Lily sat slumped at the kitchen table as if winded. She had seen pure joy on Sid’s face when his first grandchild had been placed in his arms, on Sinéad Quirke’s face the day she married Manus, hardly able to credit she had finally secured the man she had been in love with for years, and on Manus’s face when Charlotte completed her first clear round on Mandrake, vindicating his method of training to Lady Blackshaw. Now she saw a look of joy in a distorted form on Dixon’s face as she headed off to ruin Charlotte’s life.
Lily wanted to run after her to hold her back, but she couldn’t run and if she were able to catch up with her, Dixon would swat her off like a fly, the way she had done all those years ago in the nursery before Dr Finn had to come to her rescue. If only Sid were here to stand by her and support her.
“Charlotte expects me to remove my curse,” Dixon had said before she left, “but she’ll find she’s going to cop a lot more than she bargained for, and leaving the curse where it is will be the least of it, as you now know. No doubt she’ll come running back to you after I’ve finished with her, so that you can kiss her and make it all better. That should test your motherly skills, kissing away murder and making it better.”
Poor Charlotte, Lily grieved, pitted against this heartless adversary, with memories of her mother’s accident and Mandrake’s death making her credulous.
Not for one second did she believe that Charlotte had deliberately pushed Victoria into the river. Dixon was making assumptions. The little one must have slipped and poor Charlotte must have witnessed the drowning, then lost her voice with the fright of it all and then been too afraid of Dixon and Lady Blackshaw to allude to it then or ever. If only the terrified child had come to her. She would have enveloped her in sympathetic understanding rather than bringing the wrath of vengeance down upon her innocent little head.
“I’ll take the train back to Dublin in the morning after I’ve given my report at the police barracks to that Inspector Declan Doyle, who I remember had a soft spot for me,” Dixon had continued. “I’ll call to Lady Blackshaw tomorrow afternoon. I was going to post my letter to her on the way up here but I decided I’d rather shove it in front of Charlotte’s face first – together with the one I’m posting to her husband – to show her I mean business. It gives me goose bumps to think of meeting Her Ladyship and telling her in person.” She smoothed down her dress and adjusted her hat. “I think this is going to be a satisfying week. Pity old Dr Finn isn’t still around to see it. He always had a soft spot for me despite your efforts to turn him against me. Just make sure,” she threatened, wagging her finger, “that you don’t come over sticking your nose in or you’ll make it all the worse for Charlotte.”
As she left, she looked back over her shoulder to fully enjoy the old woman’s powerlessness.
Things couldn’t be worse for Charlotte, Lily grieved, checking the time on the kitchen clock, but if that evil woman thinks I’m going to sit here and leave my darling to her mercy, she’s got another think coming. I’ll wait until she’s out of sight and then I’ll go and find Manus.
Despite being cocky about knowing all the secrets of the Park, Dixon won’t be able to tell Charlotte everything because there was much she wasn’t aware of at the time, Lily thought with satisfaction while she waited.
Every adult on the estate except Nurse Dixon and Lord Waldron had known about the liaison between Lady Blackshaw and Manus. Many had seen the telling signs of attraction between the two, despite Lady Blackshaw’s conviction that she was being discreet. By commanding the servants to use the most desirable part of the demesne, the walled garden, for the purpose of limiting the range of their prying eyes, and by giving the three stable lads every Friday afternoon off so they would take their prying eyes off to a shebeen in the village, she thought her movements had passed unobserved.
Lily would gladly sacrifice the remaining years of her life to save Charlotte from knowing why Victoria had been the favoured one and why Lady Blackshaw had spent so long in Dublin for her last two confinements, a necessary subterfuge to falsify the actual dates of birth of Victoria and Harcourt.
Most explosive secret of all was that Harcourt was conceived, not in London as Lady Blackshaw was at pains to assert, but earlier, in Manus’s office, perhaps sometime in the forty-minute interval during which Victoria disappeared. The sums added up for someone who didn’t believe everything Lady Blackshaw said and who, as head housekeeper, didn’t go to the walled garden on Friday afternoons with all the other servants but, from the cover of the trees in the arboretum, a favoured sanctuary of hers, was often able to observe Lady Blackshaw’s movements. She did ask Les later on that terrible day how the filly with the gashed leg was and he had looked at her blankly and said there was nothing wrong with any of the fillies. Tending to an animal must have been the first excuse Lady Blackshaw could think of when she gave her account to the police, and who would dare question the word of the Lady of the Park?
All these convictions and suspicions she had confided in no one, not even Sid, in the full expectation of taking them with her to her grave.
It was time to go.
She made her way to the stables as quickly as her old bones would allow her and pushed open the double gates to find Manus and to tell him that Nurse Dixon was about to do harm to Charlotte and would he please come quickly.
Manus thought for a moment his old friend had suddenly flipped into senility, talking about two people who hadn’t been near the Park for years. He doubted he would recognise a grown-up Charlotte or a middle-aged Dixon, it was so long since he’d seen them, and he found it difficult to believe first of all that he hadn’t heard of their imminent return – that kind of news would spread like wildfire on the estate – and secondly, that one would threaten the other, rather than falling into each other’s arms with the joy of reunion.
“You have to trust me,” said Lily. “I don’t have time to tell you about the bad blood between them.”
She had never said a bad word about Dixon to him.
Manus told her of course he trusted her and to go on ahead. He would follow as soon as he wrestled into a stall the new wild import that was intent on inflicting injury on the foals.
He hoped there would be no awkwardness between himself and Nurse Dixon over their last embarrassing encounter. He would act as if it had never taken place and he presumed she would do the same.
To this day he could cringe at the thought of it.