Page 43 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle

Cyril was undeterred. ‘I reckon it’d be about like holding your breath, sort of. I bet it doesn’t hurt. What d’you say, William? You saw her.’

William, who had been staring at his untouched plate – he had always a grand appetite, even for Mrs Oxlea’s indifferent cooking – suddenly shoved back his chair and stood up, muttered something that included the word ‘excused’ in Moss’s direction, and almost ran from the room.

Rose watched him go thoughtfully. Of all the household, he was the one who seemed most affected. Him and her ladyship, who had shut herself away and spoke to no one unless she had to, and went for long rides to escape company.

‘Poor William – he’s really cut up about it,’ Dory said to Sebastian as she sewed up a tear in a blouse of Lady Alice’s. ‘He didn’t know her, any more than anyone, so it must just be seeing the body. Can’t have been a nice sight.’

‘I believe not,’ Sebastian said mildly.

‘One good thing, though – it seems to have made him forget all about Milly. He hasn’t given her a glance since it happened, which is a relief to her.’

‘Who is he in love with now?’

‘No one at the moment. I don’t think love is on his mind. He’s been going down to the Dog and Gun at Ashmore Carr a lot. I think it’s just to escape – he’s not a drinker. I know the barman there, Roddy, and he says William has a half of ale and sits and looks at it all evening. Mr Corbie, the landlord, doesn’t like it – says he’s putting off the other customers. But he’s a miserable old besom, Corbie, anyway.’

‘I suppose he doesn’t like people using up seats and not buying drinks. It’s reasonable,’ said Sebastian.

‘What I’ve never understood,’ Dory said carefully, eyes on her work, ‘was why Mrs Oxlea was cook here in the first place, if she wasn’t any good.’

Sebastian ran a few scales through his hands before replying. ‘She was kitchen-maid here a long time ago, under the old cook, whose name was . . . wait, I’ll have it in a minute . . . ah, yes, Mrs Duxbury. She drank, as I remember. I suppose all cooks do?’

‘No use asking me, sir,’ Dory said, with an impish look. ‘I couldn’t boil an egg.’

‘Well, Mrs Duxbury was all right with plain food. But she drank more and more, and finally had a dreadful accident. Fell in the fire while in her cups and was so badly burned she died soon afterwards. Mrs Oxlea took over the cooking as an emergency measure. Her skills were limited, but his lordship and her ladyship never cared much about food so she was good enough for them, and they never troubled to replace her. But things have got worse over the years. I suppose she caught the drinking habit from her predecessor.’

‘Well, I hope Ida doesn’t go the same way.’

‘Ida?’

‘Head kitchen-maid. She’s been doing some of the cooking recently anyway, and now she’s taken over as cook until they find a replacement.’

‘How history repeats itself,’ Sebastian murmured.

‘Oh, I hope not, sir,’ Dory said, looking up. She wondered what he really knew about the whole Oxlea situation.

He looked back, wondering the same thing. ‘It’s astonishing what rumours fly about in a big house like this,’ he said. ‘Unfounded gossip . . .’

‘Silly stories,’ she agreed, ‘that couldn’t possibly be true . . .’

‘The important thing is to give them no credence, and to sit on them firmly whenever they lift their ugly heads.’

‘I do, sir,’ Dory said, resuming her work. ‘I’ve seen enough in my life of the damage gossip can do.’

‘Yes,’ said Sebastian, staring at her thoughtfully. Then he roused himself. ‘Chopin, I think,’ he said. ‘To liven us up.’ And he plunged into the Revolutionary Étude.

After a bit, Dory lifted her head to watch in admiration. ‘I don’t know how you manage to play all those notes at the same time,’ she said.

‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘I miss a lot out. But there’s only us here, and I’m sure you won’t tell.’

Maud was in a state of white fury. She had put up with the hateful presence of Mrs Oxlea in her household in a lifelong determination to avoid talk; and now the creature had precipitated her into a filthy sump of gossip.

Suicides were not so uncommon among the unregulated portion of society, and in the last ten years Victorian attitudes had softened so that it was more often regarded as a misfortune than a crime. Even among churchmen it was hardly now condemned as a rebellion against God’s will – she had heard Dr Bannister, the rector, argue that if we must all humbly accept the pains we are sent, then anaesthetics and vaccinations are equally sinful. He would have spoken the words of the funeral service over Mrs Oxlea when Giles asked him to, if Maud hadn’t intervened.

And she was aware that her intervention had rather increased the gossip than suppressed it – people who wouldn’t have thought twice about a servant’s suicide now wondered what her ladyship had against the cook. She had done her best to keep the inquest as brief as possible, and Fothergill had done his part, and had acted so quickly there had been no audience or journalists there. But that wretched Eddowes woman was a loose cannon: her attending the burial could only provoke speculation, and who knew what she would say if asked the right question? It infuriated Maud to be still at the mercy of other people, the three who knew the secret – Eddowes, Rose and Taylor. Would she never be free of it? Anything she did to suppress talk would likely backfire: a cook’s suicide would not normally get into the papers, but if she tried to ban discussion of it, outsiders might start taking an interest. She hated to be whispered about and stared at – and she hated, hated most of all, the feeling of helplessness.

So, once the inquest was over, she sought out Giles and said, ‘This atmosphere is very bad for Rachel.’

‘Atmosphere?’ he said vaguely, looking up from the farming monthly he was reading. Drainage, it seemed, was crucial, especially on clay soils. But it was labour-intensive, and so very costly . . .