The Governess (13 page)

‘But, Miss Unwin, you’re still looking at the paper.’

Pelham stamped his foot in frustration.

He’s quite right, Miss Unwin thought. After all, I was the one who put the idea into his head that we might be too late to get to the Gardens.

She folded
The Times
back, tucked it under her arm and set off again in the direction of Kensington Gardens as briskly as the hot sun would allow.

But at last they reached their rather dusty destination and Pelham could be left to run about on the grass. Miss Unwin seated herself hastily on a bench and once more opened
The Times
, nearly tearing its pages in her anxiety to get to the Letters to the Editor.

The Northumberland Gardens Tragedy

There it was.

She read, oblivious of the heat of the sun, of the other governesses and nursemaids and their charges, of everything.

Sir, It seems to be the general opinion that this murder was committed by some inmate or inmates of the house. In examining the evidence against all possible culprits it will be necessary to discard the argument that has been pretty extensively pressed – that a crime of such brutality can have been committed only by a member of the male sex. We know that women have murdered men, especially that women scorned have murdered their lovers, since the world began and will do so again before the world ends, and it remains to be seen whether a crime of that atrocity has been committed in Northumberland Gardens. Great stress has been laid upon the fact that Mr Thackerton was known as a person of the utmost respectability, but it is also known that his wife has been an invalid for many years and we have too many instances of men in that situation seeking solace elsewhere to be able to discount such a possibility altogether
.

No traces of the murder have been found on the premises with the single exception of the blood that was observed on the sleeve of the governess’s dress. Such a trace undoubtedly proves that she was in the library at some period, whether after the murder as she is said to have asserted or before it, as is equally likely, there is no evidence. What is clear, however, is that she is a person with entrée to that room, and it must be asked how often was she accustomed to avail herself of this privilege at those hours when, by the custom of the household, Mr Thackerton was alone there and had given orders that he was not to be disturbed
.

It is very possible that some or all of these questions have been answered satisfactorily, but it does not appear from the actions of the official investigators that they have been; they are in everybody’s mouth and in everybody’s mind, and it is in the interest of the governess, if she be innocent, that they shall be publicly met and dealt with
.

The letter was signed simply
Commonsense
.

Miss Unwin felt an appalled, outraged sense of invasion. It was as if a stranger, no, more, a whole band of strangers, had burst into her bedroom while she was in a state of undress. The inmost circumstances of her life were being bandied about ‘in everybody’s mouth’. She was being discussed in every detail as if she was the latest drama in the theatre or the price of shares in the Stock
Market. And, worse, things had been invented about her, wicked, impossible, evil things. Just for pleasure. For the pleasure of speculating.

About her. About herself.

In the strong sunshine she suddenly felt cold, as if she was sitting out on her bench on the bleakest day of winter.

These thoughts, which idle people were idly indulging in, must also be in the mind of someone as little idle as Sergeant Drewd.

Perhaps the Sergeant had read the letter. No, it was certain that he had. Perhaps he was even at this moment discussing with some superior officer at Great Scotland Yard whether the public outcry the letter represented gave them cause enough to make an arrest. Perhaps some such consultation had been responsible for the Sergeant’s curious absence from Northumberland Gardens ever since she had seen him, in his fearfully out-of-place brown suit, following the funeral procession in that four-wheeler.

She had found his absence, when she had had time to think about it, almost as disconcerting as his earlier presence. Could he be away investigating her own origins? Tracing back her life? And, if he were to find out the secret of her birth, would he see that as the famous motive he had said he needed in order to complete the case against her? Would he believe that Mr Thackerton had come to discover her lowly birth and, eager to protect his precious grandson from such contamination, was on the point of dismissing her, and that she had struck that dagger blow to keep her situation? Would that seem cause enough in his eyes for her to have committed murder? And if it did, would it in the hands of a savage prosecuting counsel be enough to damn her in court?

She told herself she was being foolish. And knew that this was only half-true.

Sergeant Drewd was a man who depended on success, and would snatch at anything to obtain it. This she was fully aware of, as aware as if he had boasted of it to her directly. His whole manner betrayed it.

Would Mr Commonsense’s letter in
The Times
added to what might have been found out about her past be enough to make the Sergeant arrest her?

And what could she do now to prevent him? Could she fly?
That was something she could certainly manage to do. The Sergeant, for all his suspicions, had done almost nothing to put a watch on her. No doubt he had calculated earlier that someone who was both a lady and a governess was not the stuff a fugitive was made of. As a lady she would be quickly enough traced, as a governess she would hardly have the resources to go far.

But she was, in truth, neither wholly lady nor wholly governess. True, she had scant resources, but she knew well how to live on the barest of means. She could make her way to St Giles’s or some other rookery where the police were afraid to venture except in raiding parties and find some way there to earn enough to keep body and soul together. Yes, and without sinking to the utmost degradation either. And as for the easily recognisable appearance of the lady, however much she had struggled to attain that, she could cast it off in an instant if the need were pressing enough.

Yet she knew that she was not going to run. She was not going to be chased from the field of battle by anybody, and especially not by Mr Commonsense of
The Times
. No, she must fight back.

The only pity of it was that she had had to delay as long as she had in her plan of going out to Maida Vale and there confronting Miss Rhoda Bond. Certainly, now she must make whatever excuses for absence she could and leave the house this very afternoon.

If Sergeant Drewd would let her.

She got up briskly from her bench, tucked the copy of
The Times
, hateful, hateful sheet, under her arm and went over to where Pelham was running backwards and forwards on the grass absorbed in pretending to be a railway train.

‘Shall we go down to see the boats at the Round Pond before we go home?’ she asked him.

She gave the boy his due share of time at the pond and brought him back to Northumberland Gardens just in time to wash before luncheon. No point in asking for permission to be away for an hour or two until later. Vilkins had said that Miss Bond went out driving in the Park each afternoon.

Nothing else to do to advance her case for the present than to make a quick dart into the library – everything there in its place as it had been before the murder, the heavy armchair in front of the fireplace, the long table with its burden of writing necessities
and that tall silverwork Testimonial – and to restore the copy of
The Times
to where it belonged.

Time, too, after luncheon and when Pelham had been settled down for his nap for her customary hour of reading to old Mrs Thackerton. Miss Unwin found her, in the heavy atmosphere of her sitting-room, where on this most sultry of days the fire had not for once been lit, even less inclined for conversation than usual. She wondered, indeed, whether she was not more seriously ill than her ordinary state of invalidism. Was she, perhaps, likely to join her dead husband before too long? Certainly she looked dreadfully pale and seemed, too, deeply preoccupied.

But this was not unwelcome. Had conversation been required, Miss Unwin doubted whether she would have been very coherent. The nearer she got to the time when she might leave to tackle Arthur Thackerton’s mistress and try to wring from her the truth about their relationship the more the danger of her situation crowded into her mind.

Would Sergeant Drewd, if he came back to the house now with proof of her own secret, penetrate to this room itself to make his arrest? Or would a servant merely be sent to request her presence somewhere else?

She brought herself back to Keble’s
Christian Year
, whose pious pages Mrs Thackerton had, since her bereavement, declared to be her sole reading matter.

‘Far better they should sleep awhile
Within the church’s shade,
Nor wake, until new heaven, new earth,
Meet for their eternal birth …’

But perhaps the Sergeant would not make an actual arrest. Perhaps she would be requested only to accompany him to the police station to be questioned there.

‘Then, pass, ye mourners, cheerly on
Through prayer unto the tomb,
Still, as ye watch life’s falling leaf,
Gathering for ever loss and grief,
Hope of new spring and endless home.’

‘That will do, child. You may go now.’

So, now to ask Mrs Arthur for permission to be absent for the second half of the afternoon. But would it be granted? What if it wasn’t? Would Mrs Arthur be unwilling to take the slight risk of leaving Mary to go with Pelham for his second walk of the day? Or had perhaps Sergeant Drewd requested her to see that their distrusted governess never left the house on her own?

At the door of the room, on the point of leaving, she stopped.

‘Mrs Thackerton?’

She had spoken quietly so as not to alarm, and there came no reply.

She half-turned back to the door again. The promise of some fresh air out in the corridor after the oppressive, medicaments-scented closeness of the sitting-room was a temptation in itself. But the thought of Mrs Arthur’s likely reception of her request drove her back inside again.

‘Mrs Thackerton?’

She had spoken quite loudly, more loudly indeed than she had intended.

‘What – What – What was that?’

‘It’s only me, Mrs Thackerton. I wanted to ask you something.’

Mrs Thackerton shook her head in pallid rejection.

‘Not now, my dear. I’m very weak today. I – I have undergone a great strain, a great strain.’

Again Miss Unwin almost lost heart. And again she thought of the consequences of a refusal from Mrs Arthur.

‘It’s only a small matter,’ she said hastily. ‘I wanted to go out shortly, and’

For a moment inspiration failed her. But it was for a moment only.

‘I want to visit an old friend,’ she said. ‘A friend of my childhood days who has fallen into poor circumstances and is ill. I thought that Mary could take little Pelham for his walk this afternoon. She has done so before, and she is a reliable girl.’

Mrs Thackerton raised her head a little from the plump dark silk cushion of the invalid sofa behind her.

‘My dear, you ought not to be asking me this. Especially not now when I am twice over no longer mistress of the house.’

There was a note of bitterness in her voice. Miss Unwin decided, in an instant, on a daring stroke.

‘Mrs Thackerton,’ she said, ‘I know that I ought to go to Pelham’s mother to ask this. But – but, may I be frank, I much suspect she would forbid my going. It would inconvenience her only a little, but it would

‘No. You have said enough.’

Had she failed?

A sudden cough shook Mrs Thackerton’s tired frame. Miss Unwin hastened to offer her the glass of sugar-sweetened water that stood on the little pie-crust table beside her sofa. She took a careful sip.

Then she spoke again.

‘My dear, there are some things that ought to be understood between people without the necessity of speech. Go to your sick friend when you wish, and if the need arises I shall say that I gave you permission.’

‘Oh, thank you. Thank you.’

Miss Unwin, leaving the sickly, overheated room, felt a jab of shame at having taken advantage of the kindness she had realised that Mrs Thackerton felt towards her, for whatever reason. But her back was to the wall.

Yes, she thought to herself as rather more than an hour later, she approached a small and very attractive house in Maida Vale, I must fight with any weapon that comes to hand now. Even to the point of trying to prove that Mrs Thackerton’s son – Mrs Thackerton who has never been other than kind to me – is the person who killed her husband. I must do it. Or Sergeant Drewd will try to prove that that person was myself. And, however guiltless I am, it is not impossible that, before a Judge and jury, he could succeed.

Miss Rhoda Bond’s house had a brightly polished brass bell beside a little door surrounded by bounteous, free-growing yellow roses. Miss Unwin took the bell-pull between two gloved fingers and tugged firmly.

Miss Unwin was left a long time waiting in the still oppressive sun outside Rhoda Bond’s neat little house for her pull at the bell to be answered. But she had no doubt that it should be answered. A twitch at a curtain as she had walked up the garden path had told her that.

The scent of all the yellow roses bowing and tumbling round the door, which had at first seemed delightfully sweet, soon became overpoweringly sickly to her. Her mind filled with more and more disquieting half-visions of the woman she had come to see. A kept woman. A person outside the bounds of society. Pitch, to touch which was to be defiled. And especially so for anyone who was only precariously in the world of the genteel and the respectable.

She wanted to put up the cotton umbrella she had brought with her to act as a parasol and shade herself from the hot sun’s rays. But to do that would be to admit to the watcher inside that she was being kept waiting longer than she found pleasant, and this was something she was not going to admit.