Page 87 of The Housekeeper's Secret

‘Well, I never saw it,’ Susan said tearfully. ‘I’ve got an instinct when it comes to reading a person’s character, and I never suspected a thing.’

‘I’m afraid that says more about your instinct than Mr Arden’s character,’ Henderson drawled. ‘I imagine the judge who sentenced him to six months in Norwich Gaol with hard labour was going on his instinct too… and the evidence of four silver serving spoons, stolen from Ward Abbey and found in Arden’s room. Of course, the young housemaid who let him into the house and fell for his charm and that handsome face probably felt she had an instinct for character too. Who can blame her? He was a very plausible fellow.’

Mrs Furniss pressed her napkin to her mouth and kept it there.

‘I had my suspicions about him too,’ Henderson went on. ‘Which was why I did a little research… asked a few questions. Ward Abbey may be a long way from Coldwell, but it’s one of Lord Halewood’s properties. Sir Randolph is a good friend of Viscount Frensham, Lord Halewood’s eldest son, so I am well acquainted with his valet. Arden would have perhaps been wise to change his name on his release from prison.’

‘How?’

Everyone looked round in surprise. You tended to forget Miss Dunn was there, since she hardly ever troubled herself to speak. Her tone was almost accusing, and she was staring at Henderson with a mixture of challenge and dislike.

‘How did he get the key to the library?’

Henderson, who was about to lift a spoonful of plum pudding to his mouth, paused. ‘My dear Miss Dunn, a fellow like that’—his eyes slid along the table, towards Mrs Furniss—‘will always find a way.’

Returning his gaze to the bowl in front of him, he frowned, then carefully extracted something from his pudding. ‘Ah, the sixpence…’ He held it aloft. ‘It seems I’m the one fortune has favoured.’

As bloody always, thought Eliza bitterly.

The bothy was in an advanced state of dereliction, its doorway a gaping hole of tumbled stone beneath a tilting lintel, its roof a tattered patchwork of slipped slates and broken rafters. Through a hole above the gable, Jem could see a torn scrap of indigo sky, pinned with a single star.

The moors were dotted with structures like this, built at intervals along the ancient packhorse trails, their crumbling ruins used these days by sheep to shelter in. This one had the remnants of a fireplace, in which Jem had been able to get a small blaze going, using one of his precious matches and dried leaves from the floor, along with an old bird’s nest. A person could easily perish out on the exposed moorland in weather like this (perhaps that was what Henderson had hoped), so he was glad of the meagre fire and the sheltering walls, despite the reek of sheep.

He had managed to sleep for a few hours, once dawn had unfurled its pink streamers across the sky. Huddled into his jacket, wearing all the clothes he had, it seemed he had slept the short day away and woke to the sky drained of light, the star hovering above the broken-down barn. The symbolism wasn’t lost on him on that Christmas night, though he had never been able to muster much in the way of faith. If anything, his current predicament—frozen, aching, hungry—made him less inclined to believe. Surely no labouring woman or her newborn would survive conditions like this? Maybe it was a good deal warmer in Bethlehem.

He crouched by the smouldering fire and blew on his hands. It was only for a few more hours. Just before first light he would head back to Coldwell and find shelter in the park, close to the church. With any luck, they would think he was far away by now, and not coming back, and the snow would have melted enough for his footsteps to be lost.

He wondered if Kate had got his note. If, in all the commotion around his departure (and he could only begin to imagine that), she had thought to look in the Chinese vase, and knew that whatever Henderson said, he hadn’t abandoned her; that he would be waiting for her in the church at three o’clock on Boxing Day. Only a few more hours. By this time tomorrow, he would have had a chance to see her and explain and—please God—persuade her to go with him. Or have arranged for her to join him very soon.

Please God.

Staring up at the distant star he mouthed the words, so that they formed themselves into wisps of white breath against the deepening blue.

It was funny how the most cynical nonbeliever could muster a flicker of faith if he was desperate enough.

I will get through this.

Kate repeated the words inside her head as she went through the motions of overseeing the clearing up after Christmas dinner.

It won’t always feel this bad.

But on that dark afternoon in the dying of the year, it was hard to imagine a time when she would be happy again, or even anything approaching content. The future seemed as dreary as the December day. A restless despair pulsed inside her. She wanted to go upstairs to the footmen’s attic and search Jem’s room for a clue, or any trace of him left behind. She wanted to leave the oppressive house and go out into the fading light to follow his footsteps for as far as they would lead her. She wanted to stand on the top of the hill and scream out her rage until her lungs were scoured out, or fling herself onto her bed, burying her face in sheets that might yet bear some faint scent of his skin.

But she could do none of those things. And so, she moved mechanically through the familiar tasks, like a tinplate automaton.

When she was collecting the red ironstone serving dishes from the scullery to put away for another year, she remembered the Chinese vase.

She didn’t care that Susan and Doris were standing at the sink, elbows-deep in greasy water, or that Eliza and Abigail were whisking in and out, still bringing in dirty dishes from the servants’ hall. Now that she had thought of it, she couldn’t wait until the scullery was empty to see if Jem had left a message—some word of reassurance that Henderson was lying.

Seizing the vase, she thrust her hand into it, turning it upside down and shaking it.

There was nothing there.

‘Something wrong, Mrs Furniss?’

Susan’s abrupt question made her jump. The vase slipped through her fingers and shattered on the tiled floor.

Joseph was coming out of the housekeeper’s parlour as she took the ironstone china back. He held the door open for her but kept his head down and didn’t meet her eye as she muttered a thank-you. She was unsurprised to find Henderson in there (in fact, she should really stop thinking of it as the housekeeper’s parlour, since it clearly wasn’t her territory at all anymore). Breathing in the smell of hair oil, she had to force herself not to recoil and retreat.

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