“Aye,” said Heckling, picking up his axe again and taking a step back, waiting for us to depart so that he might begin chopping again. Taking the hint, Mr. Raisin and I stepped in line with each other and began walking in the direction of the house, where I saw his carriage was standing.
“A matter of some invoices,” he stated as we walked along. “Heckling is a reliable man and honest as the day is long, but when he needs something he thinks nothing of simply ordering it from one of the village shops and telling them to send the invoice directly to me. I don’t begrudge him this, of course, I know he would never take anything for his own benefit, but I do like to go through the invoices with him from time to time so we’re both clear about the estate’s expenses.”
“I imagine it must be a complicated business,” I said.
“It can be,” he admitted. “But Gaudlin Hall is not the most byzantine of my clients. I know people with less property and far less money who tie it up in the most elaborate tangles. Unravelling the knots would take the skill of a lifelong sailor. Anyway, Mr. Cratchett takes care of most of the daily business for me. I’m simply on hand for anything more complicated. And it’s nothing compared to the old days, of course. Certainly, when my father was lawyer for James’s father—”
“Goodness me,” I exclaimed. “Must everyone in this county follow their father’s profession? And take up their father’s duties when their time comes? Heckling was just telling me the same thing about his own family.”
“It’s the natural order of things, Miss Caine,” he said, sounding a little offended, and I rather regretted the tone in which I had spoken. “And the law is a respectable business, you know. As is being a general caretaker, if that is the class into which one is born. As, for that matter, is being a governess.”
“Of course, Mr. Raisin,” I said apologetically. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.”
“Might I ask what line your father was in?” he asked.
“He worked in the Department of Entomology at the British Museum.”
“And that was his lifelong career, was it?”
“Well, no,” I admitted. “When he was my age, he was briefly a teacher. In a school for small boys.”
“And before you came to join us here at Norfolk? Remind me what you did again?”
I smiled. For the first time in a long time, I felt like laughing. “I was a teacher,” I said.
“In a school for small girls, no doubt?”
“Quite so.”
“Well then, Miss Caine,” he said, stopping before the carriage and raising himself to his full height, his chest puffed out and with an expression of pure satisfaction on his face, “it seems that what’s good for us in the country is good enough for those in the blessed capital too.”
I stared into his face, those bright blue eyes, and we smiled at each other. Our gaze held and his expression became confused. His lips parted; he looked at me as if he wanted to say something but could not find the words.
“Yes, yes,” I said finally, willing to let him have his little victory. “I stand rightly chastised. But now, Mr. Raisin, you’re not leaving us so quickly, are you?”
“Would you have me stay?”
I had no answer to this question. Finally, he sighed and patted his horse. “I have given myself a half-day’s holiday, Miss Caine,” he told me. “I thought I would sort out the issue of the invoices with Heckling and then retire to my home with a glass of claret and Oliver Twist, which I am reading for the first time since its original publication. It’s such a wonderful story. I could let you have the back numbers if you’d care to take a look?”
“That’s kind of you,” I said.
“Kindness has nothing to do with it,” he replied. “I understand it must get a little … how shall I put this?… boring out here at Gaudlin Hall from time to time. With such a dearth of adult company. A little reading might provide a welcome escape?”
I smiled and considered that there were three other adults almost permanently present at the Hall: Heckling, Mrs. Livermore and Mr. Westerley. One of whom didn’t like to speak to me, one of whom didn’t want to speak to me and one of whom simply couldn’t speak to me. And yet, despite all that, “boring” was the last word I would have used to describe life on this estate.
“Perhaps,” I said. “But, Mr. Raisin, before you go, could I trouble you for a few minutes of your time?”
His face turned slightly pained; I suspect that he guessed the subject on which I wanted to speak and he felt disinclined. “I would love to, Miss Caine. Truly, there is nothing I would like more. But work calls.”
“You said you have a half-day’s holiday.”
“Ah yes,” he replied, frowning. “I meant … that is to say …”
“Mr. Raisin, I won’t keep you long, I promise. Just a few minutes. There are some questions I have for you.”
He sighed and nodded, aware perhaps that there was no proper way out of this, and I indicated a bench at the front of the lawns and we walked towards it, sitting down. He kept a safe distance from me; Isabella and Eustace could easily have taken their places between us and none of us would yet have touched. I looked down at his left hand resting on his lap. The golden band on the fourth finger. He followed my eye but did not stir.
“You’re not going to ask me more about the Westerleys, are you?” he asked. “I feel that I have told you as much as I know about them. From their first meeting to their last.”
“No, it’s not that,” I said, shaking my head. “And if I may say so, Mr. Raisin, you were very generous with your time with me that day. I could see that it was a distressing subject for you. It was obvious by the end of our conversation how deeply affected you had been by the events that took place here.”
He nodded and looked out towards the lawns. “It is not a time that any of us associated with it will ever forget,” he admitted. “But before you ask me anything further, Miss Caine, will you permit me to ask a question of you?” I nodded, surprised that he would want to know anything about me. “Did you speak to Mrs. Livermore after our conversation?” he asked me. “Have you met your employer at last?”
“I have seen him, yes,” I replied.
He turned away and his expression turned to one of resignation mixed with sorrow. “I would have advised against that. He is not a sight for delicate sensibilities.”
“Fortunately, Mr. Raisin, I am made of stern stuff.”
“I’m aware of that. I could tell the first day I met you. I admire that aspect of your character greatly, Miss Caine. Nevertheless, I hope the experience wasn’t too upsetting for you.”
“Is it wrong to say that I feel the poor man would welcome a release from his pain?”
Mr. Raisin shuddered a little, as if my remark had been a blasphemy. “I understand, of course,” he said. “But we must not say these things. It is not man’s right to decide when another should be released into the afterlife. Only God can make that judgement. After all, it was breaking that natural law which led Santina Westerley to the gallows and James Westerley to his living death.”
“We were in Great Yarmouth the other day,” I said, changing tack.
“We?”
“The children and I.”
He nodded and seemed pleased by this. “Capital idea,” he said. “I imagine that it does the children good to get some fresh air, away from this place. Whenever I see the boy, Eustace, I always think he’s terribly pale. Isabella has a darker complexion, of course; that comes from her mother’s side, I suppose. But Eustace is a Westerley through and through.”
“I think they enjoyed it,” I agreed. “It was certainly an interesting day.”
“As it happens, my mother was a Great Yarmouth girl,” continued Mr. Raisin, warming to his subject. “As a boy, we used to take a weekend’s holiday there occasionally. My grandparents kept a very happy home.” He smiled and then laughed a little, no doubt recalling some pleasant memory from childhood. “My brothers and sisters and I, we had some very
wonderful times then.” He slapped a hand down on his knee and shook his head. “Simpler times,” he added in a resigned tone. “I fear that modern life places rather too many demands on us, don’t you, Miss Caine? There are days when I rather detest living in the year 1867. Everything moves so quickly. Change is happening at such a pace. I preferred the way of life thirty years ago when I was a boy.”
“We visited a church,” I said, interrupting him, not wishing to get sidetracked into a discussion on how the modern world was a disappointment to him. “Isabella seemed particularly keen to go there. It turns out that there was a grave she wished to visit.”
Mr. Raisin frowned. “Isabella?” he asked. “And what possible grave could she wish to see in Great Yarmouth? She has no family there.”
“The grave of Ann Williams.”
His face fell. “Ah,” he said, nodding. He understood perfectly. “Miss Williams. Of course. I had forgotten that she, too, was a Great Yarmouth girl.”
“Born in 1846, died in 1867,” I recited, recalling the inscription on the gravestone. “She died at the same age I hold now. Twenty-one.” He turned and looked at me in some surprise and for a moment I thought he was going to be so ungallant as to suggest that he thought me older than my years. But no, he remained silent. “Miss Williams, I am told, was the third governess here at Gaudlin Hall?”
He considered this for a moment and then nodded. “That’s correct,” he said. “She wasn’t here very long, of course. Six or seven weeks, if I recall. I’d have to check back at my office but I don’t think it could have been much more than that.”
“And Miss Tomlin, Mrs. Westerley’s unfortunate victim, was the first governess.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Miss Tomlin the first. Miss Williams the third. Miss Bennet, of course, who advertised her own position, was the fifth, my immediate predecessor. And I think you mentioned that day in your office a Miss Golding and a Miss Harkness.”
“Yes, the second and fourth governesses respectively,” he replied, swallowing and looking down at the ground. “Very fine ladies, both of them. Miss Harkness was the only child of an old friend of mine from the Liverpool assizes. He took her loss very badly, poor man.”
“Miss Tomlin, Miss Golding, Miss Williams, Miss Harkness, Miss Bennet and I, Miss Caine. I have the order correct?”
“You do.”
“Six governesses in a year. Don’t you think that an extraordinary number?”
He looked me directly in the eye. “Only a fool would not think so, Miss Caine,” he said. “But as I explained, there were so many unfortunate accidents—”
“Accidents!” I said, bursting out laughing as I looked away from him. I turned my gaze to the trees, their leaves strewn about their roots, their dark branches cold and uninviting. In the midst of their cluster I thought I could see the quick movement of a man, a flash of white beard, and I gasped, leaned forward and stared, but nothing further appeared and the landscape settled into serenity once again. “You are a believer in coincidence then, sir,” I remarked bitterly.
“I am a believer in bad luck, Miss Caine. I am a believer in the fact that a man may be taken at a hundred years of age and a child may be brought back to God before he has even reached his first birthday. I believe that the world is a mysterious place and that we cannot expect to understand it.”
“Of the six governesses,” I said, determined not to allow his speechifying to overwhelm me; we were not in a courtroom here, “you yourself told me that only two live. Miss Bennet and I. Don’t you recognize that there are strange forces at play here?”
“Strange forces?” he asked. “In what way?”
“A malevolent presence,” I explained. “A ghost.”
Mr. Raisin leapt to his feet, his face reddening. “What would you have of me?” he asked. “What do you want me to say to this?”
“Tell me what happened to them!”
“The governesses? No! It’s too horrible. I have lived through all their deaths, not you. You cannot ask me to relive them.”
“But I am their successor!” I cried, looking up, refusing to appear weak before him. If I was to survive this place it was imperative that I showed nothing but strength. “I deserve to know.”
“I don’t think it would do any good,” he protested. “It will distress you for no purpose.”
“I have a right to hear their stories, surely you agree?”
“I’m not sure that I do,” he insisted. “You never knew any of these ladies, after all. They are strangers to you.”
“But I hold their position. Unlike you, unlike Mr. Heckling, unlike the Queen herself, I have not inherited this position from a relative who has passed. I am simply the latest claimant to a job that has proved fatal to so many of its occupants.”
He sighed, exhausted, and sat down again, considering this, his head in his hands. A lengthy pause ensued between us and I swore that I would not speak first. “Very well,” he said eventually. “But I assure you, Miss Caine, this will serve no good purpose. These are tragic stories, horrible coincidences, nothing more.”
“I shall decide that for myself, Mr. Raisin,” I said.
“I don’t doubt it,” he replied, arching an eyebrow, and I thought perhaps he was torn between admiring me and wishing that he had never come to Gaudlin Hall that morning. “Well, you know about Miss Tomlin, of course,” he began. “The first governess. We have more than adequately described the fate of that unfortunate lady. Miss Golding was the next. After Santina, Mrs. Westerley that is, was arrested and Mr. Westerley was removed to hospital, I had no choice but to advertise for a governess for the children. Miss Golding was a local girl. Not from the village but from King’s Lynn, which, as I’m sure you know, is not so very far away. She came from a good family. I interviewed her myself. I was concerned with there being so much notoriety attached to the estate at that time that the position might attract the wrong sort of person. And I was right, of course, it did. I had any number of ghoulish types show up at my door. It rather disgusted me. But when I met Miss Golding, I knew immediately that she was the right one. She was down to earth, you see. The no-nonsense type. I like that in a woman. I don’t care for frills and fancies, never have. Give me a plain-spoken woman with her feet on the ground and I’m a contented man. And I admired the fact that Miss Golding was sympathetic towards recent events but not fascinated by them, as others were. Also, her primary concern, and she made this quite clear at the interview, was for the well-being of the children. I appreciated this greatly for, as you can imagine, Isabella and Eustace were quite traumatized by what had taken place. It was still barely a month since the terrible events.”
“Of course,” I said, realizing, with a slight sensation of guilt, that I had never given much thought to how the children had responded in the immediate aftermath of their governess’s murder, their father’s assault and their mother’s arrest. “They must have been very upset.”
“Isabella was reasonably calm,” said Mr. Raisin, stroking his beard as he recalled those difficult days. “But then she’s a calm girl most of the time, isn’t she? A little too calm, I would say. And in truth, she was always much closer to her father than her mother. I would hear her cry at night and I knew then how badly she was taking it. But she hid it well. She has an ability to mask her true feelings, that girl. I’m not sure it’s entirely healthy.”
“You heard her?” I asked, surprised.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I should have mentioned. My wife and I took the children in on the night of the attacks. There was no one else to look after them, you see. We kept them with us for a few weeks. Until Miss Golding was hired, at which point Isabella insisted on moving back into her home here at Gaudlin Hall, and I saw no reason to say no, particularly when they had a responsible adult present.”
“And Eustace?” I asked. “How did he cope?”
“Through silence,” said Mr. Raisin with a sorrowful smile. “Poor little Eustace never spoke a single
word from the moment I took him away in my carriage that night until a few days after he returned here to Gaudlin. Gradually, after Miss Golding took him in hand, he began to talk again. But he’s a terribly troubled little boy, Miss Caine. You can see that, can’t you? I think sometimes that he has been the most badly affected by all of this, and all that came afterwards. I worry about him, I truly do. I worry for his future. The traumas of childhood can affect us badly when we’re older.”
I looked away and felt heartsick. Everything he was saying was true. And I felt desperately sorry for the boy, of whom I had grown so fond. And yet I also felt a sense that there was nothing I could do to help him. That I did not have the skills to return him to happiness. His innocence had been taken for ever.
“So Miss Golding took over as governess,” I said, urging him on.
“Yes. And all was fine for a while. She proved as efficient as I had expected her to be. And meanwhile, Santina’s trial went ahead. She was found guilty, of course, there could never have been any question of that. The murder of Miss Tomlin and the attempted murder of her own husband. There were some delays before the sentencing as the judge fell ill for a short time. And after that it took another week for the sentence to be carried out, for Mrs. Westerley to be … well, hanged. But throughout all of this, I thought that Miss Golding was doing a capital job. The children seemed as well as could be hoped for in the circumstances and she herself was a cheerful and efficient presence in the village. I felt that I had chosen well.”
“And what happened to her?” I asked. “How did she die?”
“The timings were quite closely connected,” he said. “It was such extraordinary bad luck. Santina was hanged on a Tuesday morning, on the stroke of noon. I was there to witness it, of course. I felt it my duty. I remember that morning very well. As she moved towards the gallows she looked in my direction and for a moment I saw the beautiful, carefree young woman she had once been, the girl who had dined at our table a hundred times, who had beaten me at whist and fives on any number of occasions. She looked to me and smiled a little, regretful, and I betrayed my oath by crying out to her that the children were fine, that I had made certain they would be cared for. I told her that I would look after them always and take care of them as if they were my own. I thought this would give her some consolation at the end, but it had the opposite effect for she grew furious and made to run at me and would, I think, have gone for my eyes had she not been restrained by her jailers. She had lost her senses, of course. It’s the only explanation. Fear. The terror of the hangman’s rope.”