Chapter 1
‘They’ve found him at last!’
Eleanor burst into the upstairs parlour where I was sitting quietly, having just returned from Rochester.
‘They’ve found him. Thank God for that.’ I smiled up at her.
‘No, mama. I’m afraid it’s not good news,’ she replied. ‘They’ve found his body... Oh, it is too horrible.’
I looked at her in disbelief. He’s dead! I fell back, suddenly weak, clutching the arms of the chair.
‘Mama, are you all right?... Oh heavens, I had no idea... I shouldn’t have broken the news so bluntly.’
She fussed about me, searching through my reticule for the sal volatile that I always carry with me.
‘I am all right,’ Eleanor,’ I assured her, gathering myself, for I seldom have use for those reviving salts. ‘It’s just… well, I was only talking to the poor lad a few days ago. Making plans for his future. To think now that he has gone for ever…’
She stared at me. ‘Oh, mama,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry. I should have been clearer. It’s not Timothy they’ve found.’
‘What? Not Timothy? Who then? Who?’
My readers must forgive me for thus upsetting the order of chronology by starting my tale in the middle. Indeed, Dr. Watson, who has started to show an interest in my little jottings, has already chided me for it and, chuckling, tells me that I am become quite the literary iconoclast. My reply is that a startling opening can only hope to intrigue and tempt, and that this has been, successful or not, my intention here. However, I must now step back some weeks to explain how events led to the point described above.
Following my recent adventures in Paris,[1] I had returned to London, to my house in Baker Street, where Mr. Sherlock Holmes, the renowned detective, has his lodgings, along with his friend and associate Dr. Watson. Perhaps it was the strain of the past terrible weeks in the French capital, but it soon became evident that my health was not as it had been previously. I, who have always prided myself on my vigour, was become subject to sudden weaknesses. Dr. Watson, bless his good heart, examined me and concluded that, despite the blow on the head I had sustained during my sojourn away, there was nothing seriously wrong. It was simply that I was in need of a period of complete rest, something I was unlikely to enjoy in London.
‘I cannot see you taking your ease here, Mrs. Hudson,’ he said, smiling at me. ‘You will be constantly searching to know what Clara and Phoebe are about.’
The aforementioned being my two maidservants.
‘Clara,’ he went on, ‘is perfectly capable of holding the fort here if you can find somewhere to go and stay for a while, somewhere preferably with good clean country air where there are people to look after you… I believe,’ he added, ‘you have mentioned in the past that you have a daughter living in Kent. Indeed, I have had the pleasure of meeting her here on occasion. Perhaps now would be a good time to pay her a visit.’
I have, in fact, two daughters, although the thought of taking the arduous journey north to Edinburgh to stay with Judith, much as I love her and her young family, seemed just then beyond my powers. Eleanor’s abode in the pretty village of Bilbourne in Kent, the aptly named Garden of England, was, on the other hand, little more than a relatively short train ride away. The prospect of a sojourn there appealed greatly. While my daughter came up to London occasionally to visit me, and to take advantage of the opportunity to explore the elegant emporia of Regent Street – a treat for her to view the latest fashions which she, an accomplished needlewoman, could then copy at a much cheaper price – I had only ever made the journey down to Kent once before, shortly after her wedding. Eleanor was married to George Hazelgrove, proprietor of the only shop in Bilbourne, a grocery store. Sad to say, they were not yet blessed with children.
‘Thank you for the suggestion, Doctor,’ I replied, thinking it would be good, in any case, to get away from the stifling summer air of the city. ‘I shall write to Eleanor directly.’
Without delay I penned her a letter, making little of my health problems, although my canny daughter must have read between the lines, for she insisted on coming to town to accompany me back, despite my assertion that I could manage alone. In fact, I rather suspected that the good doctor himself had dropped her a line, recommending she fetch me.
Thus it was that on a sultry day in late August, I found myself packing my bags yet again, worrying all the time that I was laying too heavy a burden on Clara in particular, since it was barely two months since I had returned from France.
‘Don’t you be fretting yourself, now, ma’am,’ that capable young woman assured me. ‘We’ll manage quite well here without you, and if Mr. H objects to Phoebe burning the toast, well, let him come down to the kitchen and prepare it himself.’
I should say here that, despite all our combined efforts, young Phoebe, although full of good intentions, continued to fall far short of the qualities demanded of a housemaid. But, because I was fond of her, and bearing in mind the neediness of her poor mother, burdened with an ever-increasing family, and a feckless husband to boot, I had not the heart to send her packing.
I made the mistake of expressing my worries aloud.
‘You know quite well, mother,’ said Eleanor, who had arrived the previous evening and who was at that moment delaying me considerably by helping me pack, ‘that Clara is well able to look after the two gentlemen.’
My maid beamed. She and Eleanor, being of an age – the middle twenties – were good friends, despite their difference in status. Indeed, to look at them they could be sisters, similar in colouring and physique. Both my daughters take after my dear late husband Henry’s side of the family, being tall and slender, like Clara, where I am small and somewhat plump, dark where I am fair (without, I am happy to say, having yet had recourse to put colour in my hair).
‘The carriage is come, mum.’ Phoebe tore into the room in her usual impetuous way, conveying the intelligence without refinement.
‘Now I trust you’ll be a good girl, while I am gone, Phoebe, and help Clara in every way,’ I told her.
‘Yes, mum.’ She bobbed an ungainly curtsey. ‘And I do hope you’ll come back better, mum.’
To my surprise, I discerned a tear in her eye.
‘I will, Phoebe. Come here and give me a hug.’
The poor girl, no beauty at all but an ungainly country lump of a lass addicted to yellow-backed tales of romance, was no doubt awaiting a swain to come and sweep her off her own two rather large feet. Just then, she happily gave me a great bear hug, while Clara embraced me more decorously, a reassuring smile on her face, though she too, as I knew, was worried about me.
‘I’ll be perfectly fine,’ I assured them, ‘and home before you know I’ve been away.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’ll stay until you’ve got your strength back.’
Her over-solicitousness, grasping hold of my arm to support me as I walked to the carriage, grated on my nerves.
‘I am not an invalid,’ I told her rather sharply. ‘Just in need of some peace and quiet.’
‘Yes, mother,’ she replied meekly. ‘Still, you know, you’re not as young as you used to be.’
‘I am barely fifty, miss,’ I retorted sharply. ‘The Marquess of Salisbury is sixty-six.’
‘Well, you aren’t the Prime Minister. Not yet, anyway.’ Eleanor laughed, adding. ‘Though perhaps the country would be better off if you were.’
‘At least women would get the vote,’ I replied, mollified. ‘It’s scandalous that we still have no voice in the running of the country.’
Eleanor agreed with me. She is quite the revolutionary when it comes to women’s rights, and supports the suffragist movement.
Friends again, for we cannot argue for long, we caught the Dover train from Victoria and, after an hour or so of travel, alighted at the intermediate station of Kenwardham, where a horse and carriage was waiting to take us inland to the village that was our destination. Our driver was a young lad covered in freckles, with a mop of ginger hair.
‘This is Joe, mama,’ Eleanor said. ‘He helps out in the shop,’
‘Help, is it!’ the lad exclaimed. ‘I do everything, I do. And little thanks or pay I get for it, neither.’
He chuckled merrily, and Eleanor joined in, ruffling his hair. Clearly Joe was one of the family.
Kenwardham is a flourishing port town on the Thames estuary with a charming medieval centre. The newer part had expanded considerably since my previous visit, well into the surrounding countryside, and I wondered at all the changes, the modern villas with their little front gardens, stretching for quite a distance along the tarmacadamed road out of town. I cannot say that I considered these lines of identical dwellings attractive, although no doubt their inhabitants were delighted with the conveniences of good plumbing and the like.
After finally leaving the town behind us, we found ourselves bouncing over inferior rough country roads for three-quarters of an hour or so, passing nothing more than the occasional farmstead or stone cottage and, visible in the distance, the distinctive round shapes of oast houses pointing their bent steeples to the skies, for this is hop-growing country.
At last, we reached Bilbourne, with its pretty village green surrounded on three sides by white-washed cottages – some thatched, some tiled with blue slates – a blacksmith’s and a carter’s. And in the midst of all, glorious behind new plated glass windows, was the grocery store that belonged to the Hazelgroves.
Since I was quite fatigued by the journey and ready for a rest, I was not of a humour just then to meet Eleanor’s mother-in-law, who surged out of the shop door as we approached. I could tell that my daughter wasn’t happy either, for I heard her mutter, ‘What’s she doing here?’
I had of course encountered Mrs. Hazelgrove senior before – Henrietta as she liked me to call her as if we were best friends – once in London at the wedding and again on my previous visit to the village. She was a small red-faced woman, round as a ball, with tight pepper-and-salt curls, a loud voice and overbearing manner, who took any opportunity to inform all and sundry that the Hazelgroves were of noble descent, Lords of the Manor in the West Riding of Yorkshire, no less, with a coat of arms she was always nagging her son to place over the shop, as well as on the side of the wagon used for deliveries.
‘To let people know they aren’t dealing with the hoi polloi here, you know.’
Easy-going George always laughed and replied that it was far from lords of the manor that the family found themselves today, and that anyway he wouldn’t like to set himself up above his neighbours, while Eleanor scowled and under her breath whispered to me that it wasn’t even as if Henrietta were a Hazelgrove herself, just a tanner’s daughter from Maidstone.
‘Here you are arrived now, Martha,’ Mrs Hazelgrove senior said, stating the obvious, with the slightly condescending familiarity that had amused me in the past, but which I found jarring on a hot afternoon after a long journey. ‘You look ghastly pale,’ she continued. ‘Eleanor, bring your mother inside instantly.’ As if my daughter had every intention of running me around the green.
The woman fussed about me further, obstructing my passage and instructing Joe on how properly to carry my suitcase into the house, ‘And do mind the stairs.’ For the family lived over the shop.
Joe just grinned. He was no doubt used to her busybodying around.
George, built like his mother and a head shorter than his wife, a jolly fellow with rosy cheeks and incipient loss of hair, was busy with a customer in the shop, but greeted me warmly, and introduced me to the old woman who was just then purchasing a packet of tea. This Mrs. Gracie said she was delighted to meet dear Eleanor’s mother, and that Eleanor was a credit to me, which pleased me greatly, indicating how much my daughter was liked in the village.
‘I am sure,’ George then said rather pointedly, looking at Henrietta, ‘that you’d like to have a lie down, mother-in-law. Especially after Joe’s driving.’
Did the woman take the hint? Not at all. She bustled up the stairs ahead of us, with every intention, it seemed, to settle in and treat me to all the local news. She and her husband ran the post office (coat-of-arms over the door, of course) and Mrs. Hazelgrove senior was ever less than discreet when it came to the doings of the small community in which she lived.
Eleanor was well able for her, however, without being rude. She conceded a welcome cup of tea to all three of us, during which time Henrietta started filling me in on the business of all sorts of people I didn’t know nor care about, and complaining at the same time that the tea wasn’t strong enough.
‘This gnat’s water won’t do your mother any good, Eleanor,’ she remarked, using a somewhat startling image, hardly appropriate for an aspirant to the nobility. ‘You should be able to stand the spoon up in it. Why you never leave the pot on the range to brew sufficiently, as I have advised you before, I shall never understand… Young women think they know it all,’ she said, shaking her head at me.
In vain I protested that it was as I liked it.
‘I find stewed tea too bitter,’ I said.
‘Not if you sweeten it properly.’ She added another large spoonful of sugar to her drink. ‘And can you not run down to the shop, Eleanor, and get some of those chocolate sponge biscuits I like so much…. You will love them, Martha, so creamy.’
‘This home-made shortbread is enough for me,’ I replied. ‘Very tasty, Eleanor.’
Henrietta shook her head again and poured her tea into her saucer in the way of country folk, before slurping it up.
‘And how,’ she asked, her eyes glinting after this unattractive procedure was done, ‘is that famous lodger of yours. Any fresh scandals?’
I shook my head and replied that I was no confidant of Mr. H, and that my knowledge of his activities was as much as could be gleaned from the accounts written by Dr. Watson. As much, indeed, as Henrietta could glean herself.
She sniffed. Clearly she was most disappointed in me, and at long last – no doubt despairing at my lack of response – took the hint, and was gone, instructing Eleanor downstairs in loud tones that carried up to me, to be sure and let me rest, for I was clearly not myself and indeed, in what passed with her for a whisper, looked to be not long for this world.
‘You should prepare yourself, my dear,’ I heard her utter, ‘for the worst.’
I suppose she meant well, but she was undoubtedly trying, and it was with great relief that I took myself to the small but well-appointed room that was to be mine for the next while, and laid myself down on the bed.
[1] See Mrs Hudson goes to Paris, MX Publishing, 2022.
