The Governess (12 page)

Miss Unwin sighed. She would have to exercise patience. That was all.

She would have to go to bed as usual now, go to sleep and in the morning when it was Vilkins’s duty to sweep the schoolroom during the family breakfast hour she would have to make some excuse and go up and see her then.

But it was a long time to wait for the news which she hoped would mean so much to her.

Not surprisingly, for all her good intentions, she did not get to sleep when she had got into her narrow bed. The mattress, never
at the best of times free from lumps in its much-used horsehair, seemed now intolerably uncomfortable. And the heat, which the night before she had hardly noticed, seemed so oppressive now that she felt she might be in that Sahara Desert that was the answer to one of Miss Richmal Magnall’s famous questions.

Then, then when it seemed she had been lying there tossing and turning for hours, there came at her door a sharp, persistent scratching sound. She knew at once what it would be.

In a moment she had jumped out of bed, gone across in the dark to the door and opened it wide.

‘Vilkins. It’s you.’

‘Lawks, Unwin, I thought Nancy was not never going to go to sleep. Where you been, Mary, she kept saying. You been with a young man? What’s his name, Mary? What’s he like? Where’d you meet him?’

Miss Unwin had hauled her into the room and closed the door behind her during all this whispered outpouring. Now she could not stop herself taking her old friend by both shoulders and positively shaking her.

‘Vilkins, what did you find out? Did you find out anything? Why were you so late? Tell me. Tell me.’

In answer Vilkins gave a great gurgle of a laugh, appallingly loud in the darkness.

‘Why, I found out the ‘ole lot. Everything what we ‘oped, lock, stock an’ bloomin’ barrel.’

‘What, Vilkins? What?’

‘He goes to a house in Maida Vale. That’s what he does, an’ he meets a lady there. Lady, did I say? Woman I ought to ’ave said. No better nor what she ought to be. Miss Bond she calls herself. Miss Rhoda Bond. An’ I bet she was christened something a sight different, if she was christened at all. Shrimp-girl, she was once, if what I heard was true. Just a little shrimp-girl a-running in the sea with her legs as brown as a native of India’s.’

‘But, Vilkins, let me get it all clear. This person, this Miss Rhoda Bond, is she really a kept woman? Does Mr Arthur keep her?’

‘Him now, and one or two more before, if what I heard at the pub on the corner’s anything to go by. An’ it is. Her house is just like a jewel-box inside, so they says. An’ her little trap what she
goes driving down in the Park in of an arternoon, you should just see it. I did. Went round to the mews with a chap I got talking to, a cats-meat man, an’ saw it with me own eyes.’

‘Vilkins dear, you didn’t … You didn’t have to …’

‘Lawks, no. I knows how to talk to a chap without a-having to do that. No, I was just friendly like with him, an’ he was just friendly like with me. He keeps his cats-meat cart in the same mews, an’ he showed me … A beauty of a little carriage it is, with the seat all in the skin o’ some sort o’ foreign animal, fawn like in colour an’ with spots.’

‘A leopard. In leopard skin, Vilkins dear.’

‘Yeh. That’s what he said, the cats-meat feller, come to think. Leopard skin. An’ the harness all white leather. White like milk, an –’

‘Yes, yes. But what else did you discover, you clever girl? Or was that all? Just that this Miss Bond owns a trap with a leopard-skin seat and milk-white harness?’

‘Oh, bless you, no. I heard a sight more nor that. What I didn’t hear about that Rhoda Bond wouldn’t be worth hearing.’

‘But, what, Vilkins, what?’

‘Owes, Unwin. She owes, that one, high an’ low. She owes at the stables for her two white ponies. She owes at the grocer an’ the butcher an’ the fishmonger. She owes the colourman for half the decorations in that pretty little house of hers an’ the haberdasher for half the ribbons on her head. An’ if she goes on the way she has just a week or two longer, she’s going to have the bailiffs in, that’s what.’

Miss Unwin heard Vilkins’s gathered gossip as if she was listening to a Judge pronouncing her guiltless of the gravest of crimes. As perhaps, at a remove, she was.

‘It is as I thought,’ she said at last. ‘It is really as I thought. Mr Arthur does need money, a great deal of money by the sound of it, and he needs it to give to a woman of that sort. She must have been pressing him for it, threatening to tell Mr Thackerton perhaps. If only I could be sure of that. If only I could go to Sergeant Drewd and tell him that for a fact. Then, surely, he would begin to direct his investigations where he should, instead of anywhere but at the head of the house.’

‘So he would, Unwin. So he would. Only …’

Vilkins’s cheerful voice faded away on a note of plain discouragement.

‘Yes, Vilkins, you are right, alas,’ Miss Unwin said. ‘Only, I have not got anything more to go with to the Sergeant than some gossip you have picked up in a public house. He would laugh it to scorn, my dear. It’s no use blinking that.’

‘ Yeh. That old Sergeant wouldn’t believe me, not if he was paid to.’

Vilkins could not have sounded more despondent.

‘My dear, it’s not your fault. You did splendidly. No one but you could have found out all that you did, and so quickly.’

‘I did find it quick, too,’ Vilkins chimed in, still lugubrious. ‘I found it so quick I thought I could take a bus back instead of a hansom. But that old bus, why, the horses must have been due at the knacker’s yard ten year ago. An’ the way that driver would stop to pick up a fare, even if he so much as saw somebody walking down the next side-street… That’s why I was so late, an’ all. An’ it was for nothing in the end, I s’pose. Nothing at all.’

‘No, Vilkins dear, it was not for nothing. Don’t you believe that. What you found out is almost certainly the truth. Or the truth only a little exaggerated. Why should it be anything else?’

‘Oh, yes, it’s the truth all right. I know that. But the thing is, it ain’t no good to you, Unwin. It ain’t one bit o* good.’

‘Oh, yes, it is. It certainly is. If it’s the truth it can be substantiated. It can be substantiated from Miss Rhoda Bond’s own lips, and I mean to make her own to it, Vilkins. I must. I see now that I must. I must go as soon as possible and talk, woman to woman, with that creature. There’s no help for it. No hope for me unless I do.’

But it was to be some time before Miss Unwin, little Pelham Thackerton’s paid governess, could do anything to put her new resolution to the test. And before she had had any opportunity to do so yet worse troubles than those that had already gathered like heavy thunder-clouds above her were to break over her lonely head.

It was not Mrs Arthur, ready to hit out with anger, who showed Miss Unwin next day that morning’s copy of
The Times
. Miss Unwin heard about what was in it from Vilkins.

“Ere, miss, has any o’ them said anything to you about the paper?’

‘What paper, Vilk – What paper, Mary? I don’t understand.’

They were out on the landing beside the schoolroom. Miss Unwin with her bonnet on, neatly gloved, had just sent Pelham into his room to fetch the new black cap that went with his mourning suit before they went for their walk. Vilkins was on her way to Miss Unwin’s room, a broad red hand grasping dustpan and brush.

She stood twisting a foot round her ankles and dropped her voice as she glanced in the direction of Pelham’s room.

‘I don’t know as I rightly know what it’s all about meself,’ she said. ‘Only that there’s this paper and it’s something about you, so they say.’

‘Who says, Mary? What paper is this? Is it a newspaper?’

‘Oh, yes. It’s a newspaper all right, though why there should be a letter about you wrapped up in it is more nor I can say.’

Miss Unwin sighed.

‘If it’s a letter about me in a newspaper,’ she explained, finding it hard to keep patient even with her old friend and daring helper of the evening before, ‘it will be something that someone has written to the editor and he has printed it. But which paper is it? Are you sure that there’s a letter about me?’

‘Oh, yes. I see it all now. Mr Mellings always has a read of it while he’s ironing it before it goes to the Master. Well, before it goes to Mr Arthur now, ‘cos now he is the Master, ain’t –’

‘Yes, yes, of course he is. And you’ve told me quite enough already. Mr Thackerton always used to take
The Times
. That would be the paper Mellings ironed for him, and now Mr
Arthur has it. But how am I to see it and find out what’s there about me?’

Vilkins gave a great grin. She leant towards Miss Unwin and whispered, spittily. But then she had whispered spittily even when they had been little girls together.

‘That’s easy, Unwin. I’ll pinch it out o’ the library directly an’ put it at the top o’ the area steps for you. Under me apron. It’s always left in the library till evening. It’ll be all right.’

Miss Unwin wondered whether such illicit borrowing would indeed be all right. Vilkins’s scheme seemed riddled with holes to her. But her faithful accomplice had darted away down the servants’ stairs and it was too late to devise any better plan.

Besides, a letter in
The Times
about herself: it was worth taking a risk to see it.

What could the person who had written it have said? It seemed as if the murder must have become one of those cases that everyone discussed, that newspaper correspondents delighted to air their views about. And she had known nothing of all the hubbub, beyond having had that one short look at Horatio Hopkinson’s lying account in the
Mercury
.

Had the letter writer in
The Times
attempted to contradict that baseless notion that Horatio Hopkinson had, surely, put forward? Or did his letter do the opposite? Had he produced extra reasons why the police should arrest her?

She must find out.

She realised that Pelham had failed to appear with his cap, and swept into his room in a gust of impatience. He was sitting on the bed playing with his box of glass marbles.

‘Pelham, I told you to get your cap. What are you doing? I shall have to take those marbles away.’

The boy burst into tears. In the whole time she had been looking after him she had never spoken as sharply.

She pulled herself together.

‘Now, come along, Pelham. There’s nothing to cry about. You get your cap and I’ll put the marbles back in the toy cupboard.’

But the toy cupboard was in the schoolroom and Pelham’s muttered ‘No’ indicated clearly that he no longer trusted her not
to whisk away his precious playthings instead of putting them in their proper place. So, however keenly she wanted to get off on their walk with the purloined copy of
The Times
under her arm, she felt she must allow him to put the marbles away himself, delay her as that might.

She waited, reining herself in, while Pelham trotted through to the schoolroom, opened the toy cupboard – its door gave a small grunt of a squeak – put the box of marbles in its place, began to come back, realised he had forgotten to shut the toy cupboard door, went in again to do so – that grunt again – and at last returned.

‘Now then, my lad, get that cap. Quick sticks. Or we shall be too late to get to the Gardens.’

Too late, too, perhaps, she thought, to reach the area steps before Mellings or someone else notices Vilkins’s apron lying there, picks it up and discovers
The Times
. And then there would be a great inquiry as to how it got there.

‘Good boy. Off we go now. Run, run, run.’

‘But, please Miss Unwin, can’t I take my hoop with me?’

‘No, no. Not today, Pelham. We’re all in mourning, remember. The hoop will have to wait for a few days more yet.’

‘Yes, Miss Unwin.’

Thank goodness, she had established the habit of obedience right from the outset.

So they went tripping down the stairs, both of them, in a decidedly unrestrained way and waited, dancing with impatience while Henry opened the front door for them. Then out into the sunshine, already hot, and a swift glance down to the area steps.

And, yes, Vilkins’s white morning apron folded up, not at all neatly, at the corner of the top step but one.

‘Stop a minute, Pelham. What’s that on the area steps there?’

‘Oh, Miss Unwin, it’s only a horrid old rag, and you said we’d be late for the Gardens.’

‘No. I think I’ll just pick it up. It might belong to somebody.’

‘But, Miss Unwin …’

Pelham was hopping from foot to foot in agitation. But that could be ignored.

Hastily Miss Unwin ran across to the steps, stooped, picked up the apron and from underneath it
The Times
.

‘It seems to be one of the servants’ aprons. They must have left it there for some reason. I think I’d better just put it back where it was. They’re bound to remember and come back for it.’

‘That’s Grandpapa’s
Times
, Miss Unwin.’

For a moment Miss Unwin’s mind went blank. She saw herself having to restore the paper under little Pelham’s stern eye to its proper place in the library. Then commonsense reasserted itself.

‘Why, what a clever boy you are to recognise that. Did you read the big letters on the front?’

‘Well, I more sort of just knew.’

‘Never mind, it was still clever. Now, off we go or we really won’t get to the Gardens.’

Miss Unwin shooed Pelham down the path in front of her before any question arose of taking
The Times
back into the house. She would have liked to have opened it where she stood. The desire to do so was sharp almost as a pain in her side. But she knew that to stand there in full view of anyone who might look out of the window of the house would be too much tempting fate.

But once round the first corner on the way to Kensington Gardens. That would be a different matter.

‘Oh, Miss Unwin, what are we stopping for? We won’t never ever get to the Gardens if you read that paper.’

‘You mustn’t say “never ever”, Pelham. Just “ever”. We won’t ever get to the Gardens if – Well, never mind.’