The house was more quiet than usual. It had been muffled and cushioned to ensure the master wasn’t disturbed, to aid his sleep. Mr. Shepherd was waiting at the entrance to the bedroom as Mrs. King approached, hands clasped.
“Good evening, Mrs. King.” Somber tone.
“Good evening, Mr. Shepherd,” said Mrs. King. And then, when Mr. Shepherd didn’t move aside, “He sent for me.”
“I’m sure I don’t know why. He needs his rest. What’s this about, Mrs. King?”
Mrs. King felt her patience waning. She didn’t have the energy to coax and manage Mr. Shepherd anymore. “It’s my birthday,” she said, reaching around Mr. Shepherd, opening the door. “I daresay he wants to give me my present.”
The room had changed the moment he’d returned from the Continent. A decline that was never to be reversed. The windows were shuttered, the tables covered with all the paraphernalia of a sickroom: pillboxes and towels and bowls ready for the nurse to collect. There was a sulfurous smell in the air. She wondered if the master had brought it with him from the gaming tables and watering holes of the spa towns.
She made herself look at the bed.
Mr. de Vries was lying there, propped up with silk cushions, curtains pulled back. Even from a distance, she could hear his breathing, the grating sound of his lungs.
“Good evening, sir,” she said.
His eyes were closed, but he took a breath, a painful little sip of air. “Come here.”
Evidently, he wasn’t going to waste words. Mrs. King crossed the room. The carpets absorbed her footsteps; she moved completely without sound.
“Your present,” he said, resting his hand on a prayer book, there beside him on the bed.
His fingers were thin, very nearly elegant. But there was something gross about them, encrusted with rings, prominent knuckles, hairs sprouting at odd angles. Hands for touching, prodding, peeling back layers. Fingers that carried disease under the nails.
She didn’t touch the book. Someone would bring it down later. Pile it with the others, by her door.
“Thank you,” she said—because it seemed like a kindness, because it didn’t cause anyone any harm.
“I wrote a letter,” he said, hoarse. “If you want to know the truth.”
She felt her body grow very still. “What?”
“It’s in the house,” he said. “The letter.”
Later she tried to recall the moment, to pinpoint what she had felt. Surprise? Curiosity? It was a wriggle in her gut, certainly, but it was more like—unease. He was being economical with words, and so was she. It took care, and skill, and precision, not to say too much. And looking at him lying there, flat against the pillows, she felt something cold entering her heart. He’s on the edge, she realized. He’s dealing with the final things.
“What letter?” she asked, at length.
His eyes flickered at that. He still had it: the taste for a game, the nose for a tease.
“Find it,” he said, “and you’ll know, won’t you?”
She yearned to move toward him, and she wanted to creep away, all at the same time. As if blood spoke to blood, repelling and seeking in equal measure.
“Are you comfortable?” she said, at last.
She asked because she was curious. She wondered what it felt like to be there, right on the brink. Because surely this was the end? Surely they were very near it now? You only had to measure the shrinking line of his neck, see the way the weight had fallen away from his cheeks. His movements were growing slower and slower, the degradation unstoppable.
He let out a shallow breath. His eyes moved toward the blur of the medicine cabinet, the bowls, the pillboxes.
“I’m bored,” he whispered.
She loathed him in that moment, but she wanted to laugh, too. I would be bored, she thought. Oh, I would be so bored by it, dying.
Straightening, she said, “Tell me about this letter.”
“It’s about your poor mother,” he replied, barely a whisper.
Mrs. King felt her body turn quite still.
It was extraordinary, wasn’t it, how easily people could shock you? Even if she counted up all the years she’d been here, all the hours and minutes and seconds—and she could count them, she felt sometimes that she simply held them all in her mind, like little slots marked up with luggage labels—then she still couldn’t think of a time he’d mentioned Mother. In his house, in his world, this world that she had entered, Mother didn’t exist. Lockwood had impressed as much upon her, the first day she arrived.
She felt a frisson pass through her skin. “What on earth do you mean?” she said, voice low.
There was something building in her chest, something dangerously akin to fear. Because she knew how games worked. There had to be a delicious little bit of irony, a slice of pain. Someone had to lose for someone else to win.
Mrs. King knew she was a bastard, an indiscretion, a stain. She’d folded that away inside herself long ago. This had to be something different.
“This is yours,” he said. He lifted a finger, barely half an inch. “All this.”
To Mr. de Vries, an inch could cover oceans, prairies, great sweeping tracts of land. Silver. Gold. Mountains, studded with diamonds. So many possessions, held under his name, in his empire. She should have been confused. Dizzy with the scope of it, uncomprehending. But she felt only nausea, deep in her gut. She understood at once. Ha-ha, she thought, dully. A twist, a ruse, right at the end.
“You were married to Mother.”
He didn’t nod. He didn’t shake his head. He just stared at her.
Mother always said she was a widow. Mrs. King never gave it any credence. She’d imagined Mother as a nervy, scattered girl, already in the family way. She’d had a fancy man, Danny O’Flynn: slick curled, a fast talker, causing trouble in the neighborhood. “He gave all the girls a ring,” Mrs. Bone once said, dourly. “To appease the neighbors.”
Mrs. King had understood that. Appearances mattered enormously. They were everybody’s first line of defense. But once Dinah entered that house, she pieced things together: the oddness of her situation, the funds supplied to keep Mother in hospital. Mr. de Vries had fathered a bastard, same as a thousand men before, same as a thousand men would after. She had a stain upon her, and always would.
Hadn’t she?
The notion that Mother had been telling the truth, that she was a widow in law as well as in sentiment, was like being hooked in the stomach. The guilt—that Mrs. King had never considered it, hadn’t even thought to believe her—took her breath away.
“Why are you telling me this now?” she asked.
He didn’t answer that. He lay there, breathing, watching her with a peculiar light in his eyes.
“Find the letter,” he said. “And then tell anyone you like.”
That night, Mrs. King began the search for the letter. Start at the top of the house, she decided. The attics.
But the house was impossible. It bested her, every time she approached it. It was comprised entirely of compartments, of secret boxes, of tight containers. Jars, hatboxes, packing crates, vases, bookcases, writing desks, picture frames, looking glasses, false-backed cupboards, bedrooms, bedposts, bed frames...
She needed to make a more thorough inspection.
The plan came as her plans always did: in colors and shapes, not words. But this was bigger, grander, than anything she’d imagined before. It was cloudy, gauzy: she saw gilt and glass. Hot faces and men shrieking in confusion.
She went up to see Madam with the menus, as usual. While Mr. de Vries had been on the Continent, they’d fallen out of the habit. Now he was back, the routine returned, too.
“Soufflé,” Madam had said, edgily. “Speak to Nurse to see what Father wants.”
Mrs. King had put her pen away.
“Is there something else?” Miss de Vries said.
She doesn’t know, thought Mrs. King.
She could read Madam. She could see the girl working hard, at all times, superintending her thoughts and feelings. She seemed weary: her father’s return was like a storm cloud hanging over her head. But she didn’t realize the truth.
“No, nothing else,” said Mrs. King. She left off the Madam.
Mrs. King sat on her knowledge, concealing it. It was like walking around with a mortar bomb under her skirts. I refuse to be rushed, she told herself. I need to plan. She sensed the master growing impatient, yearning for her to commence warfare. She refused to oblige him.
Of course it occurred to her that he might have been lying. Playing an almighty game, telling her a fairy story, only to shred it to pieces when she was entirely sucked in. If he’d married Mother, then there had to be real evidence. She drew up a list of churches, scattered all over the East End, and began inspecting the marriage registers on Sunday afternoons. She took her Gladstone bag with her notebook, magnifying glass, blotter and good pens so that she could make notes. She dipped into her own savings and gave the rectors a healthy dollop of cash for the collection plate, so they didn’t ask any questions.
There was no evidence of a wedding. But of course they could have used false names. Indeed it was almost certain they would have done. The O’Flynns must have disapproved of Mother. They were a family who formed strategic alliances with greengrocers and pawnbrokers and ironmongers. They didn’t marry loose-screwed, weak-brained girls—and that’s how they would have seen Mother. Even Mrs. Bone never hinted, never suggested for a second that Danny had made a true marriage. She would have torn him down from his glorious perch in a heartbeat, if she had.
Lucky for Danny O’Flynn. So easy to vanish, remold himself just the way he pleased. Mrs. King pictured him assessing his options, shuffling them idly like a deck of cards. She wished she didn’t recognize the trait.
Two days later, she heard his bell ringing. A summons for Madam. The master wanted to speak to his daughter.
Whatever passed between them Mrs. King never knew. Miss de Vries came downstairs, went to her own rooms, without saying a word to anyone. She didn’t send for any supper; she gave no orders at all. Mrs. King sat in her own small sitting room, waiting. She could feel something coiled in the house, a storm about to break.
Their father died that night. A sudden deterioration, entirely expected in a consumptive case like this one, said the physician later. The news broke like a river forcing its way through a dam. Mrs. King felt it rolling downstairs, floor by floor, the electroliers seething and spitting, the servants turning pale as they received the intelligence. The dinner service was suspended, the under-footmen stood about with their mouths open. Cook took to her bed. You could even hear the horses growing agitated in the yard. Mr. Lockwood and the other lawyers descended upon the house, papers out, pens aloft, issuing memoranda. The nurse cleared away all the pillboxes and bowls and towels, her trolley rattling all the way down the passage of the bedroom floor. Everyone heard Mr. Shepherd moaning, keening, from the butler’s pantry.
Miss de Vries remained in her room.
Mrs. King counted out the black armbands, one by one. This is it, she thought, blood thrumming. Truthfully, she didn’t know what it was. It felt too enormous, too unimaginable to piece together. Possession of this house, of all it contained, whistled through her mind.
The wording in the will was precise. It caused no comment. “I leave everything, my whole estate, to my true and legitimate daughter.”
Clever, thought Mrs. King, when she heard, anger rushing through her veins. Clever, clever, a lovely trick, a lovely game. Of course the lawyers didn’t remark upon such straightforward phraseology. Madam didn’t question it; nobody said a word at all. They felt they understood the natural order of things. It was up to Mrs. King to correct them.
She gave herself an order.
Strip the house. Take every box, every drawer: shake them, search them, root it out. Find that letter.
Once Alice was in post, once Winnie was in on the job, she went to the men’s quarters. She’d only have one chance to investigate those. It was the worst place for a woman to enter, if she wanted to keep her reputation. Mr. de Vries had always been so particular about his servants’ morals. Prayer books for birthday presents, church every Sunday, prayers at breakfast. The women slept on one side of the house, the men on the other. Even Mrs. King and William had never attempted to cross that divide. Although when she asked him, he agreed to keep the door to the men’s quarters unlocked. “But why?” he’d asked, deeply puzzled. “What on earth do you need?”
She ignored that. Troubles had a way of multiplying when other people became involved. But of course she did involve him; she did get him in trouble. Someone was sitting on a chair near William’s door, kicking his heels. A little rodent-faced boy, keeping an eye out for intruders. Mrs. King knew the rules. She knew there was a risk that she’d be caught, and she went up there anyway. It was her warning shot, a signal to anybody that might need to hear it.
“Whatchoo doing up here, Mrs. King?” the boy had asked. “Visiting a fancy man?”
She had been acutely conscious of her body, its stillness. Her blood, mixed by her mother and her father. The danger within her, the currents she’d inherited from both.
She had stared the boy down, stared him right down to his bones, but he didn’t run away. Of course he ratted on her, went squealing to Mr. Shepherd. Mrs. King didn’t complete her search of the men’s quarters, and she didn’t sleep that night. She felt invisible cracks running through the house, felt the walls riven from top to toe, blood pounding in her chest.
Cheated, she thought. I’ve been cheated out of my rights.
She was the rightful inheritress. She always had been. And yet she’d been put in a frilly cap and a starched collar, trained to answer bells and take orders. To sit, stay, be silent. And she had allowed it. She had permitted it to be done. It made her as angry with herself as with the world.
The following morning she faced Mr. Shepherd. Being dismissed didn’t frighten her. She was ready for it. Her plans required her to be outside the house, at liberty to circle it, correct it, tilt it, push it all the way over. Besides, she recognized her dismissal for what it was: a shot being fired right back at her. A message from Madam: Get out.
It pleased her. It gave her exactly what she needed. Permission to do her worst.