as well.’
She had not said anything — certainly not that she was Kitty Ryder, but he knew it as surely as if she had. It was there in her silence, and her fear. He understood that he should not take a step towards her.
‘My name’s Davey Stoker. I work for Special Branch. You don’t need to run any more. I’ll take you somewhere you’ll be safe …’
‘Prison?’ She shook her head sharply. Now she was shivering. ‘I won’t be safe there! The people after me are bigger than you! You don’t even know who all of them are!’
‘No! Not prison. Why would I put you in prison? You haven’t done anything.’ He knew exactly what he was going to do. ‘I’ll take you on the train, now, to my sister’s house. She’ll look after you. No one else will know, then they can’t tell anyone. You won’t be locked in. You can run, if you want to …’
‘Your sister? She in the police as well?’
He smiled. ‘No. She’s married with four kids. She doesn’t really know anything about Special Branch, except that I work there.’
‘You haven’t got a wife? They’d know to look there?’ she asked.
‘I haven’t got a wife. And I suppose they might. They wouldn’t know about Gwen. And it won’t be for long.’
‘Why would she do that? Take me in?’
‘Because I asked her to,’ he said simply. ‘We’re … close.’
She stood silent for a moment, then she made the decision. ‘I’ll come. But I haven’t got money for a train … not more than a few stops.’
‘I have. How about supper first? I’m starving. Do you like fish and chips?’
‘Yes … but …’
He understood. ‘It’s not on me, it’s on Special Branch.’ It was a lie, but he knew why she needed to believe it. She was probably hungry too.
She nodded and started to walk very slowly back towards the street. He caught up with her quickly and they walked side by side, close, but not touching, keeping step with each other.
Gwen did not hesitate to welcome Kitty. She took one look at Stoker’s face, and then at the fear and consciousness of obligation in the whole manner of the young woman with him, and opened the door wide.
‘Come in,’ she said, looking directly at Kitty. ‘We’ll have a cup of tea, then we’ll sort out a room for you. It’ll need a bit of juggling around, but it’ll work. Don’t stand on the doorstep, Davey! Come on inside!’
The warmth of the house wrapped around him immediately and as he watched Kitty’s face he saw her smile. Gwen took her up the stairs, calling back instructions to Stoker to put the kettle on.
An hour later, extra beds were made up for children to move in with each other, and told strictly not to sit up all night chattering. Gwen and her husband were sitting talking to each other in the kitchen, and Stoker sat with Kitty in the parlour, although it was chilly because the fire had only just been lit. It was a room used on special occasions, and it felt like it.
It was time for explanations.
‘What did you learn that made you leave in the night, without any of your clothes, or even a hairbrush?’ Stoker asked quietly, but with no allowance for evasion in his voice.
Kitty took a deep breath, stared down at her hands locked tightly in her lap, and began.
‘I worked it out that Mr Kynaston had a mistress. Once you think of it, it in’t that hard to see. Just little things, you know?’ She looked up quickly, then down again. ‘The way he explained where he was going, answering questions nobody asked, but not the ones they did, and you only realise it afterwards.’
‘You heard that?’ he interrupted.
‘Some of it,’ she replied. ‘Most gentry forget that servants have ears. They get so used to seeing us around, and mostly not speaking, they don’t reckon we can put anything together and understand. Or maybe they don’t care. If we want to stay in service we aren’t going to tell anyone. And it doesn’t matter what we think of them. I don’t think that’s part of anything …’
He was puzzled. ‘So what did you learn that was so bad?’
‘That his mistress was Mrs Kynaston … not his wife, but Mrs Kynaston as was the widow of his brother, the one whose picture hangs in the study, and he looks the way he does.’
‘Are you sure it wasn’t that he was just taking care of her, because of his brother?’
She gave him the sort of glance Gwen did when he said something completely stupid.
‘If anybody took it on themselves to “take care of” me like that, I’d slap ’is face as hard as I could,’ she retorted. ‘Then I’d kick him as high up as my skirts’d let me.’
‘Oh …’ For a moment he could not think of anything suitable to say. He felt foolishly embarrassed. ‘Did he know you saw, and think you would tell his wife?’
She gave a slight shrug. ‘Don’t think so. I reckon as she pretty well knew for herself. An’ either way, she wouldn’t want to think I’d seen. Sometimes you’ve got to live with things, an’ the only way to bear it hurting you so much is to pretend that no one else knows.’
He studied her face in the firelight. He could see that she was frightened. She had told him only what she knew he would almost certainly have worked out for himself. It might be painful, immoral, but it was a common tragedy. Not even poets and dreamers imagined all marriages were happy, or faithful.
‘Miss Ryder … I need to know,’ he insisted. ‘Who are you afraid of? Knowing that Mr Kynaston was having an affair with his brother’s widow was unfortunate but — as you said before — servants know all kinds of things. Did you say something to him?’
Her eyes widened. ‘No! Wot do you think I am? A blackmailer?’ She was angry, but she was also hurt.
He could have bitten his tongue. ‘No, that’s not what I meant! I’m trying to get you to tell me why you ran away. Nothing you’ve said so far is more than a domestic unhappiness: deep, maybe, but nothing for Special Branch to care about, still less to threaten your life. What is it that makes that matter, Kitty?’
‘She were Mr Bennett’s wife,’ she answered, staring at him almost without blinking. ‘But before that, she were someone else’s wife … in Sweden.’
He blinked. ‘Does that matter? Or are you saying she was still married to him? Then her marriage to Bennett would be bigamous. Is there money involved? Did she inherit from Bennett?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. She seems sort of … comfortable, but not rich.’
‘And Mr Kynaston knew that you’d found that out? How did you find it out anyway?’
‘She were staying a day or two with Mrs Rosalind, like she did quite often. I had some cream for her, special made to keep ladies’ hands white and soft. I’d made enough for both ladies, an’ I took some to her.’ She was watching Stoker carefully, her eyes never leaving his face.
‘She has this ring she always wears, sort of wide and a bit flat, with stones set in it, but not like usual. Just little stones, and she never takes it off. But she had to for this, ’cos the cream would get in it, maybe even not be good for it.’
‘Go on,’ he urged.
‘I went in to turn the bed down, an’ she was sitting there using the cream on her hands. The rings were on the table by the bedside. I moved them in case the bedcover flipped over them and knocked them off. I saw what was inside the special one.’
‘What was it?’ His mind raced.
‘“Anders and Ailsa, July 1881 — and forever”,’ she answered. ‘I must have froze, because I looked at the mirror on the dressing table where she was sitting, and I saw her staring back at me. I wanted to say something but my tongue was stuck in my mouth and I felt the room was swaying round me like I was at sea. The look in her eyes, she would have killed me. Then I heard Mr Kynaston coming up the top o’ the stairs and along the landing. She changed all of a sudden like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, and she were all sweet an’ gentle with him. I went out past him and down the stairs into the kitchen.’
‘How was she next time you saw her?’ Stoker asked.
Kitty’s face was pale. ‘I only saw her once, going across the hall. I heard her tell Mr Kynaston that there was something missing from the room, something valuable. I knew she was going to say as I took it.’ She closed her eyes, then opened them again suddenly, staring at him. ‘I did something stupid. I couldn’t afford to lose my place, or my character either. Nobody’s going to take on a maid who steals!’ she gulped. ‘I stopped and I said to Mrs
