‘Why, she’s gorn away to her sister’s on a visit, miss! She won’t be back these three days yet.’ The maid shook her head in amazement at Dido’s ignorance of these facts.
‘Oh dear. That is a great shame, I was hoping most particularly to speak with her. I have made quite a long journey.’
The maid sucked in a breath through her teeth and shook her head again. She seemed to be a woman who was continually surprised by the folly of her fellow creatures. ‘You ain’t come here on business are you?’ she said pityingly.
‘Well, yes, in a manner of speaking.’
The maid shook her head and all but echoed the words of the man in the post office. ‘No, no! Mrs Pinker won’t be able to oblige you … madam. She ain’t taking no more. She ain’t taken none this last twelvemonth.’
‘Oh.’
The maid curtseyed and, with a final shake of her head in compassion for the simplicity of her visitor, she was upon the point of closing the door. Dido thought rapidly, eagerly trying to guess at the precise nature of Mrs Pinker’s ‘business’. ‘I wonder,’ she cried hurriedly, ‘I wonder whether you might be able to … advise me …’
The maid waited with an air of great impatience, her hand still upon the door.
Dido looked about her – at the hobby horse – and the swing. And she considered also the insolent interest of the man in the post office – and the alteration in the maid’s address – that telling change from ‘miss’ to ‘madam’ as soon as she suspected that the visitor was, ‘come on business’.
An idea occurred.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘you might be able to suggest another establishment. You see,’ she continued slowly, watching the woman’s face closely, ‘a friend of mine is very anxious to place a child in the care of just such an experienced, respectable woman as your mistress. If Mrs Pinker is no longer taking in children, I would be very grateful if you would be so kind as to suggest another woman to whom my friend might apply?’
Before she had finished speaking, Dido knew, from the maid’s manner, that she had guessed aright. Mrs Pinker’s business was, without doubt, the care of children.
The maid sighed impatiently. ‘Well, I don’t know … There’s Mrs Hardwick, I suppose. You might try her. How old is the little ’un?’
‘About eight … or nine,’ Dido hazarded.
‘Oh no!’ cried the maid. ‘No, Mrs Hardwick’s like the mistress, they don’t neither of them keep ’em on that old! It’s up to seven she keeps girls – and not beyond five for boys. They need schooling after that, that’s what the mistress says.’
‘Yes … yes, of course.’
‘Is it a boy or girl?’
‘Oh! It is a … er … girl.’
‘Well then your friend might try Mrs Nolan’s school in Bath.’
‘Mrs Nolan …?’ said Dido. A memory stirred at the sound of the name, but she could not quite make it out.
‘Yes, yes,’ the maid replied and repeated the name with emphasis, as if it were one which all the world ought to know. ‘Mrs Nolan. It’s her Mrs Pinker sends her girls on to. Holds her in very high regard, she does.’
‘Thank you.’
The maid bobbed and began to inch the door closed.
‘Oh, please, just a moment,’ cried Dido eagerly. ‘There was something else which I wished to ask.’
‘Yes?’ There was a long sigh.
‘I wondered whether you might recall an acquaintance of mine – a Miss …’ She stopped, remembering the recent careful change in her own status. It was, probably, a courtesy extended to all women who did ‘business’ with Mrs Pinker. ‘Mrs Fenn. Mrs Elinor Fenn?’
‘Oh!’ The maid pushed back the door a little way and peered at the visitor, showing interest in her for the first time. ‘Yes,’ she said warily, peering around the door’s edge. ‘I recall the mistress speaking of her. But that was a long time ago her little ’un was here. Before I came.’
‘So you do not know what became of her child?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said flatly. ‘And, pardon me for speaking plain, but if I knew anything I wouldn’t tell it. It’s the rule – Mistress says I’m never to talk about the little ’uns. Folks have secrets, she says, and it’s part of our business to help keep those secrets. And that’s what I told the young gentleman when he came here.’
‘The young gentleman?’
‘Ah – the fellow who came asking about Mrs Fenn two months back. And the mistress told him the same I know – for I don’t reckon she liked the look of him any better than I did. But he was set on finding out …’ She stopped with a suspicious look. ‘What’s happened to this Mrs Fenn that everyone is asking about her?’
‘Oh nothing has happened to her,’ said Dido quickly. Clearly news of the inquest had not yet spread to Great Farleigh – and probably would not until a report was printed in the newspapers next week. ‘I just wondered …’
But the maid – mindful perhaps of ‘the rule’ – was now edging the door closed again.
Dido thanked her and turned back along the cinder path wondering who the ‘young gentleman’, can have been. And why had he been asking questions?
And where had she heard the name of Nolan before?
She was almost back to Great Farleigh when the answer to this last question occurred – and the memory brought her to a standstill in the lane between the hawthorn hedges and the cottage gardens, her eyes staring, her hands pressed to her mouth.
Mrs Nolan was the keeper of a school in Bath. She was, in fact, Penelope’s guardian …
Chapter Twenty-Four
…And so you see, Eliza, my two mysteries, Penelope’s accident and the skeleton in the pool, are now joined together!
I knew all along that they must somehow be connected!
But the discovery has thrown all my ideas into a great muddle and, if you are not so indulgent as to allow me to share my perplexities with you, I believe I shall run mad!
You see, I have made the necessary calculations and – unless my arithmetic deceives me – it can certainly be made to fit. I mean it is possible that Penelope is Miss Fenn’s child. There was gratification in this discovery for a mind such as mine which delights in patterns and connections and the complete absence of coincidences.
But I soon began to see that there is little cause for rejoicing.
For, supposing Penelope is indeed Miss Fenn’s daughter – what kind of sense does this make of recent events? What force has brought her back to the very place at which her mother met her death – and at the very time at which that death is discovered? And what am I – as a determinedly rational woman – to make of the ghost which Penelope saw? Was it somehow conjured into being by the discovery – or rather the proximity – of her mother’s remains?
Now, you see, I am got into a morass of coincidence and supernatural happenings which does not suit me at all!
But I intend to confine myself entirely to reason. I shall not allow my fancy to get the better of me. The only sensible course of action is to make some quiet enquiries into Miss Lambe’s background with a view to determining whether she is indeed the child that Miss Fenn placed in Mrs Pinker’s care.
You would laugh if you could see me just now, Eliza, for I am writing this from the kitchen. My writing desk stands upon the table here between the knife box and a great dish of curds, and I am in perpetual danger of mistaking the salt pot for my sand shaker. Rebecca is abed, suffering from a sudden and rather surprising attack of the asthma, and her assistant is gone out upon errands. So I am deputed to keep the spit wound up and to watch over the rising of the bread. I only hope I may acquit myself well. At least I have a warm and quiet place in which to think.