Death Below Stairs Read online

  As I moved farther into the room, toward the corner where Sinead had been found, I discovered what had made the scraping sound. A wooden crate, empty of the produce it had once held, had been moved from the wall and now sat at an angle that would trip the unwary. As I began to push it back where it belonged, my candlelight fell on a scrap of paper behind it. I set down the candlestick, bent to fetch the paper, shoved the crate safely against the wall, and left for the servants’ hall.

  There, I relit the kerosene lamp, which would give me better light, and sat down at the table, blowing out the candle. As a thin finger of smoke curled from the candle’s still-glowing wick, I smoothed out the paper and examined it.

  It had been torn jaggedly, about two thirds of the page missing, if it had begun as a common-sized sheet of paper. There was writing on it, but I could make no sense of anything. I knew my letters—I’d attended grammar school as a tot then learned more about writing and numbers from the first cook who’d apprenticed me. She’d told me it was a good thing for a cook to be able to read cookery books, as the lady of the house might not understand the nuances of recipes or read them out correctly.

  The paper held the remains of two lines, but the letters spelled out no words I knew, and they were interspersed with numbers. Here and there a vertical line had been carefully drawn on the page between the numbers.

  As I puzzled over this, Daniel came down the outside stairs far more loudly than he’d gone up. He entered the scullery, closed and bolted the back door, thudded across the kitchen and into the servants’ hall, and dropped into the chair across from me, breathing heavily.

  “Lost the bugger,” he said. “Ran faster than I could.” He drew a few more ragged breaths and fixed his gaze on the paper in front of me. “What is that?”

  “It was in the larder,” I said calmly. “Under a crate—whoever was the person you chased moved the crate to find it. Or, he might have been tucking it underneath, but I can’t imagine why anyone would do so.”

  “Or it was dropped there long ago and has nothing to do with this person.” Daniel sounded discouraged.

  “Who was he? Did you get a look at him?

  Daniel rested his arms on the table. His face held the cuts and bruises from his fight today, his skin mottled red, black, and blue.

  “Blast if I know,” he growled. “Slippery, moved fast, but I couldn’t tell you if it were a man or a woman. Man, I think.”

  “I agree,” I said. “He was quite strong, and I felt no flutter of skirts when he ran into me.”

  I did not finish the sentence with the conviction with which I’d begun it. I had met two women now who didn’t like to bother with skirts, and I’d felt Bobby’s strength when she’d pulled me into the coach.

  Still, a man did feel different from a woman—the way a man carried his weight was not the same. A man led with his chest and shoulders, where a woman’s balance was solidly in her hips and legs. I’d shared a bed with a man and learned a bit about males, though that was something I didn’t like to think about too much. At the time I hadn’t minded, hussy that I’d been, but thinking of my naïve happiness always brought hollow pain.

  I pushed my contemplations aside to concentrate on the paper. “I prefer to think this was put there deliberately. But it says nothing but nonsense.”

  “Let me see.” Daniel reached out his hand.

  I did not rush to give it to him. “In stories I read in magazines, writing like this means a secret message.” I studied the letters one more time then finally slid the paper to him. “Which sounds rather daft in real life. More likely it’s something perfectly ordinary.”

  Daniel moved the lamp closer to the page as he ran his fingertips over the writing. “Curious,” he said. He lifted his head, his eyes alight with interest, and folded the paper in half. “I’ll take it with me and see if I can make sense of it.”

  I slapped my hand to the paper before he could pick it up. “Not until I copy it out, thank you. I might make some sense of it.”

  Another man might have growled and told me to leave it, but Daniel only lifted his fingers away without argument. I took my notebook and pencil from my apron pocket and opened the notebook to a blank page.

  The book was full of my jottings about cookery—what had worked or gone wrong in a recipe, what I’d tasted at a restaurant and wished to replicate, and other notes about ingredients and seasons, along with the responses of those who’d eaten a particular dish. A cook can’t be expected to remember everything she does with a meal—I often varied recipes and rarely cooked a dish the same way twice. My notebook was very helpful to me.

  I kept my pencil sharp so I could make a note whenever the fit took me. Now I unfolded the paper I’d found and began to copy it.

  I went slowly and carefully, not wishing to make a mistake. If it was a secret code, one error might render the whole thing useless.

  I was about halfway finished when I noticed Daniel had gone very still. His fingers remained in the same place on the table, and his body did not move. The only motion came from the flame of the lamp on the rare occasion that it flickered, sending abrupt shadows across the folds of his coat.

  I glanced up without lifting my head to find Daniel watching me. Not what I did, but me. His hands lay unmoving before him, and his gaze was on my bowed head.

  He was studying me with a look I’d caught on my own face during a visit to someone I was deeply fond of. There was caring in that look, and worry, and gentle wonder.

  For a brief moment, the trappings of our stations fell away. Daniel, the good-natured man-of-all-work, and even Daniel the City gentleman vanished. I was no longer Mrs. Holloway, the cook, who’d seen a long and tiring evening in the kitchen and would face another equally long day in the morning.

  We were simply Daniel and Kat, or even more basically, a man and a woman. Nothing about where we were, or who we were, or how we came to be there seemed to matter. Just for that moment.

  Daniel caught my glance. He remained motionless for a few seconds longer, and then a slow flush stained his cheekbones around the bruises.

  I looked back at him, my gaze quiet, before I lowered my head again to my task. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Daniel swallow, his Adam’s apple moving.

  I made myself finish writing, willing my fingers not to tremble.

  “There,” I said, laying down my pencil and closing the book.

  Daniel took up the paper without a word and concentrated on folding the page and tucking it into his pocket. His silence unnerved me. He said nothing; his ready smile didn’t come, nor did his unending stock of banter.

  “Well,” I said briskly. I set aside my notebook and began to pull the whetstone to me, taking up the cleaver I hadn’t finished sharpening. “You ought to return to the mews before someone misses you. Nothing is a hotter place for gossip than below stairs in a Mayfair household.”

  Daniel shook his head, making no move to rise. “You go up. I want to stay in case the villain returns.”

  I had a momentary vision of coming downstairs the next morning and finding Daniel dead in the larder with blood all over his face.

  “No,” I said in a hard voice. “You shouldn’t stay here alone.”

  A ghost of Daniel’s grin returned. “I will not be alone. I’ll be here with the very sharp knives of Kat Holloway. I’ll finish the cleaver for you. I know how to grind a blade.”

  Humph. I ought to have guessed sharpening knives would be among Daniel’s vast store of knowledge.

  I did not lift my hand on the whetstone. “I will stay with you.”

  Daniel’s tone became stern. “No, you will not. I can more easily fend off a villain if I am not trying to protect you at the same time. And you are right about gossip. I shouldn’t like slanderous things said about you, Kat.”

  For the first time since he’d taken the paper, he looked directly at me. H
is eyes held a severity of purpose, a strength that lay behind both the deliveryman with the winning smile and the coolness of the middle-class gentleman.

  Which one was he? I knew he was neither. The true Daniel McAdam eluded me—eluded everyone. He was somewhere inside the man across from me, with his stern eyes and will of iron, his purpose a mystery. Only with James had I seen any softness in him, and in the moment just now when I’d caught him looking at me. But the walls between us had risen once more, Daniel shutting me out.

  He was correct about one thing—Mr. Davis would have a fine time discussing the fact that Mrs. Holloway and that McAdam were up all night together in the kitchen, this after they’d spent the entire afternoon traipsing about London and coming home late. I doubted the villain would return tonight in any case. He’d been chased away, very surprised at being caught.

  I thought of how noiselessly Daniel had moved, and how quickly, in an experienced, precise manner. I knew that if those young men this afternoon had faced the true Daniel, they’d have limped home licking their wounds. Daniel had been defeated because he’d chosen to be. Which made me wonder again whether he’d provoked the fight deliberately, and why.

  “Very well,” I said, pretending to be pragmatic. “Mind you don’t put an uneven edge on the cleaver, and make jolly certain you lock the knives into the drawer over there. Knives are expensive, and if you ruin one or lose me the lot, I expect you to give me the price of them.”

  Daniel’s lazy grin flashed. “I’ll not fail you, Mrs. H. You can count on old Daniel.”

  I wasn’t certain how to respond to that, and he knew it. Bloody man. “See that you don’t fail,” I managed.

  I gathered up my notebook and pencil, returned his impudent stare, and then stamped into the hall and toward the back stairs. I heard his chuckle float out behind me, which both irritated me and comforted me at the same time.

  • • •

  In the morning, I found my knives locked securely in their drawer in the kitchen, the cleaver as sharp as could be. I held its edge up to my eyes to study it and was a bit annoyed that it looked perfect. No man should be good at all the things Daniel claimed he was.

  But, no—he’d told me he couldn’t make much headway with accounts. He had to ask for help on that measure.

  This did not give me much satisfaction, nor did the fact that the kitchen was completely free of any indication Daniel had been there last night. The whetstone was in its proper place, the knives locked up, the key to their drawer in the pocket of the apron hung where I always kept it.

  Mary had brought out my bowl of dough for the day’s bread without being told. I was pleased—after her first awkwardness she was showing the makings of a good assistant, once I could be certain she knew one ingredient from another. But we all need to be trained—none of us are born with the knowledge of our profession, no matter what some scientists claim. What they get up to in the Royal Society, I have no idea, but they turn out some daft ideas.

  I set the dough into pans to rise, instructing Mary to put them in the oven in two hours exactly and to take them out in one hour more. For breakfast, I sliced leftover bread from the day before, set Mary to toasting it, and then put the slices, slathered with butter, on a rack and sent them upstairs. Ham and boiled eggs in their shells went with them, as well as a serving of breakfast cakes made with bicarbonate of soda, flour, and milk.

  For the servants, I pounded together scraps of leftover ham and chicken with butter, a pinch of nutmeg, mace, and salt, as well as a smidgen of cayenne pepper. This I spread on the remainder of the toasted bread and set it before them, along with a hash of leftover potatoes and vegetables, and the rest of the eggs in the house. Mary would have to buy more eggs—I liked them to be as fresh as possible.

  The remains of the pounded meat I put into jars and covered them with melted lard to keep them fresh, instructing Mary to put them in the coolest part of the larder. I then prepared everything I knew I would need for tonight’s supper for Lord Rankin, with Mary at my elbow so she’d understand what I needed her to do.

  I did not see Daniel. I sent a tray over to the stables for the groom and his lads with Paul the footman, and assumed Daniel would be among them, taking a morning meal before beginning his chores.

  I ate a few spoonfuls of hash, then I put aside my apron and fetched my coat and bonnet from the coatrack in the housekeeper’s parlor.

  “Going out again, Mrs. H.?” Mr. Davis asked me in surprise. He leaned on the parlor’s doorframe, completely ruining his butler’s dignity in a common man’s slouch. “You were out all afternoon yesterday. Send Mary to the markets if you need comestibles.”

  “She is going,” I answered without heat as I set my most prized hat on my head—cream straw with black feathers and pink ribbon. I wanted to appear at my best today. “It is Thursday, which is the cook’s day out in this household.”

  For once, the cheerful light in Mr. Davis’s eyes deserted him. “Yes, but we have no housekeeper. Mary ain’t quite up to her duties yet, and who will have to keep things running smoothly all by himself? Me, Mrs. H. You can’t desert me.” He sent me an anguished look.

  “Good heavens, I am not deserting you, Mr. Davis. I left plenty of food to be warmed up for the family and for you lot during the day, and I will be back to cook the master’s meal tonight. I never miss my day out. That you must learn.”

  “Days out don’t mean nothing to the upstairs,” Mr. Davis said darkly. “If terrible things happen because we’re shorthanded, it’s me what gets the blame.”

  “Then you must not let terrible things happen.” I pulled on my gloves and settled them around my fingers. “I took this post because it came with one full day and one half day out a week. Now I will enjoy them. Good morning, Mr. Davis.”

  I lifted my reticule and shooed him out of my way. Mr. Davis straightened and moved aside so I wouldn’t actually brush against him as I went past him out of the parlor.

  My heart beat quickly as I hurried through the hall to the scullery and up the stairs. Not until I was well out into the street did I release my breath in relief.

  My days out were special to me for a very important reason, and for that reason I would fight to keep them, even if I had to beat my way past Mr. Davis every time I wanted to leave the house.

  I had fare for the omnibuses, but those that passed me once I went out to busier roads were crushed full, so I had to walk a long way before I found any transport. I at last came upon a horse-drawn tram that had space for me, and I climbed aboard, settling myself as it clacked on rails ever eastward.

  The family who cared for my daughter, Grace, who was now ten years old, had a small house in a lane off Cheapside, near St. Paul’s Cathedral. I left the tram at Ludgate Hill and walked the remainder of the way.

  My heart always soared when I beheld the majestic dome of St. Paul’s against the smoky sky. As I say, I was not much of a churchgoer, but I never failed to be moved by the graceful building and its elegant architecture—it signaled that I was near my daughter. St. Paul’s will always have that meaning for me.

  The girlhood friend who looked after Grace was called Joanna Millburn, and she was married to one Samuel Millburn. Joanna had found in life what I had hoped to find—a happy marriage to a good, warmhearted man. While Mr. Millburn did not possess much in the way of ambition, cleverness, or studied handsomeness, he was good-natured and kind, and had no difficulty looking after the daughter of his wife’s friend as well as his and Joanna’s own four children.

  When my daughter greeted me with her usual exuberance, clinging to me in Joanna’s scrupulously clean front sitting room, everything small and mean in the world fell away. I inhaled the scent of her hair and experienced again the wonder that this little girl was mine.

  Grace, never timid, pushed away from me, already speaking. “How are you, Mama? I woke up so excited you’d come today. How is your new pl
ace? What is the housekeeper like? I made a cake today, all by myself—well, almost by myself. It’s in the oven now. Mrs. Millburn will say when it’s done.”

  “Land, child.” I set her next to me on the sofa, smoothing her skirts and looking her over with greedy eyes. Grace’s face and hands had been scrubbed pink, her pinafore was starched to crackling, and crisp pink bows secured the two braids of her dark hair. “What a chatterer you are,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about my new place if you’ll let me get in two words.”

  Grace did not look abashed. “The lady next door says children should be seen and not heard, but Mr. Millburn says that’s rot. Is that a bad word? Rot?”

  I’d heard far worse, but I let my tone become admonishing. “Do not say it in front of your next-door neighbor, then. To me, of course, you may say anything you like.”

  This prompted an impetuous hug. “I love you, Mum.”

  My heart ached. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  We went out—I always took Grace for an outing. Today we walked to St. Paul’s Churchyard and the park there. Vagrants lounged about, pathetic things, often men from far-off lands, struggling to stay fed a long way from home. I gave them pennies, as usual. I believe in charity for those who can’t help themselves.

  We went to a tea shop full of ladies who wore clothes much like mine—respectable, understated, and not expensive—and had tea and cakes, Grace’s baked treat for me notwithstanding. It was always special to have tea and cakes in a shop.

  I told Grace about Mr. Davis and his penchant for gossip, the piece of false hair on his bald spot, which made her laugh, and how he liked to read things out from the newspaper. I also told her about Lady Cynthia and her friend Bobby dressing up like gentlemen, and about riding in the coach with them. I said nothing at all about Sinead and her death, seeing no reason to upset Grace with this news.

  My spirits were high when we returned to the Millburns. The cake Grace made had come out of the oven in our absence, and if a little lopsided, it was quite tasty. We shared it with Joanna and her husband and children, the oldest two of whom were a boy and a girl about Grace’s age. All in all, it was a merry little meal.