CHAPTER 7

A SISTER’S STRUGGLE

WHEN MY FRIENDS joined the rehearsal, I went to sit with the young Lady Greyson during her hour of household management, delayed today because of the actors’ arrival. I approached the morning room tasting two distinct flavors of anticipation. One, I would have nearly a whole hour to visit with my sister! And two…I was obliged to visit with my sister for nearly a whole hour…

Marjorie had gone to boarding school when I was still a child and then married James soon after graduating. I suppose I’d told her little girl secrets before she’d gone away, but we’d had no recent practice sharing thoughts and dreams. Would we find a way to be easy together? She was a married woman with a manor house full of servants to command. I suspected that in her eyes I was still a child.

She was at her desk when I came in, her elegant script unrolling across a page of creamy paper. I sat near her in a chair upholstered in dusky pink velvet. Not a place to spill one’s cocoa. Marjorie asked at once, how was Tony? Well, Tony was getting a bit stout. Our maid, Sally, liked to feed him buttered toast.

“He likely needs to fatten up for winter,” said Marjorie. “Like a bear. And our neighbors next door at the EverMore villa? What do you hear of them?”

“It has been a quiet few weeks,” I said, since I’d discovered Irma Eversham’s corpse on the floor of the Mermaid Dance Room. “Our dancing lessons have been suspended until the new year.”

“I had a note from Rose, full of sadness and confusion,” said Marjorie, “but we know how that feels, do we not?”

Yes, we did.

“And how do you think Mummy is faring? It is so hard to discern from her letters.”

“Mostly well since your wedding,” I said. “Despite the upset of our murdered neighbor. But recently, she has been very low indeed. Perhaps because of the gray winter sky.”

“And you, Aggie? Is Groveland terribly quiet and lonely with just the three of you?”

How to explain the tremble from my ankles to my scalp when I passed the door of Papa’s study and knew he was not there to wink at me? How to describe the ache in my throat when I turned the pages of his dictionary or stood in his dressing room with my face pressed to the sleeve of his velvet smoking jacket? How to relate the moment, many times in a week, while we ate our supper when Mummy, Grannie and I each found one another’s eyes resting on Papa’s empty chair?

“Well, yes,” I said. “Very quiet.”

Marjorie sighed and scooped me under her arm and had me stand close as she finished her letter—which was to let Mummy know that we’d arrived safely, and to ask for a recipe for sorrel soup that Marjorie wished to share with her cook.

“Possibly the worst burden of being Lady Greyson,” said Marjorie, “among many, I confess, is the planning of meals. I would so prefer to curl up in a chair and eat cheese on toast than worry all day about whether to serve Swiss chard or broccoli with the veal.”

“What are the other burdens?” I said. “You still love James, I hope?”

“I love him more than ever,” said Marjorie, “for being so patient with my inept efforts to be the new Lady Greyson. Sadly, his mother is not so rich in patience.” She sighed heavily as she folded the letter and put it into an envelope, adding it to a stack of three or four others waiting for seals. She took out a new page and wrote the date across the top, while I imagined the wrinkly lips of Dowager Lady Greyson pursing in disapproval, and shuddered in empathy.

“At the very least, you have a lovely desk set,” I said, admiring the row of matching implements for writing.

Marjorie laughed. “It was a gift from James’s mother,” she said. “One of her kinder gestures, when we were married. It comes from a collection begun by James’s father. He was a great collector of odd things.”

“I noticed the teapots.” I eyed the cabinet that opened into the secret passage.

“Yes,” said Marjorie. “The horned owl teapot on the top shelf was his first acquisition. And see?” She passed me her paper knife with its ivory handle carved to show an owl in flight. The inkwell had one too, as did the smaller knife for trimming pen nibs and the rocking ink blotter.

“For Owl Park,” I said. “How sweet.”

“The set in the library has owl heads embossed on silver handles,” Marjorie said. “But mine is made for a lady’s hands, and it suits me very well.” She glanced at the bookshelf beside the fire. “Now, if only there were time to read all these books,” she said, “or even one of them. The greatest loss of married life seems to be that I haven’t read a novel in months.”

“I suppose when you’ve learned how to be the lady of the manor,” I said, “you’ll have time to read a book.”

“Where is my little sister?” said Marjorie. “She has become rather wise and grown-up.”

“Not quite all grown, I hope, if that means no time for reading! I will always choose murder with Sherlock Holmes over tea and corsets with anyone else.”

“Well, I’m very happy to have you keep me company while your friends are rehearsing,” she said.

“I would rather have measles than perform in a play,” I said, “but I do love going to watch them!”

“What an odd day, don’t you think?”

“Starting with Mrs. Sivam screaming us all out of our beds in the middle of the night?” I said. “As odd as a day can be!”

“She was just as good at piercing shrieks when we were at school,” said Marjorie. “Kitty Cartland’s special trick. Cartland was her name before she married Mr. Sivam. She made the same noise whether it was a spider in the washbasin or an intruder in the greenhouse.”

“Did you have many of those?” I said. “Intruders, I mean.”

Marjorie laughed. “Just the one. Though no one saw him except for Kitty, her scream being so effective in scaring him off. The headmistress guessed he’d been lost after too much ale at the village pub and came into the greenhouse to find shelter on a mound of burlap scraps. Kitty was collecting lilies, to decorate the chapel on Sunday morning, and got frightened to bits.”

I loved Marjorie’s stories about school. During her holidays, I’d beg to hear about the time she and her friends had purloined a pot of jam and shared it in the dark of the dormitory, or how, on the stroke of eleven, they’d all dropped their pencils during maths.

“Was Kitty one of your close chums?” I said.

“No, no,” said Marjorie. “She was older. We overlapped by only a year. She was in the sixth form when I got there in the fourth. Poor girl was called Oinks at school, even by us younger girls, for being so piggy about eating more than her share.”

“She’s not piggy in the least bit!” I said. “That was very mean-spirited of you!”

“I shouldn’t have told you,” said Marjorie. “So unfair to expose youthful flaws when one has grown up to have such pretty dresses and silky hair and not a hint of roundness.”

“Her husband is ever so nice,” I said. “Almost as kind as James.”

“James and Lakshay were great pals at Oxford,” said Marjorie. “I have the sense that James befriended Lakshay when he first arrived from Ceylon, a lonely boy far from home, though James wouldn’t put it like that. He tells about seeing Lakshay carrying a table on his shoulders up the stairs to his rooms, and how he enticed him to join the rowing team.”

“How did Kitty come to marry him?” I asked.

“I do not know their love story,” said Marjorie. “James has been so busy with Owl Park since his father died, he hasn’t had time for friends and fell out of touch with Lakshay. They met again recently and found they still liked each other. That’s when I learned that Lakshay had married Kitty. So, we thought to invite them for Christmas.”

“Is it usual for an Englishwoman to marry a man from Ceylon?”

“I do not imagine it is common, but it does happen occasionally,” said Marjorie. “They seem to be at ease, which is really all that counts, is it not?”

“Like you and James,” I said, and was rewarded with a smile. “He will feel gratified to return the Echo Emerald to the goddess Aditi, will he not?”

“A gentleman is coming here the day after Christmas to appraise the gem so it can be insured for travel. Mr. Sivam’s dream will come true very soon.”

“He’s awfully far from home,” I said. “Even if he lives here now. Like Hector.”

“Just like Hector,” said Marjorie. “Or like me, at Owl Park. I feel like a toad dropped into the middle of a frog pond—and we all know that toads can’t swim!”

A knock at the door. “Come in, Mrs. Hornby,” Marjorie called out. And then to me, “This will be Cook, I’m afraid, about today’s meals.”

I quickly vacated the chair next to my sister’s desk where Mrs. Hornby was accustomed to sitting each morning. Marjorie had a list of things to discuss with the cook about her current guests, beginning with thanks for taking the trouble to make nut rissoles for Mr. Sivam’s vegetarian diet. What would she provide this evening? Grannie Jane could not tolerate tomatoes. What did Mrs. Hornby think about this or that and this?

I listened politely for a few moments before wandering—ever so casually—to the cabinet that hid the entrance to the secret passage. I noted the handle on the second drawer down that Lucy had turned yesterday. I daren’t touch it in case it sprang suddenly to life. I imagined Mrs. Hornby clutching her bosom in shock if part of the furniture began to move!

“I make a lovely rum cake, if you’d like that, your ladyship,” said Mrs. Hornby. “No one is a teetotaler that I’ve been informed about.”

“That will do very nicely, Mrs. Hornby, thank you.”

When the cook eventually made her way out, Marjorie sagged in her chair.

“Whatever menu I choose, James’s mother has a reason to complain. I never seem to get things right!”

“What if you asked for her advice?” I said. “She must have been the young Lady Greyson herself at one time?”

“Oh, Aggie,” said Marjorie. “My greatest fear is being revealed as the imposter that I am. Asking for help would be like shouting out loud all the things I do not know. My only comfort is that I do not see how things can get any worse!”