Alice pictured Mrs. King’s face in her mind, dark-eyed and worried. She knew the safest reply. Very kind of you to suggest it, Madam. Something to think about, Madam. Do allow me to consider your kind invitation, Madam. Tomorrow night this job would be over and done with and Alice would vanish from Park Lane forever. So it had been planned; so it had to be.
“Very kind of you to suggest it, Madam,” she said, and imagined Mrs. King’s expression relaxing in her mind.
Miss de Vries pressed her lips together, face tightening. It made Alice feel a twist of regret—a quick and guilty sensation, something to try to ignore, but there: absolutely there.
21
The night before the ball
1:30 a.m.
Mrs. Bone waited until Sue fell asleep, and then she opened the bedroom door. She didn’t care if someone caught her in the passage. She was going to confront Mrs. King, come hell or high water.
She nearly ran down to the bottom of the garden. The whole place was alive with silent activity, men streaming over the walls. They bent double as they crossed in front of the house, ducking behind pillars and urns. Mrs. Bone saw them crawling up the pale, blank face of the house on rope ladders. In normal circumstances she would have watched with grim satisfaction, praying that the moon stayed behind the clouds. But she had bigger problems now. The air was sticky, clinging to her scalp.
Mrs. King was standing with Winnie by one of the pools at the bottom of the garden, concealed by trellises and vines. They started at the sight of Mrs. Bone.
“You,” Mrs. Bone said. “I want a word.” Her lungs felt too tight. She banged her chest with a fist, trying to knock them into order. “The girls,” she said. “What’s happening to the girls?”
Winnie paled. Her eyes widened.
Mrs. Bone jabbed Mrs. King’s arm with her finger. “I know a bad business when I see it. I can smell it a mile off. I’m not a fool. Someone’s using these girls. Getting ’em out of bed at all hours. I know what that means.” Mrs. Bone jabbed her again, harder. “You brought me in here under false pretenses.”
Winnie sucked in her breath. “No, Mrs. Bone.”
“I’ve been making a fool of myself, crawling around on my hands and knees, wiping everyone’s arses. You should have told me what I was getting into. It’s sick; it’s rotten. I’ve never let myself get anywhere near this sort of business.”
At first Mrs. King looked entirely nonplussed. But then something moved in her eyes, a slow and creeping fear.
It made Mrs. Bone clench her fists. “What sort of house was you running here?” she said.
Winnie raised a hand. “Please don’t,” she said, voice constricted. “Don’t put this on Mrs. King. She doesn’t know.”
“Doesn’t know what?” said Mrs. King, voice taut.
Mrs. Bone let out a short bark of laughter. “What sort of person doesn’t know what’s going on under her own roof?”
“Winnie?” said Mrs. King.
Winnie sagged against the wall, closing her eyes. “I only found out three years ago.”
“Found out what?”
“Girls,” said Mrs. Bone. “They’ve been meddling with the girls.”
Mrs. King’s face went very still. She took this in, assessed it. Clearly, she understood what that word meant, what meddling was: of course she did. Everyone did.
“No,” she said, her voice growing cold. “That’s not correct.”
Mrs. Bone snapped her fingers at Winnie. “You. Tell us. What do you know?”
Winnie rubbed her hand over her face. Her voice was low, hoarse. “I was here. I mean…here, in the garden. The mews house has a loft above it. There’s a little staircase that comes down to the stables. They used to keep a carriage there, but it’s empty now. I saw a man, someone I didn’t recognize. He had a beautiful coat on. It was… I don’t know. Seal gray. Sealskin.”
She took a shuddering breath. “It was very smooth, like silk. I thought: Oh, what a lovely coat.” She paused, frowning. “He was walking a girl down the stairs. I mean, he had his hand on her shoulder. He was pressing her down. Pushing her along. Like he was shoving her out. I knew at once it was wrong. I mean, my whole body felt it.”
Mrs. King watched her the whole time she was speaking. Her face changed, grew ashen.
“It was Ida,” said Winnie. “One of the kitchen girls. And I didn’t know the man at all.”
Mrs. Bone knew that mews house. She’d seen it every time she crossed the yard. Pale gray plasterwork, ivy beginning to climb the walls. One small window.
“How old?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
“How old, Winnie?” said Mrs. King, voice hard.
“Not old, not old enough. She looked…” Winnie screwed up her face. “Sick. As if he’d made her sick. She looked like she was going to…to throw up.”
Silence. Mrs. Bone absorbed this, felt the knowledge shifting in her gut.
Mrs. King asked, “Did they see you?”
“No.”
“What happened to that girl?”
Winnie clasped her hands together. Didn’t reply.
Mrs. King took a step closer. “Winnie.”
Winnie squeezed her eyes shut, as if to hide from it. “Shepherd told me one of the housemaids had given notice. That I’d better let the agency know. I must have asked him who it was. Just to…test him. And he must have told me—he must have said it was Ida.” Winnie looked at the ceiling. “He just told me as if it was nothing, as if it meant nothing at all.”
“Shepherd,” said Mrs. Bone. Her mind was working quickly. “Mr. Shepherd. So Danny might not have known, either. He might not have had a thing to do with it.”
Winnie lowered her voice. “Oh, he knew.”
Mrs. Bone pictured her house in Deal. The treasures she’d stockpiled. The banker’s order from her brother, the foundations of her whole fortune. She began chuckling, pain crisscrossing her breast. “What a set of stupid girls,” she said, crooking a finger at Mrs. King. “Here’s one.” Pointed to Winnie. “Here’s another.” Pointed to herself. Dug her nails into her palm. “Here’s a third.”
Mrs. King stared back at her. Then at Winnie. “You never told me.”
Winnie looked agonized. But Mrs. Bone didn’t have any patience for that.
“Who else?” she said. “Who else knew? Mr. Doggett? Cook?”
Winnie shook her head again. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand what it was like in this place. It wasn’t there, not on the surface of things. It was…” She tried to find the words. “It was underneath everything.”
“And what about our fine lady mistress? Did she notice girls coming and going? Or was she as dense as you?”
Mrs. King’s face closed up. “Winnie?” she said.
Winnie ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t know—I’ve never known. It’s… She was…”
“What?”
“She was always friends with them. With the girls in the house.”
“Friends?”
“Yes, friends.” Winnie reached for Mrs. King. “You remember what it was like up there, in the schoolroom, before Madam came out. Just the tutors, and the governesses, and the dance mistress. Mr. de Vries let her make friends below stairs.” She closed her eyes again. “I thought it was such a kindness,” she whispered.