Death at Bishop's Keep (7 page)

Bishop's Keep might not be a castle, but like it or not, she was here.

“The majority of servants would be judged criminal if their backgrounds and their actions were fully known. Many were previously discharged for lying or theft and have obtained their present places with forged credentials, while not a few supplement their honest wages by acting as paid informants for house-breakers. The careful mistress must beware of those who pretend to serve.”

—The Practical Household, 1884

 

 

 

“I
continue to believe, Sabrina,” Bernice Jaggers said, feeling quite cross, “that you are making a most dreadful mistake. This young woman's reputation is not personally known to you, and it is the utmost folly to trust the word of some Pinkerton person on the other side of the Atlantic. We must be vigilant. Persons hired into our household must be of the most trustworthy sort.”

Sabrina Ardleigh put down her pen and turned from the small rosewood desk in the withdrawing room. “I am not hiring a servant, Bernice. I am employing Brother Thomas's daughter.”

“I hardly see the difference.” Bernice sat down on a carved mahogany chair and twitched the skirt of her black bombazine, which she wore in mourning for her husband, Captain Reginald Jaggers, of whom in the last years of their marriage she had not been fond. He had fallen with General Gordon at Khartoum nearly a decade before, but like the Queen, Bernice lived daily with her husband's memory. She drew her brows together severely. “She is an American. Worse yet, Irish.” Her mouth puckered on the word. “You have managed for years without knowing that Thomas had a daughter, and you have managed without a secretary as well. Why must you have one now? And why is Thomas's daughter the only one who will do?”

Sabrina rose from her chair and crossed the Turkish carpet to the window that gave a view of the sloping lawn. She spoke without turning. “We have discussed the matter fully, Bernice. You are always insisting on the virtues of Christian charity. It is scarcely Christian of you to reject an opportunity to assist a woman of our own blood—”

“Christian!” Bernice shrilled. “You talk of Christianity, when you persist in consorting with those wretched spiritualists and taking part in shamefully immodest pagan rites at that horrid Temple of Morris—”

“Temple of Horus,” Sabrina corrected her mildly. “Horus was the son of Isis, the most revered of Egyptian goddesses. And the rites to which you refer—”

The mention of Egyptian deities added fuel to Bernice's fire, for she was a strict Nonconformist who attended chapel three times a week and demanded that the servants do likewise. “Morris, Horus, it's all one,” she snapped. “I simply do not understand Vicar Talbot, encouraging you to involve yourself in this Order of the Golden Fawn—”

“Golden Dawn.” Sabrina turned. “Really, Bernice, you could at least learn to listen, even if you object to—”

Bernice snorted. “Ever since then, you have been entirely lost to good sense. Seances, magic, fortunetelling cards. You might as well leave Bishop's Keep and set up as a palm reader in Colchester.”

“And leave the Ardleigh fortune to you, my dear sister?” Sabrina asked lightly, smiling a little.

Bernice closed her eyes. “I am content,” she said piously. “You have been overgenerous to your poor sister, whom God in His infinite wisdom saw fit to leave with little.”

But Sabrina had slipped, so to speak, a dagger into the dark heart of her sister's discontent. In her youth, Bernice had been a carefree, willful young woman. After a tempestuous courtship, she had eloped with a military man of little family and no prospects. In stem consequence, her father had disinherited her. Meanwhile, Thomas, her brother and the Ardleigh heir, had quarreled with his father, renounced his fortune, and fled to America. Through attrition, then, the sizable Ardleigh estate, gained through shrewd dealings in the woolen industry, had fallen into Sabrina's hands. It was only due to her assent—not freely given but coerced with a certain compelling piece of information—that Bernice had lived at Bishop's Keep for the past four years. For the profligate Captain Jaggers, true to his father-in-law's dire predictions, had upon his demise left his wife only a meager pension, scarcely enough to permit the purchase of a decent annual bonnet. For Bernice's part, she bore her widow's fate with perpetual resentment and never resigned herself to her dependency upon her sister. It was the grossest injustice that Sabrina alone had inherited what should have been shared between them!

A moment's silence followed Bernice's outburst, and then the tentative clearing of a throat. Bernice opened her eyes to glare at Amelia, the parlor maid, a brown-haired, generously endowed wench whom Bernice suspected of having an eye for the coachman.

How long had Amelia been standing there? How much had she overheard? Servants simply could not be trusted. They battened on family discord like vultures on carrion. One was at their mercy, just as poor Lord Russell had been at the mercy of his valet, who had been inspired to murder by reading a dreadful shilling-shocker. Or the tragic Mrs. Thomas, who had been hacked to pieces and parboiled by her savagely cunning maid-of-all-work, an Irishwoman. Yes,
Irish!
and named Kate! Bernice shuddered.

The parlor maid took a step forward, hands folded over her starched white apron. Bernice noticed that her frilled white cap was crooked.

“What is it, Amelia?” Sabrina asked.

Amelia sketched a curtsy. “A lady t' see ye, mum.”

“Where is her card?” Bernice asked testily. “Have I not instructed you how a guest is to be admitted? You are to receive the card on a silver tray. If from a footman, present it unaltered. If from the lady herself, turn up the right corner.” She pursed her mouth. “And straighten your cap.”

There was an unmistakable flash of defiance in Amelia's brown eyes before she obediently raised her hands to the back of her head. “Th' lady don't have no card, mum.”

Bernice chose to ignore the look. “No card? What lady would come calling without a card?”

“It is Miss Kathryn Ardleigh, mum. Wot was expected tomorrow. I showed her to th' mornin' room.”

“Miss Ardleigh!” Sabrina exclaimed. “Kathryn!”

“What did I tell you, sister?” Bernice said, with meager satisfaction. “The Irishwoman has scarcely set foot in the door, and already she makes herself a bother.”

“Nonsense,” Sabrina replied, lifting her chin. “Amelia, we will have tea for three, please. Tell Mudd to prepare the best silver service.”

With a disdainful harrumph, Bernice followed her sister out of the room. Had she noticed Amelia's glance, shadowed by some darkly unfathomable emotion, she might have been less inclined to fret about her niece and more inclined to distrust the parlor maid.

“From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory, and hypocrisy, from envy hatred, and malice, and from all uncharitable-ness, Good Lord, deliver us.”

—The Prayer Book, 1662

 

 

 

T
he exterior of the house might be dull and rather ugly, Kate thought, but the morning room was quite lovely, done in silver-green bamboo wallpaper, with pale green velvet drapes at the windows and a carpet of deeper green. On one table was a blue bowl filled with lemons, on another a collection of framed photographs, one of which Kate recognized with a start as her father as a boy of sixteen or so, stiff and solemn in a frock coat and an absurdly elegant top hat. Somehow the sight of the photograph made her connection to Bishop's Keep seem very real, and she realized with a start that until that moment the place had seemed imaginary, make-believe, like the setting in one of Beryl Bardwell's stories.

She stared at the photograph for a moment, feeling a wave of loss and grief for the father she had never had a chance to love. What had he been like as a boy? As a young man? How different might her life have been if he had lived to bring his wife and daughter home to England?

Home—the word had an odd ring to it, and she lifted her head to look around. Her father had grown up here, had run and played and laughed and cried in these rooms, on the lawns, in the woods. This place had been her father's home. Was it now to be hers?

“My dear niece Kathryn!” a huskily melodic voice exclaimed behind her. Kate turned. “How good it is to see you—and a full day early!”

The handsome older woman who seized both Kate's hands had warm gray eyes under heavy brows. A gracious smile lighted a face marked by intelligence and individuality, with fine lines of age etched about the eyes and mouth. She was dressed in a loose, lace-trimmed mauve gown with fluid sleeves. The color highlighted the silvery streaks in the soft wings of hair on her forehead, the loose coils on top of her head. She wore no jewelry except for an intriguing golden pendant in the shape of an Egyptian scarab.

“Hello, Miss Ardleigh,” Kate said, liking her at once. “I hope it is no bother that I have come early. The ship docked sooner than expected.”

With a last squeeze, the woman dropped Kate's hands. “Of course it is no bother. And please, call me Aunt Sabrina.” She turned to the woman standing behind her. “This is my sister and also your aunt, Mrs. Bernice Jaggers.”

Bernice Jaggers stood stolidly fastened to the floor, a lady of late middle age, her plump white hands clasped over her full black skirt, a sour, pinched look on her round face. She acknowledged Kate's greeting with a brief inclination of the head and the chilly instruction to address her as “Aunt Jaggers.”

Smiling, Aunt Sabrina led Kate to a green damask settee. “Bernice and I are delighted that you have come.”

Hardly, Kate thought, seeing the twist of Aunt Jaggers's narrow, thinly compressed lips. From the look of it, the woman bitterly resented either Kate or her sister's inviting their niece to Bishop's Keep—or life in general. Apprehensively wondering which it was and how her attitude would color their relations, Kate sat down.

Aunt Sabrina seated herself in one of the damask armchairs and leaned back in a comfortably casual pose, one that would not have been possible, Kate knew, if the sitter were stiffly corseted. “Now, my dear, tell us about your journey. I hope you found enough of interest to distract you from its tribulations.”

After a brief sketch of her railway travel and sea voyage (omitting the fertile intrigue that had enlarged the notebooks of Beryl Bardwell), Kate concluded by relating her encounter of Miss Marsden and her trip from Colchester with the Marsdens and Sir Charles Sheridan.

“So you have made the acquaintance of some of our neighborhood aristocracy,” Aunt Sabrina remarked, smiling. “Well, you will meet the rest of the family this evening. Only this morning, we received an invitation from Lady Henrietta to dinner tonight. I am certain she will wish you to join us.”

Aunt Jaggers moved to a straight chair and sat on its edge, arranging her voluminous black skirts. She cast a steely-eyed gaze at Kate, then turned her attention to Aunt Sabrina.

“Please recall, sister,” she said stiffly, “that Miss Ardleigh has not come to Bishop's Keep to participate in society. She is here to serve as your secretary and assist you with your ...” She gave a loud sniff, as if she were rejecting a piece of spoiled fish. “Writings.”

“Be that as it may,” Aunt Sabrina said firmly. “If she is not too tired, I am sure she will be welcome at tonight's dinner.”

“Thank you,” Kate said sincerely. “I enjoyed meeting Miss Marsden and her brother. I should like to come.” She glanced from Aunt Jaggers to Aunt Sabrina. Sisters they might be, but they did not look it. Aunt Sabrina, who bore some resemblance to the faded photograph of Kate's father, was at this moment toying with an escaping tendril of feathery hair. Her graceful posture, her tilted head and loose hair, her mobile and generous expression—to Kate these were the attributes of a woman who enjoyed an enviable ease of movement and freedom of mind. Aunt Jaggers, on the other hand, was straitly corseted and as tart as the lemons piled in the Delft bowl. In the look she darted at Aunt Sabrina was enough malice to make Kate shift uneasily in her chair.

Kate cleared her throat. Other thoughts pressed into her mind, and she had to speak them, the sooner and the more frankly, the better. “I am very grateful to you for asking me to come to Bishop's Keep,” she said to Aunt Sabrina. “Your invitation was a great surprise, as was the fact—if you will pardon me—of your existence. I had not known that any members of my father's family survived him.”

Aunt Sabrina's eyes went to Kate's father's photograph, then back to Kate. Her face was somber, as if the thought of him were a long sadness. “When my brother went to America, he expressed the wish to permanently dissociate himself from the family. Your grandfather, George Ardleigh, was quite willing to concur in his son's decision. He imposed his concurrence upon the rest of the family, including your grandmother Madeline, who was deeply grieved by Thomas's absence. No doubt both father and son had good reasons for wishing a permanent separation. But they took those reasons to their graves. When I made belated inquiries last year about your mother and discovered that she had borne a daughter, I felt it was not fair to impute to you your father's perhaps impulsive estrangement from his family.” She fell silent for a moment, and when she spoke again, Kate felt the melancholy weight of her sadness. “I am sorry for your loss of both your parents, Kathryn. And I have come to view our estrangement as a great loss. I hope to remedy it.”

Aunt Jaggers straightened her shoulders, her mouth pinched and parsimonious. “I must speak frankly, Niece Kathryn,” she said. “My sister's sentiments are in no way to be attributed to me. It was my sad duty to counsel her against inviting into this house a young Irishwoman whose character is not directly known to us, who has been brought up in America.” Her tone sharpened. “It has frequently fallen to me to counsel my sister against various ill-conceived schemes, to no avail. It was no different this time. My counsel was ignored.” Her dark eyes glittered like bits of chipped glass. “But I insist upon making my position clear.”