go, old thing, I don’t want to be late for work; can’t give
them an excuse to lay me off, can I, not with jobs being so scarce nowadays.’
He was trying to make her laugh, she knew, and she managed a feeble smile. He
got up from the table then, and came over and patted her awkwardly on the
shoulder and bent down and kissed her fleetingly on the forehead; just a gentle
peck, she thought, no hint of passion. If only he wasn’t so nice and reasonable
about it all. If only he showed her that he was hurting too. ‘Take care of
yourself, old thing. I’ll see you Sunday evening and then you can tell me all
the news from Ashgrove.’

With that he left the room. She heard him stop briefly in the hall
outside to exchange a few words with Alice, their maid; no doubt, she thought
bitterly, to warn her that her mistress was feeling particularly fragile this
morning and to treat her with care. Then she heard the bang of the front door
as he closed it behind him and then he was gone and she was left alone with the
remains of the breakfast things.

Edith waited a few moments in case he returned.  But all was still
and quiet, except for the faint echo of Alice humming a tune to herself in the
distant reaches of the house.  When she was quite certain she would not be
disturbed, Edith took the photograph from the pocket of her blouse. She studied
it; it was getting so creased now, too much handling, of course.  She’d
have to be careful from now on in case it ripped, because there wouldn’t be
another one quite like it, could never be another one.  The thought hit
her so forcibly, as if it was an actual physical blow, that she clenched her
hands together suddenly feeling choked. She stared for a long time at the face
of the young man in the photograph and then, as she had done a thousand times
before, she bent and traced the features of his face gently with her fingers
and touched her lips to the photograph, the paper receiving the kiss that she
could no longer give to the flesh and blood man. How long she sat there, she
did not know, could hardly hazard a guess even. Vaguely she became aware that
tears were now trickling effortlessly down her face. How was it possible to
weep so silently, so unconsciously? She shuddered and then with a hopeless
shrug she surrendered to her grief.      

After much deliberation, Rose selected an all silk flat crepe dress in
rose beige with a symmetrical column of bows and a normal waistline, made up of
rippling flares and tiny pleats and with a longer skirt than was usual for the
time. It was one of her favourite dresses, understated, but hinted at quality
and taste, just the sort of dress she considered Lady Withers and, perhaps more
importantly, her servants would approve of and consider appropriate for wear to
a weekend country house party. Not though, of course, that it was to be much of
a party as such with just one other guest besides themselves. However, she
still wanted to make a good impression. Yes, she would wear this dress,
together with her petal trim hat in dove grey. She had also packed her one good
tweed suit, together with a couple of white silk blouses, one with a peter pan
collar and the other with a pussy bow, just to be on the safe side because
nobody could complain about those, and a couple of bright summer dresses in
small flower-patterned material with co-ordinating cardigans for good measure.

She had been less decided about evening wear. She knew that Sir William
and Lady Withers always dressed for dinner regardless of whether they had
guests or not, and Lavinia was sure to wear some ridiculously expensive,
stunning gown. Backless ones were all the rage and, with her stunning figure,
Lavinia was bound to look utterly gorgeous. It was tempting to try and compete.
Rose had contemplated telling her mother about the visit earlier, for she would
have insisted on running her up a couple of dresses in the latest fashions,
made from the leftover bits of material from the gowns she made for her more
affluent customers. However, her mother’s worsening eye-sight, coupled with
their ever dwindling finances which made their financial situation ever more
precarious, meant that Mrs Simpson could ill afford to waste her time making
outfits for which she would not be paid. If only she, Rose, had inherited her
mother’s sewing skills, but alas she had not. Besides, if Rose was honest with
herself, she knew that she could never really hope to compete with Lavinia.

She had been tempted to pack her synthetic gold satin dress but it would
look very inferior to Lavinia’s gold lame gown, a fabric incorporating metallic
threads, which gave the overall effect of liquid metal. So instead she had
settled on her old
black silk velvet
bias-cut dress with its cap sleeves, and a draped bodice gathered at the high
waist
which, while it might prove a little warm for a summer’s night and
was rather plain, had the advantage of looking both tasteful and elegant. While
she was sure Lavinia would wear different gowns on the Friday and Saturday
nights, she had resigned herself to wearing the same dress twice but with
different accessories; on the Friday night her mother’s pearls, which she felt
would lift the outfit and give it a touch of class, and on the Saturday night,
a flower, scoured from the flower gardens at Ashgrove, which she intended to
wear as a corsage. 

She had, of course, packed her own case because neither she nor her
mother employed a maid who could do it for her. It would be different, of
course, at Ashgrove; there would be a housemaid assigned to her as lady’s maid,
to unpack her case and hang up her clothes and even press them if necessary
before she wore them, and in the morning her clothes would be laid out for her and
a bath run. She looked at the clothes in her case, frowned and took them out
again and repacked them as carefully as she could. Her cheeks flushed as she
imagined the maid tutting to a fellow servant. ‘Of course you can tell she’s
only a shop girl. You should have seen the way she packed her clothes,
something shocking it was. Talk about creases, it will take me half the night
to press them to make them look half decent…’

Although no-one else was in the room and the conversation was entirely
inside her own head, Rose found that she was blushing. She could not help but
think that things could have been so different if… but no, she must not go
there, she must not dwell on what could have been, but instead focus on the
here and now….

‘Oh, Rose, I don’t know how to tell you.’ It was the day after her
father’s funeral and her mother had clutched at her sixteen year old daughter’s
hand and led her into her bedroom to sit down on the bed beside her. This in
itself was unusual, for her mother regarded her room as her own private
sanctuary to which Rose was rarely invited. So Rose had known instinctively
that something was wrong, more horribly wrong even than the death of her father
which, if truth be told, though it was too awful to admit, was almost a relief
for them both. Worryingly, whatever her mother wished to say, she wanted to
keep from their servants, Dobson, the cook and Doris, the daily help.  She
remembered afterwards the smell of lavender which had filled the room and
remained with her long after her initial feelings of devastation, caused more
by her shock at the obvious wretchedness of her mother than by the news she had
to impart, the implications of which she had not fully comprehended then.

It was only later, when she had been alone in her room, turning her
mother’s words over and over in her mind that it had slowly dawned on her that
what had hitherto been a relatively comfortable and naïve middle class
existence, was about to become unravelled. Much later still, when she thought
back on that day, she remembered also the blackness of her mother’s mourning
dress which mirrored her own, casting dark shadows across the rooms like crows.

‘It’s too awful, Rose. It’s even worse than I’d feared.’ In the privacy
of her room, away from the prying eyes of servants, her mother had given way to
tears and wept freely.  Rose, still very much a child in some ways, had
felt awkward and afraid.  She had pressed her handkerchief into her
mother’s hand and stood and waited for the sobbing to cease, or at the very
least subside, not sure whether she wanted her mother to explain what she
meant, or to be left in blissful ignorance.

‘We’re destitute, Rose,’ her mother had said, mopping at her eyes with
the piece of cloth, ‘totally destitute! Your poor, dear father, God rest his
soul, has left us with nothing but death duties and his gambling debts.’

Rose had stood there, not taking in fully her mother’s words. Mrs Simpson
was not prone to exaggeration and so Rose had known that it was right to fear
the worst; it was not simply going to mean a few less treats; their very way of
life was threatened.

She had been six when her father had gone off to fight in the Great War.
Her recollections of him were somewhat hazy, but she had remembered that he had
been a tall, strong mountain of a man, always laughing as he teased her mother
while he stole a kiss, or bent and scooped the young Rose into his arms, the
little girl giggling and wriggling as he lifted her up to sit on his shoulders,
she all the while clinging on to his hair and his ears least she should fall.
She had felt so high up, sitting there on his shoulders, peering down at the
world beneath, that sometimes she had pretended that she was sitting astride an
elephant like the pictures she had seen of people in India.

It had come as a shock when she found that he was gone. She could not
understand why he would leave her, her mother telling her that he was a brave
hero gone to fight for his country, had meant nothing to her. She had wanted
him to be there with her. The years had passed and she had grown up. When he
had returned she was no longer the little girl he remembered and he was no
longer the big, strong, laughing man that she had idolised. She suspected later
with hindsight and an adult’s understanding, that they had both felt a little
disappointed in one another and somehow cheated knowing that they could never
get back those lost years.

From both Rose’s and her mother’s perspective, Mr Simpson had returned
from the war a broken man. Physically he had been intact unlike so many other
poor wretches who had returned with missing limbs and scarred faces, or not at
all, and initially his mind had seemed undamaged. But it soon became clear by
his brooding silences and inclination to be alone that he was a different man
from the one who had left home. Rose’s mother had explained to her that during
the war her father had seen some terrible things that still haunted him and
that, while he did not wish to talk about them, he was finding it difficult to
forget. Her mother had clung on to the hope that in time things would change,
and she would eventually get back a resemblance of the man that had gone away.
Instead things had got worse as her husband had found it difficult to
concentrate and keep a job and had sought solace instead in drink and gambling,
the knowledge of which Mrs Simpson had tried in vain to keep from her daughter.
Rose and her mother had both watched helplessly as, in equal measures, the
family’s money was squandered and Mr Simpson sunk into a rapid decline, his health
deteriorating until, barely six years after he had returned from the front, he
had died, and the full desperateness of the Simpsons’ financial situation was
revealed.

Rose’s mother had gone to pieces and so it was the girl herself who was
forced to be the practical one and find a solution to their financial crisis.
It had not been easy. Mrs Simpson had initially refused to even contemplate
giving up their servants or their home even though they had barely a penny to
their name. Rose’s suggestion that they take in paid lodgers was met with an
outright refusal. It was only when faced with the stark ultimatum that they do
so or lose everything, that Mrs Simpson had relented, but it had not been a
success. Rose had chosen the lodgers carefully, a Mrs Partridge and her
unmarried daughter; they were quite respectable and Rose had hoped that her
mother might find some things in common with the older woman which would make
the sharing of her home more palatable. But Mrs Simpson had not liked strangers
living in their house; the loss of privacy and the giving up of the use of
rooms had jarred with her; in addition she complained to her daughter that Mrs
Partridge was inclined to be rather loud and too talkative, whereas Miss
Partridge was painfully shy, barely uttering a word and was inclined to start
when spoken to. The situation had become tense and uncomfortable for all
parties, and it was something of a relief to both Mrs Simpson and Rose when the
Partridges had left to live with some distant relations.   

The Simpsons had been forced to sell their house. Mrs Simpson had cried
bitterly and Rose had moped around the place touching doors and walls one last
time, trying to commit the rooms to memory, knowing as she did so that she was
saying good bye to more than just her childhood home. She could not help but
dwell on “what ifs”. What if her father had been killed in the war? What if he
had returned the man that he had left, laughing and smiling and not felt
compelled to turn to drink and gambling? Although she tried not to, Rose could
not help resenting her father’s behaviour, which had ruined both hers and her
mother’s future.

They had bought a much smaller house in a poorer part of town and had let
go of Doris, who had sobbed uncontrollably at their reduced circumstances.
Dobson had been the next casualty, although Rose’s mother had fought to keep
her and Dobson herself had seemed just as reluctant to leave.

‘I’m that sad to go, Miss Rose,’ she had said taking the girl aside.
‘I’ve seen you grow up from a little babe to a fine young woman and I’ve been
with your mother since the day she left her parents’ home to marry your father.
It breaks my heart it does, to think of you and your mother as you are now. If
I could afford to, I’d stay on with you both and take no wages. Whatever are
you going to do? You’ve absolutely no money as far as I can tell. Why, I don’t
think you’ve even got a brass farthing between you.’

‘You’re right, Mrs Dobson, things are looking awfully grim right now. Neither
my mother nor I want to let you go, but we’ve simply got no other choice. Of
course we’ll provide you with a very good reference and if our circumstances
ever change, I’ll be sure to write to you. I’m going to leave it a day or two
and then I’ll break it to Mother that I’ll have to get a job.’

In the end Mrs Simpson had been the first to get work. For the sake of
her daughter, she had reluctantly pulled herself together, finally facing their
situation. The thought of Rose financially supporting her, while she sat home
alone in their mean little house doing nothing but dwelling on what had been,
was abhorrent to her. Dressmaking had seemed the obvious answer for it was
something she was both very fond of and good at; she could also do it in the
privacy of her own home. At first she had approached some of her more affluent
friends for work, or former friends as they had now become as their paths now
seldom crossed. As time went on, word of mouth brought her more business
although the work was often irregular and could not be relied upon to provide a
living wage for them both. Almost as soon as her mother had embarked on her
dressmaking business, Rose had gone out and sought work herself to supplement
their income. Madame Renard’s was the second shop she had approached. Five and
a half years later, Lady Lavinia Sedgwick had entered the same establishment to
satisfy an adolescent bet.