Frost Hollow Hall (21 page)

I’ve blown it
, I thought.
That’s it. I’m done for.

Will landed neat as a cat beside me.

‘Great start!’ he hissed.

‘At least I’m in one piece, thanks for asking,’ I muttered, and sat up.

We both froze. Out in the corridor came the sound of footsteps, then voices . . . two voices.

‘Oh heck,’ said Will. ‘Here they come.’

I grabbed his sleeve. ‘Don’t just stand there!’

We squatted down behind the table. It hardly shielded us at all, but seemed a better option than just handing ourselves over. The door edged open. A candle appeared, then someone gasped sharply. I bit my lip. Any second now we’d be spotted. Instead, to my great relief, the door closed again. And out in the passage, I heard Dorcas’s voice. ‘It was nothing. Finish your drink now, Gracie and we’ll go back to bed.’

She clearly thought this mess was Ada’s work, and didn’t want to upset Gracie further.

I gave it another few minutes, just enough for the house to fall quiet again and for my heartbeat to slow.

‘Ready?’ I whispered to Will. He nodded.

I found us a candle stub, and once I’d got the thing alight, steadied myself with a deep breath.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Follow me.’

Out in the passageway, the darkness closed in on us. No sign of Gracie or Dorcas. The air was colder too, and it was deathly quiet. A shiver ran down my back. We went through the glass doors towards Mrs Jessop’s office. The candle gave off little light, but I could see the walls at least, and then up some stone steps to a door. We stopped in front of it. My heart thumped hard against my ribs.

‘This is it,’ I whispered.

‘Step aside then,’ said Will. ‘And hold that candle close.’

He tested the door to see if it was locked.

‘Of course it’s locked!’ I hissed. ‘She’s got the biggest bunch of keys in England. She’d lock
you
up if she could!’

‘Thinking like that don’t help. Now, if you don’t mind . . .’

‘Sorry.’

Crouching low at the door, he slid his knife in the lock and jiggled it for what seemed like an age. My arm began to ache from holding up the light.

‘You done yet?’

‘Nah,’ Will said. ‘It don’t want to budge.’

I tutted irritably. Hadn’t he bragged that he could pick a lock? Wasn’t that why he was here?

Then he turned his wrist sharply. The lock clicked. Easy as pie the door swung open.

The room was much as I remembered it – clean and orderly and full of notebooks. But this time the lamp was unlit, the grate full of cold ashes. I put down the candle and looked about me. I saw that the desk had drawers. Each one had a lock. But the brass clock on the wall showed it was already nearly quarter past four, so we’d have to get a shift on. The maids would be up at five.

‘I’ll start with the books,’ I said to Will. ‘You get those drawers open.’

The notebooks were in date order, one for each month, their spines all level on the shelf. I counted backwards ’til I got to 1871, the year Kit died. Ten more books and there it was. My throat went tight: ‘February 1871’. But this particular book wasn’t lined up neat like the others; it was set right back on the shelf. I slid it out, dreading what I might read inside.

Heart in mouth, I opened the book. Page after page was filled with tiny writing. I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, so I held it near the candle for a better look. My heart sank. It was all just details of meals and chores and who’d done what. Then I noticed other things written round the edge of each page. They seemed to be little thoughts,
Mrs Jessop’s thoughts.

I shuddered. It didn’t seem right to read her private words. It felt uncomfortable, like she was right here in the room with her cold eyes on me. Now wasn’t the time to get squeamish. I took a breath and read on.

The first entry was for Thursday February 2nd:

Milk late again.

I skipped forward to Friday February 3rd:

Still no milk. Jug of Monday’s milk passable for breakfast. Lady B peevish about K and A making too much noise in the library. Says they should be somewhere else.

I guessed ‘K’ would be Kit, and ‘A’ would be Ada. So far, so clear.

K and A chasing up and down on the back stairs, but now the housemaids cannot sweep up properly or carry things to and fro. A full chamber pot has been dropped. Tempers are short. The staff are complaining. Matters must be dealt with, though I suspect one of the maids has done this already. A shows me the pinch marks on her arm. Tell her not to make such a fuss.

I shuddered and rubbed my own arm.
The back stairs . . . pinching fingers
. . .

So.

Ada and Kit had made mischief on the back stairs. Hardly a hanging offence, but clearly the housemaids didn’t like it, for someone had given Ada a hiding. Her own mother hadn’t exactly taken her side. And so by pinching me and terrifying Gracie, perhaps Ada’s spirit was getting its own back. Quite by surprise, I almost felt sorry for her. Fancy her own mother not sticking up for her, even when she was all upset! I knew what
that
felt like.

I glanced up at Will. He was crouched by the desk, working his way through its drawers.

‘Found anything?’ I said.

‘Not yet. You?’

‘Think so.’

‘Keep going then.’

I read on:

Afternoon spent with K and A writing and drawing in quiet part of kitchen. A getting good at her letters now, thanks to what K has taught her, though we all keep this from Lady B. The very idea would irk her further. It is not befitting of an heir to be so free with us, she says. Must take care not to anger her further. For I am blessed to have a position in a fine house where A is allowed to be with me. The alternatives – the workhouse or the orphanage – are too painful to bear. I only hope the staff don’t complain again. If they could see what I see, how dear K and A are together, like the sweetest children God would put on this earth.

So Mrs Jessop had good intentions. In fact, she
did
have a heart. I’d not really guessed it ’til now. And I could just picture Kit, my lovely Kit, sat at the table like a big, kind friend, coaxing Ada to write. Then:

K and A start giggling over something they have written. They won’t show me what it is, though I catch sight of the word ‘dearest’. It makes me smile. How fond they are of each other. Her Ladyship would die on the spot if she knew.

I stopped reading for a moment, just so my head could catch up. Could this be what I’d seen written in Kit’s sketchbook? Clearly, they were drawing that afternoon and, it seemed, writing something too. The words that I’d thought were meant for his mother might actually have been meant for someone else.

Ada.

It struck me that I didn’t know how old Ada was. In my head, she was a little girl, on account of the words on her gravestone and the light footsteps I’d heard on the stairs.

Of a sudden, I didn’t know what to believe.

As I scanned on down the page, my eyes alighted on a note written later that same day:

Milk arrives at last! News from the village is that the fever’s back. Five children already grievously sick, God help their souls.

And then:

A bird flew into the kitchens this afternoon. That young housemaid Dorcas Watkins turned skittish and said it was a sign there’d be a death in the house before long. Such superstitions these girls have!

I couldn’t imagine Dorcas like this, not when she seemed such a steady sort. The next entry was for Saturday February 4th, two days before Kit died. My heart began to thud.

The wind has turned nor’easterly. Snow since last night. Hard frost.

A few lines of what food was cooked and how Mr Phelps had ordered the silver to be cleaned, then . . .

A out of sorts today – parched throat, warm head. Put her to bed early with hot water and honey. Said extra prayers, though must try not to fret. Honey is a great healer, I am sure of it. All she wants is ‘dear K ’. L B forbids it. Insists she must be confined to her room until we know what ails her. She even talks of forbidding me to tend her, my own child! Wretched . . .

A word had been heavily crossed out. I guessed it wasn’t a kind one. Another thought hit me.

Honey.

The smell of it had been a sign that Ada’s spirit was close. I’d smelled it on the back stairs and in the kitchens. And each time, that sickly scent had made me feel ill too. And it quite turned me over to think of Ada so poorly, not from fear like me but from some terrible sickness that in a day or two she’d be dead from.

‘I in’t found much,’ said a voice beside me. Deep in thought as I was, I took a moment to realise it was Will.

‘Oh, um, right.’

‘I’ll try this middle drawer. Looks like it hasn’t been opened in years.’

He pulled and cussed ’til the drawer opened at last. Then he stuck his hand right in, and with a sharp gasp drew it straight back out again.

‘Quick! Give me that candle!’ he cried.

We peered into the shadowy drawer. There, at the back was something dark, all coiled up like a snake. Holding his breath, Will pulled it out.

‘Take it,’ he said. ‘I’ll hold the light.’

It looked like rope. But as soon as I touched it, I knew what it was and a thrill ran through me. The hair had been braided into a thick plait about a foot long. Tied with a limp blue ribbon, it felt cool and heavy in my hands. I held it closer to the light. The hair was darker than my own, so dark it was almost black.
Just like Mrs Jessop’s
.

Will whistled through his teeth. ‘And look at this!’

He’d found a photograph. It was a simple postcard portrait of a serious little girl in her best frock, with her hair all neatly plaited and her hands crossed in her lap. She was sat in a chair that was too big for her, so her feet dangled high above the floor.

‘Oh Ada!’

Here she was, a girl of seven, perhaps eight. She looked such a poppet of a thing it made me feel choked and sad. I gave it to Will so he could put it back in its proper place.

‘Hang on, what’s this?’ He seemed to have found something else. ‘I reckon this might be her, too.’

He gave me another picture, bigger than the last. An older, handsome girl stared back at me. She was unmistakably Ada.

She might’ve been my age. Her hair was dark, smoothed neat to her head, and though she wasn’t quite smiling, her eyes were bright. At second glance, she wasn’t so pretty. But she had a clever, spirited face. It was there in the tilt of her chin, and the strong curve of her mouth. She looked so full of life. Somehow, this made things worse.

‘What d’you reckon she died of?’ said Will

‘She got sick, that’s all I know.’

Will turned over the picture in his hand. ‘Well it says here, “Ada Jessop – d. sixth of February 1871”.’

Everything stopped.

‘Give me that!’ I seized the picture from him.

As I read the writing on the back of it, a sob broke from my mouth. There it was, clear as day, that date which linked everything together. How could it be? Kit and Ada, dying on the same day? What were the chances of
that
?

For a moment I couldn’t speak.

‘I’d bet it was scarlet fever,’ said Will gently, seeing my shock. ‘The village got it bad that year. My brother had it too.’

I looked at him. ‘Oh, Will. I’m sorry. I never knew.’

‘It’s all right. He lived. But they cut all his hair off soon as they knew. They said it was to stop the infection spreading. And no one could see him; the rules were very strict.’

‘Well, it seems pretty sad,’ I said, my eyes filling up. ‘Poor Ada.’

And I meant it too. I couldn’t quite see my likeness in the picture. I still reckoned that was all in Cook’s mind, since my hair wasn’t as dark as Ada’s, and it certainly wasn’t as neat to my head. But my view on Ada was shifting. Maybe she had good reason to be angry.

‘Lady Barrington sounds heartless to me. Fancy keeping such dear friends apart like that,’ I said.

‘Scarlet fever spreads so quick. She was just protecting her son.’

‘But he died anyway, that’s what’s so strange.’

Will took the picture from me. ‘Reckon you’ve seen enough?’

Before I could answer, I heard footsteps and low voices out in the passageway. A faint light passed under the door. The footsteps stopped. I held my breath. Ever so slowly the door eased open, and two frightened faces gazed into ours.

33

What the
Housemaid Saw

Gracie rushed at me, almost knocking me to the floor.

‘Oh Tilly! It’s you!’ she sobbed. ‘We came down for a drink. Then we heard noises in the kitchen and thought . . . oh . . . !’

I wrapped an arm around her and told her to shush. After so much talk of sickness and dying, it was a comfort to feel her next to me, though she trembled like a leaf. Dorcas was right behind Gracie. She was in her nightgown, her hair loose about her shoulders. She didn’t look pleased to see us. In fact, she seemed properly vexed. Slowly and pointedly, Dorcas took in the scene – Will with his knife, the drawers flung open, and me with a dead girl’s hair in my hand. I shifted uncomfortably. There was no point trying to hide anything. We’d been well and truly rumbled.

‘What on earth is going on?’ Dorcas fixed us with such a glare, I wanted to curl up in shame.

‘It in’t what it looks like,’ I said.

Dorcas narrowed her eyes at the plait of hair. ‘What’ve you got there?’

Shamefully, I raised my arm. She came closer with her candle, and gasped. ‘Why, that looks like Ada’s. Good God, Tilly! This is too much!’ Her face crumpled and she started to cry.

‘Who’s Ada?’ asked Gracie, bewildered.

I shook my head.
Not now
.

All went quiet but for the sound of sobbing. People like Dorcas didn’t cry; not cool, unflappable Dorcas who always kept the rest of us in check. It was deeply unsettling. And for a moment, we were all at a loss; Gracie leaned into me, and Will stared awkwardly at the floor.