Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [101]
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
‘She was an old lady,’ Mrs Quivering said. ‘Her heart failed, that’s all.’
We were in the housekeeper’s room, just the two of us. Mrs Quivering was sitting behind her desk, I – at her invitation – in a chintz armchair. She was being kind to me, in that half-fearful way people have when they think you might fly apart from shock, like a glass vase shattering. It was just after one o’clock in the morning. The curtains were drawn over the windows, two candles burning on the mantelpiece. One was almost finished, the flame dropping right down below the candle-holder then rising in a blue splutter.
‘Yes.’
‘She must have gone upstairs to make sure the children were asleep. She knew Betty couldn’t be with them.’
‘Yes.’
I had not told her, and had no intention of telling her, that Mrs Beedle had gone to the schoolroom to meet me.
‘She was devoted to her grandchildren,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘It’s possible that she felt herself becoming faint and went to the schoolroom to sit down. Then she must have fallen and hit her head on something – the rocking horse, perhaps.’
The story was improving all the time. We both knew very well that she was talking nonsense. Mrs Quivering had organised the removal of the body from the schoolroom to Mrs Beedle’s bedroom. I’d heard her intake of breath when two footmen brought the body into the schoolroom corridor, and the lamp she was holding had swung wildly, sending waves of light all round us. Betty had been summoned and had hustled the children away somewhere, so, apart from the footmen, we were alone. It had looked for a moment as if the infallible Mrs Quivering would collapse like any ordinary woman. Hardly surprising. The grey hair above Mrs Beedle’s left ear was clotted with blood, the side of her silk dress soaked with it. Mrs Quivering had to run for towels from the nursery bathroom because blood was seeping on to the carpet. By then, she was in control again. She told the footmen to carry the body down the back stairs, so as not to alarm any guests who might be going to their rooms, and left me to hold the lamp for them. Then she disappeared for a while.
I was sure she’d gone to report to Sir Herbert. What else could she do? I imagined him called away from his port and his guests, some hurried consultation in an ante-room. At any rate, it can’t have lasted long because by the time we reached Mrs Beedle’s bedroom, Mrs Quivering was there to meet us. She told the footmen to lay the body on the bed then sent them to wait outside, lit candles and dispatched me to the kitchen for hot water, ordering me not to talk to anybody on the way. I came back with it to find that she’d stripped Mrs Beedle of her black silk and replaced it with a long nightdress. Mrs Beedle looked older and smaller in death, false teeth gone and mouth open. I thought of the immense effort of will it must have cost her to keep alive and protect her family, and was close to tears, knowing that I’d failed her after all.
Mrs Quivering told me sharply to come and hold the bowl while she sponged the worst of the blood off the long grey hair and dabbed it dry with a towel. She made me rummage in drawers for a white muslin scarf and a nightcap. We used the scarf to bind up the sagging jaw then put on the nightcap over the damp hair and injured head. When we left, she ordered one of the footmen to stay on guard by the closed door. By that time, the gentlemen guests had joined the ladies in the drawing room and were listening to music. I heard a snatch of a Vivaldi oboe and violin concerto as we came into the kitchen corridor with our bloodstained towels and water bowl, and imagined Daniel with his fiddle to his chin, just a few rooms