madhouse bride 7

 

Chapter 7

 

Julian decided that ‘going the third time to the well’ was unwise; but he did ask Jem to answer an advertisement as a footman in the Denver household.

Jem readily got the job; many Londoners had already heard of the Denvers.

He shared the duty of footman with a small, sharp-eyed lad from Bermondsey, who had managed to shed his accent most of the time, and who was looking on this job as a step towards a real career with real toffs. ‘Chalkie’ White, who had not been known by the name bestowed upon him by his fond parents since he left home at fourteen and shed the opproprium – to the rest of the street boys – of being named Eustace Augustus, after sundry royals. When Jem found out, he laughed.

“It’ll stand you in good stead as a butler, though,” he said.

“Knowing my luck, I’d have a master named John William Smith,” said Chalkie.

“More’n likely,” said Jem.

And that was it; Jem had his feet under the table, and charmed the reason for the new staff out of the stuck-up maid who served both Mrs. and Miss Denver.

“And the candles burned green, they say, when that girl went to light them, and she had hysterics, and all the others came to gawp, and they would have it that it was witchcraft,” said Jane South, the ladies’ maid. “And then, my poor mistress! The master had left a love-letter from some mistress shoved down the cushions of his chair, and my mistress had me search for more, and they were tied up in a garter!” she looked triumphant. “Can you believe that? He’s not such a gent as he’d have us believe to sleep with such a vulgar piece.”

“Saucy letters?” asked Jem.

“As if I’d tell the likes of you!” said Jane South in scorn.

“Oh, didn’t let you read them, then?” asked Jem.

“As if I’d want to,” said Jane South, turning up her nose at the whole concept.

Jem laughed, recognising prurient curiosity when he saw it.

“And this led to the whole staff being turned off save you and old Friday-face?” he asked.

“It was the superstition over the green flames, and calling it witchcraft,” said Jane South.  “As well as dead mice, and live ones, left all over the place. And the master got the idea someone was doing it as a prank, and not knowing who, got rid of all the other servants.”

“So, it ain’t you or Mr. Wilcox, then?”

“Certainly not! I’m sure I don’t know who might be doing it or why, and with my poor mistress finding  those letters too, and the master not even ready to admit to his bit on the side, it’s been very unpleasant,” said Jane South, who then clammed up.

Jem made sure to continue the work of scattering mice, and went to the trouble of constructing a miniature gallows, on which to hang one of the little corpses he was distributing, left on the dining room table  beside the epergne.

The shriek from Thomas Denver, echoed by higher pitched shrieks from his wife and daughter was a delight to Jem’s ears.

“That’s the outside of enough! It’s you, Wilcox, I know it is!” he heard Denver shriek.

“Don’t be a fool; what could I gain from stupid pranks like this?” demanded Wilcox.

“You’re trying to make me go insane! Then you’ll steal everything I own!” cried Denver.

“If I was trying to make you go insane, you idiot, I’d claim not to be able to see the mice, so you thought you were seeing things.”

“Wilcox, you should not speak to your master like that,” said a female voice.

“Shut it, Clarinda,” snapped Wilcox. “When you’re my wife, I’ll school you properly, but in the meantime, stay out of what doesn’t concern you.”

Clarinda went into loud hysterics.

“Selling your daughter to the butler just because he thought he could help us get rid of that girl, and what happens? She has her fortune tied up too tight for us to touch it!” screamed Amelia Denver, shrilly. “And meanwhile, you are poking some vulgar piece, and wasting our money on her – a diamond necklace, mink, and who knows what else!”

“For the last time, Amelia, I do not have a mistress, I do not know where those letters came from,” snapped Denver. “For all I know, Wilcox had his own fancy-woman write them, to divide us!”

There was a long silence.

“Nothing to do with me,” said Wilcox.

Jem smirked at the arguments.

“I found out what was wrong with the candles,” said Wilcox. “Someone had put a copper pin down each by the wick.”

“Why would that make it green?” asked Denver.

“Because they were copper,” said Wilcox. “Oh, surely you know that copper burns green? That’s how they put green colour in green fireworks.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” demanded Denver.

“Because it’s the sort of thing that gentlemen pick up?” said Wilcox.

Denver scowled.

“This is looking more and more as if you know enough to do this, and I do not,” he said.

“Just because I understand what has been done and why, does not mean I did it,” said Wilcox. “Honestly, man! Would I be likely to tell you what caused it if I was trying to drive you silly? Or is that sillier?”

“There is no need to be offensive,” snapped Denver. “No, I suppose not.” There was the sound of a slap, and a female cry. “And you can be silent, Clarinda! You didn’t manage to ‘take’ because you turned your tantrums on all the young men, and if I choose to marry you off to Wilcox, that’s how it will be. Now go to your room!”

Jem made a strategic withdrawal as Clarinda flounced out of the room and up to her room. There was disharmony between thieves and in the household, and it must be milked – but judiciously. There was a rhythm to this.

Jem decided to leave it until the letter arrived.  Let things settle down and seem normal, and then see how the letter affected them. He was the perfect footman, but he did hover until Denver snapped, “Out with it, man! What did you want?”

“Did sir want the dead mice kept to make sculptures with?”

“What the devil do you mean? Why should I want dead mice?”

“Well, sir, the… sculptures have been… interesting, but a little… unnerving, arranged in, as you might say, scenes of daily life….”

“Throw them away! Throw them all away! I am not creating sculptures, it’s nothing to do with me!”

“No, sir, of course not, if you say so,” said Jem. “And the clothes made for them?”

“Throw it all away!”

“Very good, sir.”

 

Later, Denver stopped, and thought, ‘clothes?’

He decided not to ask.

 

Other than the strained atmosphere over the very frisky letters by Daisy the Dasher, the next couple of days were relatively quiet. Jem thought it a shame that Wilcox had managed to convince Denver that he had nothing to do with the troubles.

 

oOoOo

 

Julian went to see the village vicar, an elderly, scholarly man named Benedict Cartwright-Jones.

“I want to get married,” said Julian. “I embarked on a betrothal contract, with a verbal agreement that it could be broken by the lady without penalty on her eighteenth birthday, if nothing occurred requiring my protection. It was a promise to a sick man, who subsequently died in an accident whose validity I doubt but cannot prove. Her relatives have treated her badly and I rescued her, but, naturally, she is compromised by living under my roof.”

He showed the document.

“It seems to be in order; I will need to speak to the lady to see if she is also willing,” said the Reverend Cartright-Jones.

“Yes, understood. But when you are satisfied as to that, you are willing? I thought to purchase an ordinary licence so as to avoid the banns being called, to prevent any unpleasantness from her uncle.”

“If he is her guardian now….”

“Sir, the plan was to give her ‘treatment’ of ice baths and electric shocks until she signed her wealth away to her uncle, and then her life would not have been worth a sous,” explained Julian. “I snatched her from the madhouse which is a place, essentially, for inconvenient heiresses.”

“Dear me! How very singular.”

“Not as singular as you might think, alas,” said Julian. “I’ll be giving sanctuary to the other young ladies when they can be busted out. I thought I might ask if your sister would be willing to chaperone them in the Dower House.”

“My sister knows nothing of alienism,” said Cartright-Jones.

“She won’t need to; I’m arranging care for the three genuinely insane. These are frightened young girls bullied into appearing insane.”

“Then it is no more nor less than her Christian duty to be a mother-figure for them. I am sure she will agree; she is at a loose end since her husband died.”

“I hoped it would help her as well as them,” said Julian. “If she will start getting the Dower House ready, and hiring such servants as she requires, who will, of course, be on my staff, then it will be ready for them.”

“I will write to her immediately, and then come to see Miss Bonnet,” said Cartright-Jones.

 

oOoOo

 

Jem was fairly able with a needle; he did, after all, care for Julian’s clothes. A dress and bonnet, mouse-sized did not stretch his ingenuity too much; a waistcoat took a bit more work, and a top hat had to be modelled in paste-board and painted with stove blacking. Leaving them on top of Amelia Denver’s sewing basket where Denver might see them in the parlour led to accusations, recriminations, loud voices and crying.

“Watkins! Watkins!” Denver called. Jem went to his call.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

Denver thrust the tiny clothes at him.

“You said you got rid of them!” he yammered.

“I got rid of all the others, sir,” said Jem. “I haven’t been prying where I should not to see if any more were hid.”

“No…. quite… understood,” said Denver. “Who is doing this, Watkins?”

“I… well, I fancy, sir, it’s the other young lady.”

“Other young lady? What do you mean? My daughter?”

“Oh, no, sir, not your daughter. The other young lady; the dark-haired one. L... Well… she never comes downstairs in the daytime, and I only caught glimpses of her…. I assumed she was sick, sir, and had her own servants.” said Jem.

“There is no other young lady here!” declared Denver.

“No, sir, I must have imagined seeing her,” said Jem, obligingly.  “I did wonder… but nobody believes in ghosts, nowadays, do they? I apologise for being fanciful.”

Denver forced a laugh.

“Oh, very droll, ghosts, indeed,” he said. “You may go. Burn those clothes.”

“Yessir,” said Jem.

 

Denver waited until Jem had gone, and ran up to Anne’s room.

It was untouched…. Save for the short length of knitting on two hat-pins.

Denver ripped it apart, and took the fine darning-wool downstairs to throw on the fire.

There were no such thing as ghosts! It was impossible! It had to be his wife, only a woman could sew so well or knit.  But was she working with Wilcox? He was a younger, better-looking man when not assuming the lugubrious mien a butler ought to have.

He had to know!

Denver planned to sit up all night, and watch.

It was fortunate for Jem that he had decided to do no more until the letter arrived; but he heard the footsteps as Denver prowled around and leaped out of bed and advanced in nightgown and slippers and hefting a candlestick.

“Who goes there?” he demanded.

“It’s me, Watkins,” said Denver. “I… I hoped to catch whoever was playing nasty tricks.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, sir,” said Jem. “I wondered if it was a burglar… I don’t hear no footsteps when things were left.”

Denver shuddered.

“I am glad you are vigilant,” he said. “I’m going back to bed.”

“Yessir, me too,” said Jem.

 He was smirking to himself. Denver was truly rattled. 

Jem had his feet well and truly under the table, though it was plain that Wilcox did not like him.

“What the master sees in you, I don’t know,” he grumbled.

“Perhaps that I don’t judge about his messing about with mice,” said Jem. “It being none of my business if he wants to go to the trouble of dressing them, and then having me get rid of them.”

“What do you mean?” demanded Wilcox.

Jem sighed.

“You have to admit, he has an odd obsession with mice,” he said. “And ‘Chalky’ will tell you how we found some with clothes on.”

“Aye, that’s right, Mr. Wilcox,” said Chalky, since Jem had organised this to involve his fellow footman as a witness. “Liddle beads as buttons on weskits and liddle dresses.”

“And you’ve both seen this?” asked Wilcox, sharply.

“Hard to miss,” said Chalky.

“Christ!” said Wilcox.

Jem wondered if this was merely an expletive, or an actual invocation of a man disturbed out of his equilibrium.

He suspected the former. Men like Wilcox do not turn to God for comfort.

 

And this was the day that the newspaper carried news of a spurious hurricane wiping out a plantation.

And Denver reacted perfectly, spitting his morning coffee all over the table, and leaving his breakfast.

He leaped up.

“I have to go into town, to my stockbroker,” he mumbled, as his wife and daughter stared at him.