Without even having to think about it he nodded vigorously. ‘I would be extremely grateful if you would. I’ll accompany you in the carriage, of course, but I’m afraid I’m not very good at this sort of thing. Could you be ready in half an hour?’
Amber nodded. ‘Yes, I’ll wait for you down in the hall.’
After he’d left, Becky frowned at her. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? I mean?.?.?. it ain’t goin’ to be very nice, especially if it is Mrs Ruffin.’
Amber shrugged. ‘It’s the least I can do for her, she was always very kind to me.’ But deep down she was hoping that it wouldn’t be Mrs Ruffin.
As promised, she was downstairs waiting for Mr Greenwood at the agreed time, very conscious of the fact that she didn’t have a black gown to wear – her grey one would just have to do.
‘May I ask where she is?’ she asked when he had followed her into the carriage and they were on their way into town.
‘She’s in the morgue at the undertaker’s.’ Barnaby shook his head as if he couldn’t take it in. ‘I know she adored Louisa but surely her death wouldn’t make Mrs Ruffin take her own life?’
‘Perhaps she didn’t take her own life,’ Amber pointed out. ‘Perhaps she was so upset that she slipped into the water.’
He nodded. ‘It is possible, I suppose. But we’ll never know, will we? Unless foul play is suspected of course.’
They travelled the rest of the way in silence and once they reached the market square where J. Hackett, the undertaker’s, was situated, Amber climbed down from the carriage telling him, ‘Stay there if you want. I’ll be fine on my own.’
In honesty her heart was pounding and she was beginning to regret making the offer, but Amber was one for keeping her word so she strode purposefully to the door of the funeral parlour and entered. Heavy purple velvet curtains hung at the window and the heady scent of lilies met her as the bell tinkled. Mr Hackett appeared in a starched white shirt, a black cravat and a black suit with tails on the jacket. He was a tiny little man with sparse white hair and a pair of gold pince-nez glasses perched on the end of his nose.
He smiled at her. ‘And how may I help you, my dear? Have you suffered a bereavement?’
‘Not personally, Mr Hackett,’ Amber told him quickly. ‘But my employer, Mr Greenwood from Greenacres, has asked me to come an’ identify the body of a woman you have here. We fear it might be the nurse of his late wife.’
‘Ah yes, of course. Well, she’s outside in the morgue. Would you follow me please?’
Amber gulped before following him through the door at the back of the parlour and yet another door that led out into a yard.
‘That door there leads to the chapel of rest.’ He pointed to the first door and moved on. ‘And this is the morgue. But are you sure you are up to this, my dear? You’re not going to faint on me, are you? You wouldn’t be the first.’
‘I shall be quite all right, thank you,’ Amber told him with her head held high and so, after extracting a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and ushered her into a large gloomy, windowless room.
‘I’ll just light the lamp,’ he told her as he hurried over to an oil lamp that was standing next to a long trolley on which lay a body covered in a crisp white sheet. Amber supressed a shudder.
‘So are you ready?’
She gulped again and nodded, praying once more that this would not be Mrs Ruffin, and very gently he peeled the sheet back from the corpse’s face.
Amber’s breath caught in her throat as she stared down at the serene face of Mrs Ruffin. She looked so peaceful that Amber could almost imagine she was simply asleep and would wake up at any moment, although of course she knew this wasn’t so.
‘Y-yes, that’s Mrs Ruffin,’ she said in a choked voice as a tear slid down her cheek.
Nodding gravely, Mr Hackett quickly pulled the sheet up again. ‘Then could you ask Mr Greenwood what he wishes me to do with the body? Would you happen to know if Mrs Ruffin had any next of kin that I could inform?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Amber admitted as she turned and stumbled towards the door. ‘But I’ll go an’ ask him now.’
Once she was outside one look at Amber’s face told Barnaby all that he needed to know and he sighed as he swiped the hair from his forehead.
‘Mr Hackett wants to know what you want him to do wi’ her body,’ she told him and after standing and thinking about it for a few moments he nodded and strode into the parlour, leaving Amber to clamber back into the carriage.
‘I’m going to ask Louisa’s parents if she might be buried as close to Louisa as possible in Pickering,’ he told her when he came back out. ‘I think it’s what both Louisa and herself would have wanted. She was more like a mother to her than a nanny and a maid. But I shall have to speak to them first before I can give Mr Hackett the decision.’
Amber thought that would be the right thing to do, although she didn’t feel that it was her place to comment and so the journey back to Greenacres was made in silence.
‘Er?.?.?. thank you for doing that for me,’ he said awkwardly when they entered the house again and with a stiff nod Amber hurried back to the nursery.
Later that afternoon, Mr Hackett delivered the young mistress’s coffin and she was transferred from her bedroom down to the drawing room where friends could come and say their last goodbyes to her before she started her final journey to Pickering the next day.
