‘But now they will not be able to discover who she was.’
‘Nor would they by looking at her, miss. Her face…’ Rose put her hand firmly over her mouth and prayed that her breakfast was all gone and nothing remained with which she might disgrace herself before the lady.
‘I see,’ said Dido. ‘I had not understood that she was injured in the head.’ It was a detail which even the hardy Mrs Harris had failed to discover. But, she thought, it was a shame that Mr Fallows should order immediate burial; there was surely a great deal of information which a body might reveal… If only one could get at it.
‘Was there anything you wanted here, miss?’ asked Rose. ‘Only I’d better be getting on. There’s all the breakfast dishes to be washed and cook’ll be shouting for me.’
‘No, no, you just sit down until you feel a bit better.’ Dido gave a conspiratorial smile. ‘You have had a shock, my dear, and you need to go about things a little slowly this morning – otherwise I don’t expect you will be able to tell cook and all the others everything they want to know.’
‘Everything they want to know,’ the girl repeated with a confused look.
‘Yes, everything they want to know about the dead woman. I expect everyone is wondering about her and, after all, you have actually seen her.’
‘Oh yes, yes, I suppose I have.’
‘And – with you being so upset and everything – I don’t suppose you will be able to remember much at all unless people are kind to you.’
Understanding dawned and Rose gave a lopsided grin that lit up her grey face. ‘No, no maybe I won’t. But…’ The grin dissolved. ‘But the truth is, miss,’ she said sadly, ‘I don’t think I’ve got much to tell, what with her face being all…’
‘Oh, I am sure you have plenty to tell,’ said Dido bracingly. ‘Let me see, what might they want to know? Well, what sort of woman do you suppose she was?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, miss.’
‘Was she a lady?’
‘Oh no!’ came the immediate reply. ‘Not with hands like that!’
‘What were her hands like?’
Rose dropped her eyes. ‘Red, working hands, miss.’
Dido followed the girl’s eyes, which were fixed on her own hands, clasped in her sacking apron: red, cracked and scarred with chilblains. ‘This woman had chilblains on her hands?’ she suggested.
‘Yes,’ said Rose. Then she stopped herself. ‘At least she had old ones. Healed mostly. No new ones.’
‘Now, it was very clever indeed of you to notice that. Very clever indeed. It tells you a lot about her, you see.’
‘Does it, miss?’
‘Why, yes. It means she was a working woman, you see; but one that had perhaps gone up in the world a bit just lately. Got a better job perhaps.’
‘Yes, yes, I suppose it does,’ said Rose, much encouraged.
‘And what of her dress?’
‘Covered in blood it was.’ Her hand flew back to her mouth.
Dido quickly produced another peppermint; Rose took it and sucked noisily.
‘Apart from that,’ said Dido gently when the crisis seemed to have passed, ‘was it a nice dress?’
Rose nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, yes, it was, now you ask. A very nice dimity it was, with a pretty blue stripe.’
‘New?’
Rose was thinking hard now. ‘Yes, I think it was new.’
‘The dress has made you think of something?’
‘Yes. It was when I said that then about it being blue-striped dimity. It made me think because I’d never seen anything like it before and I remember Jenny – that’s one of the housemaids here – I remember her saying she’d seen some lovely blue dimity new in from London in a draper’s shop last month when she had her day off.’
‘That’s very interesting, Rose. Do you remember what shop it was?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t know the name of the shop, miss; that was way over by Hopton Cresswell, I should say, because that’s where Jenny’s people live.’
‘Well, well, you have got a lot to tell them all! You can even make a guess that the unfortunate woman lived somewhere near Hopton Cresswell. And I suppose you know roughly how old she was.’
‘Oh no, miss! Because her face—’
‘Yes, yes. I know you could not see her face. But what was her hair like?’
‘Fair, miss,’ said Rose, frowning to remember. ‘Long and yellow and it didn’t curl over much.’
‘Was it thick?’
‘Yes, quite thick.’
‘Were there any grey hairs mixed in with the fair ones?’
‘Oh no.’
‘Well then, she was rather young. On the right side of thirty, I would think.’
‘Oh yes, miss, yes I suppose she was.’
‘And was she fat or thin?’
‘Neither really, miss.’
‘A good figure then?’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘There now,’ said Dido, getting to her feet, ‘I should think all that is worth a nice little sit down in the housekeeper’s room at least – and perhaps a dish of tea too. Remember, don’t tell them anything unless they are kind to you.’
‘No, miss, thank you, I won’t.’ Rose smiled happily, picked up her skirts and started off across the wet cobbles to the kitchen door. But then she stopped and turned back, biting her lip thoughtfully.
‘Have you remembered something else, Rose?’
‘Yes, miss, it’s that dress I keep thinking about. Funny, it was. But I don’t seem to be so good at making out what things mean like you are.’
‘What was funny about the dress?’
‘It was made really odd. Too much stuff in it. Lots of little tucks, and stuff all folded into the seams. I ain’t never seen a dress like it. Do you think that’s interesting at all? Does it mean something like those other things?’ She peered hopefully at Dido’s frowning face. ‘Well, miss? What do you think?’
‘Oh? Oh no. No, I doubt it is important. I expect it just means that she was a bad dressmaker and a little bit wasteful. And,’ she added brightly, ‘we should not speak ill of the dead, should we? No, I would not bother to tell anyone about that. You have plenty to tell without that. Remember now, a nice rest by the fire and a drink of tea.’
Dido smiled encouragingly and clattered away across the cobbles in her pattens. She went out of the yard, skirted the red-brick wall of the kitchen garden, and came, by a side gate, into the park.
She had left the house with the intention of inspecting the place where the woman had been found and it was only the sight of a covered cart from the village bearing its sad burden away from the stables that had prompted her to make a detour into the kitchen yard, in the hope of learning something there.
But now her mind was full and she walked on in some agitation across the park until she came to a little rise in the ground which afforded a particularly good view of the house and estate. Here there stood the broad stump of a walnut tree – one of the ones which Margaret had pointed out to her in their drive through the park yesterday as having been felled in the ‘Great Storm’. It must have been a remarkably fine tree, for even its broken remains had a kind of melancholy dignity. There was an ornate bench of green wrought iron standing close beside it and Dido sat herself down upon it to think.
Before her the yellowing autumn grass stretched away under a heavy grey sky, each blade thickly beaded with dew. The great trees of the park stood out black against white mist and the squat tower of the family chapel rose up above a dark bank of yews. On her right, a well-trodden path led off along the edge of the ha-ha that bounded the shrubbery, and beyond the shrubbery rose lawns and fountains and all the columned grandeur of the house-front. It was a beautiful, tranquil scene which spoke not only of the master’s wealth, but also of his care that everything around him should be well kept and present a picture of perfection.