AGNUST FLUMPED A plate in front of me.
‘I hear you do get yourself in a scrape last night,’ she began.
Who had snitched? Surely not Gerrund?
Apart from being loyal to me he would have got the edge of her tongue too.
Well don’t look at me, Ruby protested. I was tucked up in my coffin until a moment ago.
Breakfast was two oak-smoked Yarmouth kippers. They were from a batch sent by my mother who, having sampled a disappointing sandwich at Montford railway station eight years ago, was convinced that there was no proper food to be had in neighbouring Suffolk.
‘Just a little one,’ I admitted warily and Agnust plunked her sizeable fists on her even more sizeable hips.
‘Now you listen to me young lady,’ she began and I promised that I would, though not that I would heed her words. ‘When I come down from civ’lisisation…’ By which she meant Thetbury Hall, just over the border in Norfolk. ‘I promise your dear mamma I look after you.’
‘And you do,’ I assured her, helping myself from the rack of toast.
Agnust thrust out her chest, not that it needed projecting any further. She was a large woman in every dimension.
‘And how do I do tha’ when you’re off fightin’ rats?’
‘I did not fight them. A dog did.’
‘And galivantin’ with crinimals,’ she continued.
‘Gerrund was there to protect me and I did not do any gallivanting,’ I objected. ‘I ran away.’
‘Runnin’ away from crinimals at all hours?’ She jutted her jaw. ‘Wha’ kind of behavin’ way is tha’ for a young lady of old breedin’?’
‘I was doing some research for my book.’
‘And tha’s another thing.’ Agnust folded her powerful arms under that bosom. She could have done a few rounds with Sledgehammer, I pondered, and not come off much the worse for it. ‘Young ladies of old breedin’ do not goo writin’ shockers.’
‘They are what makes the money,’ I informed her though The Mangrove Street Massacre had yet to recover its meagre advance.
I did not ask how she thought I paid her wages because my father did that. Taking Agnust with me was one of the conditions that I had had to agree to before they consented to my moving from home. ‘What has Montford got that we have not?’ my father had demanded. ‘Apart from smog and cholera?’ And it was useless to argue that we were no smokier than any other market town or to point out that the last outbreak of cholera had been ten years before I was born.
‘You should write romances,’ my maid and self-appointed literary adviser advised, ‘like Miss Primrose Delight.’
‘I hate romances,’ I told her, ‘all those swooning heiresses falling in love with handsome brutes.’
Agnust shook her head at my nonsense, for she had read Withering Hills at least twice and told me about it ten times more than that.
‘And do you see the state of your dress?’ she demanded. ‘It look like you goo paddlin’ in a cess pit.’
That was actually not far from the truth but, when all was said and done, it was my dress and it was not her job to launder nor repair it.
‘Might I have my coffee now?’ I asked more timidly than I had confronted members of the underworld, and Agnust begrudgingly poured me half a cup.
‘Int good for you,’ she muttered, though I should have thought that my beverage would have been the last of her worries after my night spent mingling with crinimals and brawlin’ with vermin.
‘How did you know about last night?’ I enquired.
She was there in disguise, Hefty theorised unconvincingly. It didn’t make a fool of me though.
What did then? Ruby asked, filing a fingernail and I wished she would not do that. The debris made my thalamus itch.
‘You write it in your diary,’ Agnust explained and I sat up indignantly.
‘My journal is private.’
‘Well,’ Agnust refolded her arms and the cuff of her dress rose to reveal some of her scars, ‘if you do leave it lyin’ ’round in a locked drawer you have to ’spect people to read it.’
But how, I wondered. The lock had not been forced and I could not imagine my maid having the dexterity to pick it.
She has seen you leaving the key in that ginger jar, Ruby explained, and it occurred to me that most employers would have their maids packing their bags after that explanation but, not being most employers, I only said, ‘I see,’ in a tone that I hoped would give Agnust pause for thought, but if she paused at all it was only to glance at her reflection in the mantle mirror and stroke the furry mole on her upper lip affectionately on her way to the door.
‘And dint you goo chokin’ on any bone,’ she admonished me, though I had never done so yet.
Alone at last I opened my post. A relative I had never heard of was being held in a Turkish prison and would be beheaded if he could not pay his fifty-guinea fine for insulting the sultan. I might have given it a little more attention if the postmark had not been Preston and, heartlessly, I left him to his fate.
I browsed the day’s Times, hardly giving the front page of advertisements a glance. I had no need yet of liver salts nor electrical devices to stimulate my sluggish circulation, though I did wonder if I might benefit from Professor Frobisher’s Brain Tonic, guaranteed to help any lady think more sensibly – like a man presumably. I turned the page, getting hardly any butter on the lower edge.
Sidney Grice, the famous Personal Detective and his goddaughter March Middleton had managed to track the mysterious Honest Publisher to his hiding place in Wimbledon. Many had thought that he must be a mythical figure.
There was something sharp in my throat and I coughed as gruffly as a bilious colonel, but the sharp something was still there. Hastily I chewed and swallowed a piece of toast, which not only failed to shift it but got stuck too. Choking now, I hurried to the sideboard, sploshed out a cup of, mercifully cold, coffee and managed to wash the bolus down, hurrying back to my chair as heavy footsteps approached.
Agnust eyed me suspiciously. She must have heard the commotion and I was probably flushed, but she made no comment except to wonder if I believed that she did not have enough to do without my slopping beverages. I assured her that I did not. If she had not returned I would have mopped it up myself, but she had caught me brushing crumbs off the tablecloth once and enquired if I were after her job.
‘I shall have a quiet day today,’ I sought to reassure her as she cleared.
‘And tonight?’ she asked distrustfully. ‘Gooin’ bear baitin’ or cock fightin’ with the nasty-men are we?’
Nasty-men were garrotters and, twenty years after the scare in London, the panic had struck in East Anglia. A man had been strangled from behind in Gorham and three women in Ipswich, not to mention assorted parlour maids, milkmen and vicars similarly dispatched around the county. One of the many troubles with these accounts was that they had always happened to somebody that a friend of an acquaintance knew, but the teller could never recall their names. The stories were in all the papers they would assure you, but they must have been in different editions to the ones that were delivered to my house.
‘Are we?’ she pressed.
‘You are not,’ I replied and was about to add that I was not either when the doorbell rang.
‘Now who do tha’ be?’ Agnust cocked an ear.
‘There is only one way to find out,’ I replied but, on reflection, there were at least three, though answering the door was the easiest and most conventional way.
I sat and waited. It was not Gerrund’s job to respond unless Agnust was not available, and I was fairly confident that it was not mine either. She unwound her arms and huffed.
‘S’pose I best goo,’ she decided. ‘But, if tha’s one of your friends, you int not gooin’ out to play.’
It was seventeen years since an eight-year-old Lady Violet Thorn had run with her hoop in front of a hay waggon and I had been right as rain within the year, but neither Agnust nor the dent in my skull would ever let me forget it. Few things sound more horrible than the cracking of bones, especially if they are one’s own.