The Flight of Swallows Page 27

  ‘The gentleman?’

  ‘My father.’

  The body of a young woman, her baby in her arms, was found in the mere in the centre of Beggers Wood, discovered on his rounds two days later by Brooke’s gamekeeper. Her body had somehow drifted to the side of the mere, half in and half out of the water as though at the last moment she had changed her mind about so drastic an action. She was a pretty little thing, or had been, for the animals had been at her and the gamekeeper brought up his breakfast in the bushes at the sight of her.

  He ran to the nearest farm which happened to be Jack Emmerson’s and between them, armed with one of Mrs Emmerson’s blankets, they wrapped her and the baby in it and carried it back to Emmerson’s place and put it tenderly in the barn. Mrs Emmerson, kindly soul that she was, would not have them in the house, she told them tearfully. The constable was summoned and with the help of Mrs Armstrong’s servant, Kizzie Aspin, she was identified as Maudie – how strange they never knew her surname, was Kizzie’s sad thought – the young woman who had once worked for Mrs Armstrong.

  They all wept, even the servants in the kitchen at King’s Meadow, for though she had been a naughty girl, she had not deserved to die, nor her boy with her, in that fashion. The mistress went mad and it was not until she was shut in with the master, who took charge of everything, that she was quietened.

  He held her tightly in his arms, his lips against her hair, soothing her, murmuring to comfort her and to damp down the rage that twisted through her.

  At last he spoke. ‘The man is a bastard of the first order and though you know how I felt about the girls you took in, girls in the worst kind of trouble, I grant you that now, they did not deserve the fate of this poor child, and her child. You were right and I was wrong and I am sorry. But he must be dealt with and not by you. I’ll ask him to call and see what he has to say. We are assuming it was your father . . .’

  ‘He did to her what he used to do to me and the boys. Whipping us until the blood ran . . .’

  ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he whispered. ‘Send Percy with a message that I wish to see him but, my dearest dear, please keep out of the way. Promise me . . . promise me.’

  She promised.

  22

  The men had carried their master downstairs and placed him in front of the drawing room fire, for he had felt he would be at a disadvantage if he was to face up to Arthur Drummond in the bedroom he shared with his wife. He was at a disadvantage anyway since he was unable to move about and he felt that Drummond would take advantage of his immobility. He was, of course, dressed and there was no sign of the badly injured man he had been at Christmas apart from the lines of recent pain that were etched on his face. Doctor Chapman had told him that in a week or two he was going to try him on crutches and if he did well, perhaps just a walking stick. His muscles would be weak since he had been inactive for three months and there would be months of hard work ahead of him to get him back in shape. His wound was healed but in an awkward place. Each time he moved the newly healing flesh was pulled and so he must be patient. The doctor was of the opinion that had it not been for his devoted wife Brooke Armstrong would have given up long ago and fallen into a depression that would have felled him. He was an active man, an outdoor sort of a man, a man of strong will and resolution and, Wallace Chapman privately thought, a sensual man whose wife had found a way to satisfy his needs despite his present disability. And of course, he adored his baby daughter and was well on the way to becoming besotted with Arthur Drummond’s neglected child as well. He had a lot to live for and he knew it, which was half the battle.

  Arthur Drummond lounged in a deep and comfortable chair opposite Brooke, a brandy in one hand and a cigar in the other, an expression on his face that was hard to decipher. It spoke of arrogance, a certain superiority that indicated that he came from a better family than Armstrong’s, that his breeding was clear where Brooke’s background was merely that of industrialists, which was true for their vast wealth came from the manufacture of woollen cloth during the previous century. Arthur Drummond was not rich but his blood was that of the gentry class. Brooke wanted to stand up and smash his face in, knock his teeth down his throat, put his hands round his neck and throttle him and not just because of what he had done to his own beloved wife and her brothers but for the casual way in which he had taken up with the pretty child who lay in a coffin with her son in her arms, and had then turned her away from his door as though she had been a tinker begging for a farthing.

  ‘It seems a long time since we met, Brooke, old man, considering we are related,’ Drummond drawled, ‘but then your accident excluded you from mixing with your friends. I do hope you are recovering. The hunting season will be over soon but I’m sure you and I—’

  ‘I have not summoned you here to discuss hunting, Drummond, but to—’

  ‘Summoned me here! I must say I take exception to your use of words, old chap. Your man said you had something of importance you wished to discuss with me and as you are unable to get about at the moment I rode over as soon as it was convenient for me to—’

  ‘Will you be going to the funeral, Drummond?’ Brooke’s voice was icy and Arthur Drummond looked genuinely startled.

  ‘Has someone died, old man? I was not aware—’

  ‘You bastard. How you can sit there and pretend—’

  Drummond rose to his feet, his face almost purple with rage. ‘If you were not a cripple I would lift you from that chair and beat the living daylights out of you. I haven’t the faintest notion what you are talking about but anyone who dares to call me—’

  ‘You’re not just a bastard, but a bloody murderer and I have half a mind to summon the police and accuse you of driving that poor girl to her death. You are—’

  ‘What the bloody hell are you on about, man? Have you lost your mind?’

  ‘Does the name Maudie ring any bells, Drummond? A pretty young girl who you took to your house and debauched, violated, whipped her until she bled and then—’

  ‘Maudie! Do you mean that prostitute from your wife’s brothel? The house of ill-repute as it is called hereabouts. She was nothing, the mother of an illegitimate child, a street-walker who was paid for her services and who took my fancy, as some of them do as I’m sure you must know. She made no resistance to my . . . er . . . demands but when she came to my door and insisted on seeing me, my servants told me, her bloody child in her arms, I told them to send her on her way. There are plenty more where she came from and the best of it with women such as her is that they don’t mind what you do, or demand that they do as long as they get paid for it. By God, how you have the bloody nerve to summon me here to castigate me like some preacher and even to threaten me with the law is beyond belief. Do you think the police are going to believe that because some trollop chooses to kill herself – oh yes, I heard the gossip – they are going to suppose I had something to do with it? You must be mad.’

  ‘Perhaps you are right, Drummond, but believe me you will not go unpunished. I shall blacken your name in this county so that no decent family will have you across their doorstep. Oh, I know you consider your pedigree is superior to mine but I am a very wealthy man. An influential man. Many of our friends, your friends, are in debt to me. I could destroy many a business if I chose and I do believe I might inform them that if they continue to entertain you or be entertained by you then they will go under. Do I make myself clear? Now get out of my house and if I see you again I will seriously injure you!’

  Arthur Drummond grew very still, his face drained of all colour and his eyes pure slits of venom. They were the same colour as his chestnut hair but somehow they had faded to a pale muddied brown. Something glinted in them though, like some predatory fish swimming just below the surface of the water, but then he smiled and Brooke felt his blood turn to ice in his veins, for it was a satisfied smile that told him that Drummond had an ace up his sleeve that he was about to reveal. His quick thinking had flashed it before him and now, sneeringly, he produced it.r />
  ‘Do that, old chap,’ he said, almost genially, ‘but before you do will you summon your nursemaid and tell her to get my daughter, my baby daughter ready to go home with her father. It is high time I made her acquaintance. I will find a decent nursemaid for her, one who will not indulge her as I am sure she is being indulged under your roof and then, when she is old enough, I will undertake her . . . education myself.’ The threat was clear. ‘It was good of Charlotte to look after her while I . . . grieved for my wife but now I think I am—’

  The murderous roar reached every room in the house and in the kitchen every servant froze to a standstill, paralysed with dread. Mrs Groves, who had been making treacle toffee for Master Robbie and his friend, Tad Emmerson, reached out and dragged the pair of them into her arms, pressing their alarmed faces to her capacious bosom, while upstairs in the nursery Rosie sat down suddenly in the armchair in front of the fire then jumped to her feet and swept both protesting babies into her arms. Aisling, who had never met Arthur Drummond and never seen the master except when she took his daughter Lucy and the little one who they were all beginning to think of as her sister down to see him, backed up against the window, for she was not unfamiliar with violence.

  But it was Charlotte who had been listening at the foot of the stairs who was first to explode into the drawing room, just in time to stop her husband from doing his best to rise from his chair and fling himself at her father. In a moment she was across the room and was pressed against his struggling figure, forcing him to remain seated.

  ‘Don’t, darling, don’t move. Do you want to pull your wound apart? Stay there.’

  ‘Stay here?’ he bellowed, while in the kitchen Mrs Dickinson made a sign to Nellie to fetch men from the yard. ‘Stay here while this . . . this perverted bugger takes away our . . . your . . . the baby he abandoned three months ago? No doubt he will subject her to—’

  ‘Sweetheart, my love . . .’ With her back to her sneering father she put her arms about Brooke and held him down in his chair, terrified, not that he would do harm to her father but that he might undo all the good the doctors had achieved. She pressed her face to his, kissing him passionately, sitting almost in his lap but facing him and the man at her back actually began to laugh.

  ‘Well, it seems I did well to marry you to this half a man, my dear. I see you have formed an attachment and before he became as he is gave him a child. But you also took my child and unless the pair of you do exactly what I tell you I will have my child back. Your husband has threatened me and I will not have it. I will not have it!’

  At that moment John the gardener and Percy the groom entered the room in a furious rush, for from what Cook gabbled the master was in great danger but a hand from the man they knew as their mistress’s father, a hand raised in derision, stopped them in their tracks and they waited, should they be wanted, for a sign from either the master or the mistress.

  ‘Thank you, John, Percy, we shall not need you so . . . shut the door as you leave and, Percy, if you would be so good as to bring Mr Drummond’s horse to the front of the house. He is just about to leave.’

  If they were astonished to see the mistress apparently holding down the master they did not show it. They both glared at Mr Drummond who had a bad reputation in these parts and left the room.

  ‘Well,’ drawled Arthur Drummond, ‘what is it to be? Shall I give you a day or two to think it over? Let me know as soon as possible so that I might, if it is necessary, engage a nurse for the child. Now, I must be off. I’m to dine with friends this evening and I believe we are to go to the opera though it is not really my preference. The music hall is more to my taste. Pretty girls, perhaps a game of cards and then . . . whatever, or whoever I might be in the mood for. Well, Brooke, you will get my drift, being a man of the world. So, I’ll say good-day to you. By the way, did you call the child Ellen?’ He smiled as he sauntered from the room.

  It was a long time before they moved, then, slowly, like an old woman, Charlotte stood up and, holding her husband’s hand, rang the bell. Nellie, her face ashen, crept into the room. She had no idea what was afoot but she knew it was bad. The master and mistress had each aged ten years since she had seen them earlier in the day, staring into some horror that had come upon them, the master’s hand in that of the mistress.

  ‘Ma’am?’ she quavered.

  ‘Ask two of the men to carry my husband up to our room, will you, Nellie, and . . . and . . .’ She seemed to falter as though she did not know what to do next, so after waiting for a moment Nellie scuttled from the room.

  ‘Two of yer are wanted,’ she told the men who huddled at the back door. John and Percy flung themselves forward and were led into the drawing room by the distressed parlour-maid.

  When they were at last back in their bedroom, Brooke frozen in his chair, she knelt at his feet, her head on his knee while his hand smoothed her hair, his gaze unseeing at the garden where for the first time there was no activity since all the men and the two boys who often rode their new bicycles – Christmas presents from Robbie’s brother-in-law – up and down the long drive were all at the back, huddled together in dread. They were aware that Mrs Armstrong’s father had made some threat. Why else would the master roar as he had done? He had been outraged, they were aware of that, too, but what the dickens could it be? For comfort they stayed together, sitting or standing about, drinking the strong tea Mrs Groves considered a heartener, debating what was amiss in quiet voices, and when Kizzie bustled into the kitchen she was stopped in her tracks by the silence and the frightened faces that turned to look at her.

  ‘What’s up?’ she asked, but they only shook their heads sadly.

  In the bedroom Charlotte stirred, looking up into Brooke’s face then asked the same question but in different words.

  ‘He wants Ellie, or rather he doesn’t want her but he is using her to blackmail us into keeping quiet about the young girl who died.’

  ‘Maudie?’

  ‘Yes. I knew there was nothing I could do within the law to punish him so I told him I would have him ostracised in the county. I could, too. I have some powerful friends, many of whom are in my debt so he said, “Go ahead, but fetch my daughter from your nursery and I will take her home.”’

  ‘No, no!’ she leapt to her feet and again the servants clutched at anything that would steady them, a chair, the solid table, each other, and Robbie, who, in his opinion, was now grown up as he was eight years old, buried his face in Mrs Groves’s protective arms. He was to go to the grammar school in Wakefield in the autumn and Brooke, who he thought the world of now, was to pay for Tad to go with him. He didn’t know what was happening but the shouts and now Charlie’s screams frightened him to death. He knew his father had been here and in his terror he thought it might mean he was to go back to live with him.

  ‘Now, now, Master Robbie, don’t fret, chuck,’ Mrs Groves murmured.

  Upstairs, Brooke recited in a toneless voice what had happened between himself and Arthur Drummond, even his comment about the Dower House being a ‘house of ill-repute’ filled with prostitutes and their illegitimate offspring and therefore available to any man with the brass to help himself to one. He had ‘helped himself’ to Maudie, promising her God knows what and the result had been her death. And the implication was that if there was another of his daughter’s girls he fancied he would do it all again. He felt no guilt, nor shame that the silly bitch had taken her own life and that of her child, driven to desperation by his denial of her and therefore could see no reason for Brooke to take any action.

  A week later, with a face carved in stone, Brooke Armstrong agreed to Arthur Drummond leaving his younger daughter in his elder daughter’s care for the time being, the inference being, though not spoken for there was no need, that should a breath of scandal touch him through Brooke’s machinations the child would at once be taken back to her home with her father. Arthur Drummond also implied that now and again he might be short of a guinea or two and he was sure his ol
d friend and son-in-law would help him out.

  After he had ridden off, cock-a-hoop, Kizzie said bitterly, having been told the whole story, Charlotte wept in her husband’s arms and Brooke felt the frustration of a man who had once been strong and invincible and who was now unable to protect those he loved.

  ‘He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it,’ Charlotte moaned. ‘He killed Maudie as surely as if he had thrown her in the mere and held her under. And how are we going to defend the girls we have at the Dower House? They are ignorant working girls who will be in awe of a man of my father’s class who takes an interest in them. They have been taught their place and to believe what the ruling classes tell them. But I cannot allow Ellie to be torn from us and given to her father. I would kill him first,’ she raged while Brooke tried to soothe her.

  ‘My sweetheart, I wouldn’t let him.’

  ‘But he is her father.’

  ‘We will come to some arrangement.’

  ‘You mean buy her.’ Her voice was wild.

  ‘If necessary, yes.’

  ‘But it must be legally binding.’

  ‘Darling, trust me,’ he shushed her, cursing inwardly the bloody bull and not just the bull, which was only doing what was in his nature, but himself for his carelessness and his inability to deal with this chaos as he would like. What would he like? He knew what he wanted to do more than anything in the world, but since it was not possible to beat a man to pulp and get away with it he summoned his solicitor instead and after a long and protracted interview in which the intricacies of the law were discussed it was sadly agreed there was nothing to be done.

  ‘Could I not adopt her?’ he had asked hopefully, his wife clinging to his hand.