Death at Whitechapel (5 page)

So it was with a great deal of satisfaction that Kate looked out over a garden reclaimed from the wilderness that had overtaken it—pruned, planted, transplanted, manured, and mulched, by a team of four boys and two girls in blue tunics, at work today trimming the yew and privet hedges so that they were straight-sided, a little narrower at the top than at the bottom.

“I congratulate you, Mr. Humphries,” she said. “You have done a fine job.”

Mr. Humphries grinned modestly, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Thank you, m‘lady. I'm partic'lary proud o' the old rhododendrons—there's several of the early Spanish and a yellow Siberian—and the new herbaceous border, of course. Ye won't lack flowers fer cuttin', but the border'll take less time t' tend, an' we can go on t' other things. The rose garden, fer instance.”

Kate also loved the rehabilitated rose garden, which contained some lovely cultivars, including a very old L'Isle de Bourbon that had been a wedding gift to her grandmother and a moss rose called Rouge de Luxembourg that her great-grandmother was said to have planted as a young girl. Kate treasured these horticultural connections with her Ardleigh ancestors, who had lived here long before her father angrily renounced his inheritance and went off to America, where he married her Irish mother. The garden somehow made her feel more English, and while she did not want to forget who she was or the America she came from, she also cherished the English part of herself and was glad that she could help to bring the garden back to life again.

As Kate was about to ask the gardener to take her through the rose garden, she was interrupted by Sally, the parlor maid, who came through the French doors onto the terrace.

“Lady Randolph Churchill, m'lady,” she said breathlessly, and curtseyed.

Kate was startled. Jennie's first visit to Bishop's Keep had been pleasant and uneventful—several days of quiet walks and relaxed country drives, sharing experiences and confidences—and the two women had become fast friends. But Jennie was an extraordinarily attractive and desirable single woman who could choose among dozens of invitations from her friends and admirers, including the Prince and Princess of Wales. So Kate had been greatly surprised when she had telegraphed two days before, inquiring as to whether she could come for another visit. And now here she was, a full day
before
her expected arrival!

“Thank you, Mr. Humphries,” Kate said hastily to the gardener, and to the maid, “I'll come in, Sally. Is she in the drawing room? Oh, and do tell Mr. Hodge that there will be three for dinner.”

The maid turned with a helpless gesture. “Lady Randolph, m'lady.” She curtseyed again, and vanished.

“Jennie!” Kate exclaimed, as the lady came out onto the terrace. She was dressed in a blue wool traveling suit piped in darker blue velvet, her dark hair piled up under a matching blue velvet hat with white feathers and a swath of veil. She was as beautiful as always, but lacked her usual cheerful ebullience. Her cheeks were pale, her eyes heavy, and she looked exhausted. For the first time, Kate noticed the fine lines around Jennie's mouth and between her heavy dark brows that gave away her age.

“I do so hope I'm not putting you out, Kate.” Jennie made a wry, self-deprecating face. “Such inexcusable rudeness—not only to invite myself but to arrive early!”

Kate took Jennie's gloved hands in hers and bent forward to kiss her cheek. “Don't be silly,” she said warmly. “You've only given us more time to be together.” She stepped back. “But the train has tired you. Your rooms are ready, of course, and you'll want to rest before tea. Charles returned yesterday from Somersworth. He'll be delighted to see you.” She squeezed Jennie's hands and let them go. “As am I.”

“You're too kind,” Jennie said. She bit her lip, hesitated, then said: “I know that I owe you an explanation for imposing in this way, but I ... I—” She stopped.

“No explanations, Jennie,” Kate said. “Whatever your reasons, I know they are good ones.” But she had to admit to a swift-rising curiosity. While the Jennie who had visited two weeks earlier had been calm and deliberate, the woman who stood before her now was shaken and (if Kate could trust her intuition) desperately afraid. Afraid of what? Had something happened to disrupt her love affair with George Cornwallis-West? Had Winston got himself into a scrape or some scandal? Or perhaps the difficulty had to do with money—of which, Kate knew, her guest was perpetually and dangerously short.

Jennie walked to the edge of the terrace and put her hands on the rail. “I didn't have any choice,” she said in a low voice, as if Kate had not spoken. “I couldn't stay in Cumberland Place because ...” She didn't finish the sentence.

Kate raised her eyebrows, saying nothing.

Jennie turned, her jaw tense, her expression enigmatic. “I asked to come because Daisy Warwick suggested that I seek Lord Charles's help with a ... difficult matter. I've come early—” Here, her voice broke. She swallowed, pressed the back of her gloved hand to her lips, and continued. “I've come early because the difficulty has become desperation. I fear—” She closed her eyes, then opened them wide. “I fear I am in a very serious difficulty!”

 

 

 

W
hen Charles had looked around Bishop's Keep for an appropriate site for his laboratory and darkroom, he came upon a small room, not very far from the kitchen, which had once been a game larder. The windowless room was below ground level and often damp and chilly, so he installed a gas fire to warm it, and (now that his electrical plant was working up to capacity), electric lights above his worktables. As a scientific laboratory, it was small but well-equipped, with oak cabinets filled with glassware and chemicals, two sturdy laboratory tables (one with a porcelain surface), a sink with both hot and cold water, a gas burner, a chemical balance, and other scientific equipment arranged neatly on shelves. His Lancaster achromatic microscope, fitted with rack and fine screw adjustments and a condensing lens, sat on one table. In the corner was the X-ray apparatus he had made from a Crookes tube and a Tesla coil, according to the instructions in one of Professor Roentgen's recent papers. In another corner, on its own, separate stand, was his new experiment in animatography: a Prestwhich Magazine Camera that stored up to 100 feet of film. With it he hoped to record simple motions for further investigation. Kate, however, had already pressed it into service to document her School for the Useful Arts, so that she could demonstrate its workings to the next meeting of the Parish Association.

The adjacent darkroom was equipped with a worktable, porcelain developing tanks, washing and drying racks, a sink, an Eastman clock, and a Knox enameler, and supply shelves, as well as a new electric safe-light. There was also a Koresco reducing and enlarging camera, and another purchased from Fallowfield in Charing Cross Road and designed exclusively to produce lantern slides, for which Charles had paid four pounds five shillings. The camera had won a silver medal at the Hackney Exhibition, and was one of his happiest purchases in spite of the cost.

Today, Charles was at work on a new cross-indexing system to keep track of his many prints and negatives. He was updating the index when Bradford Marsden stopped in for a chat. Bradford was the master of Marsden Manor, having recently inherited his father's baronetcy. The Mars-dens and the Sheridans were near neighbors, and Bradford and Charles had been friends since their days at Eton. Bradford was a strikingly handsome, fair-haired man in his early thirties, with fine, angular features, a trifle thickset but fashionably dressed in riding dress and tall polished boots.

After some desultory conversation about recent local events, Bradford tapped his boot with his riding crop and got down to the business for which he had come. “You know, old chap,” he said, “times have been rather hard since Papa died.”

Bradford's father had succumbed to a failing liver some eighteen months previous, leaving his son in full command of the family fortunes, such as they were. The holdings that were left included the country estate of Marsden Manor, whose lands adjoined the southern border of Bishop's Keep.

“I'm sure it's difficult,” Charles murmured, trying to remember what he had done with the negative plates of the shots he had taken of Kate's roses.

But Bradford scarcely heard his friend's sympathetic words. “Damned hard,” he muttered vexatiously, “and getting harder.” He clasped his hands behind his back and began to pace, frowning. Where his inherited family wealth was concerned, Bradford had an uncomfortably clear understanding of the difficulties he faced, what had caused them, and what he ought to do to redeem them.

The cause, of course, had been the Old Man's refusal to face up to the challenge of the modern era and allow the family funds to be invested for the future. Instead, he insisted on living as the previous Marsdon baronets had lived, following the style of life that he considered his birthright: a fully staffed mansion in Hyde Park, Marsdon Manor and its extensive properties in Essex, a ruinously expensive racing stable, hunting and entertainment on a grand scale, not to mention jewels and ball gowns for Bradford's mother and sister. No wonder that Bradford's inheritance had been spent long before his father departed this earth, leaving him precious little besides debts, mortgages, jointures, and heavily encumbered, nonproductive land.

If Bradford had been able to look beyond the misery of his empty pocketbook and the irritating demands of his banks, he might have not have laid such a bitter judgment upon his father, for the decline of the Marsden fortunes was symptomatic of a pervasive change in the way the world was organized. Over the last twenty years, England's agricultural markets had been devastated by the bountiful harvests in America, Australia, and the Argentine, coupled with cheap and efficient shipping, which drove prices so low that English farmers could not compete. Between this irreversible agricultural decline, falling rents, mounting death duties, burdensome interest payments, and unrenewable mortgages, the landed elite was feeling the ground shift under its feet. Their lands and trust funds no longer yielded enough to feed their avaricious desire for money and the power that went with it. Across England and the Empire, there were thousands of men like Bradford, who had inherited empty coffers and a mountain of debts.

But while Bradford was too close to the problem to see it in its entirety and not sufficiently philosophical to appreciate its long-term implications, he could at least see what he might do to redeem his own situation. While others of his class might stick their heads in the sand as his father had done, or sit in their clubs and drown their dilemma in drink, he was of a temperament to
do
something about it. Granted, his earlier efforts had been rather ill-advised (witness Harry Lawson's automobile swindle which had swallowed up his mother's emeralds, or the failed Canadian mining scheme that had cost him so much grief), but Bradford considered that these efforts had taught him some valuable lessons. Anyway, this Rhodesian venture was different. It was a much more solid thing, based on engineering estimates and proven mineral reserves, and the men involved—well, they were gentlemen, and damned shrewd. Not your average City man, with no feel at all for the real work to be done, the profits to be gained. He couldn't keep a boastful tone from his voice when he said:

“But things are looking up, Charles. Cecil Rhodes has set up a new mining venture, the Rhodesian Mining Consortium. It will be capitalized at a hundred thousand pounds. I'm to be a director. It's a fine position, offering both interesting employment—one has to fill one's idle hours somehow—and material remuneration.”

Charles grunted. “Cecil Rhodes, eh?”

His friend's tone, Bradford thought, was distinctly skeptical. He said, warily: “You have to admit that Rhodes knows what he's doing. Not one of the Rhodesian ventures has failed, and there have been several stunning successes. Cattle, land, mining—”

“I don't doubt the potential for success,” Charles said. “The land is rich, and Rhodes is a brilliant opportunist who knows how to exploit its resources. It's the man himself that's the problem. You may be the company's director, but he'll pull your strings.” He gave Bradford a direct look. “I hate to see you going the way of Fife and Abercorn. They lent their names and reputations in return for directorships of his British South Africa Company at two thousand pounds a year. Of course, they were mere ornaments, whom Rhodes kept entirely in the dark. But that didn't stop the Committee of Inquiry into the Jameson Raid from censuring them for failing to act as responsible directors and control Rhodes. As if they could,” he added wryly.

“I will be no mere ornament,” Bradford said, nettled. “Rhodes has promised me a free rein.”

“To ride the course he's laid out?” Charles raised a cynical eyebrow. “But I see that the deed is done. I trust you've also been promised the opportunity to buy stock at par.”

“Of course,” Bradford said, recalling his reason for coming. “Which reminds me of my errand.”

Charles looked mildly alarmed. “If you are offering me stock in Rhodes' new venture, Bradford, I'm afraid I must decline. I—”