The Keeper of Secrets (5 page)

‘That was merely a want of manners,’ I chided her gently.

To my amazement, however, she responded with what some might have considered a quite unbecoming sharpness, ‘But does not Mr Burke tell us that manners are more important than laws, which touch our lives only occasionally? Manners, he says, are the basis for our morality in that they barbarise or refine us.’

‘He does indeed,’ I smiled, wondering how such a pretty young lady should have come across the great man’s writings. Before I could ask, however, we were joined by a second girl, as dark as my companion was fair.

‘Pooh,’ said she, ‘Sophia is such a bluestocking. And to be talking about morality after a dinner party is, you know, very bad manners. Come, Mr Campion, my cousin is needed at the piano to play some country dances.’

‘Her ladyship—’ I began.

‘Pooh, she will not object. And you know that dancing is far more important than conversation in such a situation.’

‘That is what our manners tell us,’ Miss Sophia conceded, with a decided twinkle.

I laughed. ‘But a lady of your years, Miss Sophia, should be dancing, not concealed behind a piano,’ I said, intending to sound serious, but no doubt appearing flirtatious.

‘You see, Sophia, I told you you would not lack for a partner,’ her pert cousin declared, ‘and now you have a clergyman for the first dance.’

The violet eyes opened wide. ‘I cannot dance with him, can I? We have not been introduced.’

‘Parson Campion, my cousin Miss Sophia Heath. Sophia, Parson Campion. There. You may dance, but not the waltz.’ She gave a roguish smile. ‘It would not do,’ she added, her face all seriousness again, ‘for Sophia to be thought fast.’

I did not tell her that it was Sophia’s conversation that was likely to set her apart. Indeed, in the other’s company she was demureness personified, her eyes lowered, as if inspecting her fan for flaws, a modest row of pearls around her neck and a round-necked white gown almost identical to the ones worn by my sisters at a similar age. My mother would have approved.

Her cousin, on the other hand, displayed the town-bronze of a lady who has enjoyed her first London season, with a dress so diaphanous it revealed at least as much as it concealed. My mother would not have approved, nor of the casual way she announced that she was Charlotte Winthrop, betrothed to dear Lord Warley, to whom she gave a little wave before tripping off to join him.

Sophia was suddenly gauche, standing in social limbo. What else could I do but make my bow, and solicit her hand for the first dance?

‘Are you sure?’ she asked, in all seriousness. ‘There are other girls properly out who lack partners.’

I smiled. ‘But I have not been introduced to them.’

To my amazement, Dr Hansard, who had not, to my regret, been at the dinner table, was also dancing. In view of his advancing years, I would have expected him to be making up one of the tables of whist that Cousin Elham had set up in the book room. Nonetheless, he sought out young ladies without a partner, and led them into the dance with at least as much vigour as I.

At last, my two dances with Miss Sophia over, I was summoned to Lady Elham’s side, where she sat with the other older ladies. Making my bow, I prepared to congratulate her on the delightful entertainment, but she silenced me with a gesture of her fan.

‘Cousin Tobias, do not let me hear complaints of you again. I understand that you are young and idealistic, but I want no Evangelicals in this parish.’

‘If your ladyship hears that I am an Evangelical, she is misled. Pray, madam, let me prove it by preaching in your own chapel here at the Priory. I understand it has fallen into disuse. I would be more than happy to become your household’s chaplain.’

‘You may lead us in prayers and a hymn or two, but that is all. You naughty young man,’ she added, a sweet smile indicating that she would rebuke me no more, ‘to set all the neighbours a-gossip like that.’

‘Your ladyship, had all the neighbours been in church to hear my words in person, they would have known there was no cause for gossip.’

‘No cause for gossip? With poor Widow Jenkins’ husband hardly cold in his grave?’

I straightened. ‘I beg your pardon, madam, but there is a serious misapprehension here. Mrs Jenkins and her family were dressed from your own poor basket and now perforce they reside in the workhouse. They come to church—’

‘By your express command, I understand—’

‘Because the children have not yet been baptised, and must be.’

‘Mrs Jenkins too, I gather?’ She eyed me archly.

‘Of course. It was a deathbed promise to her husband,’ I said. ‘She made it as I wed them.’ In my effort to scotch any foolish rumours, my voice was far too forceful for such a merry gathering, and she raised an eyebrow at its intensity.

I sought for a more neutral topic. ‘Do you have news of Corby?’

‘That man? What news should I have?’

‘Does his new venture at the seaside prosper?’

‘He betrayed my trust, Cousin. Never mention his name in this house again!’

I did not judge this as an appropriate time to mention my hope of teaching the children their letters.

As if to rescue me, Dr Hansard came to my side, bidding farewell to his hostess. I added my compliments to his, and we left together, breathing deeply the night air, chill under a sky clear enough to presage a frost.

‘I see you’ve attracted the attentions of our little heiress,’ he said, as our horses ambled side by side.

‘Miss Sophia? A chit from the schoolroom who is “not quite out”?’

‘You do her less than justice, Tobias. Today she is a pretty-eyed nonentity, but soon she will blossom, and if you are not careful you will be elbowed aside by all her other admirers!’

‘But they may not find her bookishness to their taste,’ I reflected.

‘And you do?’

‘Come, Dr Hansard, I am at least ten years her senior.’ But that was not the reason my heart did not lift at the thought of her. I had to admit to myself that I did not mention the schoolroom sessions to her ladyship for fear that she might, despite her protestations to Mrs Beckles, oppose them, and I would have thus lost a chance of renewing my acquaintance with the delightful Lizzie. Who, I asked myself rhetorically, would make a better parson’s wife, a pretty heiress or a young woman used to work? A wife prone to the vapours at the sight of naked children would not suit, and I had already seen enough of Lizzie’s capability to believe she would excel in any situation.

I said none of this to Dr Hansard. I knew he would see the speciousness of my argument. Lizzie attracted me not as a cross between a nurse and a housekeeper, but because she was simply the most beautiful young woman I had ever encountered and for the first time in my life I believed myself to be deeply in love.

‘I am nearly forty years her senior, but my pulses might still race at the sight of Sophia,’ he laughed. But he stopped abruptly.

A glance showed that his face was unwontedly serious. I
conjectured that it was another lady at the sight of whom his heart beat faster, one who might welcome his advances should he make them.

‘I was surprised to see you amongst the dancers,’ I observed mildly.

‘You expected me to be at the whist tables? These days, Tobias, I do not gamble.’ He pulled his horse to a halt. ‘Some might take me for a Methodist, but the truth is this. When I left India I was a veritable nabob. I was sent there to make my fortune, and make it I did. But then I lost it, almost all of it. You have seen Langley Park, and I have entertained you in some pleasant rooms. Did it ever occur to you that those were the only rooms with any furnishings in them? That is the pass to which I had come. It was the thought of losing my library that stopped me short. And to this day I have never played at so much as Speculation. Each year, I try to earn enough to hang one more set of curtains, lay one more carpet.’

‘Then I admire you even more than before,’ I declared, ‘for your honesty and your industry. Your kindness to such folk at the Jenkinses is even more laudable in the circumstances.’

‘There is a vast difference,’ he observed dryly, ‘between not being able to afford silk hangings and having nothing but bread to eat. Nay, what’s that?’ He pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted.

I followed suit.

He was bent over the path, exploring something under the starlight with his fingers. ‘I thought so! Do you have a pocket knife?’

I passed it to him without a word. In a moment he was holding up a long piece of twine.

‘Stretched between the bushes, my friend. Designed to trip a horse – and thus unseat a rider.’

‘Another of young Chartham’s little tricks,’ I said lightly.

‘Are you sure? Have you no other enemies? Well,’ he said, coiling the twine and slipping it into his pocket, ‘at least it did no harm. But keep your eyes open, young Tobias. Even a fall can harm a man.’ 

My efforts to become a teacher were not uniformly successful. Under duress, Mr Bulstrode, the workhouse master, approved my suggestions in principle, but he always found an excuse to cancel my classes, on the grounds he had found work more fitting for his young charges. There had been but a tepid response from the villagers, too. Jem suspected that their parents kept a weather-eye on the Priory, and if there was the merest whisper that their landlord disapproved, they would not risk sending their children to me.

Ironically Mrs Beckles had found a room and benches for my older charges, the servants at the Priory, right under the noses of the people the villagers feared most. Whether the Elhams knew or even cared, I did not enquire. But I was not a successful instructor. The more I endeavoured to help my pupils, the more I appreciated the efforts of my governess, who had contrived somehow to inculcate in me a belief that the strange symbols of the alphabet made sense – a concept that in my classes seemed to elude the youngest and the oldest alike. In desperation, I wrote to dear Addie – Miss Addison – who responded by sending me a small parcel. In it I found familiar blocks on which letters were painted in now faded colours, and some books all too clearly for children.

I also realised how very patient Addie must have been; no matter how I and the other members of the schoolroom party teased her or resisted her efforts, she was never less than smiling and calm.

‘She was paid to be patient,’ Hansard remarked, throwing another log on to his study fire to cheer me as I poured out my woes one evening. Even though Mrs Trent was now installed in the housekeeper’s room, and her cooking was all that Mrs Beckles had promised, I still spent many evenings at Langley House, enjoying the good doctor’s hospitality while Jem listened enthralled to tales of India, told with some ornamentation, perhaps, by Turner, Hansard’s valet, a man not much older than he but with realms more experience of the world.

‘She was not paid enough, I am sure. For though my family consider it insufferably middle class to quibble over servants’ wages, she was still treated as precisely that – a servant who could be dismissed on a whim, and whose days were long and truly not well rewarded.’

‘And what has become of her?’ He filled my glass.

I omitted mention of a financial gift I had pressed on her when I reached my majority. ‘She was left a little money, enough to achieve respectable retirement – a competence, no more, Edmund, after a lifetime’s toil. The fact that her toil was with her head, not her hands, is irrelevant.’

‘Did I say otherwise?’ he asked, with a gesture of surrender. ‘Come, there are those whom I treat who grumble that all I do is feel their pulses and give them coloured liquid. As for you, you do not even have to feel their pulses before you give them coloured liquid!’

Although he mocked the Communion service, he did so as a regular and reverent communicant, so I permitted myself to laugh at his joke.

I sipped at my wine. ‘Should I ask you to feel my pulse, Edmund? After all, this too is a fine coloured liquid, very fine indeed.’

‘Thank you. So do none of your pupils make progress?’

‘One has had singular success,’ I conceded. ‘But not in my classroom. Lizzie Woodman is now
Miss
Lizzie, abigail to my cousin, Lady Elham, herself. It seems she has nimble fingers and very quiet ways. But it means her time applying herself to her letters is very much curtailed.’

‘Many is the mistress who rues her maid’s ability to read,’ Hansard murmured, with a twinkle.

‘Miss Lizzie says my cousin is kindness itself,’ I said, bridling despite myself at the imputation.

‘I’m sure she is.’

‘She also says that she feels safer under Lady Elham’s direct protection.’

‘Safer? Ah, from all those young bloods desperate to get their hands on her person.’

I heard the savagery in my own voice. ‘You will have heard that I had to tear one importunate admirer from her with my own bare hands! So I believe my cousin must have her best interests at heart.’

‘At heart? Oh, no, Tobias. People of her rank have – in general – only their own interests at heart. If it improves the servant’s lot, that is merely incidental. Look at yourself, man – you come here for your own pleasure, not for Jem’s, do you not? Oh, I know he enjoys Turner’s tall tales, and, for all I
know, flirts abominably with that new maid of mine, but he is here because it suits you.’ He poured more wine, as if to soften the home truth. ‘So you have made no progress with your charges?’

‘Far more since I aimed less high. But they make slow progress. I do not know whether they lack innate ability or whether they are prevented by other factors.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What sort of factors?’

‘Is it easier to learn if one is warm and well fed than if one is cold and hungry? Is it easier to learn when one is young than when one is old? Come, Edmund, these are more your fields of knowledge than mine: what say you?’

‘I know my hyacinths are still blue,’ he said, referring to his attempt to breed a new variety. ‘Though I believe last summer’s seemed to have taken on a pinker hue. Perhaps humankind is like bulbs. Perhaps we could make changes by selective breeding.’

I laughed in his face.

‘Consider’, he said seriously, ‘your family. Are they all like you, tall and well set up?’

‘Mostly. But – and this is never spoken of – I believe my mother was brought to bed of a strange, runtish child who was immediately put out to a kind family on one of our more remote estates.’ I blushed. ‘I swore I would never reveal my background, and that secret in particular. Edmund, pray, forget that I said that.’

He gestured acquiescence. ‘My dear friend, I have always known you are from the
ton
. How else would you speak, even walk, the way you do? But your secret – such as it is – is safe with me. After all, you have spoken of nothing that would not
apply to a dozen or more of the upper ten thousand. I could not possibly deduce of which family you spoke. Now,’ he said, getting to his feet, ‘I have rewarded myself for this past year’s industry. To celebrate my new billiards table in my equally new billiards room, shall we adjourn and pot a few balls?’

My eyes had been opened to another aspect of below-stairs life by my schoolroom activities at Moreton Priory. Used as I was to life the family side of the green baize door, with some inconveniences more than outweighed by the many luxuries I took for granted, I was surprised how few of what I considered the necessities of life the servants enjoyed. Gone were the rich hangings and thick carpets, the warmth of great fires, the brilliance of candelabra; here were stone floors, green-painted walls, endless unheated corridors and the meanest spluttering working candles. All life was ruled by a row of bells hanging inside the servants’ hall; at the faintest jangle, a young man or woman would set off as if his or her life depended upon it.

Of course I did not venture into the attics, where the lowest servants were accommodated, but the spartan quarters of that most charming of women, Mrs Beckles, did not augur well for her juniors. Her sitting room appeared to have been furnished with anything the family no longer valued. The carpet was Aubusson, I suspect, but was faded and had been cut to fit the room. One armchair might be Hepplewhite, but someone had had to glue an arm in place. The walls were hung with pictures by distinguished artists, but none was clean and none inspired anything other than feelings of gloom. One wall was devoted to silhouettes, the homely framing of which suggested
that Mrs Beckles might have executed the portraits herself. I was sure that she had at least selected the volumes almost filling a small bookcase, where I found, alongside two or three collections of sermons, novels by Richardson and Fielding – though I was surprised to see a member of the fairer sex possessing
Tom
Jones
, Smollett and a selection of Gothic tales. I was happier to see much poetry, both ancient and modern. In all, however, I was confirmed in my opinion that Mrs Beckles was an extraordinary lady – certainly my mother, who prided herself on keeping up to date with fashionable writers, did not have half so fine a personal collection.

I never had occasion to penetrate Mr Woodvine’s portal, but suspected that, like that of Mr Davies, the steward, the butler’s would be a slightly larger, but even drabber room. If either man left his door ajar, he could see that row of all-important bells.

Inside, there were no novels for Davies, at least, but tomes on the management of land that made me yawn to contemplate them. On the other hand, now I was supposed to be overseeing my own glebe lands, or at least making sure that Ford, my own resentful steward, did not fleece me, so I had called on Davies to ask which one he might recommend – the smallest, for preference. He had his hand outstretched to pass me one, when chaos broke out, in the form of the violent ringing of the front doorbell. Before our eyes, a succession of other bells sprang into activity, the last being that in his lordship’s bedchamber. The panic crossing Davies’ poor old face was catching. Like him, I took to my heels and ran whither he was summoned, pushing through knots of maids too hysterical to move aside when asked.

‘It’s his lordship,’ gasped Mrs Beckles, clearing a way at the foot of the backstairs. ‘Pray, Mr Campion, go to his room and see what you can do.’

‘You have already sent for Dr Hansard?’

‘Of course,’ she replied simply. ‘Go, sir!’ She pushed me firmly between my shoulder blades.

The first thing was to clear the crowd pressing round the bed, and demand decent silence from those chattering or wailing uncontrollably.

Her ladyship alone remained icily calm. Rising from where she knelt at the bedside, she said softly, ‘I fear you come too late, and that Dr Hansard’s journey will also be wasted. My husband is dead. I believe that he was already dead when I managed to pull him from the stream.’

For the first time I noticed that she was indeed soaking wet. ‘Fetch Miss Lizzie,’ I told a huge-eyed young girl, too young in any case for such a scene.

Lizzie appeared as if by magic.

‘Pray, take her ladyship to her own room and persuade her into some dry clothes. She must be chilled to the bone, and I am sure that is what Dr Hansard would advise. Hurry, Lizzie.’

Like the sensible girl she was, she acted without argument, propelling my cousin from the room with the same tactful force as I’d seen her use on the Jenkins brood.

With her example, one by one the other servants dispersed, leaving his lordship to the solemn care of his butler and his valet.

Dr Hansard, still red-faced from the exertions of a hurried journey, was closing Lord Elham’s eyes and drawing a sheet over his face when her ladyship reappeared, already clad in
black from head to toe. I doubt if I had ever seen her more beautiful, though I am sure that that was not her intention. She reminded me of a long-forgotten line from the Bard: ‘Like Patience, in a monument, smiling at grief’. As yet, of course, she smiled not at all, and it might be many months before she allowed herself to, but her self-control and dignity were very pattern-cards of behaviour. She sank again to her knees as I led in prayer those already assembled.

When we escorted her back to her boudoir a few minutes later, in vain did Dr Hansard press laudanum drops upon her. She needed nothing, she declared, except a solitary period of quiet reflection. But her son must immediately be sent for – the new Lord Elham, she reminded us, with some emphasis.

‘A bad business,’ Dr Hansard observed a few minutes later, as on his orders we drank some of his new lordship’s wine in the housekeeper’s parlour. He had insisted on a glass for both Mrs Beckles and Mr Davies, as a restorative after shock.

‘But how should it come about?’ Mrs Beckles demanded. ‘His lordship was no child, to go paddling when his nurse’s back was turned. He was a grown man, with more sense, surely to goodness. And how came her ladyship to find him?’

Hansard favoured her with an appreciative smile. ‘Those are precisely the questions I shall have to ask in my capacity of justice of the peace. Was she alone, coming by chance upon him as he lay in the water? Or were they walking together? Tell me, were they in the habit of taking afternoon strolls in each other’s company?’

Her glance spoke volumes.

He got to his feet. ‘Come, Campion, there is enough light left for us to see the site of the accident for ourselves. Perhaps Mr Davies will accompany us?’

Davies jumped, as if kicked. He had been silent so long in his corner that I had completely forgotten about him. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘And the lad who heard her ladyship’s cries and came running to summon help. If we can find him.’

Mrs Beckles opened her mouth to say something, but shut it, as if suppressing an opinion she thought best not uttered. Even as she did so, it occurred to me that she would have made a better companion in our foray than old Davies, her bright eyes, in my experience, missing nothing and certainly more efficient than poor Davies’ rheumy orbs. But her place, of course, was here, advising the cook on the changes that would necessarily be made to the arrangements for dinner for what was still a houseful of guests. There was also the matter of mourning for all the staff – would she have a supply of ready-made clothes set aside in some distant attic or would she be sending post haste to a warehouse supplying such garb?

I would have caught her eye to smile my sympathy, but Dr Hansard was already speaking to her in a low tone, issuing last-minute instructions about her ladyship’s well-being, no doubt.

‘What are you looking for?’ I asked my mentor, as we stood five or six yards from the stream that had ended his lordship’s existence. Davies, his job done, retired to the lee of a tree and watched our activities in silence. Of the lad there had been no sign, and Edmund wanted to waste none of the remaining light while they hunted for him.

‘Anything and everything and nothing.’ He drove his hands more deeply into the pockets of his riding coat.