Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [53]
‘Miss Lock?’
Celia’s voice, with its little lisp. I turned.
‘I need very much to speak to you,’ she whispered.
‘Now?’
‘No. Tomorrow. Will you meet me and not tell anybody?’
‘When?’
‘Early, very early. I hardly sleep. Six o’clock in the flower garden.’
‘Celia?’
Mrs Beedle’s voice, sharply, from the drawing room.
‘You will, won’t you? Please.’
I nodded. She put a finger to her lips and turned away. I followed Betty and the children back up the horseshoe staircase, still feeling the pressure of Celia’s fingers on my arm.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Later, when the children were in bed and Betty Sims and I were sharing supper in the schoolroom, I asked her where the flower garden was.
‘Right-hand side of the house looking out, behind the big beech hedge.’
She showed no curiosity about why I wanted to know, because by then I’d asked her a lot of other questions about the house and the Mandevilles – all perfectly reasonable for a new governess. She’d been there thirteen years, from a few months before the birth of Master Charles, but her time of service with Lady Mandeville went back longer than that.
‘She wasn’t Lady Mandeville then, of course, she was Mrs Pencombe. I came to her as nursemaid when her son Stephen was six years old and she was confined with what turned out to be her daughter Celia.’
‘So you’ve known Celia from a baby?’
I wanted to know everything I could about Celia. It might help me decide how far to trust her.
‘From the first breath that she drew.’
‘What was she like as a child?’
‘Pretty as a picture and sweet winning ways. But headstrong. She was always a child that liked her own way.’
‘What happened to Mr Pencombe?’
‘He died of congestion to the lungs when Celia was six years old. We thought we’d lose Mrs Pencombe too, from sheer grief. It was a love match, you see. With her looks, she could have married anybody in London.’
‘And yet she must have married Sir Herbert quite soon afterwards.’
Betty put down her slice of buttered bread and gave me a warning look.
‘Two years and three months, and I hope you’re not taking it on yourself to criticise her for that.’
‘Indeed not.’
‘What would anyone have done in her place? Mr Pencombe hadn’t been well advised in the investments he made and he left her with nothing but debts and two children to bring up. She was still a fine-looking woman, but looks don’t last for ever.’
‘Did she love Sir Herbert?’
‘A woman’s lucky if she marries for love once over. I don’t suppose there’s many manage it twice. May I trouble you to pass the mustard?’
That was her way of telling me I was on the edge of trespassing. It might also have been a gentle hint that she’d made a comfortable little camp for herself and the children in this great house and that it was kind of her to let me into it. At first I took her achievement for granted and it was only when I began to learn more about the household that I appreciated her quiet cleverness. The fact was that we should not have been enjoying our ham, tea and good fresh bread in the schoolroom at all. For all her long service, Betty as nursery maid was only entitled to a place about halfway down the table in the servants’ hall – well above kitchen maids but a notch below the ladies’ maids. I as governess – stranded somewhere between servant and lady – would have been permitted the lonely indulgence of eating in my own room. Over the years, patient as a mouse making its nest, Betty had built up such a network of little privileges and alliances that the nursery area was hers to command. We had our own tiny kitchen with an oil burner for making warm drinks and a bathroom for the children’s use, grandly equipped with a fixed bath, water closet, piped cold water and cans of hot water carried up twice a day by Tibby, the schoolroom maid. Betty was bosom friends with Sally the bread and pastry cook, so tidbits arrived almost daily from the kitchen, in exchange for Betty’s sewing skills in maintaining