Tyringham Park (46 page)

Lochlann was to be her main beneficiary. If he pre-deceased her, then his sister Iseult would become Mary Anne’s legal guardian, and a generous slice of Charlotte’s fortune would
revert to her, the rest being held in trust for Mary Anne until she came of age. Mary Anne’s name was not to be changed legally from ‘Carmody’ to ‘Blackshaw’. A
bequest of five thousand pounds each was to be left to Miss East (now Lily Cooper), Manus, Cormac and Queenie.

Because she made a point of not looking directly at Waldron, Edwina hadn’t noticed that his skin was turning yellow. Verity did, and expressed concern as she took her
place between the two of them at the dinner table. Edwina forced herself to raise her eyes. When had the yellow managed to displace the purplish-red tones that had predominated when she last looked
at his face?

He’s showing his age at last, Edwina thought. The military bearing and slim figure are gone, replaced by a stoop and a paunch. His voice lacks authority. And what does it signify that his
hands are restless, constantly scratching at himself?

Charlotte was five minutes late taking her place. “Sorry,” she said. “Mary Anne took a little longer than usual to settle tonight.” She didn’t say it was because
the child kept trying to return to her grandmother’s room to play with the new toy monkey and his clashing cymbals.

“This letter came for you in the afternoon post, Charlotte,” said Aunt Verity. “It’s postmarked ‘Ballybrian’ and it’s quite bulky. I don’t
recognise the handwriting.”

“Thank you. I’ll open it later,” said Charlotte, whose pulse quickened, thinking that Miss East or Manus must have something so important to tell her that one of them had
decided to write to her at last.

While the rack of lamb was being served Charlotte slit open the envelope with a knife and, under the table, flicked to the second page to reveal the signature,
“(Nurse) Elizabeth
Dixon
”, written in a clear, well-formed hand.

Both sisters registered the look of dismay on her face as she pushed back her chair and, without giving a word of explanation, ran from the room.

“Is the doctor dead?” asked Waldron, looking up in time to see an envelope flutter to the ground and his daughter, clutching sheets of paper, making a dramatic exit.

“It could be anything or nothing. Charlotte makes a habit of running from rooms,” said Edwina, who had seen her do it twice.

Charlotte waited until Mary Anne was asleep before moving to the next room to read the letter so that the child wouldn’t be contaminated by anything that had any connection to Nurse Dixon.
Aunt Verity dropped by to ask if everything was all right and left aggrieved when she didn’t get any information out of Charlotte.

If only Lochlann were with me now, giving me courage, Charlotte thought as she positioned herself beside a lamp and forced herself to read:

What kind of a fool does she take me for? was Charlotte’s initial response to what she read. Does she think I am still eight years old and credulous? If she really
believes in the power of her curse why doesn’t she withdraw it straight away, rather than wait to set up a dramatic charade at the Park? Does that final sentence about calling to the
townhouse contain a threat?

I’ll have to travel to the Park to see her. I can’t risk having her anywhere near Mary Anne, putting her evil eye on her.

She must have fallen on hard times. That’s why she wants me to travel down. All that mumbo-jumbo about a curse is a trick to make sure I turn up. One thing I can guarantee – she
doesn’t intend to do me a good turn. She wants something. Why else would she contact me? Even she wouldn’t have the brass neck to be asking for a position at the Park, so it must be
money. I can’t think what else it would be. I’ll leave Mary Anne with Iseult and go down and face her on my own. That would be the best thing to do. I’m not afraid of her any
more. What harm can she do to me at my age?

Ballybrian
1943

Elizabeth Dixon dressed for the performance of her life. Her well-cut costume, silk stockings, handmade shoes, opal hatpin, kid gloves and crocodile handbag all proclaimed to
the world her success and refined taste. Even with Jim Rossiter looming over her while she packed a single case, she had chosen well. It was a pity she couldn’t wear her jewellery. Now that
she was back in Ballybrian, she feared it might be recognised.

Turning the compact mirror to reflect light on her face, she had to admit she was still a fine-looking woman. The Australian sun’s damage to her skin was slight because she had stayed
indoors most of the time. The two months enforced rest at sea had rejuvenated her, though it had taken until the final fortnight for her strength to return, such had been the shock to her system of
being found out and deported.

She applied red lipstick – the final touch. She didn’t know what would thrill her more – the shock Lily East and Charlotte must get when they saw the change success and
education had made to her bearing, or their reaction to the fact that she and she alone had solved the longstanding mystery of Victoria’s disappearance, a solution so unexpected that
apparently no one, including herself, had thought of it during all those years of conjecture. Or, after all that, the satisfaction she would experience at extracting a pile of money out of that
rich Charlotte to replace what Jim had stolen from her.

She had been staying under her alias, Beth Hall, in a room in a guest house in Ballybrian, visited by a trio from the Park staff who had been invited in by the young proprietor, Mrs
O’Mahoney, to meet her. Fascinated by Dixon’s stories of the old days, they accepted her as one of their own and gave her uncensored versions of all the happenings since then, the most
affecting being Lady Blackshaw’s accident, the most fortuitous, the death of Mandrake and the most hurtful, Manus’s marriage to a local girl. Sid’s death didn’t mean
anything to her. She’d had little to do with him when she was at the Park and the only memory she had of him was that he never liked her. Who would that little tyrant Lily East get to fight
her battles for her now that Dr Finn and Sid were both gone?

Dixon swore the Park employees to secrecy about her presence there, not divulging her real name for added security, stressing how much she looked forward to surprising her former colleagues.

She couldn’t help but notice that the calibre of servant had altered since her time. The new breed seemed to be either physically deformed or mentally deficient, or both. In her day the
Big Houses were filled with bright talented people with unrealised potential, who could have done better things if they hadn’t been held back by history and lack of education, through no
fault of their own. Mrs O’Mahoney from the boarding house explained to Dixon that since the Great War young people would no longer accept the low wages, long hours and isolation of the
estates, preferring factory work in the city. Besides, the power and influence of the Big Houses had declined along with their numbers. The way of life the landlords had imposed on Ireland for
centuries was fast dying out.

She thought she might faint when she first saw Manus in the village. Her belief that he was hers by right was as strong now as it had been during those eight years of waiting for him to declare
himself. Standing at her window, hidden behind lace curtains, she stared and stared, willing him to cross the street so she could have a good look at him, but he stayed on the other side. He was
walking home after Sunday Mass when she spotted him. There was a female imposter walking beside him and four children accompanying them. Two boys, two girls. How perfect. The eldest, a boy of about
twenty, looked the dead spit of how she remembered Manus looking when she first met him.

The unfairness of it. Those four children should have been hers.

The younger daughter said something and Manus and his wife laughed. The wife had no dress sense and was on the plump side, the typical shape of someone who had let herself go. After Manus met
Dixon again, would he regret turning her down when he saw how well she had preserved her looks and kept her figure?

She wondered what description Jim had given the bank to ferret out her Beth Hall identity. ‘Outstanding-looking woman, middle-aged but looking thirty, fashionably dressed, impressive
manner, air of authority’? Yes, something along those lines.

She straightened the seams of her stockings, pulled the veil down over her face and smoothed on her gloves. It was one o’clock. Making her way down the main street of the village, and
walking the half mile to the Park gates, past the shell of the lodge, and then along the beech-lined avenue, was an experience she wanted to savour, every second of it. As she passed by she
expected to dazzle the locals with her finery. It was the first time she had put herself on display since her arrival. Would they be able to judge, simply by looking at her, that she would have
been wasted if she’d stayed in this backwater? And when they heard her speak, if they dared speak to her, would they be surprised to find she could now outshine Lily East in the use of long
words and correct grammar, though she stopped short of the la-di-da accent Lily affected as it tended to put people off?

It gave her pleasure to hear from the current servants that Miss East had given up her position of head housekeeper to become ordinary Mrs Sid Cooper, living in Sid’s small cottage (from
which she was soon to be evicted), rearing his daughter Catherine until the young girl was old enough to leave for Dublin to become a nurse, all the time doing good works, making ends meet and
leading an uneventful life.

That last bit was about to change.

The stables came up on Dixon’s left. The double doors were open, but there was no sign of Manus, which suited her as she didn't want to see him face to face until the following day. Best
get Lily East and Charlotte out of the way first so she could give Manus her full and undivided attention when the time came.

She stared at the spot where Lady Blackshaw had left the baby carriage, and at the corner where Teresa had glimpsed the two little girls for the last time, not understanding the significance of
what she’d seen. Dixon wouldn’t be the only one looking at those areas with heightened interest when her story was told.

As the huge stone house came into view, snippets of the optimistic, romantic notions she held when she first arrived here at the age of eighteen and gazed up at it as if it were a magic castle,
made her cringe at the naïvety of her misconceptions, almost as naïve as the belief when she was in the orphanage that one day her mother, whoever she was, would call by to reclaim
her.

The vicar of her Huddersfield parish in England had told her she would be nanny to a very grand family on a very grand estate. Her mind had filled with images of beautiful women with tall hair
in exquisite clothes and men in embroidered coats with buckles on their shoes – she had seen pictures of such people in the few books of fairy tales at the orphanage. What a disappointment
the life at Tyringham Park had been. Lady Blackshaw never dressed for dinner when Lord Waldron was abroad, which was most of the time, staying in her male riding clothes all day and evening. No
parties, no balls, no visitors, no occasions. The last hunt that Lord Waldron had hosted on his way back from India before he joined the War Office in London was so thrilling she knew what she was
missing. After seeing all those stylish people dressed for the dinner and the dance, she had become more dissatisfied than usual, sitting in the dark, wearing flat, mannish, lace-up shoes, dressed
in her uniform that she wore seven days a week, entertaining sour thoughts in a cold nursery with a whining child for company.