Rosemary Aitken (27 page)

‘Me?’ Effie was alarmed. She didn’t relish the idea of barging in, if Mrs Thatchell didn’t want the tea. She knew how her employer treated people who interrupted her.

‘Well, you got those silks to take her, haven’t you? I heard her tell you to bring them straight away. Besides it’s your job – if it’s anyone’s – to take the tea tray in.’ She gave Effie a funny sideways look. ‘What’s more, it’s your two gentlemen who are up there with her now.’

‘My two gentlemen?’ Effie cried, amazed. ‘What gentlemen are those? I don’t know any gentlemen at all.’ Then she remembered the police bicycle outside. ‘You don’t mean Alex? The young constable that came?’

Cook looked triumphant. ‘If that’s his name, then that’s exactly who I mean. And that bowler-hatted fellow that you talked to on the step. Don’t think I didn’t see him, ’cause I’ve got eyes, you know – I saw you when I was taking out some scraps, to leave for Mrs Mitchell when she came.’

‘Mr Broadbent? What’s he doing here again?’ Effie felt uneasy suddenly. ‘Here, it isn’t about that blessed corpse again, I hope? I’ve told them till I’m sick of saying it that I had never seen him in my life before.’ She turned to Mrs Lane. ‘Well there is only one way to find out. Let’s have that blooming tray. She’ll have my guts for garters, but at least I’ll know the worst – and if I take the tea up, it will give me an excuse.’

‘You’re a good girl, Effie.’ Cook looked quite relieved. ‘Let me freshen up the tea.’ She took a cloth and seized the kettle from the hob as she suited the action to the word. ‘There, that’s better. You can take it up. And if she’s nasty, tell her you was sent.’

‘I’d better take these damty silks to her as well.’ Effie slipped them in her pocket as she spoke. ‘Though I’m bound to be wrong, if I do or if I don’t. You know what Mrs Thatchell can be like.’ She picked up the heavy tray.

Cook came up and held the swing baize door for her, and Effie sidled to the morning room. Her heart was beating like a drummer at the fair as she balanced the tea-tray on the what-not in the hall, and tapped softly on the door.

Mrs Thatchell did not answer her and Effie stood a moment, wondering what to do. But then the door swung open and to her surprise she found Mr Broadbent smiling down at her. ‘Ah, Miss Pengelly. And you’ve brought some tea. I think your mistress might be glad of it. You had better come inside.’ He stood aside to let her walk into the room.

Mrs Thatchell was sitting in her normal chair, but that was the only normal thing about the way she looked. Her hair was half-dishevelled, as if she’d had her hands in it, and her face was all contorted and red and streaked with tears.

‘Madam?’ Effie put the tray down and went across to her. ‘Is something the matter?’ It was a stupid question – there obviously was.

Her mistress looked up dully. ‘Oh, tell her, someone, do. She’ll have to find out sometime. What does it matter now? For years and years I’ve tried to live it down, but it’s come back to haunt me. I thought that I’d be safe here, but I shall have to go. I can’t stay in Penzance once this has got about.’

‘Why, what is it, madam?’ Effie cried. This was not the Mrs Thatchell that she knew at all.

‘Effie!’ It was Alex. She hadn’t noticed him, standing by the window with his helmet in his hand. ‘This concerns you slightly. It is best you understand, though there isn’t any need to spread the news outside this room. You understand?’

She nodded.

‘Mrs Thatchell is understandably upset . . .’

But he couldn’t finish because Mrs Thatchell was saying, inexplicably, ‘Please don’t call me that. Miss Borlaise will do me very well. It is what I was born with, and it’s all that I deserve.’

‘But . . .’ Effie started, but Alex raised a hand to silence her.

‘It’s an unhappy story. Not Mrs Thatchell’s fault. And I’m sorry, madam, but I’m going to call you that, because you deserve a title of respectability. The thing is, Effie, she was married once—’

‘Only I wasn’t!’ Mrs Thatchell snapped.

Alex went on as if she hadn’t said a word. ‘Or she believed she was: there was a proper wedding ceremony and she had a ring, though she married a man of whom her family did not much approve.’

‘They said he was a gambler,’ Mrs Thatchell said. ‘But he was worse than that. He was already married – if I only knew – and with a child as well. Of course, I knew he often went away, but he told me it was army business and I never questioned it. And then he was posted to South Africa. I missed him terribly, but he wrote me every month and I thought that I was lucky – can you imagine that! And when I heard that he was coming home, I went up to meet him – but I was not the only one! This other woman and her child were there, and when I asked for Ricky Thatchell, I was told there wasn’t one. It wasn’t even his proper surname – as I soon found out.’ She buried her streaked face in both her hands.

‘His name was Royston,’ Mr Broadbent said. ‘Thatchell was his mother’s maiden name and he reverted to it, for the second wife. I suppose he thought it would be hard for anyone to trace. And he might have got away with it for years, if it hadn’t been for that decision to go and meet the ship. Of course the women met. The Army tried to hush it up – these things are not good for the reputation of the force – but they court-martialled him. He made it easy for them, it appears, by escaping custody and following your employer to beg her to have him back.’

‘So he was absent without official leave,’ Alex put in. ‘Cashiering matter, for an officer, so they were able to be vague about the other charges on the sheet. But that was the end of Royston’s military career. He had to go back to his legal wife, of course, though to do him justice I believe that if she had agreed to give him a divorce he would have preferred to marry Miss Borlaise.’

‘I would not have had him,’ Mrs Thatchell said. ‘After a divorce! And he wasn’t just cashiered. Afterwards they put him in prison for a week, for bigamy! Imagine the disgrace! I’m only glad my parents did not live to learn how right they were and what a mistake my so-called marriage proved to be.’

Effie was shaking her head in disbelief. ‘But I don’t understand. What was he doing here? I suppose it was him who was found dead in the court – though you would not have known it from the photograph.’

Alex nodded. ‘We’re satisfied it was. His second wife was able to identify a certain – shall we call it – identifying mark.’ He looked at Mrs Thatchell.

‘He had a strange-shaped mole,’ she said, reluctantly. ‘Low down on his . . . on his lower back.’

Alex nodded. ‘The sort of thing that only a wife or mother would generally know. And the notes record a similar marking on the corpse. So it appears that we do have an identity. As for why he came here, that seems clear enough. As Mr Broadbent told you, I believe, Royston had been living in a state of penury and had long been estranged from his legal wife – ever since this incident in fact – but she died of a fever together with the child. So since she had adamantly refused to grant her husband a divorce, and there were no other relatives, the estate would have come to Royston in the end. He had probably found out. He had been trying for months to contact Miss Borlaise – presumably to beg her to have him back again, now that he was in a position to provide for her and make her properly his wife.’

Mrs Thatchell nodded. ‘He kept sending letters through my bank – he knew the branch I used. I kept replying that I could not forgive and I did not want to see him and forbade them to continue forwarding his messages to me. I suppose he came here looking as a last resort. He must have gleaned from them that I was living in Penzance.’

‘And it wasn’t you that he was asking for at all, Effie,’ Alex said gently, coming to her side. ‘It was the former Effie – the maid that Mrs Thatchell used to have when she was first married. He tried the haberdashery, because he knew that his lady loved embroidery and when he mentioned “Effie” Miss Blanche thought of you. He thought the maid would plead his cause, perhaps.’

‘She would have done, as well,’ Mrs Thatchell snapped. ‘It’s one of the reasons that I was glad to see her go. She was always begging me to let him contact me and saying that the whole unhappy thing had only happened because he’d loved me much too well. Ricky could always charm a girl as soon as look at her. Well, I was not going to let him try his charm on me. I’d fallen for it far too much before. That’s why I didn’t trust myself to let him come.’

Effie looked at Mr Broadbent. ‘So what will happen now? Who will inherit the dead wife’s estate?’

Broadbent shook his head. ‘It doesn’t seem that Royston left a will at all, so I suppose that it will go to Chancery. Mrs Thatchell might be able to submit a claim to it, but she says she doesn’t wish to anyway, and it is doubtful whether that would hold in law. Pity, because it means that I won’t get my fee – but there are compensations for my having come.’ He smiled. ‘No doubt Miss Blanche will tell you, if she has not done so yet?’

Effie had had sufficient puzzles for one day. She shook her head. ‘I only saw Miss Pearl when I went back and she was all peculiar and hardly said a word. But I was only worried about bringing back the silks. I’ve got them, Mrs Thatchell.’ She produced the little bag. ‘And what about this cup of tea? It will be getting cold.’ She looked at the three faces staring back at her. ‘Well, I mean to say, the story you just told me is very, very sad, but it doesn’t really alter anything at all. And you said you didn’t want the news to spread outside this room. Mrs Lane will think it’s odd if you don’t drink some tea.’

It was oddly reassuring to hear Mrs Thatchell say, in something much more like her normal tone of voice, ‘Very well, Effie. You may start to pour.’

Alex did not ask to change his duty roster, after all. Instead, he wrote a little letter to the Knights, thanking them profusely for their hospitality but explaining that – between a complicated case that he was dealing with and the necessity of studying for the forthcoming exam – he was not in a position to avail himself of their kind standing invitation. He read the missive through a dozen times, then added a scribbled ‘for the present anyway’. It was prevarication, but it didn’t sound so bald.

He felt like a weasel as he sealed the envelope but he had already put off writing this missive several times and it was already close to being impolitely late. He got it stamped in time to catch the early-morning post so that it would reach them by Wednesday afternoon.

Next day he went, as promised, to put Effie on the bus. He was there before her and he watched her come, pretty as a picture in her best cape and navy skirt, her neat boots tap-tapping on the pavement as she hurried up to him.

‘My life, Alex! What a day it’s been. I thought that I was never going to get away at all.’ She looked around. ‘Although the horse-bus isn’t here yet, that’s a mercy anyway. I was afraid we wouldn’t get a chance to do more than say “hello”.’

He made a sympathetic face at her. ‘Is Mrs Thatchell being difficult? If we can still call her Mrs Thatchell, after what we know. I shouldn’t be surprised if she was quite impossible. This must have been an awful shock for her.’

Effie shook her head. ‘Not so much that she is difficult, it’s just that she’s made up her mind she’s got to go, and she’s got us clearing out the drawers and making lists of things to pack. I’ve told her till I’m purple in the face that no-one in the town is going to know a thing, but she won’t believe it. Says that in a little town like this, gossip spreads like wild-fire and she could never hold her head up any more – I suppose she means in church, since that’s the only place she ever goes.’

Alex was frowning. ‘You mean she’s really going to leave Penzance?’ Then, as Effie nodded, he asked, ‘So where’s she going to go?’

‘Back up to London where she came from, I believe. I think the fact that this Royston man is dead has given her a sort of freedom to do that – she says at least she won’t be running into him. Or his wife and family either, come to that. It’s strange. She’s almost got more human, since it all came out. I thought she’d want to see the back of me, since I was the one that brought this trouble home, but it’s quite the opposite – she’s asked me to go with her.’

Alex felt as though his heart had missed a beat. ‘And are you going to do that?’

She looked at him as though he were an idiot. ‘Well, of course I said I couldn’t – not with Pa the way he is. Anyway, I’d be frightened in the capital. I know that lots of it is marvellous – Miss Blanche was telling me – parks and palaces and all sorts of things. But all those crowds of people! And miles and miles of streets. They say that you can walk all day and still be in London at the end of it!’

Alex made a little joke to cover his relief. ‘I can walk quite slowly in Penzance when I put my mind to it.’ Then he added, more seriously, ‘So you’re going to lose your position? What are you going to do?’

She grinned at him – a grin of open-hearted simple joy, so different from the cultivated simper of Miss Knight. ‘I shouldn’t really tell you, because I promised that I wouldn’t say anything until it was arranged. But there is a possibility of something else – an expected vacancy elsewhere – and a friend’s put in a word to recommend me for the post. It’s something that I’d love, though I don’t really have the experience I’d need. But I think that there’s a chance. Mrs Thatchell herself was asked and has put in a word for me.’

‘Has she?’ Alex said. He didn’t mention that he had a fair idea of what this exciting vacancy might be. He’d never spoken to anyone at all about that embarrassing lunchtime at the Knights. ‘That’s very good of her.’

Effie smiled. ‘She’s not a bad stick, really, when you come to think. She was ever so good about giving me the time to go and visit Pa when he was bad, and Cook says that it was the same with her, when she had sickness in the family. It’s just that she can be a Tartar when she tries!’

‘I wonder if Miss Caroline is worse, though, all the same?’ Alex said, but then rather wished he’d held his tongue. He grinned at her ruefully. ‘I imagine that’s the vacancy that you are speaking of? I know that your friend Lettie has moved on from there.’ That was as tactful as he knew how to be.