Emily stared at her. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said in a rush. She had been given the position. It was decided. She felt at once frightened and victorious.
“Thank you, Amelia, that will be all. You may go.” Loretta’s voice brought her back to reality.
“Thank you, ma’am,” she said again, letting the relief show in her face. After all, she really did want the place! She bobbed very briefly and turned to leave, feeling an overwhelming sense of freedom just at being out of the room and past the first obstacle.
“Well?” The cook looked up from the apple pie she was finishing off with carefully cut pastry leaves.
Emily smiled at her more broadly than she should have. “I got it!”
“Then be about your unpacking,” the cook said pleasantly. “Don’t stand around ’ere, girl. You’re no use to me! ’Ousekeeper’s sitting room is second on the left. Mrs. Crawford should be in there this time o’ day. Go and see ’er and she’ll tell you where you’ll sleep—Dulcie’s room, I daresay—and she’ll have Joan, the laundry maid, show you where your iron is, and the like. I daresay someone’ll find Edith for you—that’s Mrs. Piers York’s maid. You’ll be for Miss Veronica.”
“Yes, Mrs. Melrose.” Emily went to the corner to pick up her box.
“Don’t you bother wi’ that! Albert’ll take it up. Liftin’ and carryin’s not your job, ’less you’re asked. On wi’ you!”
“Yes, Mrs. Melrose.”
She went to the housekeeper’s sitting room and knocked on the door. She was told sharply to come in.
It was small, crowded with dark furniture, the smell of polish mixing with the thick, greenhouse odor of a potted lily on a jardinière in one corner. There were embroidered antimacassars on the backs of the chairs and along the sideboard, which was littered with photographs. Two hand-stitched samplers framed in wood hung on the walls. Emily felt overpowered even before she stepped inside.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Crawford, was short and thin, with the face of an irritable sparrow. Gray hair escaped a screwed-back hairstyle that was considerably out of date and crowned with white lace like froth.
“Yes?” she said sharply. “Who are you?”
Emily stood up straight. “The new lady’s maid, Mrs. Crawford. Mrs. Melrose said as you would tell me where I should sleep.”
“Sleep! At four o’clock in the afternoon, girl? I’ll tell you where you can put your box! And I’ll show you to the laundry and Joan can give you your iron and table. I daresay Edith is sitting down; she’s not so well these days. You’ll have met Nora, the parlormaid, and there’s Libby the upstairs maid and Bertha the downstairs maid, and Fanny the tweeny, but a useless little article she is! And of course Mr. Redditch, the butler, but you’ll not have much to do with him, nor John the footman, who valets for Mr. York, and Albert the bootboy.”
“Yes, Mrs. Crawford.”
“And you’ll have met Mary the kitchen maid and Prim the scullery maid. Well, that’s all. Outside staff, grooms and the like, don’t need to concern you. And you’ll not have anything to do with anyone outside the house unless Mrs. York sends you on an errand. You’ll have Sunday mornings off to go to church. You’ll eat in the servants hall with the rest of us. I expect that dress’ll do you.” She looked at it without favor. “You’ve got caps and aprons, of course? I should think so. If Miss Veronica wants them changed she’ll tell you. I hope I don’t need to remind you, you’ll have no followers, no gentlemen callers of any sort, unless you’ve a father or brother, in which case if you ask permission, I daresay they’ll be allowed to see you, at convenient times.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Emily could feel the walls tightening round her as if she were a prisoner. No callers, no admirers, one half day off a fortnight! How was she going to keep in touch with Charlotte, and Jack?
“Well, don’t stand there, girl!” Mrs. Crawford rose and smoothed her apron briskly, her keys jangling at her waist. She led the way out, moving like a little rodent, with busy, jerky steps. In the laundry she patted and touched things, showing Emily coppers for boiling linen, bins of soap, starch, ironing tables, flatirons, and airing rails, all the time clicking her tongue over the absence of Joan.
Upstairs Emily was shown Veronica York’s bedroom. It was cool green and white with touches of yellow, like a spring field, and her dressing room had cupboards full of clothes, all fashionable and of high quality—but nothing in pink, let alone cerise.
Upstairs on the servants’ floor, she was led to a small room about one fifth the size of her own at home, bare but for an iron bedstead with a ticking-covered mattress, gray blankets, and a pillow; one small cupboard; and a table with a basin on it, no pitcher. Under the bed was a plain white china chamber pot. The ceiling sloped so that in only half of the room could she stand upright, and the dormered window had thin, unlined brown curtains. The linoleum on the floor was like ice to the touch; there was one small rag mat by the bedside. Her heart sank. It was clean and cold and infinitely grim compared with home. How many girls had stood in doorways like this with tears welling up inside them, knowing there was no possible escape, and this was the best they could hope for, not the worst?
“Thank you, Mrs. Crawford,” she said huskily.
“Albert’s put your box there; you unpack it, and when Miss Veronica rings”—she pointed to the bell Emily had not noticed before—“you’ll go down and attend to her dressing for dinner. She’s out now, or I’d have taken you to her.”
“Yes, Mrs. Crawford.”
And the next minute she was alone. It was ghastly. All she had was a box of clothes, a narrow bed as hard as a bench, three blankets to keep warm, no fire, no water except what she fetched for herself to put in that basin, and no light but for one candle in a chipped enamel holder; and she was at the beck and call of a woman she had never met. Jack was right: she must have lost her wits! If only he had forbidden her, if only Aunt Vespasia had begged her not to do it!
But Jack was not worried about her loneliness, the bare floor, the cold bed, the chamber pot, the strip wash in one basin of water, or the obedience to a bell. He was afraid because someone had committed murder in this house— twice—and Emily was an intruder who had come to try and catch the murderer.
She sat down on the bed, her legs shaking. The springs creaked. She was cold and her throat ached with the effort not to weep. “I am here to find a murderer,” she said to herself quietly. “Robert York was murdered—Dulcie was pushed out of a window because she saw the woman in cerise and told Thomas. There is something terrible in this house, and I am going to find out what it is. Thousands of girls, tens of thousands all over the country live like this. If they can do it, so can I. I am not a coward. I do not run away just because things are frightening, and certainly not because they are unpleasant. They are not going to beat me before I’ve even begun!”
At half past five the bell rang, and after straightening her cap in front of the piece of mirror on the mantel shelf and retying her apron, Emily went down to meet Veronica York, carrying the candle.
On the landing she knocked on the bedroom door and was told to go in. She did not glance at the room; she had seen it before, and curiosity would not do. And indeed, her real interest was in Veronica herself.
“Yes ma’am?”
Veronica was sitting on the dressing stool in a white robe tied at the waist, her black hair falling loose like satin ribbons down her back. Her face was pale but the bones were beautiful, her eyes large and dark as peat water. At the moment her fragile skin was a little blue around the slender nose and across her high cheeks, and she was definitely too thin for current fashion. She would need a bustle to plump out those narrow hips, and swathes to make her bosom look fuller. But Emily had to admit she was a beautiful woman, with the qualities of delicacy and character that haunt the mind far longer than mere regularity of feature. There was passion in her face, and intelligence.