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None of us had noticed that Joseph wasn’t there when we discovered Henderson’s body, and no one thought to look for him. The gamekeeper found him later, half-naked, none too sober and out of his wits, trying to wash the blood off his clothes in the lake.
The story came out slowly. I’d say there are still bits that haven’t come out, about the things he witnessed before he went into the workhouse. Henderson had made a bit of a favourite of him and had been bribing him to spy on us. Joseph didn’t realise what he was getting into at first, and I suppose he liked the money. By the time he understood, Henderson had his hooks well and truly into him. Joseph must have been desperate to do what he did.
You’d have thought that Hyde would be devastated to lose his right-hand man, but that wasn’t the case. He knew as well as the rest of us what Henderson was like and what he was capable of, but Henderson was privy to Hyde’s unsavoury secrets too, and that had given him a hold over his employer. Hyde must have been relieved to be rid of him, though if he believed his secrets were buried alongside Henderson in his pauper’s grave, he was mistaken.
I could have told the police what he had done. Perhaps I should have, to try to get justice for my brother, though it would have been an unequal fight—a footman with a criminal record against a baronet—and my appetite for revenge had left me by then. It seemed more important to look to the other boy I should have protected. The one who was still living.
We all closed ranks around Joseph and kept him away from the police as much as possible. They weren’t much interested in him anyway. They had their suspect—the housekeeper who had disappeared so suddenly and couldn’t speak for herself.
I could have spoken for her.
God knows, Kate—I wanted to, please believe me. But I kept silent, because clearing your name would have meant exposing Joseph’s guilt and I couldn’t do that to him. Not when I should have seen what was going on and prevented it, or at least listened when he tried to tell me. Besides, I’m almost ashamed to say that I wanted the police to look for you. Finding you was all I could think about, and they had a better chance of success than I did. I would have admitted to the murder myself, then. I would have gone to the gallows without complaint if it meant I could see you again and have the chance to explain.
I never went back to work at Coldwell, only to help close it up. In the new year, the Hydes moved down to the London house, taking Miss Dunn and Thomas with them. Goddard was given a pension and went to live with a niece somewhere, and the rest of us were given generous characters and a sum of money to tide us over. The Gatleys stayed on as caretakers of the estate, and are still there, as far as I know. Lady Hyde didn’t stay in London long. She and Miss Dunn returned to Shropshire, with the excuse of nursing her father, who wasn’t in good health. You perhaps heard that Hyde suffered a heart attack at the card table in a London gaming club later that year. He wasn’t much mourned, except by the fellow who was beating him at cards. When Lady Hyde returned to Coldwell for his funeral, she instructed the solicitors to put it up for sale.
I didn’t want to work in service again. What I really wanted to do was scour the country and search until I found you, but I felt a responsibility for Joseph and Eliza. I know you were aware of her situation and were going to help her, and since she looked after me when I was recovering, it seemed only right that I should do the same. Joseph was very troubled after what happened, and I couldn’t leave him to make his own way. I managed to get farm work for us on a small estate in Nottinghamshire. It came with a cottage, and I presented Joseph as my half brother and Eliza as my widowed sister.
It would have been kinder to say she was my wife. I know that was what she would have chosen, but I couldn’t do it. Just in case word got out and reached you somehow and you believed it was true. Or, by some miracle you came looking for me, asking around, and were told I was married. It was a small hope, but I clung to it. I had nothing else.
I thought the arrangement would just be for the short term, until the child had been born and Eliza had decided what she wanted to do, but it didn’t work out like that. The baby—a tiny girl—came too soon, in the coldest part of that winter, and never drew breath. In spite of everything, Eliza took it badly. We all did. Such a little life, but a big loss, on top of everything that had come before. Someone else I hadn’t been able to keep from harm.
After that, it was just a case of going on. Long days, hard work, the shifting seasons. In another life, I might have been happy there. I wrote to Miss Dunn from time to time. She was better placed to hear word of you than I was, and though she used her connections in the church and in service, we could find no clue. I knew you must have changed your name and done all you could to disappear again.
Why did you have to do it so well?
The night is almost over, and time is running out. It’s beginning to get light now and the chill is starting to ebb away. In any other circumstances I’d say it was going to be a glorious day.
Maybe, wherever you are, you are happy. I hope you are. Maybe you found someone else and fell in love and have a home and children and the life I said should be yours. I hope you have.
I can say that now and truly mean it. More than anything else I want to know that, wherever you are, you are safe and loved and you have a good life.
But I am still selfish enough to wish that it could have been with me.
Chapter 34
Brighton
July 7th 1916
When she leaves Lewes Crescent she finds that she very much doesn’t want to go back to Belgrave Place. Since the wounded started to arrive Mrs Van de Berg has demonstrated a vampire-like thirst for information about the Poor Brave Boys which she is in no mood to indulge today. Not with the letter like a burning coal in her pocket.
Her heart is beating an erratic rhythm as she waits to cross Marine Parade, eventually losing patience with the late-afternoon traffic and dodging between an omnibus and a grocer’s cart. The beach is emptying now, mothers and nannies corralling children and packing up picnic baskets, and she doesn’t have to walk far to find a place that feels safe from the scrutiny of others.
She can feel the warmth of the stones through her skirts as she sits down. All day, as she has gone from bed to bed, writing postcard after postcard; as the VADs have peeled stinking, tattered uniforms away from torn flesh and the orderlies have lifted stretchers from ambulances and Sister Pinkney has cleaned wounds and administered morphine; and across the sea the guns have rumbled, on and on… All that time, it has been a dazzling high summer’s day and children have played and paddled and begged for ice creams, and Joseph—Joseph—has made the final part of his journey from the carnage of trenches, first aid posts, and casualty clearing stations, through a series of randomly assigned trains and boats and ports and stations, and arrived here. With this letter.
She stares at it for a long time. The dirty envelope tells a story of its own, one she can just begin to comprehend, having seen the men and heard them talk of where they have come from. But it’s the writing she focuses on. Although she has got used to being called Eliza Simmons, and can almost think of it as her own name sometimes, she cannot hide from the fact that this letter is not intended for her and she has no business opening it.
She never meant to assume Eliza’s identity. On the night she fled from Coldwell, as Miss Dunn helped her to bundle up her scant possessions, she had only thought to put enough distance between herself and Henderson that he wouldn’t be able to compromise and control her, or give away her whereabouts to Alec. She had scarcely been aware that the character reference from Eliza’s previous employer was amongst the papers she shoved into her writing case, much less planned to use it. But after seeing the newspaper report of Henderson’s death—his murder—what choice did she have but to reinvent herself again?
She strokes her thumb over the address on the envelope. She can still do the right thing. She can affix one of the stamps with which Mrs Van de Berg keeps her generously supplied for the Poor Brave Boys… She can get up and walk back to the street, along the seafront and drop it into the post box. It will be in the real Eliza’s hands the day after tomorrow.
But she knows very well she is not going to do that.
The envelope contains the answers to questions that have tormented her for four and a half years. It is fat with them. Here is the ending to the story, and she cannot let it go without finding out what happened to the man she fell so foolishly in love with.
And so, she shoves aside the guilt and silences the prim little voice of her better nature. Her hands are trembling as she tears a flimsy corner and slides a finger in to rip it open. The paper she pulls out is creased and marked, as if it has been carried around for a long time, though she is surprised to see that it contains only a few brief lines.
She reads them with her heart in her throat and tears in her eyes.