The Chronicles of Downton Abbey: A New Era (24 page)

Prison inmates were restricted as to the number of letters that they could send
and receive. At the start of their sentence they might only be allowed to send a
letter every couple of months, but with good behaviour and time, a prisoner such
as Bates would pass through the so-called ‘Progressive Stages’ and would see his
privileges steadily increase.

Bates
Do you never doubt? For just
one minute? I wouldn’t blame you.

Anna
No. And I don’t doubt that the
sun will rise in the east, either.

A
nna Bates is a rare creature; utterly sure of herself, dependable, sympathetic and steadfastly loyal. She is generous and kind but she’s no pushover, and her steely determination to do the right thing by those she loves has earned her respect from everybody at Downton Abbey. Even hard-hearted O’Brien grudgingly accepts that Anna is good at her job and does not cross her. Only Thomas will occasionally send a barbed remark in her direction, but it’s usually about Bates, not Anna herself, and she is able to give as good as she gets when it comes to defending her husband.

Of course, he takes some defending. A convicted murderer for a husband is not quite every newlywed’s dream, but Anna is unwavering in her belief that he is innocent. Anna puts her loyalty to her husband first and foremost, and her love for him could be as dangerous as it is steadfast. If he is proved to be guilty after all, Anna will have been blind; but if he really is innocent, then she has been wise. Either way, she has to close herself off to the influence of others. But this she does anyway.

With Bates in York Prison, it is up to Anna to make the best of things and to handle his affairs for him as his wife. She travels to London with Mrs Hughes to get his mother’s old house ready to rent out, as it’s in her name now, demonstrating her practicality and ability to get on with life, whatever it throws at her. Still relatively young, Anna is ‘emotionally wise for her age’, says Joanne Froggatt, the actress who plays the part. ‘I think she must have gone through things in her childhood. Perhaps the loss of a younger sibling. She has learnt a lot in a short time. She must have lived a life which taught her to deal with hard times in the way that she does.’ As self-reliant as Anna may be, rarely seeking help, she is quick to be there for others. In fact, she is able to empathise with almost anybody, no matter what their circumstances or what is worrying them.

With a respectable position but less seniority than Mrs Hughes, Anna is able to move fluidly between the floors of the house, more so than anybody else. She has genuine relationships across the spectrum – from the junior maids below stairs to the attachment to Lady Mary above. Molesley, the butler/valet for Mrs Crawley and Matthew, doesn’t have much time for most people but he has a soft spot for Anna. (Poor Molesley. Bates gets in the way of both his heart’s desire
and
his perfect job.) Even Lord Grantham is fond of Anna, as the loved one of his long-suffering valet and friend. He feels deeply sorry for her, too – despite his best efforts, Bates is sitting out a sentence that could last up to 20 years.

Bates
Haven’t you anything better to do?

Anna
I have not. Because I’d rather
work to get you free than dine with
the King at Buckingham Palace.

But Anna has a backbone of steel and does not entertain for one moment the notion that she might not be able to uncover something that the detective on the case missed, to prove her husband’s innocence. In the second half of
1920,
the newspapers were full of a story that would have been preying on Anna’s mind – as well as on those of others at Downton – the trial of Harold Greenwood. It had chilling echoes of the case against Bates.

Greenwood, a solicitor from Kidwelly in Wales, was accused of murdering his wife, Mabel, with arsenic, so that he could marry a much younger woman. Mabel Greenwood had died in June 1919, apparently of heart failure, and it was only after a persistent local whispering campaign had built up against Mr Greenwood and his new wife that the police decided to exhume her body and hold an inquest. They found traces of arsenic in Mabel’s blood, and returned a verdict of murder by poisoning, ‘administered by Harold Greenwood’. At the subsequent trial it was alleged that he had poisoned her during Sunday lunch, by means of a bottle of Burgundy.

Greenwood was fortunate to have Sir Edward Marshall Hall, a brilliant advocate of the time, as his lawyer (Bates would have fared much better if he had engaged his services). Marshall Hall undermined the forensic evidence, discredited the testimony of the parlour maid, and showed that Greenwood and Mabel’s grown-up daughter had also drunk from the same bottle of wine but with no ill effects. The jury, rather reluctantly, returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’. But the ill feeling against Greenwood persisted in the local area and, together with his new wife, he left Wales to start a new life under a new name. The whole case would have been a powerful reminder to Anna of the difficulties involved in both proving a man’s innocence and upholding his good reputation.

Bates
I don’t see what can come of it.

Anna
Probably nothing. And my
next idea will probably lead to nothing.
And the next and the next. But one
day, something will occur to us, and
we’ll follow it up and the case against
you will crumble.

In her quest to unlock the mystery she might have drawn comfort from a small volume published that same year.
The Mysterious Affair at Styles
was Agatha Christie’s first novel and introduced the detective Hercule Poirot. It would have suggested, if nothing else, that in many cases things are not as they first appear. Intelligence and persistence are required to uncover the true course of events and both of these are qualities Anna possesses.

But while Anna is relentless in her sleuthing, she cannot do it all of the time, and with prison visits so limited she may be grateful for the distraction that her work brings, if nothing else. As head housemaid, Anna is eligible for a certain amount of lady’s maid duties for the daughters of the house as well as any female guest who arrives to stay without her own personal servant. (The head housemaid would look after the married women, the junior maids after the unmarried guests.) Hence, Anna has got to know Lady Edith and Lady Sybil well, being privy to their chatter when getting ready for dinner or during the 20 minutes of brushing their hair before bed. Dressing hair would have been an important element of this work and as Loelia, Duchess of Westminster, recalled, it was ‘not easy. It was first tied in bunches with little bits of tape and then pinned up in puffs and mounds and curls attached to long wires fixed on the side.’ Curiously, at the time women believed that hair would split and ‘bleed’ when cut, so they would singe the ends with a lit taper after the scissors had done their work.

In her quest to prove
her husband’s innocence,
Anna visits acquaintances
from the first Mrs Bates’s past.