Elsie felt the cold creeping into her bones. ‘Is it much farther now?’
‘Not overmuch. Two more bends and you’ll see the gardens.’ Helen wiped the moisture from her face with the back of her hand. The chill, damp air only made her red skin look rosier. ‘But while we’re out here, ma’am, I did wonder . . . have you been back in the nursery?’
‘Certainly not. I have had no occasion to go there.’
‘Oh.’ A short pause. ‘Ma’am, can I ask another thing?’
‘Good lord, I thought this was a walk, not an inquisition.’
‘Sorry, ma’am. Only I wondered if we’d be getting some more help when the baby comes? What with Mabel being promoted and all the extra clouts and such, I won’t have time to catch my breath.’
Or ask so many questions.
‘Naturally, I will hire nurses for the baby at Lady Day. I have other expenses for the present.’
They must be drawing close now; she could hear the sound of shears clipping in the gardens.
Hopefully they would make it inside before another onslaught of rain. The clouds were building in formation, ready to attack. With the sun shining behind them they glowed, gunmetal grey.
‘We had better send the gardeners home for the day,’ she said. ‘They will get too wet working in this weather.’
Helen raised her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t think the gardeners were come today.’
‘Of course they have come, can’t you hear them? Listen.’
Helen shook her head.
‘They’re deadheading flowers or trimming the hedges. You really cannot hear it?’ The sound was growing louder, like a blade against a whetstone. Snip, snip. Elsie stopped walking and put her hand on Helen’s arm, forcing her to pause. ‘There.’
Helen blinked. She looked thoroughly witless. Elsie had never seen a more witless look – she wondered if Helen practised it.
‘Never mind.’
Just as Helen promised, another two turns brought the gardens into sight. Evergreen foliage showed vivid against the backdrop of the sky. Elsie spotted a crow hopping between the dying hedges, but no gardeners. They must be working around the other side.
‘I hope you won’t be too downcast this Christmas, ma’am,’ Helen said. ‘What with the poor master and all . . . The first Christmas is always difficult.’
‘Yes.’
‘Master were only a few years older than me. Seems so cruel . . .’
Of all the servants, it was Helen who mentioned Rupert the most. Perhaps it was, as she said, the similarity in their ages, or the fact that she had found his body.
‘You sound as if you were fond of your master, Helen. I am glad to hear it.’
She gave a half-hearted smile. ‘He always spoke kindly to me. I thought it was nice of him, to notice his staff.’
Heaven knew the London ones didn’t deserve his notice. Spiteful ingrates, they were, for all their efficiency.
‘And then,’ Helen went on, ‘he’d tell me little things about his day. Like reading that book, and finding the letters in the nursery.’
The nursery again. Elsie shuddered as a raindrop fell from a branch and trickled down her back. ‘You must give up this fancy, Helen. You have already told me that Mr Bainbridge presumed the letters were left that way by the previous occupant. He did not think it was a ghost.’
‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But he didn’t know I’d tidied them up the week before and put them all in a box. And he never saw the writing in the dust. Mother, it said, that day. Usually it’s a whole sentence.’ Elsie did not want to hear that sentence, but Helen was clearly going to tell her. ‘Mother hurt me, it says.’
She couldn’t answer.
They were nearing the house. Elsie clopped around the dew-sprinkled hedges. They gave off a green, mossy smell. She could still hear those relentless shears, and the sound began to grate on her nerves.
As they drew level with the stone fountain, Helen chirped up again. ‘What do you think it is then, ma’am? Writing to me?’
‘It is Mabel,’ she snapped, irritated. ‘Playing a joke on you. She writes it and then pretends she cannot see it. Nothing could be simpler.’
‘Mabel? But she can’t even read her own name, ma’am, let alone—’ The end of Helen’s sentence disappeared in a gasp.
Elsie snapped around to face her. ‘What? What is it?’ The roses had fled from Helen’s cheeks. Even her lips were pale. ‘Are you unwell?’
Helen extended a finger, pointing.
Elsie didn’t want to see. She didn’t want her eyes to follow the direction of that finger, but they would drift, slowly, without her volition, trained by some fatal instinct.
The wooden girl stood looking out of the card-room window. Shadows like twigs obscured her face. Antlers – they were antlers. She was placed directly underneath the stag’s head. But that was not what caught Elsie’s eye: it was the window to the left.
The rectangle with a muddy hand printed on the glass.
‘Perhaps the gardeners . . .’
‘No.’ Helen swallowed. ‘Look, the mark’s on the inside.’
It was difficult to breathe. The baby was moving, turning somersaults in her stomach. Still the air rang with the sound of those damned shears: snip, snip.
Elsie shook herself. A mountain out of a molehill – that’s what Ma would say. Mabel, or even Helen herself, could have made the mark by accident.
‘Nonsense. You cannot see if the print is inside or out from all the way over here.’
Elsie strode forward with more determination than she felt. Helen’s voice pleaded with her to stop, but she could not change course now. Her feet moved without her – she was left behind.
Another step and the muddy print bobbed closer, coming into focus. Too small. It could not be a gardener. This was a child’s hand.
She drew to a halt just before the window, so near that her breath misted the glass. As it cleared, she saw her own face reflected back, overlaying the wooden features of the companion. Only it was not her face – not really. It was pale and warped, ugly with fear.
Trembling, Elsie reached out her glove and placed her palm against the mud hand. Helen was right. The print came from the other side.
‘Ma’am? Can you see it? Is there writing?’
She opened her mouth to reply when a flicker, a small movement behind the glass, drew her attention. She recoiled.
‘Ma’am? Are you all right?’
She managed a nod; she could not speak.
The companion no longer looked out across the grounds. She stared, dead and unblinking, right into Elsie’s soul.
Mabel had not been lying. Its eyes moved.
Draughts flowed down the maroon corridor. Shadows rocked across the flock wallpaper as the gas lamps fired up with a roar. Elsie huddled in her shawl, cowering against Sarah’s shoulder. She had never felt so overpowered, so swallowed as she did in this house.