chapter Four
However, later on, when in ordinary circumstances she would have been changing for dinner, she was overwhelmed by the strangeness of her surroundings and all the events that had occurred in the last few days. This time last week she had been in London with Emily and Jack, as usual. Then she had been upheaved and sent to St. Mary in the Marsh. She had barely settled to accepting that when Maude Barrington had arrived. That was almost accommodated, and Maude died, without the slightest warning of any sort!
Grandmama had been the only one to perceive that it might well not be natural, but a crime, the most appalling of all crimes, and there was no one else but herself to find justice for it. And here she was sitting quite alone in a house full of strangers, at least one of whom she was now convinced was a murderer. Added to that she had not even fresh underclothes or a nightgown to sleep in. They had offered to lend her something, but all the women in the family were at least three or four inches taller than she was, and thinner as well, by more inches than that! She must have taken leave of her wits. Certainly she could never admit any of this to Caroline! Or anybody else. They'd have her locked up.
There was a knock on the door and she started so violently she gulped and gave herself hiccups.
"Come in!" she said, hiccuping again.
It was the housekeeper, to judge from her black dress, lace cap, and the cluster of keys hanging from her waist. She was short and rather stout, exactly Grandmama's own build.
"Good evening, ma'am," she said very agreeably. "I'm Mrs. Ward, the housekeeper. It was very good of you to come personally with the sad news. It must have inconvenienced you very much."
"Her death grieved me," Grandmama answered frankly, relieved that it was a servant, not one of the family. "To come and tell you personally seemed no more than the obvious thing to do. She died among strangers, even if they were people who liked her immediately, and very much."
Mrs. Ward's face colored as if with considerable emotion she felt obliged to hide. "I'm very glad you did," she said with a tremble in her voice. She blinked rapidly.
"You knew her," Grandmama deduced. She made herself smile. "You must be grieving as well."
"Yes, ma'am. I was a maid here when I was a girl. Miss Maude would have been sixteen then."
"And Mrs. Harcourt?" Grandmama asked shamelessly. She must detect! Time would not wait upon niceties.
"Oh, eighteen she was. And such a beauty as you've never seen."
Grandmama looked at the housekeeper's face. There was no light in it. She might respect Bedelia Harcourt, even be loyal to her, but she did not like her as she had Maude. That was something to remember. Servants said little, good ones seldom said anything at all, but they saw just about everything.
"And Mrs. Sullivan?"
"Oh, she was only thirteen, just a schoolgirl, all ink and books and clumsiness, but full of enthusiasm, poor girl. The governess was always trying to get her to walk with the dictionary on her head, but she kept losing it."
"Dictionary?"
"Only for the weight of it! Miss Agnes was perfectly accurate with her spelling. But that's all in the past. Long ago." She blinked rapidly again. "I just came to say that if there is anything I can get for you, I should be happy to." She had an air of sincerity as if her words were far more than mere politeness, or even obedience to Bedelia's request.
"Thank you," Grandmama replied. "I...I'm afraid I have none of the usual necessities with me." Dare she ask for a clean petticoat or chemise?
Mrs. Ward looked embarrassed. "There is no difficulty in the least finding you toiletries, Mrs. Ellison. I was thinking of...of more personal things. If you'll forgive my saying so, it seems to me that you and I are much the same height. If you would not be offended, ma'am, you might borrow one or two of my...my clothes. It would give us the chance to...care for yours and return them to you?" She was very pink; as if afraid already that she had presumed.
Grandmama was suddenly touched by the woman's kindness. It seemed perfectly genuine, and perhaps added to because she had cared for Maude. "That is extremely generous of you to offer," she said warmly. "I would be most grateful. I have nothing but what I stand up in. It was the last thing on my mind as I left this morning."
Mrs. Ward colored even more, but most obviously with relief. "Then I shall see that they are brought. Thank you, ma'am."
"It is I who thank you," Grandmama said, startled by her own courtesy, and rather liking it. It flashed into her mind that in a way Maude's death had given her the opportunity to begin a new life herself, even if only for a day or two. No one here in Snave knew her. She could be anything she wanted to be. It was a dizzying sort of freedom, as if the past did not exist. She suddenly smiled at the housekeeper again. "You have extraordinary courtesy," she added.
Mrs. Ward blushed again, then she retreated. Fifteen minutes later she returned carrying two black dresses, an assortment of undergarments, and a nightgown.
With the assistance of one of the maids assigned to help her, a most agreeable girl, Grandmama was able to dress for dinner in very respectable black bombazine, well cut and modest in fashion, as suited an elderly lady or a housekeeper. She put on her own jet and pearl jewelry, serving the double purpose of lifting the otherwise somberness of the attire, and also being classic mourning jewelry. She had a lot of such things, from the period when she had made a great show of being a widow.
Added to which they were really very pretty. The seed pearls made them dainty.
She went down the stairs and across the hall to the withdrawing room. She could hear lively conversation from inside, amazingly so, but she did not know the voices well enough to tell who they belonged to.
She opened the door, and they all ceased instantly, faces turned toward her. The gentlemen rose to their feet and welcomed her. The ladies looked at her, made polite noises, observed the change of gown but did not remark on it.
Conversation resumed, but stiffly, with a solemnity completely different from that before she had come in.
"I hope you are comfortable, Mrs. Ellison?" Bedelia inquired.
"Very, thank you," Grandmama replied, sitting in one of the overstuffed chairs. "You are most generous." Again she smiled.
"It is fortunate Lord Woollard left when he did," Clara observed.
Grandmama wondered whether that remark was made to convince her that they had not had sufficient accommodation for more than one further guest at a time, hence the need to turn Maude away. If so, it was ridiculous. She knew there were at least two more rooms unoccupied. And family should be first, most particularly when they were returning from a long time away.
"Indeed," she said, as if she were agreeing. "Is he a close friend? He will be very sad to hear of Maude's demise."
"He never met her," Bedelia said hastily. "I do not think we need to cloud his Christmas by telling him bad news that can scarcely be of concern to him."
So they had entertained a mere acquaintance in Maude's place!
"I thought perhaps he was a relative," Grandmama murmured.
Arthur smiled at her. "Not at all. A business acquaintance." He sounded tired, a strain in his voice, a kind of bitter humor. "Sent actually to assess whether I should be offered a peerage or not. See if I am suitable."
"Of course you are suitable!" Bedelia said sharply. "It is a formality. And I daresay he was pleased to get out of the city and visit us for a day or two. Cities are so...grubby when it snows."
"It isn't snowing," he pointed out.
She ignored him. "At least his visit was not marred by tragedy."
"Or anything else," Clara added quietly.
"I think it will snow," Agnes offered, glancing toward the curtained windows. "The wind has changed and the clouds were very heavy before sunset."
Grandmama was delighted. Snow might mean she could not leave tomorrow, if it were sufficiently deep. "Oh dear," she said with pretended anxiety. "I did not notice. I do hope I am not imposing on you?"
"Not in the slightest," Bedelia assured her. "You say you were a friend of Maude's, even on so short an acquaintance. How could you not be welcome?"
"Of course," Agnes agreed again, echoing Bedelia. "You said Maude spoke to you a great deal? We saw her so little, perhaps it would not be too distressing if we were to ask you what she told you of her...travels?" She looked hastily at Bedelia. "That is...if it is seemly to discuss! I do not wish to embarrass you in any way at all."
What on earth was Agnes imagining? Orgies around the campfire?
"Perhaps...another time," Arthur said shakily, his voice hoarse. "If indeed it does snow, you may be here with us long enough to..." He trailed off.
"Quite," Bedelia agreed, without looking at him.
Zachary apologized. "We are all overwrought," he explained. "This is so unexpected. We hardly know how to...believe it."
"We had no idea at all that she was ill." Randolph spoke for the first time since Grandmama had come into the room. "She seemed so...so very alive...indestructible."
"You no more than met her, my dear," Bedelia said coolly.
Grandmama turned to her in surprise.
"Maude left before my son was born," Bedelia explained, as if an intrusive question had been asked. "I think you do not really understand what an...an extraordinary woman she was." Her use of the word extraordinary covered a multitude of possibilities, most of them unpleasant.
Grandmama did not reply. She must detect! The room was stiff with emotion. Grief, envy, anger, above all fear. Did she detect the odor of scandal? For heaven's sake, she was not achieving much! She had no proof that it had been murder, only a certainty in her own suspicious mind.
"No," she said softly. "Of course I didn't know how extraordinary she was. I spoke with her and listened to her memories and feelings, so very intense, a woman of remarkable observation and understanding. But as you say, it was only a short time. I have no right to speak as if I knew her as you must have, who grew up with her." She let the irony of the forty-year gap hang in the air. "I imagine when she was abroad she wrote wonderful letters?"
There was an uncomfortable silence, eloquent in itself. So Maude had not written to them in the passionate and lyrical way she had spoken at St. Mary. Or she had, and for some reason they chose to ignore it.
She plowed on, determined to stir up something that might be of meaning. "She had traveled as very few people, men or women, can have done. A collection of her letters would be of interest to many who do not have such opportunities. Or such remarkable courage. It would be a fitting monument to her, do you not think?"
Agnes drew in her breath with a gasp, and looked at Bedelia. She seemed helpless to answer without her approval. A lifetime habit forged in childhood? Perhaps forged was the right word, it seemed to fetter her like iron. It made Grandmama furious, with Agnes and with herself. It was a coward's way, and she knew cowardice intimately, as one knows one's own face in the glass.
Clara turned to her husband, then her mother-in-law, expecting some response.
But it was Arthur who answered.
"Yes, it would," he agreed.
"Arthur!" Bedelia said crisply. "I am sure Mrs. Ellison means well, but she really has no idea of the extent or the nature of Maude's...travels, or the unsuitability of making them public."
"Have you?" Arthur asked, his dark brows raised.
"I beg your pardon?" Bedelia said coolly.
"Have you any idea of Maude's travels?" he repeated. "I asked you if she wrote, and you said that she didn't." He did not accuse her of lying, but the inevitability of the conclusion was heavy in the air. She sat pale-faced, tight-lipped.
It was Clara who broke the silence. "Do you think it will still be acceptable for us to have the Matlocks and the Willowbrooks to dine with us on Christmas Eve, Mama-in-law? Or to go to the Watch Night services at Snargate? Or would people think us callous?"
"I don't suppose we can," Agnes said sadly. "I was looking forward to it too, my dear." She looked at Clara, not at Zachary who had drawn in his breath to say something.
"Death does not alter Christmas," Bedelia responded after a moment's thought. "In fact Christmas is the very time when it means least. It is the season in which we celebrate the knowledge of eternity, and the mercy of God. Of course we shall go to the Watch Night services in Snargate, and show a bond of courage and faith, and solidarity as a family. Don't you think so, my dear?" She looked at Arthur again, as if the previous conversation had never taken place.
"It would seem very appropriate," he answered to the room in general, no discernible emotion in his voice.
"Oh I'm so glad," Agnes responded, smiling. "And we have so much to be grateful for, it seems only right."
Grandmama thought it an odd remark. For what were they so grateful, just now? The fact that Lord Woollard had considered Arthur suitable for a peerage? Could that matter in the slightest, compared with the death of a sister? Of course it could! Maude had not been home for forty years, and they had considered her absent permanently. She had chosen to return at a highly inconvenient time, otherwise they would not have dispatched her to stay with Joshua and Caroline. Was there really some family scandal she might speak of, and ruin such a high ambition?
Any further speculation on that subject was interrupted by the announcement of dinner. The meal was excellent, and richer than anything Caroline had offered.
Conversation at the table centered on other arrangements for Christmas, and how they might be affected either by Maude's death, or the weather. They skirted around the issue of a funeral, and when or where it should be conducted, but it hung in the air unsaid, like a coldness, as if someone had left a door open.
Grandmama stopped listening to the words and concentrated instead upon the intonation of voices, the ease or tension in hands, and above all the expression in a face when the person imagined they were unnoticed.
Clara appeared relieved, as if an anxiety had passed. Perhaps the visit of Lord Woollard had made her nervous. She might be less confident than she appeared. Had she been socially clumsy or otherwise unacceptable? Since her husband was the only heir, that would have been a serious problem. Perhaps she came from a more ordinary background than the rest of the family and had previously made errors, or her mother was one of those women ruthlessly ambitious for their daughters, and no achievement was great enough?
Zachary did not say a great deal, and she saw him look at Bedelia more often than she would have expected. There was an admiration in him, a sense of awe. For her beauty? She was certainly far better looking than poor Agnes. She had a glamour, an air of femininity, mystery, almost power, that confidence gave her. Grandmama watched her as well, and in spite of herself.
What was it like to be beautiful? There were not many women so blessed, certainly she had never been so herself, and neither were Agnes nor Maude. Clara was no more than handsome. Luminous, heart-stopping beauty was very rare. Even Bedelia did not have that.
Grandmama had seen it once or twice, and one did not forget it. Emily's great-aunt by her first marriage, Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, had possessed it. Even in advanced years it was still there, unmistakable as a familiar song-one note, and the heart brings it all back.
Why did Zachary still watch Bedelia? Ordinary masculine fascination with beauty? Or good manners, because this was her house?
Arthur did not watch her the same way.
Agnes looked at both of them, and seemed to see it also. There was a sadness in her eyes. Was it an awareness that she could never compete? Perhaps that was the sense of failure Grandmama detected, and understood. She knew it well: a plain face, no magic in the eyes or the voice, above all the knowledge of not being loved.
Envy? Even hate, over the years? Why? Simply beauty? Could it matter so much? Very few women were more than pleasing in their youth, and perhaps gaining a little sense of style, or even better, wit, in their maturity. And she had not been left on the shelf. But sisters did compete. It was inevitable. Was money also involved, and now a peerage, too?
The conversation continued around her, concern for those who would be alone over the Christmas period and possibly in need, those whose health was poor, anyone to whom they could or should give a small gift. Would the weather deteriorate?
"Do you often get shut in by the snow?" Grandmama inquired with interest. "It must be a rather frightening experience."
"Not at all," Zachary assured her. "We will be quite safe. We have food and fuel, and it will not be for more than a day or two. But please don't concern yourself. If it happens at all, it will be in January and February. You know the old saying 'As the days get longer, the weather gets stronger.'" He smiled, transforming his face from its earlier gravity to a surprising warmth.
She smiled back, enjoying the sudden and inexplicable sense of freedom it gave her. "I have found it very often true," she agreed. "And I am sure you are quite wise enough to guard against any possible need. It was rather more such things as someone falling ill that I was thinking of. But I daresay that is a difficulty for all people who live in the wilder and more beautiful country areas."
She continued being charming. It was like having a new toy. She turned to Bedelia. "You know, Mrs. Harcourt, I would never have seen Romney Marsh as anything more than a very flat coast, rather vulnerable, with a permanent smell of the sea, until I met Miss Barrington. But on our walks I saw how she was aware of so much more! She spoke of the wildflowers in the spring, and the birds. She knew the names of a great many of them, you know, and their habits. The water birds especially." She was inventing at least part of this as she was going along. It was exhilarating. The surprised and anxious faces around her increased her sense of adventure.
She drew in her breath and went on. "I had never realized before how perfectly everything fits into its own place in the scheme of things."
"Really?" Bedelia said, her voice almost expressionless. "It is an interest she had developed recently. In fact, since she left England altogether. She must have gained it from reading. Except perhaps in her early childhood, she never saw them in life."
"She did not go walking a great deal?" Grandmama asked innocently.
"She was only here for a matter of hours," Bedelia informed her. "She did not have time to go out at all. Surely she told you that she arrived without giving us any prior warning, and we were thus unable to accommodate her. Do you imagine we would have asked Joshua Fielding to offer his hospitality were it possible for us to do so ourselves?"
So she was correct! Maude had been given the single dose of peppermint water by someone in the house. She must think very rapidly. Better to retreat than to cause an argument, much as the words stuck in her mouth. Was it better to be considered a fool and of no danger at all, or as a highly knowledgeable woman who needed to be watched? She must decide immediately. She could not be both, and time was short.
Bedelia was waiting. They were all looking at her. A brilliant idea flashed into her mind. She could be both apparently stupid, and extremely clever-if she affected to be a little deaf!
She drew in a breath to say so, and apologize for it. Then just before she did, she had another thought of infinitely greater clarity. If she were to claim to be deaf then any evidence she gained could later be denied!
She smothered her pride, a thing she had never done before, except on that unmentionable occasion when her own past had loomed up like a corpse out of the river. But if she had survived that, then nothing this family could do to her would ever make a dent in her inner steel.
"You are quite right," she said meekly. "I had forgotten she had been away so very long. If she had no interest before, then it must have been acquired entirely by reading. Perhaps she was homesick for the wide skies, the salt wind, and the sound of the sea?"
There was a flash of victory in Bedelia's eyes, a knowledge of her own power. Grandmama felt it as keenly as if it had been a charge of electricity between them such as one is pricked by at times if one touches certain metals when the air is very dry. She had read that predatory animals scented blood in the same way, and it gave her a shiver of fear and intense knowledge of vulnerability, which made life suddenly both sweet and fragile.
Was that what Agnes had known all her life? Or was she being fanciful? What about Maude? Was she crushed, too? Was that really why she had left England, and everything familiar that she unquestionably loved, and gone to all kinds of ancient, barbaric, and splendid other lands, where she neither knew anyone nor was known? A desperate escape?
Perhaps there was very much more here, beneath the surface, than she had dreamed, even when she had stood in the bedroom beside Maude's dead body this morning?
Bedelia was smiling. "Perhaps she was," she agreed aloud. "But she could have chosen to live by the sea if she had wished to. Poor Maude had very little sense of how to make decisions, even the right ones. It is most unfortunate."
"We were hoping to go out far more, later, when she returned..." Agnes glanced at Bedelia. "In the New Year...or...or whenever we were certain...," she trailed off, knowing that somehow she had put her foot in it.
Grandmama stared at her, willing her to explain.
Bedelia sighed impatiently. "Agnes, dear, you really do let your tongue run away with you!" She turned to Grandmama in exasperation. "You had better know the truth, Mrs. Ellison, or you will feel that we are a cruel family. And it is not so at all. Maude is our middle sister, and she was always unruly, the one who had to draw attention to herself by being different. It happens in families at times. The eldest have attention because they are first, the youngest because they are the babies, the middle ones feel left out, and they show off, to use a common term."
"Maude was not a show-off," Arthur corrected her. "She was an enthusiast. Whatever she did, it was with a whole heart. There was nothing affected or contrived in her."
Bedelia did not look away from Grandmama. "My husband is a man of extraordinarily generous spirit. It is his work for the less fortunate for which Her Majesty is offering him a peerage. I am immensely proud of him, because it is for the noblest of reasons, nothing tawdry like finance, or political support." She smiled patiently. "But occasionally his judgment is rather more kind than accurate. It was apparent as soon as she arrived that Maude had traveled in places where manners and customs are quite different from ours. I'm afraid that even her language was not such that we could subject our other guests to her...her more colorful behavior. We knew that Joshua, being on the stage, might be more tolerant of eccentricity. Of course we could not know that you also would be staying with him, and if Maude has shocked you or made you uncomfortable, then we are guilty of having caused that, and on behalf of all of us, I apologize. Our inconsideration in that regard is what has been disturbing Agnes."
Agnes smiled, but there were tears in her eyes.
"I see." Grandmama tried to imagine Maude as an embarrassment so severe as to be intolerable. She did not know Lord Woollard. Perhaps he was insufferably pompous. There certainly were people so consumed by their own emotional inadequacy and imagined virtue as to take offense at the slightest thing. And the Maude she had met would find a certain delight in puncturing the absurd, the self-important, and above all the false. It would be a scene to be avoided. If Arthur Harcourt had done as much for others as Bedelia said, then he was deserving of recognition, and more importantly the added power to do more good that such an accolade would offer him.