Page 24 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

For a brief moment, she had her reward in his peacocky look of pleasure, before it was replaced with a scowl. ‘Think yourself so clever, don’t you?’ he shouted after her, as she clattered on down the stairs. ‘But I’ll find out!’

It was not long before they all found out. As Rose passed Mrs Webster’s room, she saw Ida, the head kitchen-maid in there, looking anxious.

‘Rose – a minute,’ Mrs Webster called.

Oh, Lord , Mrs Oxlea’s drunk again , Rose thought, stopping. I warned her not to go to that bottle. ‘Yes, Mrs Webster?’

‘You talked to Mrs Oxlea earlier, didn’t you?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Rose hedged.

‘Brigid saw you coming away from her room,’ Ida said. ‘She was in the still-room for some soap when you come past.’

‘Oh – yes, I might have had a word,’ Rose said vaguely. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘She’s not come to start work, and it’s well past time,’ said Ida.

‘Well, start without her,’ Rose said impatiently. ‘You’ve done it often enough before.’

‘I was, we have, I put the girls on the vegetables, but I want to get Lady Stainton’s posset started’ – Kitty was still having invalid meals in her room – ‘but the lemons are in the larder and Mrs Oxlea’s took the key with her.’

‘Why don’t you ask her for it?’ Rose said.

‘I did. I knocked at her door and called out, but she didn’t answer,’ Ida said. ‘I knocked for ages in case she was asleep, but nothing. I don’t know if she’s gone out somewhere.’

‘Was she all right when you spoke to her?’ Mrs Webster asked.

‘Well, you know her,’ Rose said.

‘Was she drunk?’ Webster asked bluntly.

‘No,’ Rose said, glad to be able to tell the truth. ‘Maybe she went out for a walk.’

‘She doesn’t like walking,’ Ida said. ‘She doesn’t like going out. She never goes further than the yard. I looked for her out there, and all round here. She must be in her room.’

‘Did you look ?’

Ida was shocked. ‘I’d never go in her room, not without she asked me. You don’t.’ In a house with so little privacy, someone’s own room was sacrosanct.

‘You know her best, Rose,’ said Webster. ‘See if you can get her to answer.’

All three went along Piccadilly to the door, gathering a small trail of other servants, keeping a discreet distance, but agog with interest. Anything to vary the monotony of life.

Mrs Oxlea had been a source of entertainment on occasion in the past, when in her cups.

She had once thrown a sauce boat at a footman who was hurrying her for the gravy for upstairs dinner; another time she had tripped over something and stabbed herself in the foot – the knife had gone through her shoe and missed her actual toes, but the point had stuck in the floorboards and it had been pretty exciting all the same.

Rose knocked and called out. ‘Deena? It’s Rose. Are you there?’ Silence. ‘You’re late starting dinner. Are you all right?’ More silence.

Rose looked at Mrs Webster and shrugged.

‘Try the door,’ the housekeeper said. When Rose hesitated, she added, ‘She might be ill.’

Rose knocked again, and called, ‘Deena, if you don’t answer me, I warn you, I’m coming in.

’ Another silence. ‘All right, I told you!’ She grasped the door handle, turned, and pushed.

‘It’s bolted,’ she reported to Mrs Webster.

‘She must be in there.’ She put her ear to the door and listened, but could hear nothing – no sobbing, anyway, thank God.

‘Maybe she’s asleep.’ But even in drunken sleep, she’d always woken when the door was thumped enough.

Mrs Webster turned the gawping crowd to the right-about, seized William from among them, and ushered him, Rose, and a wooden chair outside. ‘Not you, Ida. Go and get as much done as you can. The posset will have to wait. I’ll help you with it later if I have to.’

‘What are you afraid of?’ Rose whispered to the housekeeper as they made their way through the chain of small yards outside that flanked the lower floor of the house.

Mrs Webster shot her a brief glance, white in the gloom. ‘I’ve seen a drunk who drowned in their own vomit,’ she replied. ‘If she’s not answering . . .’

Rose blenched, but said, ‘She’s never sick when she’s drunk.’

Webster didn’t say, There’s always a first time . She didn’t need to.

Because the house was on a hill, the lower floor was below ground at the back, but at ground level, under the terrace, at the front.

Along the sides, the rooms had small windows at graduated height, all barred.

Only Rose was sure which one was the cook’s.

William placed the chair and climbed up on it.

‘Well?’ Rose said impatiently.

‘I can’t see,’ William mumbled. ‘There’s something in the way. She’s hung up some clothes or something by the window.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ Rose said. ‘Here, get down, let me see.’

William climbed down with bad grace. ‘You won’t see any more’n me,’ he muttered, giving her a hand up.

Rose looked, then after a moment got down, her hand over her mouth.

‘What is it?’ Mrs Webster prompted. ‘Did you see her?’

Rose shook her head, then nodded, then at last removed her hand. ‘You’ll have to break the door down,’ she said in a curiously toneless voice.

William belatedly revised what he had seen. ‘Oh, my good gawd,’ he said, his voice high, like a child’s.

The cook’s room had once been a still-room, so the door was solid.

The bolt was a good, strong one, and in the end, the carpenter had to be sent for, to chisel out around the hinges until they could be unscrewed and the door removed that way.

By then, there was no one in the house who didn’t know what was happening.

His lordship, rather grave and pale, came down and took charge of the operation.

Uncle Sebastian took charge upstairs. Mrs Webster corralled the staff in the servants’ dining room with bread and cheese to keep them occupied.

Moss made the footmen take up cold meat, biscuits and wine for an upstairs scratch meal that no one much wanted, then retired to his own room to finish off the bottles he had decanted.

Miss Taylor went to see to the dowager, who had retired to her room, and had her head bitten off.

Miss Hatto went to sit with Kitty under Giles’s orders, but did not obey his order to tell her nothing.

She’d find out in the long run, and in the meantime it would only fret her to be kept in the dark, when something was clearly up.

By the time Gale, the carpenter, got the door off, Dr Welkes had arrived in his pony trap, but there was nothing he could do.

William was beyond being helpful, and Cyril, the other footman, was too small, but Speen surprisingly pushed his way in and said calmly, ‘Here, let me. I seen this before. All right, Mr Gale, I’ll take her weight, you hop on that chair and cut the rope. ’

Gale, who had been silent since the door came open, blinked at the chair and said, ‘Beggin’ your pardon, sir, but I’m a big man, and that chair don’t look—’

‘Never mind,’ said Speen quickly. ‘I’m light, I’ll get up. You take a holt on the body – like this.’

Gale cringed so much that Rose wanted to slap him, but he did as he was told, and in a moment the body was down and laid on the bed.

Rose took the place beside her, to see the decencies preserved.

Dr Welkes leaned over with his stethoscope, but it was, of course, only for show, Rose thought.

You couldn’t be in any doubt, if you had caught a glimpse of that face . . .

‘Will it go down?’ she whispered to the doctor.

He glanced at her, surprised, then his face softened as he realised it was not prurient curiosity. Touch her not scornfully, think of her mournfully, gently and humanly , he thought. ‘I’m afraid not,’ he said quietly. ‘It’s fixed in death. Were you her friend?’

Rose couldn’t accept any credit. ‘She didn’t have any friends,’ she said. ‘But she talked to me.’

‘There will have to be an inquest,’ Welkes said, straightening and looking at Giles. ‘I’m sorry, my lord, but it’s required in these cases. With the door being bolted from the inside, though, there won’t be any doubt . . .’

‘Quite,’ said Giles. He looked for a moment at Rose, as if he wanted to ask her the one question: why ? But he didn’t. Instead, he said to the housekeeper. ‘Did she have any family?’

‘No, my lord, not that anyone knew about,’ said Mrs Webster.

Giles thought a moment. ‘Then we had better see to it ourselves.’ He looked around. ‘It’s cold in this room. She can stay here until the morning. Then someone will have to be sent for, to lay her out. And the undertaker—’

‘I’ll have a message sent to Mr Folsham first thing, my lord,’ Mrs Webster said. ‘He’ll bring a woman to do what’s necessary.’

Giles glanced at Rose again, then said to Gale, ‘Can you put the door back in place for now?’

Gales pulled himself together, though his voice was wobbly. ‘I can fix the hinges again, my lord, temporary.’

‘Do it. And,’ to Mrs Webster, ‘have someone stand guard on the door. We don’t want everyone coming to stare.’

‘I’ll see to it, my lord.’

Rose was about to offer to sit by the bed, hold vigil over the departed, but at the last moment she kept silent.

For all her pity for the departed, she did not want to stay in the room with that face.

And the body wasn’t really Deena. She had gone somewhere, to be with her dead son, presumably.

What was left was no more her than were her discarded clothes.