Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [77]
On Monday morning I woke with my eyes still tired from all that penmanship, body stiff and weary after an uneasy night. The thought of being under the same roof as the fat man had kept snatching me back from the edge of sleep. I fumbled in the half dark with the buttons and buckles of my boy’s clothes, hating them for the memory of Mr Brighton’s hands. No ride on Rancie this morning. The delight of that had been lost in what followed it and I had more serious things to do, although how poor Rancie was to be given her exercise was one of the thoughts that had nagged at my brain through the night. I hurried down the back stairs, through the room of the chamber pots and across the courtyard.
When I came to the drive and took the turning for the back road, the clouds in the east were red-rimmed, the sky overcast and rain threatening. About a hundred yards down, to the right of the road, was the big dead oak tree. On the other occasions I’d passed there had been two or three crows sitting on it, but there were none that morning. I don’t know why I noticed that. Perhaps I sensed something, as dogs and horses do. I passed the tree and had my back to it when a voice came from the other side of the trunk.
‘Good morning, Miss Lock’.
A woman’s voice. An elderly voice. Even before I turned round I knew who I’d see, though it was so wildly unlikely that she’d be there in the early hours of the morning. She’d come out from behind the tree and was standing there dressed exactly as she always was, in her black dress and black-and-white widow’s cap, ebony walking cane in her hand. She stood where she was, clearly expecting me to walk towards her. I did.
‘Well, aren’t you going to take off your cap to me?’
Confused, I snatched off my boy’s cap. My face, my whole body felt as red as hot lava while her cool old eyes took in everything about me, from rag-padded high-lows to disorderly hair.
‘I wondered where those clothes had got to,’ she said. ‘Where are you going so early, if I might ask?’
I didn’t answer, conscious of the two letters padding out my pockets and sure she was aware of them too.
‘It’s going to rain,’ she said. You are likely to get wet before you reach the Silver Horseshoe, Miss Lock.’
‘Oh.’
‘So I hope you have those papers well wrapped up. It would be a pity if they were spoilt, after all your careful copying.’
‘Oh.’
I was numb, expecting instant dismissal or even arrest.
‘So you had better hurry, hadn’t you?’ she said.
‘Umm?’
She gave a sliver of a smile at my astonishment.
‘May I ask for whom you are spying? Is it the Prime Minister? I wrote to him and to the Home Secretary. I was afraid that they’d taken no notice of me, but it seems one of them has after all.’ Then, when I didn’t answer. ‘Well, it’s no matter and I’m sure it is your duty not to tell me. I did not know that they used women. Very sensible of them.’
‘You mean …?’
‘Only I must impress on you, and you must pass this on to whoever is employing you, action must be taken at once. This nonsense has gone quite far enough, and it must stop before somebody dies.’
No smile now. Her hand had closed round the top of her cane, as if she were trying to squeeze sap out of the long-dead ebony.
‘Somebody has already died,’ I said.
‘All the more reason to stop it then. What are you waiting for? Hurry.’
I went. When I looked back from a bend in the road there was only the oak tree, no sign of her.
There was a letter for Celia at the stables that Monday morning, but nothing from Mr Blackstone. On Tuesday, when Mrs Beedle came up to see the children at their lessons, she gave not the slightest sign that she regarded me