Untitled (8 page)

   She looks towards the policeman and opens her mouth to speak, but she lets out a sigh instead. There is nothing to be gained by remarking on this. It will only look worse for her.

   She must wait. Mr. Cartwright will return, and Mr. Robert, and her fate will be decided. Now she wonders about the sort of man Mr. Robert might be. The sort to send her away without a character just because he suspects her? The sort who thinks too highly of himself to do such a thing, yet who will find fault with her from now on and soon, in a few weeks, or maybe a few months, dismiss her over some other small matter?

   The policeman sets his cup back down in its saucer. With a loud sniff he strokes his chin and stares towards the door.

   "Fancy a slice of pie?" asks Mrs. Johnson.

   "Meat pie?"

   "If you like."

   "Thank you kindly. We were just about to eat when we were called off on another case, and then what with this right when we got back to the station—" He looks across the table at Jane as though this is her fault.

   Mrs. Johnson fetches a pie from the pantry and cuts a generous slice. When she passes it to him he says, "Having a run of bad luck in this street, aren't you?"

   "Not more than anywhere else, I'm sure," Mrs. Johnson tells him tartly.

   He picks up a fork but holds it almost accusingly at her. "That maid that fell from the window—that was near here, wasn't it."

   It's not a question. Mrs. Johnson wipes her hands carefully on the cloth hanging from her apron. "A terrible accident," she says. "Those young girls—they step onto the ledge to clean the windows. I've seen them do it—mop in one hand and the other on the frame like it's nothing to them that they could slip."

   "That was the second in a week, that one was. Had another do the same thing just a few streets away. We had an awful job trying to get her off the railings. Stuck fast on them she was." He gives a low chuckle. "Thought we was going to have to cut her off."

   He's just about to put a forkful of pie into his mouth when the door opens. Mr. Cartwright. Even as he unbuttons his coat his eyes swing over them all—Elsie at the sink, Mrs. Johnson at the stove, the policeman with his pie, Jane sitting rigidly across the table from him. He looks back at the policeman. "What's all this then?" he says.

   "Keeping an eye on the young person here." He puts the piece of pie in his mouth and points his fork at Jane.

   Mr. Cartwright shrugs himself out of his coat. Jane watches him—the careful movements, the way he folds the coat over his arm, the way he catches Mrs. Johnson's eye and hands the coat to her like a man about to fight. "Well, now," he says, coming close. "In my experience"—he sits down at the end of the table—"and I've been in service now—oh, let me see, going on forty years—young maids straight up from the country aren't known for being part of criminal gangs. I'd say"—he rests one finger at the corner of his mouth, as though he is thinking—"that somebody had been watching this household and found out a new maid had just taken up a situation here."

   "Would you, now?"

   "Yes, I would. That wouldn't have been difficult, would it? We're a private household, but our affairs aren't secret."

   The policeman is now hard at work on his pie. "Sounds to me," he says, "as though you're in the wrong line of business, being in service." He chews. "Maybe you should think about a change. With all your
experience
"—he wipes his mouth on the back of his hand— "they'd be sure to take you on at Scotland Yard."

   Mr. Cartwright smiles. He leans forward in a friendly way. "Tell me—how did our young maid here know she'd be the one answering the door? After all, it was only by chance that I had to go out on an errand just when Sarah was at the shops. And seeing as Jane was in the kitchen doing the mending—right, Mrs. Johnson?"

   "Right, Mr. Cartwright."

   "—ever since she cleared away luncheon, even if she
had
known, how could she have given a signal to her accomplice? Isn't that how it's done?"

   The policeman's pale brows stand out, light smudges against a face that is growing more heated. "The tales I could tell you of the craftiness of criminals—"

   "Well, this one wasn't so crafty. He left his hat upstairs. I noticed it straightaway."

   The policeman tries to hide his surprise with a cough, but Mr. Cartwright smiles.

   "Yes," he continues, "the hat on the stand upstairs is not Mr. Bentley's. I'm intimately acquainted with all his apparel. And that hat is not his. Indeed, Mr. Bentley's hat that was hanging there is gone. So I should say that the burglar took off with the wrong one, wouldn't you, Constable?"

   Only now does Jane lay her hands flat on the table and say, "Yes—that's right. There was already a hat on the stand."

   "Mr. Bentley's second best."

   Above them on the wall a bell rings. The labels are so dark with dirt that even if Jane turned around she would not be able to read which room it was for. Mr. Cartwright purses his lips. "Mrs. Robert Bentley," he announces, "needs me." He stands. "If you would like to view the hat—"

   With a grunt the policeman pushes away his plate and gets up. He takes a moment to brush the crumbs off the front of his uniform, then he follows Cartwright to the stairs.

   Mrs. Johnson takes up the plate and the half-eaten slice of pie. "Well, now," she says to Jane. "I daresay you're getting thirsty, love. How about a cup of tea?"

   He was in the morning room too, she is sure of it. Going through the papers. That mess in the study as though a storm had blown through—a ruse. Because whatever he wanted wasn't in there. No. The papers in the desk in the morning room must have been gone through. She imagines him carefully picking through them and wonders what he read, what he might have taken away with him that will not be discovered for weeks. For months even. Only, she thinks, he might use what he found before then.

   But there's nothing of her old life here, she tells herself, nothing that could have stowed away with her to London. Does this mean that Lizzie was innocent? Or that she didn't find anything and this man had to come to finish the job? She leans her head against the wooden frame of the sash. Maybe that's not what he's after. Yet what else could he have hoped to find?

   This morning she was going over the accounts, calculating how much money she and Robert have left, how long it will last them if they move to a smaller apartment in Paris. Was it her account book he was after? It is still safe in her portable desk upstairs. But she remembers using an old envelope for her calculations—names on it of her landlord in Paris, and her dressmaker. Where is it now? Taken away by one of the maids to be thrown on the fire? Or folded into his pocket? She cannot know. Such information seems suddenly dangerous. Would a little cleverness be enough to pull on such a small thread and unravel her life? Could he trace her back not only to Paris but from there to who she was before? She hadn't thought it possible. And yet, if he's clever—

   She looks up. Across the street a woman is outlined against the brightness of a window. She wears a cap and, as Mina sees as the woman steps back into the light, a white apron—a maid. It takes Mina a moment to understand that she must be visible to anyone who chances to look over to this side of Cursitor Road, and she straightens herself. Slowly, she lets down the sash. She is merely a woman who needed a breath of fresh air. She makes sure to close the curtains, too, then sits back on the bed. It is hard, and too small for two people, for this is the room Robert had growing up. She lifts her fingers to her mouth and catches the edge of a ragged nail in her teeth.

   When she and Robert arrived here the house felt hollow—his mother keeping to her bed, the rooms ghostly in their dust sheets. Mrs. Bentley used to be a formidable woman, by all accounts. Maybe that's why the servants have taken liberties. It's their revenge. She imagines them like mice that creep out at night, or when doors are closed. Nosing around in places they should not be; looking for crumbs, for secrets to feed their curiosity with, or their greed. She has tried her best to scare them back into their place, but they hold her eye a little too long when she talks to them, as though they have uncovered a truth: that they are every bit as good as her.

   The house doesn't feel hollow anymore. Instead it has pulled in so uncomfortably tight around her that she finds it hard to breathe.

        
N
ight has fallen, the lamps have been lit, and the rooms look more splendid. Gone are the faded patches of wallpaper, the grime in the corners of the ceilings, the paleness of the carpets where threads have started to show through. As Jane opens each room she sees the gleam of polished furniture, the dance of light on the glass domes covering clocks and stuffed birds, the rich reds and oranges of paintings that had looked lifeless in daylight. But she does not have the time to be admiring anything. There are fires to be laid, and the whole frantic business of dinner for Mr. and Mrs. Robert to be got through.

   Did she arrive only a day ago? Weariness has settled deep into her bones, and she could believe that she has spent half her life in this place, treading up and down the stairs with buckets and mops, emptying ashes and cinders out of fireplaces, washing her hands again and again so that they are clean enough to smooth sheets and carry trays. Was it only this afternoon that she was sitting at the kitchen table with a policeman keeping an eye on her? It feels as though weeks have passed since then.

   She gets onto her knees to lay rolls of newspaper and splints of wood across the grate in the drawing room fireplace. Then she picks lumps of coal from the scuttle and lays them on top, one by one. She is tired, and the next lump slips from the tongs and falls into her lap, and she could cry to see the dark trail it leaves across her apron when she'd thought to wear it another day at least. And her hand—without thinking she grabbed for the coal with her bare hand, and it is smudged too. Now she will have to be careful not to touch her face, or the paintwork of the door. She will have to go all the way downstairs to wash before she can turn back the bed. The very thought of it—of all those stairs—makes her long for this day to be over so she can curl under her blankets and give herself up to sleep.

   Her stomach murmurs and she presses both hands against it. Mrs. Johnson served beef and potatoes, but her stomach was so clenched she barely ate a mouthful. A hot meal for supper—Mrs. Saunders would have called it an extravagance, because didn't they have a proper meal at midday? Only, thought Jane, if you call the leavings from the upstairs dinner a proper meal, and only those leavings not good enough to be served again as soup or a stew.

   She loads more coal onto the fire—too much, perhaps—and takes a match from the mantelpiece. It catches easily enough and, with the fireguard in place, she sits back on her heels with her hands held out to catch the first flare of heat.

   There's a knock at the door. Sarah. "Mr. Robert wants to see you in the study," she says.

   "Me?"

   "Of course
you.
" She doesn't smile, just pulls the door closed again.

   Jane wonders: Is this it? Has enough suspicion clung to her that already he wants her gone? Or, now that the question of her honesty has been brought up, has he asked to see her letter of reference and seen something wrong in it? But then, wouldn't it be Mrs. Robert who'd have asked to see her? Jane's hands are shaking as she gets to her feet and pushes a strand of hair back from her face. Too late, she realizes she must have left a smear of coal dust across her cheek. So she stands and peers into the mirror above the mantel piece, a mirror not intended for such a purpose, evidently, for it is so high that she must strain to see herself. The heat of the fire laps around her ankles. She stands there anyway, rubbing her cheek with a corner of her apron until her skin is so red that it's hard to tell if there's any trace of coal left. From her dress rises the unpleasant smell of hot cotton.

   The slow ticking of the grandfather clock fills the hallway. It needs dusting—she notices that as she passes it and turns under the stairs to the study. Talking to Mr. Robert will only delay getting her work finished. As it is, she has been behind ever since she was made to sit idle at the kitchen table, watching the policeman eat his pie.

   She knocks on the door. Three gentle raps.

   "Come in." The voice is sharp, and from it she expects a small man, but the Mr. Robert she finds standing by the fire is tall and slim, and at most in his thirties. His face is all straight lines, from the crisp part through the middle of his hair to his trimmed brown moustache. The rest of him is in disarray—his shirtsleeves rolled up, his collar crooked, his jacket slung carelessly over the arm of a chair. He is intent on the sheet of paper in his hands. Papers lie everywhere—over the floor, on the desk, caught in the aspidistra by the window. On the armchair by the fire sits an untidy pile that he sets the sheet onto, then he glances over at her.

   He is, she thinks, nothing at all like the intruder. "Sir?" she says.

   "Ah. Jane, isn't it?"

   "Yes, sir."

   "Yes." He stoops to gather up another handful of papers. "Quite a mess this burglar of ours left behind him. No doubt he was looking for something of value and all he found"—and here he spreads his hands—"are these papers. He must have been somewhat disappointed."