Dinner had indeed been a wretched affair, Charles thought. The food had been cold, the Duke and Duchess had had nothing to say to each other or to anyone else, and even Kate’s gaiety, usually so spontaneous, had seemed forced. Marlborough cut short the usual after-dinner port and cigars and retired, leaving Winston free to go off to confer with Stevens over the wage book, and Charles to go in search of the housekeeper.
Mrs. Raleigh did not know in which room of Housemaids’ Heights Kitty had slept-did not know, it appeared, much at all about the housemaids’ habits. She had seemed at a loss when Charles said he wanted to have a look in Kitty’s trunk, and had rung the bell for Ruth, who had been Kitty’s roommate. It was Ruth who, carrying a candle, showed him with alacrity up the steep stairs to the dark, chilly room in which she now slept alone, at the very top of the tower.
Ruth, a plain-faced young girl with thick brown hair, lit a second candle from the first and pointed to a trunk in the corner. “It’s the blue wool I’d like, sir,” she said eagerly. “The one with the blue and black braid. It’s for my sister, y’see. She’s gettin’ married, sir, and she’ll be ever so glad to have it.”
Somewhat mystified, Charles said, “A dress, is it? You’ll have to speak to Mrs. Raleigh about that, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, sir,” Ruth said, quite clearly disappointed. “I thought you was going to give me-”
“No,” Charles said firmly, “Whatever it is, it’s not mine to give. Thank you, Ruth. You can go back to your work now.”
With a resigned curtsey, Ruth departed, taking one of the candles to light her way down the stairs. In the flickering light of the remaining candle, Charles surveyed the small, bare room, which was scarcely larger than a cubicle. It contained little furniture, only a broken chair, a small chest of drawers on which sat a badly chipped china pitcher and basin, and an iron cot covered with a thin straw mattress scarcely wide enough for one, let alone two. An uncurtained casement window was set into the stone outer wall, overlooking a landscape palely illuminated by a quarter moon. Streaks of occasional lightning split the night sky, and thunder rumbled not far away.
Charles placed the candle on the floor beside the cheap cardboard trunk, knelt down, and raised the lid. The inside smelt strongly of camphor. He took out a rolled-up cloak, a skirt and white blouse and some undergarments, and the blue wool dress that Ruth had wanted, carefully folded with camphor balls in tissue paper. There was also a pair of rough boots badly in need of new heels, a slim volume of The Young Girl’s Guide to Domestic Service and a copy of Self-Help, by Samuel Smiles, its pages dog-eared and pencil-marked. Charles riffled through it, noting that the sentence, “Heaven helps those who help themselves,” reoccured and was underlined in several places. As well, there was a small enamel box containing an assortment of buttons and pins, a spool of white thread with a needle stuck in it, a short length of narrow black velvet ribbon, a chipped ceramic dish bearing colored pictures of the King and Queen, and a silver-colored hair ornament. A worn leather purse contained two half-crowns and several shillings. And that was all.
Charles frowned and picked up the candle, holding it so that the light fell into the empty trunk. He ran the flat of his hand across the inside of the lid and the bottom of the trunk and on each of its four sides, inspecting the glued-on wallpaper lining. On the left side, his fingers felt a ridge, and on closer inspection, he saw that the paper lining had been carefully pulled back at the top, creating a kind of pocket into which an envelope had been slipped.
There was nothing written on the outside of the tan-colored envelope, and it was unsealed. Inside, there were three folded pieces of paper. One appeared to be a character reference, signed by someone identified as the housekeeper at Carleton House, Manchester, and bearing a date of approximately two years previous.
Another was a short article clipped from a newspaper, headlined “Crime Mastermind at Work.” A certain Richard Turner, Scotland Yard detective, was quoted as saying that several recent thefts appeared to have been carried out by the same organization and masterminded by a man whose identity remained a mystery but whom the criminal element and those who made their livings by breaking the law respectfully (if somewhat jocularly) styled as “Mr. Napoleon.”
The third was a small, smudged snapshot of a gentleman in a top hat and evening dress, emerging from a carriage. He had been caught by the camera in a full-face view, looking up, but the image was badly out of focus. On the back was penciled, in a labored script, the words Jermyn Street.
For a moment, Charles studied the photograph, following in his mind the sequence of events that might have brought it into Kitty’s possession, imagining the uses she might have put it to, or intended to put it to. If this was what he thought it might be, it was a dangerous weapon-but perhaps more dangerous to the one who held it than to the one against whom it was meant to be used. Dangerous enough to spell death? he wondered. Yes, on balance, he thought so. Blackmail was not a game to be played by the untutored or the unwary.
He looked at the photograph again, feeling as if there were something familiar about the figure. But when he could not think what it was, he returned it to the envelope and slipped the envelope into his pocket. He then replaced the clothing and other belongings and got to his feet.
He stood for a moment over the open trunk, regarding its meager contents, feeling the pathos of this small, sad collection of items, mute testimony-perhaps the only testimony there would ever be-to its owner’s personality, to her uniqueness and individuality. He had no evidence that the girl was dead, but he felt in his heart that she was. Whoever Kitty had been or hoped to be, it was all here in front of him, and there was woefully little of it.
Charles had closed the trunk and straightened up when something else occurred to him. He set down the candle, lifted the trunk lid again, and took out the blue wool dress, still folded in tissue. He laid it carefully on Ruth’s narrow cot, took a gold sovereign out of his pocket, and slipped it under a fold of the braid-trimmed bodice.
Then he descended the stair. He had one more search to make that evening: He was going to Gladys Deacon’s room to have a look at her diary.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
How Grand is the Life of a Poacher. Yet it is more Grand to learn the Habbits of Game… If I had been Born an idiot and unfit to carry a gun-though with Plenty of Cash-they would have called me a Grand Sportsman. Being Born Poor, I am called a Poacher.
Badger had been on the Blenheim lake, man and boy, for nearly seventy years. His father had maintained the Blenheim Fishery before him, and his grandfather and his great-grandfather before that, so that Blenheim’s lake was not only a family occupation, it ran in Badger’s blood.
The great, sinuous lake, which occupied an area of some hundred and fifty acres, had not always been there, of course. Before there was a lake, there had been only the pretty little river, the shallow, rippling River Glyme, meandering lazily between steep, wooded banks through Rosamund’s Meadow, where sheep were put to graze under the frowning brow of old Henry’s stone castle on the brink above.
That had been a great many years ago, centuries, even, but a pen-and-ink drawing of the drowned river, its meadows and cliffs and the looming castle, hung on the wall in Badger’s cottage. The drawing had been done in a rare moment of idleness by Badger’s great-great-grandfather, who had an artist’s eye and had left a yellowed portfolio of other sketches in mute and moving testimony to a forgotten past: the ancient buildings of Old Woodstock; a race meeting on the Four-Mile Course on the high ground north of the old king’s palace; and the palace itself, where the great Queen Elizabeth, then a princess and a threat to her Popish sister Mary, had been imprisoned in the gate house, which had been reduced to a ruin of rubble-stones by the later bombardments of the Civil War.