The Other Cathy (25 page)

Emma tried to hold back her avalanching thoughts and
examine his words one by one, to reduce their horrifying im
pact.

‘But – but what connection could Uncle Paget have had with my father’s death?’ she whispered.

His dark eyes were serious and intent as he looked at her.

‘I have come to the conclusion that I was mistaken in
suspecting William Hardaker. This new evidence points to
Dr Eade, though as yet I know of no reason why he and your
father should have quarrelled violently. But there must have
been some reason, Emma, and I intend to discover what it was.’

* * *

Seated beside Jane in the padded window seat, Chloe paid
scant attention to her sister’s tearful lamentations. She was observing Emma and Matthew engrossed in conversation. It
was a disgrace, after the girl had been warned about him. Was Emma so stupefied by his flattering attentions that she couldn’t
perceive the kind of man Matthew Sutcliffe really was? Chloe
had been hearing talk everywhere about the way he’d been
calling on Blanche, alone and late in the evening! She glanced towards her sister-in-law, sitting over by the fireplace, and saw
that although Blanche was ostensibly absorbed in talking to
Bernard, she was watching the couple across the room with
jealous eyes. Not that Chloe had any sympathy to waste on Blanche! And it was being whispered, too, that Matthew Sutcliffe had been seen in an establishment in Wyke, in the company of one of those – even in the privacy of her mind she
baulked at the distasteful word – one of those low women of
the town! Now he had the effrontery to try his captivating
wiles on Emma.

Chloe’s gall rose at the thought of Hugh’s daughter –
her
niece –
and Arnold Sutcliffe’s son coming together. It was as
if, she brooded, fate had decreed her own humiliation was not
enough; as if through the second generation, through Arnold
Sutcliffe’s son by that odious woman he had married, she was being made to suffer all over again.

Chloe closed her eyes against the pain, but at once her mind
was tortured with the vivid, stabbing images that had haunted it through all her adult years. High summer, a sleepy Sunday
afternoon and herself as a girl of seventeen, running happily through the scented meadow pastures, her bonnet ribbons flying. Just a short time before, looking from the conservatory of the grand new house her papa had recently built, she had caught sight of her beloved sitting astride a wall at the bottom of the slope that ran down to the river. She had waved at him
eagerly, and Arnold had waved back. It had been agony, wait
ing minute by minute until she could slip away from her
mama unobserved. But at long last she was free, and her heart
sang with joy as she skipped along. But Arnold was nowhere
to be seen – he must be hiding from her! She climbed the
stile and looked behind the drystone wall of the seven-acre
field, but he wasn’t there. Nor was he concealed by the thick trunk of the oak tree near the drinking trough. Chloe glanced
around breathlessly. There was only one place left, surely
the tumbledown old cruck barn! She ran to it, calling to him
expectantly, ‘Arnold, where are you? Come on, don’t be a tease, I know you’re there somewhere.’ At the gaping en
trance where the old plank doors had fallen in, she had stopped
and peered inside, waiting until her eyes could penetrate the
gloom. He wasn’t there! Then, from up above, she heard a
muffled exclamation. Of course, the hay loft!

Holding her breath, smothering an excited laugh, she had
crept up the rickety ladder. As her eyes crested the loft floor,
she met the startled gaze of another pair of eyes – and then an
other pair! Chloe stared in horror, petrified, unable to utter a
sound. There in the tumbled hay lay Maggie Crowther, her skirt
cast aside, her petticoats up above her waist. And Arnold lay
on top of her, their bare limbs entwined. The pulsing seconds
seemed like hours before the young man moved, rolling away
and hastily covering his nakedness, while the girl pushed down
her petticoats. The hush of the afternoon was split by a scream
that Chloe only afterwards realised was her own voice. Careless of tearing her Sunday-best clothes, she scrambled fever
ishly down the ladder, fleeing from the barn and across the fields; running, running with all her might.

She had never spoken to either of them again – never, never,
never! Not when they were married; not when, two years later, a son was born to them. Not even when Arnold Sutcliffe was
made overlooker at the mill and she could not avoid seeing
him on her visits there. Not so much as a single, solitary word.
As if she would demean herself! Maggie Crowther, a small
holder’s daughter who had been her fellow pupil at the Misses
Smallbent’s Academy; and Arnold Sutcliffe, whose father had
been nothing more than a wool-sorter. She had offered them her friendship, and this was her reward. People like that were little better than servants. Chloe despised and hated them.

Like father, like son! She hated Matthew Sutcliffe and all
he stood for. Hated his pretensions now that he was wealthier
than the Hardakers themselves; hated his arrogance when as a
young man he had claimed that credit for the Hardaker Con
densing Engine should by rights go to his father, that Hugh
Hardaker had stolen it. Chloe smiled to herself at the memory,
a bitter smile that was like a knife piercing her heart. With
what savage joy she had seized her opportunity, that day Hugh
had shown her the patent application he’d drawn up, in the
name of Arnold Sutcliffe!

‘Don’t you see!’ she’d cried excitedly, ‘now that he’s dead you can destroy this document and prepare another, this time
with
your
name as the inventor.’

How bewildered Hugh had looked! That twin brother of
hers could be very slow-witted at times.

‘But, Chloe, it was entirely Arnold’s idea, and he did all the development in his spare time. I merely offered to write up
this specification for him in the proper form.’

‘What of it? He was just a mill hand, an employee of the
Hardakers, and that’s all he ever would have been. And now
that he’s dead, it would be too absurd to let that document be registered in his name.’

‘You always disliked Arnold,’ Hugh had said, looking at her
curiously. ‘I never understood why.’

‘Disliked? How ridiculous! Why should I dislike the man? Arnold Sutcliffe was nothing to me, one way or the other.’

Having ruled Hugh as a child, she’d not expected such
resistance from her twin. But she’d won him over in the end. And then, when that loud-mouthed Sutcliffe boy had started
spreading the story that his father had been the true inventor of the condensing engine, Hugh had panicked and weakly wanted to give way to him. But she’d soon put a stop to that
nonsense!

It was outrageously unfair that Arnold Sutcliffe’s son had
returned from Australia a rich man, lording it in the Brackle Valley, accepted everywhere; and now he dared to cast desirous eyes upon Hugh’s daughter. Had it been up to her, as
soon as Matthew Sutcliffe’s identity was discovered the Hard
akers would have cut the wretch dead. But Randolph had
seen fit to decree otherwise, and she could not bend Randolph
to her will, as she had always bent Hugh.

Chloe opened her eyes and discovered they were moist with tears.

Across the room The Reverend Thomas Milner, who had
officiated at Paget’s interment, was now giving Randolph the benefit of his views on Mr Charles Darwin’s deplorable theory
that man was descended from the apes. He broke off his diatribe and peered over his spectacles at the two sisters who sat
together on the window seat.

‘Ah, how they grieve!’ he tutted with compassion, ‘But it
is only right and proper that they should, after such a tragic
loss.’ He gave a deep sigh, and sipped appreciatively at his
glass of fine amontillado sherry.

Chloe had stayed on at High Banks to keep her sister company
but she returned home in time for dinner on the third day, and Emma left Cathy for an hour to join her uncle and aunt for
the meal.

‘It really is too absurd,’ Chloe remarked acidly, ‘the way
Jane is making such a display of her grief. She’s scarcely eating a morsel – well, I suppose starving won’t hurt her for a few days! But she trails around the house with puffy red eyes,
ready to burst into a flood of tears at the smallest provocation.
I even had to address the funeral cards for her, she said her hand shook so much she couldn’t hold a pen.’ Chloe gave a
short, dry laugh. ‘To see Jane now, nobody would credit that
she despised Paget all those years.’

Emma, grasping the opportunity to probe further into the
matter which had festered in her mind ever since Matthew had spoken of it at the funeral, said thoughtfully, ‘It doesn’t appear to have helped her at all that Uncle Paget recovered consciousness for a few moments just before he died, long
enough for Aunt Jane to tell him she forgave him.’ She
spooned up the last of her partridge soup, but when neither
Randolph nor Chloe made any comment, she continued, ‘It
seems so dreadfully sad that their marriage should have been
blighted because of a single mistake. A terrible mistake, I know, but all the same Aunt Jane cannot believe that Uncle
Paget was wantonly careless in not saving poor Annabella’s
life.’ Pausing deliberately for a moment, she added, ‘That was
why he started drinking, wasn’t it?’

‘Really, Emma, this is no fit subject for a young woman of
your age to be discussing,’ Chloe protested, but Randolph
waved her to silence. ‘It seems the obvious conclusion, lass.
Why do you question it?’

Having manoeuvred the conversation so far, Emma was at
a loss to know how to continue.

‘I – I don’t really know. It’s just that I can remember Uncle
Paget being a heavy drinker ever since I was old enough to
understand, and somehow I’ve always had the impression that
it started after Annabella’s death. I merely wondered if that
was true.’

Chloe, looking highly disapproving, shot a glance at her
brother to see if he was going to censure Emma. But Randolph
had risen to his feet, preparing to carve the joint of boiled
gammon on the sideboard.

‘As it happens,’ she said, tight-lipped, ‘it is true! And now that your morbid curiosity has been satisfied, Emma, let us
please change the subject. We don’t want the servants over
hearing.’

‘I wouldn’t have mentioned it before the servants, Aunt
Chloe.’

‘I should hope not, indeed!’

After dinner Randolph returned to the mill. Chloe and Cathy were both sleeping and the house was wrapped in its
usual afternoon hush. Emma felt restless, disinclined even to
read. She was very much on edge and longed to be doing some
thing active and positive. The thought came to her suddenly that she had never looked through the remaining contents of her mother’s deed box. At once she went up to the attic and
carried an armful of the tape-tied packages to her own room,
spreading them on the bed. She selected the bundle of letters
penned in her father’s hand – love letters to her mama. Emma
held them a moment, then dropped them back on the quilted
counterpane. Not just now! One day she would read them,
when she was really happy.

Opening one of the other parcels she spread out the re
ceipted bills it contained. There were several invoices on pale
blue paper from a bookseller in Bloomsbury, made out to
Hugh Hardaker Esquire. These were for books dealing with
aspects of the textile industry, such as the development of the Jacquard loom and the new ring-frame spinning machines in
America; the volumes had passed to Uncle Randolph after papa’s death, and were now kept in the glass-fronted cabinet
over the secretaire in his study, though whether he had ever
read them was another matter. Unlike papa, her uncle wasn’t
a technically-minded man. Emma was about to gather the invoices up again when she noticed that one of them, dated only a few months before her father had died, was for a book entitled
Patent Law and Practice.
Patents! Papa must have
bought it for reference when preparing the specification for
the Hardaker Condensing Engine. Or, as Matthew insisted it should rightly be, the
Sutcliffe
Engine.

On an impulse, Emma decided to go down to Uncle Ran
dolph’s study and have a look at this book. It might, just con
ceivably, contain some useful clue – a marked passage,
perhaps. But she was frustrated in her aim. On her way
downstairs she heard a carriage draw up outside, and the
doorbell jangled. Going to answer it herself, Emma was sur
prised to find Blanche standing there.