CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marie

‘PLEASE ATTEND TO my hair,’ said Marie, the following morning as she settled at her dressing-table mirror. ‘I would like it combed, then pinned up.’

‘Yes, madame,’ said Harriet, picking up the comb and beginning.

‘I am pleased over these last few weeks with your efforts, your touch is lighter and your fingers have found the way to curl my hair just so.’

‘Thank you Madame.’

‘And I do so enjoy the little tete-a-tetes we have been having,’ continued Marie. ‘Although I see today you look a little flushed, dear.’

The girl didn’t meet her eyes in the mirror.

‘Almost like you’ve been out walking.’

‘I’ve been outside.’

‘You like to walk the grounds?’

‘I like to walk in the forest,’ came the confession. ‘I’m allowed once I’ve finished my chores.’

‘How delightful,’ soothed Marie. ‘And what do you see in the forest?’

The girl looked up and caught Marie’s eye in the reflection. ‘Nothing,’ she stammered. ‘Nothing but the trees and the birds.’

Marie picked up her trinket box and peered within. ‘I find promenades most refreshing. And a rosy complexion favours you. Has your beau noticed?’

A pause, before, ‘I don’t have a beau, madame.’

‘Oh, not the valet then?’

‘He’s not my beau,’ said the girl, and her comb snagged a knot.

‘Forgive me, I misunderstood. Have you fallen out?’

‘It’s not … it’s not proper to talk about it, madame.’ The girl looked uncomfortable as she combed the knot out a little too vigorously.

‘Oh, but you can tell me,’ said Marie. ‘I can keep a confidence.’

Harriet released Marie’s hair. ‘Forgive me for troubling you, madame, but my mother and father are both dead, and I have no one in this house to talk with.’

‘Consider me your confidante,’ said Marie, and turned to face her. ‘Sit there.’ She gestured to the end of her bed. ‘Tell me, you do not like him anymore, no?’

‘It’s not that. Well, it is – but, oh, I don’t know where to begin.

If His Grace ever found out, I’d lose my position.’

‘He won’t, you can trust me. Now tell me what’s happened.’

‘At the start Albert, the valet, was kind, showed me how to do my chores, told me how this place was run, and I was grateful. And I smiled at him, even blushed, so what’s happened is my own fault. I encouraged him, he said, I encouraged him, and now I am being cruel by fighting him each time.’

‘Encouraged him to what?’

‘Take liberties with me. He said at the start he’d marry me if I let him. And I didn’t. Not properly, and then I told him to cease altogether. But every night he catches me in some corner, or behind a door, or out the back by the well – that’s his favourite place. The other night in the courtyard, he had me up against the well wall and his hands under my skirts, and I couldn’t fight back otherwise he said he’d tip me over and no one would be the wiser.’ Her eyes watered, and she rubbed them distractedly. ‘I am to blame, I know that, but I don’t know what to do and I have no family and if I lose this position, well —’

‘Firstly, do not suppose it is your fault that this man degrades you in such a way. Your smiles and blushes were not an invitation for him to treat you in such a manner. This is perhaps the hard way to learn, but you have learnt nevertheless.’

‘I fear I have learnt that too late, madame, but what can be done about it now? I dread each night and cannot sleep knowing what I must face again the following.’

‘What you will do,’ said Marie calmly, patting Harriet’s hand, ‘is leave it up to me. I want you to avoid him. Lock yourself in your room after supper and do not come out no matter what the instruction. I will tell him you are working on something for me and cannot be disturbed.’

‘Oh, but he will be so angry. And that can’t go on forever.’

‘It needn’t.’ Marie stood up. ‘It will do for a few weeks, and by then both our problems will be solved. Now go wash your face, and send the valet up to me in half an hour’s time.’

‘You’re not going to tell him I told you?’

‘I am your confidante, and I will look after you,’ said Marie. ‘But, now I think on it, perhaps you could help me in return?’

Harriet gave her a questioning look.

‘I have been meaning to ask you for some time and now that we are more intimately acquainted, I would like to talk with you about these flowers, the enchanter’s nightshade, in the painting. They are the same as what you left here in my room are they not?’

Harriet didn’t look at the painting although her eyes seemed to sharpen.

‘Yes Madame.’

‘And so I would like to know what you meant by your remark about these flowers being left for me as a sign of Elanor’s favour.’

Harriet blanched. ‘Nothing,’ she whispered. ‘And please don’t ask me about it again.’ She looked down at her fingers.

‘If I am to help you, I need to know what has happened here.

With Elanor.’

Harriet pushed the tip of her thumb so that the wound reopened; it began to bleed. ‘I want your help, madame, and am most grateful for it, but I didn’t know it would come with conditions. I’m sorry to have troubled you with my own trouble. It was wrong of me, please forget we ever spoke.’ She made for the door.

‘Wait,’ said Marie. She had pushed too far; she needed to build on the trust established today first. ‘I’m sorry my curiosity overrode my manners, it’s just that I am a woman like you all alone in this house and trying to make sense of everything here. I do hope we can be sympathetic with each other.’

Harriet stared at her for a long moment. ‘Thank you, madame. I will do what I can to help you, and I appreciate you will do the same for me.’ She bobbed and withdrew.

Marie paused in her stirring of the plaster later that morning, almost ready to pour over Elanor’s clay mould. Over the past weeks she had grown accustomed to the sounds of wind rupturing the silence at the opening of the tunnel, bringing blunt gusts that died out valiantly. Otherwise the air remained still and the sounds carried underground. Unnatural sounds, sometimes. But the air had been perfectly still when she’d come down not half an hour since. The sky bright and clear. No clouds that foretold a summer storm this evening. Yet there it was again, the wind. Creaks of the timber flooring in the ballroom. Contracting and swelling with changing temperatures. Another creak, louder this time. Then a groan.

She had maintained her isolation at Welbeck, only interacting with the valet and Philidor as needed, dispensing with formal meals and forgoing visiting London completely. While in the midst of creating she preferred solitude and being able to walk the grounds and retreat to her bedchamber without the distraction or expectation of interaction. Harriet alone she continued to talk with, enjoying their growing acquaintance and then, of course, there was her correspondence with Regington. He had proven himself an ardent admirer but had been forced to travel abroad for business, which, he said, explained the large gaps between letters. He was returning soon though and wrote of his desperation to see her. As Elanor was nearing completion her thoughts turned more to him and what part he was playing in this venture.

But for now, focusing on what was in front of her, Marie continued using a piece of wood to mix the liquid until it reached the necessary consistency. With a wide flat brush, she painted the plaster over Elanor’s clay head, thickly in separate panels. As always, this messy process splattered the mixture over her hands, dress and floor, even when the surrounding area was layered with rags. ‘Nearly there, my dear,’ she said, as she coated the limbs.

Elanor’s plaster would have to dry overnight, so Marie returned to her bedchamber for the final session of sewing Antoinette’s hair and to continue trialling her new idea for a mechanical contrivance that could be used to enhance the appearance of life in her creations. As she fiddled with the thin wires and springs, she thought of the valet and her lie to him that Harriet was working on some intricate sewing for her thereby she was not to be disturbed from her room. He had acquiesced but still, he was concerning her.

She could smell his curiosity, fascination even, with what was transpiring underground, and had caught him looking at her as they passed in the hallway, appraising her as if deliberating about something. She was also sure, because she noticed such things, that the papers on her bureau with her design had been moved in her absence and that the corners of the pages of the duke’s volume of drawings were sticky, as if someone had recently licked a finger and turned each one over carefully. This breach of her privacy was intolerable.

Marie attached the last wire into the tiny metal box that held the clockwork teeth and wound it up. The spring pushed up and down rhythmically; it had a large wax paddle at the end that would press gently against the chest cavity from inside. It was exactly as she’d envisioned and the thought of how it would further animate her creation and in doing so intensify the spell surrounding it was thrilling.

The next morning, upon returning to her workshop she swept up the dried flakes of plaster, dust, dirt and clay into a pile in the corner, next to the logs for the fire. She was dreaming. Thinking of her boys and how she would take them to be fitted for suits with the finest tailor in London when they arrived. They would see the creations their mother had worked upon and be proud of her accomplishments, and she would teach them all she knew so they could carry on the work under her name.

The fire needed to be stoked. As she bent to pick up a log, she saw a glint of something amongst the pile of dust, blended in with the wood and the shadows: a key.

Odd. She hadn’t seen it before or heard it clink as she swept up.

She placed it on the table, focused on inspecting the dried plaster moulds. She gently stuck her chisel between the seams of the panels, loosening them. Each piece came away complete in her hands. After she put them together again and ensured they sealed completely, it was time to heat the wax in another metal bucket over the fire. Once it reached boiling point, she turned the head upside down and placed it in a brace, then used a funnel to stick in the upturned hollow neck of the mould and poured the wax inside.

The troughs were filled with cold water in which she submerged the head mould, heavy with the seven pounds of wax needed for it alone. The remaining limbs and torso were submerged in the troughs alongside, all wrapped in cloth and bound with twine to enable her to pull them out easily.

There it came again: that moan. Same as the day before. Was it the wind? No. The air was still, just as it had been before. She wiped her wet hands on a cloth, picked up a candlestick and opened her workshop door. Around the corner to her right was the bend that led out into the main ballroom area, while to the left the passage continued. She waited.

A shuffle sounded from further down the passage on her left. Was it behind that doorway, the one she had already been drawn to the first night of her stay?

Holding her candle up, she stepped towards the sound, aware that she was crossing over the forbidden threshold again. Aware also that this doorway had been entreating her to explore it from the borders of her subconscious mind ever since. Was it worth breaking the rules a second time to try and find out more? The pull of mystery was too strong this night.

So she went down, down, further and further. Her footsteps quickened, reverberating through the narrow passage like the heavy tread of an army. Was she alone? She couldn’t resist turning around. No one was following her.

Another two, three steps forward, and there it was: the wooden door, set right back into the wall with the sizeable keyhole that appeared as if it hadn’t been opened in years.

Drip, drip, drip. She raised her candle. The low roof above her was shot through with streaks of a silver mineral that winked in the light, exaggerated by the moisture sweating through the skin of the rock.

She tried the doorhandle again. Gritty and cold. There was no way she could get in without a key. Oh yes, the key back in her workshop! It may fit this lock. Could it be the one? Too much of a coincidence, surely. Had someone put it in her workshop for her to find? Or perhaps it had always been there, and she’d simply not been paying attention when she swept. A scrape from behind the door as if a chair was being pushed back, a clatter as of something thrown onto a table, followed by another moan. Marie looked down and saw a faint light underneath the door.

She hastened back to her workshop and closed its door behind her. Had she been heard? No, impossible – she was as quiet as a mouse. There was someone down here, that much seemed certain. But who was it?

She walked passed Antoinette who now sat in the corner complete, to the table where the key lay. Did she hear a voice, a woman’s voice? A faint vibration in the air. A whisper. Marie picked up the key and turned to face her. ‘The key,’ Antoinette seemed to breathe.

She opened her workshop door. Yes, the moaning had stopped. She would take the key back with her for another look. She approached the cavern door, noticing that the light was extinguished. Her ears strained but she heard no sound.

The key slid into the lock. She turned it sharply, and it clicked. She waited, then pushed. The door resisted. Without giving herself time to reconsider, she grabbed the handle and shook it, the noise seemed excruciating loud, betraying her invasion. No matter – if someone was behind the door, they would be just as frightened of her as she of them.

With a final thrust, the door screeched open. A small cavern lay before her, filled with a stench so vile she raised her hand to her mouth. She stepped inside and slowly pushed the door shut. She could not focus with that black empty doorway standing open behind her.

She moved towards the table in the centre of the room. On it lay a mound of Enchanter’s Nightshade carcasses in varying stages of decay: a fresh bundle on top, then layers of rotting petals of yellow, brown then black. The rest of the table was littered with drawings of Elanor’s face. A chair sat a few feet away, presumably the one she had heard being pushed back.

The drawings were simple lines in pen and ink. As with the flowers, there were layers of them. Elanor in a tree, tongue poking out. Here she was now in profile, her hitched-up skirts exposing her inner thigh, hair streaming behind her as she ran through a field. One of her bending over a stream, its water in her cupped hands, as she stared straight at the observer with a mischievous smile. In another, she sat cross-legged under the oak tree, amidst the enchanter’s nightshade.

It struck Marie that Elanor was like the enchanter’s nightshade. Thin. Pale. Fine featured. Delicate but hardy. Marie could see it in her eyes, her mouth, her expression. This girl looked as if a breeze would blow her over, but her energy, her will was strong at the roots and thriving.

Marie turned from the table. A narrow wrought-iron bed sat in the corner, with rumpled blankets as if someone rested there.

Was it possible someone had walked past her workshop to reach this cavern? But the door had clearly not been opened for some time, considering the stiffness of the lock and the build-up of silt. No, the visitor had not entered that way which left only one alternative, a secret passageway leading back to the manor. Given the labyrinth of tunnels underground and the narrow railtracks already linked to the kitchen, it was conceivable. She ran her eyes quickly across the stonework of the room, nothing discernible that announced itself immediately as the outline of an entrance, but all thoughts of a passageway were driven from her mind when she saw something else: a newspaper article stuck to the back of the door with a knife.

The Worksop Village Times
MISSING GIRL A MYSTERY
A girl of sixteen has been reported missing from Welbeck Abbey, the estate of His Grace Henry Cavendish, 4th Duke of Portland Elanor Hemmings, the daughter of Mr and Mrs Hemmings, tenant farmers on the duke’s land, was last sighted in her bed, having eaten her evening meal as normal and bidden her mother goodnight. Her bed was found empty in the morning, but parish

Constable Trickett, reported there were no signs of a struggle. There have been rumours from local villagers that a group of hawkers, camped in a nearby field, may be involved in her disappearance as they departed suddenly on the same morning. Constable Trickett followed the band a considerable distance before coming upon them and making enquires. Despite the threat of being put in the stocks for three days and whipped, the hawkers denied their knowledge or involvement and have been allowed to leave the area. The girl is described as being of slight build with brown hair and green eyes, and wearing her nightgown and a shawl.

The article was dated 1795.

So Elanor had lived at Welbeck then, just as Harriet had said. But long ago, before something had happened. Something so terrible that she disappeared. Had Elanor been kept prisoner in this cavern, then? By whom? Or perhaps her bones had been stored down here under lock and key. What, then, did Harriet know? Did she plant the key in her workshop? The valet? Or did the duke lose it somehow?

Marie knew she was working for a madman – that much had been evident from the beginning – but was she also working for a murderer? She had heard and seen him consumed by grief and remorse by the tree. Was this evidence enough of the hand he had played in her disappearance and demise?

Another twelve hours at least for the moulds to set in the water before they could be withdrawn and placed on a towel on the workbench. She would retire now and try to sleep. But sleep did not come easily as her mind sought to draw closer to understanding what went on in this house. And how she could use it all to her own advantage.