A Woman of Consequence

half-hour and I assure you I can very ill spare the time. For I absolutely must pay my visits this morning; I am quite ashamed of how I am neglecting my neighbours. But now I find the apple pies are still to be made, and I would be very much obliged to you, if you would just spare a moment or two to speak to Rebecca about them and see that they are done. It will not take above ten minutes I am sure and then you may enjoy your walking about and letter-writing as much as you please.’

And so Dido was obliged to quit the hall, without being able either to hear the end of the conversation in the library or to assure Mr Lomax that she had not been listening to it. And, as she started down the chilly stone passage to the kitchen, she did not know which circumstance to regret more.

What was the situation which Francis had shared with Mr Portinscale? And why did Mr Portinscale wish Francis to intercede with Mr Harman-Foote? And did this matter relate at all to Mr Portinscale’s anxiety over offending that gentleman’s wife? These were questions which must occur and yet to even ask them was to feel ashamed. She was mortified to have been discovered by Mr Lomax in so base an act as listening at a door … Well, she told herself comfortingly, she had not actually been at the door. She had been on quite the opposite side of the hall; her ear had not been pressed to the lock …

But still, she could not be comfortable about it. She ought not to have done it. This was curiosity at its most inexcusable. And he had known what she was about. The skin upon her neck prickled with discomfort at the thought.

She pushed open the kitchen door and stepped into warmth and the smell of damson jam. At the wide, scrubbed table, Rebecca was just securing the lids upon the last of the pots.

Dido delivered her message and then, obligingly, sat down at the table to peel apples while the maid carried away the jam to the pantry and began upon making pastry.

It was a rather peaceful place in which to think, well away from Margaret’s intrusions – and the observation of Mr Lomax. The air was sweet with the scent of fruit and sugar and the bundles of drying rosemary and mint which hung above the table. An outer door was standing open upon the kitchen garden and pale October sunlight was streaming across the scrubbed flagstones, bringing with it a smell of warm damp earth and scraps of song from a particularly impertinent blackbird who now and then bobbed up to peer curiously into the room.

Slowly Dido began to regain her composure and, as she watched the long green curls fall away from her knife, she told herself that she must never, never again let her curiosity lead her into impropriety …

‘That’s odd Mr Portinscale coming to see the master, ain’t it, miss?’ remarked Rebecca as she spooned flour into her bowl.

Dido’s knife stilled. She looked up to see Rebecca with her round red face tilted questioningly, waiting for encouragement to go on. She resumed her peeling. ‘Yes,’ she said offhandedly, ‘I suppose it is. He does not often come.’

‘He ain’t a great one for visiting at all.’

‘Is he not?’

‘No, I reckon he thinks most folks are a bit too sinful for him to want to go visiting them.’ Rebecca paused a moment in her spooning and gave a quick half-smile.

‘He is certainly a very severe moralist,’ Dido acknowledged. And she smiled back – though she knew she was breaking one of her grandmother’s strictest rules and ‘being familiar with servants’.

‘Ah yes, miss,’ said Rebecca significantly, ‘he’s certainly got a great deal to say about other folk’s sins.’

And that, reflected Dido, was the great danger of breaking strict rules: it so often achieved precisely what one wanted … She could not resist. It was clear that Rebecca was full of some gossip which she was quite longing to share. Despite the resolution she had taken only minutes before, she leant a little closer across the table. ‘Do you suspect that he is … a little less harsh upon himself?’ she asked.

‘Well, it ain’t my place to say, of course, but I can’t help feeling that’s a bit odd – him being such a great one for the ten commandments …’ Rebecca nodded significantly and began to work lard very vigorously into the flour, with the air of one who has a great deal she could say – if only she were not so charitable.

Dido took another apple from the basket, cut into its thick waxy skin – and waited. Now that she was begun, Rebecca would not be able to stop herself.

‘… Well it is one of the commandments, ain’t it?’ Rebecca continued, half to herself, but with one questioning eye upon her companion.

‘To which commandment are you referring?’

‘Thou shalt not steal.’

‘Indeed!’ Dido’s knife stopped again. She stared at Rebecca. ‘Are you suggesting that Mr Portinscale has been stealing?’

Immediately Rebecca looked frightened. ‘You won’t tell anyone I said it, will you, miss?’

‘No, no, of course I shall not. But are you sure of it? What has he stolen?’

Rebecca looked about her, as if she feared that the black-leaded range, or the clothes-horse, or even the coffee grinder, might somehow be concealing spies. When she was quite satisfied that they were alone, she dusted the flour off her hands. ‘Cake!’ she whispered.

‘Cake?’ The notion of the dry, severe clergyman purloining – and secretly devouring – cake was delightful, but scarcely believable. ‘Cake?’

‘And pie.’ Rebecca smiled as she poured a little water into her bowl and began to stir. ‘No end of it gone from the pantry, so his housekeeper says. Right angry she was about it and ready to beat the skin off the back of the poor boot boy. And then she found crumbs!’

‘Crumbs?’

‘In the reverend’s study.’ Rebecca shook a little flour onto the scrubbed wood of the table, lifted her pastry out of its bowl and took up her rolling pin. ‘Now, what do you say to that then? Stealing cake out of his own pantry!’ (It was clear that, to Rebecca, the fact that it was his own pantry only compounded the crime.)

‘It is quite … extraordinary.’

‘It certainly is. And another extr’ordin’ry thing is he ain’t getting no fatter for it – nor is he stinting himself on his meals neither.’ She set about her rolling, nodding sagely. ‘If you ask me, that looks like he’s feeding someone – secret like, you know.’

Chapter Twenty

… But, Eliza, I am sure I cannot conceive who the reverend gentleman might be feeding. He is certainly not a man who is noted for random acts of charity. Nor can I believe him to be one who would keep a good deed hidden.

So, whatever can he be about? Does this theft from his own pantry have anything to do with his odd conversation with Francis?

It is quite remarkable the way in which, once one has begun upon solving a mystery, one discovers so many strange and inexplicable things that it is impossible to know which are of importance and which are not. Indeed, I believe that we live surrounded by all manner of strangeness: that our neighbours all have secrets to hide, of which we know nothing until one chance circumstance causes us to begin enquiries.

Well, I am quite sure that you are shaking your head over that idea, for I know that you believe me to be too suspicious in general. I have not your remarkable talent for thinking only the best of my fellow men and women.

But I am growing quite uneasy about the Reverend Mr Portinscale.

At dinner I asked Francis the purpose of Mr Portinscale’s visit and he said that he had come to discuss poachers. By Francis’s account, the Rev. Mr P. believes that, since  Mr Harman-Foote cannot be persuaded to take strong measures, the other gentlemen of the neighbourhood should unite against this ‘wicked assault upon property’.

Francis was, as you may imagine, no more anxious to exert himself in this cause than he is in any other. Though Margaret, I might add, took a rather different line. She was all for a little hanging and