Page 16 of The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle

Rose, the head housemaid, joined her, having overheard everything from the nap closet, where she had been inspecting tablecloths. ‘They should never have brought her here in the first place,’ she said. ‘The cottage hospital’s the place for her.’

Mrs Webster agreed inwardly, but it wasn’t for her to criticise what Upstairs decided. ‘Well, she’s here now, and we have to deal with the situation.’

Miss Taylor had been carried in, frightened and in pain, and the mistress had sent for the doctor and ordered her to be cared for. Once the leg was in plaster, it was obvious that Miss Taylor could not go back to her old room at the top of the house. Even when she was able to get out of bed and move about on crutches, so many stairs would be impossible. Mrs Terry, the cook, had volunteered to move out of her room, just along from the kitchen.

‘I don’t mind sleeping upstairs with the maids,’ she said. ‘As long as Biddy wakes me up a bit earlier.’

Biddy was the under scullery maid, the lowest creature in the house, and the first up in the morning, her job being to make up the big kitchen range, boil a kettle and wake Mrs Terry with a cup of tea before starting on the scrubbing. Biddy wasn’t quite right in the head, but the life of the under scullery maid was such that no normal girl would stick at it. Mrs Terry treated her kindly, and Biddy had conceived a dog-like devotion to her, so it had worked out all right. She tended, as Mrs Terry called it, to ‘go cluck’ if she got flustered, but as long as she was given clear instructions and left alone to get on with the job, she was a good worker.

‘Are you sure?’ Mrs Webster had asked, because having your own bedroom was one of the perks of the cook’s job, but Mrs Terry had said yes, it was quite all right.

So Miss Taylor had been installed in the cook’s room, which Rose had said was enough to give anyone the willies, since the cook before Mrs Terry had suffered from melancholy and had hanged herself in that room. And even if you weren’t superstitious, it was a gloomy sort of cell, lit only by one barred window high up in the wall. Between suffering and morphine, Miss Taylor had hardly noticed her surroundings at first, but now it seemed to be getting on her nerves. She was becoming increasingly irascible.

‘You ought to ask the mistress to have her moved,’ Rose said now. ‘If you ask me, it’s driving her barmy. You know how keen she always was on precedence. It must gall her to be in a cook’s room when she’s a lady’s maid.’

‘Was,’ Mrs Webster corrected. Rose looked questioning, and she shrugged. ‘Who knows what will happen? Her mistress might not take her back, and she must know it.’

‘All the more reason to get her out of here.’

‘I did hint it right at the beginning, but the mistress said we must take care of her, after all those years of service. I can’t bring it up again.’

‘Hmph,’ said Rose. ‘Well, then, I’d better have a word with Taylor and tell her to mind her manners.’

Mrs Webster sighed. ‘You’re probably the only person who could.’

‘Oh, I don’t mince my bones,’ Rose said, with a toss of her head.

‘But whether it will do any good . . .’ Mrs Webster finished doubtfully.

Rose and Miss Taylor had served together for a long time, since the reign of the old master, and were, along with the dowager, the only ones who had known his darkest secret. It had given them a certain sort of invulnerability: the dowager was cold of heart and savage of temper and would dismiss at the drop of a hat anyone who displeased her. But Rose and Taylor could not be dismissed. They had kept the secret; they had to be kept.

Rose tapped on the door of the cook’s room and went in, remembering for one brief flash how poor Deena had hung there, with purple face and black protruding tongue. Rose was unsentimental and did not believe in ghosts, but she thought she would not have wanted to have that room. Taylor, however, like Mrs Terry, had not actually seen the body, so perhaps it was different for them.

‘It’s only me,’ Rose said, as she entered.

Miss Taylor, propped up in bed, scowled at her. ‘Did I say come in? Is one to have no privacy?’

Rose gave her a sharp look. ‘Not when “one” is having her meals brought and her potty emptied and not a lick of work to do for it. When are you going to get out of bed?’

‘I don’t have to listen to your impertinence. Get out!’

Rose stood beside the bed and looked down at her, not without pity. She spoke with a degree less sharpness than was her wont. ‘I know you’re scared. Lord knows I would be, in your shoes. But you’re not helping yourself. If it was me, I’d be doing everything I could to get back on my feet.’

‘You know nothing about it,’ Miss Taylor snapped.

‘I know Dr Welkes says you’re ready to walk with crutches. You got to start some time.’

‘Oh, leave me alone!’ Miss Taylor cried.

‘Look, Taylor—’

‘Don’t call me that!’

‘Well, Mary, then. Ha! You didn’t know I knew your name was Mary, did you? Her ladyship’s being nice to you at the moment, but you’re not her maid, and sooner or later his lordship’s going to ask your mistress what’s to be done with you. And if you can say for certain what she’ll decide, it’s more than I’d answer for. So you’d better get back on your feet, and quick about it. And stop cussing the maids and throwing things at ’em.’

‘I shouldn’t have to endure their impudence,’ Miss Taylor growled. ‘They never would have dared when—’

‘No, they wouldn’t,’ Rose agreed, but without sympathy.