Elsie jerked upright at a knock on the door, bemused by her surroundings. The grey afternoon had deepened into the charcoal of an autumn evening. The fire burnt low in the grate. Only a single candle flickered on the dressing table, a winding sheet of hard wax down its side. Memory lurched back: she was stuck in the country – and Rupert was dead.
The knock came again. She reached for her lace gloves and pulled them on. ‘Enter,’ she croaked. Her mouth tasted stale. How long had she been asleep?
The door creaked open. Metal clattered against crockery and a short young woman, perhaps about eighteen years of age, edged across the threshold carrying a tray.
‘Ma’am.’ She placed the tray on the dressing table, fired up the gas lamp and lit it using the candle.
Elsie blinked. Surely it was a trick of her eyes – was this really her housemaid? She was filthy from the kitchen, soot streaking her coarse apron. Her face was not altogether plain; she had long lashes and thick, rosy lips that would have been pleasing were they not quirked in an impertinent expression. She wore no cap. Her dark hair was parted down the middle in a severe fashion, then looped behind her ears into a knot at the back of her head.
Did such a creature pass for a housemaid in this part of the country? If Elsie had known this, she would not have worried about her own appearance earlier.
‘Ma’am,’ the girl said again. Belatedly, she bobbed an awkward curtsy. The tray rattled. ‘Mr Livingstone said you might be hungry.’
‘Oh.’ She could not say if that were true: the combination of smells arising from the tray left her ravenous and nauseated in equal measures. ‘Yes. That was very kind of him. I will take the tray here.’ She propped a bolster behind her back.
The girl came forward. She did not have the careful gait of the servants in London; her bold stride jogged the bowl and sent soup trickling over the rim. Depositing the tray on Elsie’s legs with a thunk, she stepped back and bent her knees in another curtsy.
Elsie didn’t know whether to be offended or amused. The girl was clearly a bumpkin. ‘And you are . . .?’
‘Mabel Cousins. The maid.’ She had an odd voice; a blend between a cockney twang and a country drawl. ‘Ma’am.’
It occurred to Elsie that perhaps Mabel was not usually permitted above stairs. They may have grown desperate for a pair of hands and sent anyone. From the way she eyed the pile of Elsie’s clothes on the floor and the lace collar of her nightgown, you would think she had never seen anything so costly in her life. ‘Are you the housemaid? The kitchen-maid?’
Mabel shrugged. ‘Just the maid. Me and Helen. Tain’t no others.’
‘Well then, that makes you the maid-of-all-work.’
‘If you say so. Ma’am.’
Elsie adjusted the tray on her lap. Steam rose from the surface of a yellow-brown soup flecked with herbs. Next to it sat a dish of broiled beef and a cream-coloured, lumpy substance that looked like chicken fricassee. She was hungry, but the idea of food turned her stomach. Grimacing, she picked up a spoon and plunged it into the soup.
She was surprised to see Mabel still standing there. What on earth was she waiting for? ‘You may go, Mabel. I don’t require anything else.’
‘Oh.’ At least she had the grace to blush. Wiping her hands on her apron, she gave another hopeless curtsy. ‘Sorry. Ma’am. The Bridge ain’t had no mistress for nigh on forty years. We ain’t used to it.’
Elsie lowered her spoon and let the soup slide back into the bowl. ‘Really? That long? How very strange. I wonder why?’
‘There were a bunch of servants what died, I think. In the old days. Put the family off living here. I heard talk in the village – something about a skeleton they dug up in King George’s time. A skeleton in the garden! Imagine that!’
Really, there was so much dead in that garden, it did not come as much of a surprise.
‘Indeed! You grew up in the village of Fayford, I suppose?’
Mabel’s crack of laughter made her jump. The maid threw back her head like a common woman at a music theatre.
This would not do – it would not do at all. ‘Do I amuse you, Mabel?’ she snapped.
‘Lord bless you, ma’am.’ Mabel wiped an eye with the edge of her apron. ‘No one from the village works here.’
‘And why might that be?’
‘They’re scared of the place. Gives ’em the morbs.’
Weight settled around her neck. Superstition? Premonition? Whatever it was, she did not want Mabel to see it. ‘Well, that seems very foolish. It was only a skeleton. There is nothing to be afraid of, is there?’ Mabel shrugged. ‘That will be all, Mabel.’
‘Very good, ma’am.’ Without a curtsy she turned, extinguished the lamp and strode out of the door. She didn’t bother to close it behind her.
‘Mabel!’ Elsie called. ‘You turned off the light by mistake, I cannot see to . . .’
But she could already hear Mabel’s flat feet thudding down the stairs.
Nobody came to close the door or remove the food. Despairing, Elsie placed her untouched dinner tray on the floor and dropped back against the pillows.
When she awoke, the room was as black as a weeping veil. The fire had expired, leaving the air chill. The taint of that damned soup still hung in the air, making her stomach writhe. How could the maid just leave it there to fester and grow foul? She would have to speak with the housekeeper in the morning.
It was then that she heard it: a low rasp, like a saw against wood. She went rigid.
Had she really heard that? The senses could play tricks in the dark. But then it came again. Hiss.
She did not want to deal with another problem tonight. Surely if she kept wrapped up with her eyes shut, the noise would go away? Hiss, hiss. A rhythmic, abrasive sound. Hiss hiss, hiss hiss. What was it?
She pulled the cover up over her ear until it muffled the noise. At last, it stopped. Her head drooped with the weight of exhaustion. It was probably some foolish nonsense; animals in the woods. She would not recognise their sounds – she had always slept in a town. It was silent now, and she could go back to sleep . . .
Hiss, hiss. She started up, every inch of her electrified. Hiss. Teeth against wood. Scraping.
Blindly, she groped under the pillow for her matchbox. It was not there. Of course it was not there, she hadn’t unpacked yet. Her hand felt empty, vulnerable, without the box. She had to be careful, she mustn’t spiral into panic.
Half falling from the bed, she fumbled in the dark for a gas lever, a tinderbox, anything. Her fingers only met hard pools of wax where the candle had melted. Hiss, hiss.