***
Miss Rochester returned the next day, late in the afternoon, again in Eustace’s carriage. Betty had discovered there had been a public assembly in Scarborough that evening, so she was satisfied that the lady had been dancing the night away. Tess said nothing, disbelieving, for the girl had worn an ordinary evening gown not the more elaborate ball gown. She determined that she would watch Eustace more closely when she returned home.
She was almost ready to abandon Apstead House and accept that her father had never been there when she made a discovery. Like many houses of a size suitable for a gentleman’s family, there was a small coach house at the bottom of the garden backing onto a quiet lane. It was from the lane, she presumed, that the gentleman caller had come, walking through the garden to the house. The garden itself was neat and tidy, for Mrs Mayberry was indefatigable with a trowel in her hand, and no weed dared to show its face. The coach house was less well cared for. It contained an ancient gig, but there was no horse and no groom, nothing but a few wisps of rotting hay and a great many cobwebs. Outside stairs at one side led to an upper floor, perhaps intended as accommodation for a groom. On the other side was the privy.
Tess had explored a little, while supposedly visiting the privy, and discovered that the door to the upper floor was firmly locked. She thought nothing of it until the day that, hidden behind the privy door, she had seen Mrs Mayberry go up the stairs. Creeping quickly around to a better vantage point, shewatched Mrs Mayberry unlock the door, go inside and emerge a few minutes later with a heavy purse in her hand. She hastily tucked it away into a pocket of her old-fashioned skirts, but Tess had seen enough.
“There ismoneyin there!” she hissed to Betty. “We have to get inside.”
“Lord, Miss Tess, you’re like a dog with a bone!” Betty said. “There’s nothing amiss with a lady keepin’ a little cash locked away safe like that. If your fortune were in there, d’you think she’d be livin’ in a little house like this, with not enough servants? And why don’t she have more servants, anyway? She’s got to be desperate, takinguson.”
“True, but if she has money of her own hidden away, why is the better food such a recent innovation? The furnishings are good — Turkish carpets, I would swear, porcelain everywhere and some fine paintings on the walls. And Miss Rochester’s clothes were not cheap. Have you looked through the young ladies’ wardrobes? Not in the first stare of fashion, but good quality fabrics.”
“Cut too low, and too flimsy, if you ask me,” Betty said darkly.
Tess only laughed. “You should see what Izzy wears sometimes. Very low cut, very flimsy.”
“She’s a married lady,” Betty said. “I don’t care what you say, Miss Tess, I don’t like this house. I don’t like it at all. There’s something not right about it.”
“I dislike it, too,” Tess said, “and as soon as I have seen inside that room above the coach house, we can leave.”
Betty sighed and rolled her eyes. “You’ll need the keys, and the mistress hangs them from her waist.”
“Only during the day. When she dresses for dinner, she leaves them in the housekeeper’s room. This evening, when Margaret is upstairs serving the tea, Mrs Harris is asleep inher chair and Phyllis is in the scullery — that will be my opportunity.”
The first part of this plan went remarkably well. Mrs Harris, the cook, did indeed nod off, Phyllis was occupied washing dishes in the scullery and Margaret was serving tea upstairs when Tess crept along the passage to the housekeeper’s room, slipped inside and took the large bunch of keys. Then she scuttled to the kitchen door and out into the garden, as if going to the privy. Instead, she ran light-footed up the stairs to the groom’s apartment and began to work her way through the keys on the ring, trying to find the one that opened the door.
Male voices from below caused her to freeze. Two men walked past the end of the coach house, passing directly below the stairs on which she crouched, trying to make herself as small as possible and fade into the shadows. The sun was not yet set, and if they had looked up they could not have failed to see Tess. They did not look up, passing on up the garden, absorbed in their own conversation — it sounded as if they were discussing a horse race. A burst of laughter, and then they were gone.
Tess turned quickly back to the locked door, and finally, with almost the last key she tried, the lock turned and the door opened.
The room was disappointing. It was, at first sight, just what one would have expected, sleeping quarters for a groom. There was a low bed, devoid of mattress or blankets, a washstand, a chest of drawers and wardrobe, and a battered wooden table set in front of a window, set with paper, ink and pens. There were some pegs in the wall for hanging coats, and a few nails where pictures might once have hung. Curiously for a disused room, it was clean and tidy, with none of the cobwebs so prevalent in the coach house below. Someone, then, cleaned regularly.
But where had the money come from? With light from the lowering sun pouring through the window, she began pullingopen drawers. They were full. Some contained bills, mostly from Pickering businesses, some were letters or business documents that she would need to read carefully to understand. And finally — success! One drawer contained account books neatly annotated in her father’s hand. A metal cash box contained four hundred and twenty pounds in notes and guineas, and a quantity of smaller coins.
Triumphantly, she let the coins slide through her fingers. Her fatherhadbeen to this house, had kept an office here, had kept records of his expenses. But there was no sign of her fortune, or a safe where it might be hidden, and no other cupboard, apart from the wardrobe. With a rush of excitement, she pulled open the wardrobe door, and there it was — a neat safe, undoubtedly containing a multitude of gold bars.Hergold bars.
She could see at a glance that none of the keys on the ring would fit the safe. Now, where would her father keep the key? On his person? No, the key to the safe at Corland had been hidden on the underside of the desk, and undoubtedly the same was true here. All she had to do was search carefully.
Just as she was about to crawl on the floor looking under the writing table, the door creaked open and a dark figure loomed in the doorway. Mrs Mayberry, resplendent in purple, with Margaret hovering behind.
“I told you I saw someone moving about,” Margaret said.
“Well?” Mrs Mayberry said. “What have you to say for yourself, you little thief?”
Tess jumped to her feet and rubbed her dusty hands on her skirt, and laughed in their faces. “Oh no, you have that wrong.Youare the thief, not I. Did I not see you come in here and take money away?”
“That is my money,” Mrs Mayberry said. “All of this is mine.”
“On the contrary, all of this ismine,” Tess hissed at her. “This house and everything in it was left to me by my father whoowned it before me. Everyone said he never came here, but he did, this room proves that he did. That money you have been stealing was his and is now mine, and the contents of that safe were his and are now mine.”
The two women gazed at her, open-mouthed in astonishment. “You? You are Miss Nicholson?” Margaret whispered.
“I am.”
“Nonsense,” Mrs Mayberry said robustly. “We’ll see what the constables have to say aboutthat.But whoever you are, you can pack your things and leave within the hour, you and that so-called sister of yours.”
“You cannot throw me out of my own house,” Tess said.
