It was young Constable Declan Doyle who had been on duty when the message from Lady Blackshaw arrived at the barracks in Bandon, the nearest sizeable town, informing them about the missing child, instructing that officers be dispatched to the Park and asking for the family history of Teresa Kelly and details of her final days in Ballybrian. As a young ‘blow-in’ he didn’t realise how important Lady Blackshaw was perceived to be in the district, and had never heard of Teresa Kelly. His older colleague Inspector Christy Barry, who was a native of Ballybrian, had to fill him in on the background of both women.
Charlotte was sketching in a listless fashion. She hadn’t spoken since Dixon told her of Victoria’s disappearance. No one had noticed. At this time of day she would normally be taking Mandrake over the jumps.
“Go outside and play. You’re getting on my nerves with all that scribbling.”
Charlotte didn’t move.
“Go on. Build another one of those bridges you’re so fond of, but stay out of the mud.”
Charlotte looked at her sadly.
“You was happy enough doing that with Teresa, Miss Street-Angel-House-Devil, wasn’t you?”
Charlotte stayed silent.
“You would try the patience of a saint. The world doesn’t revolve around you, you know. How many times do I have to tell you?” Dixon strode over to the table, snatched up the five pages of horse drawings, crumpled them and threw them into the fire, then grabbed Charlotte by the arm and dragged her, a dead weight, to the open door and pushed her onto the landing, adding through habit, “And stay away from them banisters.”
Dixon needed to think, and couldn’t with that sullen face looking at her.
The last twenty months, since Teresa Kelly had come bounding up the stairs on her first day, had been the happiest of her life. The two of them had made a connection right from the start, despite their different backgrounds, religion, accents and age. Dixon felt as if she had climbed out of a damp dungeon into a summer garden by allowing herself to believe she had found a real friend for the first time in her life.
Teresa, unwelcome in her family home in the village since the death of her father and the arrival of a hostile sister-in-law, spent her spare hours, even her monthly day off, in the nursery with Dixon. “Where else would I be going?” she used to say. “My brother’s wife would be glad never to see my face again, and him, too, seeing he takes her part – and I love being here.” She didn’t appear to be bitter even though she had wasted, to Dixon’s way of thinking, the fifteen best years of her life caring for her senile father, with nothing to show for it at the end. The brother had inherited everything.
When Teresa left in the evenings to join the other servants for dinner in the downstairs dining hall, leaving Dixon to eat from a tray with only Charlotte and Victoria for company, she thought she might die of jealousy and loneliness. When she saw Teresa and Miss East setting out for the village for their weekly night of cards, she suffered an extra torture. What if Miss East transmitted her dislike of Dixon to Teresa, dripping poison into her ear during the long walk there and back? She watched each week for any sign of a negative change in Teresa’s attitude towards her but found none. In fact, if she didn’t think she was imagining it, she would swear Teresa’s kindness was increasing, if that were possible.
Each morning, Dixon would wait to hear Teresa’s footsteps on the stairs, and when she did the day took on a brighter aspect. Even the doleful Charlotte would give a screech of joy and rush to wrap her arms around Teresa, and Victoria, as she grew older, would wriggle free from Dixon’s arms and follow her sister’s example. Dixon didn’t approve of the excessive show of emotion from the girls but let it go unpunished for her friend’s sake as she seemed to like it and, besides, there were plenty of other excuses she could use for chastising them.
It was clear to anyone who had eyes to see that Teresa tried her best to treat the two girls equally but wasn’t able to disguise the fact that Victoria was her favourite.
If only all interviews could be as pleasurable as this one, Constable Declan Doyle thought when the striking young woman settled herself down to be questioned – back straight, feet together, hands clasped, eyes so downcast they looked closed.
“Tell me in your own words what happened here today, Nurse Dixon,” he said in a gentle voice. “Take as much time as you need.” May she take all evening, he thought.
Nurse Dixon spoke with little hesitation, not once looking at either Declan Doyle or Inspector Christy Barry.
“After the rain stopped, I thought I’d take little Victoria out for some fresh air as we was cooped up for two days with all that rain. She were in no humour for walking, even though she learnt to walk early and is a good little walker. She couldn’t hardly keep her eyes open because she woke early and had missed her morning nap, so I put her in the baby carriage even though she were too big for it. Had to turn her sideways and bend up her legs so she would fit. At least she’ll get the fresh air, even if she don’t get the exercise, I said to myself. Charlotte went off on her own – indoors she draws and paints non-stop and outdoors, when she isn’t riding, she builds things with bricks and stones and wood – she likes to do things that make a mess. I ran into Lady Blackshaw who stopped to admire Victoria, who were already asleep. After I told her Victoria would sleep for more than an hour, she said she would take her for a walk and bring her back after that. I were that surprised you could have knocked me over with a feather. Her Ladyship has never done nothing like that before, certainly not with Charlotte in all her eight years, and it made me feel right peculiar handing over the baby carriage, but then I asked myself what could go wrong, with Her Ladyship the child’s mother after all.”
She paused to allow the men time to take in the dramatic implication of those words.
“What time was this?” asked the constable, who was concentrating so much on the movement of Nurse Dixon’s mouth he was neglecting to write in his notebook.
“About two o’clock.”
“What do you personally think of the idea that Teresa Kelly took the little girl with her when she left?”
Dixon blinked three times before answering. “Absolute rubbish. She weren’t even at the Park today. She said her goodbyes yesterday, and besides she would never do a thing like –”
“My sentiments exactly,” the inspector interrupted with satisfaction. “And who better to know that than you, her best friend? Good girl. Now tell me, what do you say to the idea that the little one drowned?”
“More rubbish. The girls was never allowed near the river. They was warned often enough. I never stopped telling them about them children drowned in the deep Dark Waterhole fifty years ago and the man who went in to save them and was drowned with them. That gave Charlotte a proper fright. Even Victoria had it drummed into her and she were old enough to understand what I were saying.”
“As the one who knew her best, what do you think happened to her?”
“I think she wandered off and will still be found. She’s a great little walker for her age.”
The constable took his chance to study Dixon while Christy Barry was questioning her. He had been expecting a grim matron with iron hair and a starched nurse’s hat and apron, so when this fine-looking, mysterious young woman the same age as himself came through the door he’d been nonplussed, and smitten in an instant.
“May I ask for the sake of our official report . . .” and for my sake, he added in his thoughts, “what is your Christian name?”
“I don’t have one that I know of. Not a real one. I were a foundling. They called me ‘Baby’” – it was really ‘Cry Baby’ but she saw no reason to disclose that – “until I were old enough to look after the new babies brought into the orphanage, and then they called me ‘Nursie’ and then ‘Nurse’.”
The young man’s face was suffused with sympathy.
Teresa Kelly’s brother, Séamus, even though he didn’t work on the estate, presented himself to the policemen to be questioned by order of Lady Blackshaw. According to him, Teresa asked as a special favour if she could stay in her old room for her last night for old time’s sake. He had no objection, of course. At eight o’clock in the morning the wife, checking to make sure Teresa hadn’t stolen anything, though he didn’t say that, found Teresa’s bed empty and a farewell note left on the pillow. He hadn’t laid eyes on her for the rest of the day and, as far as he knew, nor had their neighbours. He had no idea what mode of transport she was taking. Things hadn’t been good between them, as everyone well knew. The only thing he could tell them was that her bicycle was missing – his wife wasn’t too pleased about that as she’d had her eye on it, though he didn’t mention that either – and that he was upset the way things had turned out so unfriendly seeing he and she used to be so close. He didn’t know anything about her life at the Park or anything about the child that was missing.
The constable’s gift for getting people to spill their life secrets in minutes was being wasted, and the inspector’s own method of questioning which consisted of finishing sentences and cutting long stories short – he’d been in the business longer and had become impatient – had produced no better results, simply because the servants had nothing to say. They hadn’t seen anything because they weren’t in a position to. The Park’s custom of giving everyone the same afternoon off, taken for granted by the staff as they were used to it, seemed unusual to the policemen, who had expected a rota system to be in place. At the time the child went missing, the majority of servants were in the garden with its enclosing eight-foot-high walls, while others were in the village, the shebeen or their own quarters. No wonder no one had seen or heard anything out of the ordinary. The demesne, to all intents and purposes, was unstaffed.
A timid little chambermaid, with the odd name of Peachy, third last on a list of twenty-eight, scuttled in, her eyes wide with apprehension. The inspector thought the constable would have his work cut out to get her to speak at all, but the young man’s spaniel eyes, and the patience he exercised to allow long periods of silence to elapse, finally had her saying that she had seen Teresa Kelly at the Park around the same time as the baby had disappeared.
The inspector jerked upright. “Are you sure of that?”
The chambermaid’s eyes widened. “She won’t get into trouble, will she?”
“Of course not. Why would she?”
A stubborn look came into her face. “Teresa didn’t take little Victoria,” she said. “Lady Blackshaw thinks she did – I know that because someone heard her and Dixon talking about Teresa.”
“I didn’t think for one minute she did,” said Christy Barry. “I know her personally and I know she would never do a thing like that.”
The maid breathed out with relief. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“But are you positive it was today you saw her?” Christy continued. “I thought she left the Park yesterday.”
“Yes, I’m sure it were today.” She screwed up her face in concentration, trying to remember exactly. It hadn’t seemed important then. She was dying to join the others in the walled garden but had been delayed, as she had dropped and smashed a jar of Lady Blackshaw’s hand cream and it had taken ages to clean up the mess with all those bits of broken glass. Then, on her way to the walled garden she had seen Teresa wheeling her bicycle in a great hurry away from the servants’ door at the back of the house. Teresa had called over to her that she couldn’t stop, that she was late.
“I thought she had left something in her room or had a message for Nurse Dixon. She’s a friend of Dixon’s. I called back ‘Good luck!’ and kept going, and that’s all I seen.”
“Do you know what time that was?”
“No, but it were only a little while later Miss East came to tell us the bad news and told us all to run off and start looking straight away, and we did.”
“Have you told anyone else about seeing Teresa?”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was the only one who seen her here today. I didn’t want to get her into trouble.”
“There’s no fear of that,” said the inspector. “Even if we suspected her of any wrongdoing, which we don’t, we wouldn’t know where to find her. Tell me, do you remember if she had any of her belongings with her?”
“She did. One of those canvas bags with a drawstring that sailors use. You couldn’t miss it, strapped to the back of the bike.”
“So she was on her way.” Christy thought for a minute before standing up and ushering the young woman to the door. “Many thanks. You’ve been a great help. Now off you go and don’t give it another thought, there’s a good girl.”
That evening, the villagers, making their way home exhausted and heartsick, met Manus riding up the avenue. In the dying light they couldn’t see his face clearly and had to ask if he had found the child, and when he answered that he hadn’t even though he had followed the river all the way to the sea, there were moans of sorrow followed by whispered expressions of hope that she might not have gone anywhere near the river after all and might still be found alive.
At the stables Manus handed Mandrake over to Archie, the eldest stable lad, who, glad of the opportunity to hide his brimming eyes, bent to examine the scratches on Mandrake’s chest and legs and look for stones in his hooves.
Manus couldn’t bring himself to go up to the Big House, let alone cross its threshold, so, citing his wet and muddy clothes as an excuse for not reporting back personally to Lady Blackshaw, sent the second stable lad up instead to relay the message.