A Woman of Consequence

to wonder whether, in certain circumstances, it might be of some utility.

‘Now, Miss Kent,’ continued Mrs Harman-Foote briskly. ‘Is it true that Miss Lambe saw … believed that she saw the Grey Nun in the ruins?’

‘Well,’ said Dido cautiously, ‘I would not put it down for a certainty. Though Lucy seems quite convinced of it.’

‘I should very much value your opinion. Was it shock at seeing something frightening which made her fall?’ A very earnest look accompanied the question. ‘It is of great consequence. As you see, poor Georgie is so very distressed; he must not be frightened by this talk of ghosts.’

‘Of course,’ murmured Dido, glancing at the poor sensitive child who was now absentmindedly beating the doll’s head against the leg of a chair. ‘But I do not see how he is to be protected. Lucy is so very sure that the ghost appeared, and I daresay that by now half your household is talking about it.’

‘And, if they are, they must be stopped,’ Mrs Harman-Foote said firmly, and watched with a look of tender concern as her son began to wrench the limbs from the broken doll.

Anne Harman-Foote was a tall woman with features which were too well marked for beauty and she lacked that grace which makes height becoming. Her smile was not unpleasant; but there was such a forbidding air of knowing always that she was right, as made her seem older than her eight and twenty years – and her belief in her children’s talents and virtues was unassailable. The consciousness of being Madderstone’s heiress was very deeply ingrained: she was a woman who had not even surrendered her surname on marriage, but had merely added her husband’s name to hers – as the substantial Foote fortune had been added to the even more substantial acres of the Harmans.

‘Miss Kent,’ she continued earnestly, ‘you have not yet told me what your opinion is of this sad accident. I know I can rely upon you to speak good sense and not be carried away by fancies.’

‘My opinion …’ Dido hesitated, for she found that she must consider the events again before she could give an answer deserving of the compliment. Everything that had intervened: the bringing of Penelope to the house, the terrible suspense they had all been in while they awaited the surgeon’s pronouncement, the writing of a hurried note to be sent express to Mrs Nolan, Penelope’s guardian; all these things were already confusing and weakening her recollection of the terrible moments in the abbey ruins.

‘I was not very close to Penelope when she fell,’ she began carefully. ‘I was at the bottom of the steps. But I saw her … She started to come down. She turned – when she was on the second step …’ Dido remembered the hesitation, one little hand clutching at the wall. ‘She seemed to be about to say something to Harriet and she was looking up at her – and into the gallery. And suddenly she looked so shocked …’

‘As if she had seen something frightening on the gallery?’

‘Yes,’ admitted Dido with reluctance. ‘That is how it appeared. Or, at least, if it was not a look of positive fright, it was one of very great surprise …’ She struggled to remember, and to speak, exactly. ‘As if she had seen something which ought not to be there. There was a kind of involuntary recoil. I am sure that step backward – which was the cause of her fall – was made quite unconsciously.’

‘Of course,’ said Mrs Harman-Foote with a dismissive wave of the hand, ‘there was no ghost. But what was it that Miss Lambe saw?’

‘It is a great puzzle,’ acknowledged Dido. ‘But I daresay we shall only be in suspense for a day or two. For then Penelope will be sufficiently recovered to tell us all about it.’

‘But I have spoken to Mr Paynter on the subject,’ said Mrs Harman-Foote anxiously, ‘and it his opinion that, after such an injury, it may be several weeks before the patient is well enough to recall the exact circumstances of her accident. Indeed, he tells me that he has known cases where these memories are lost for ever and that even after a perfect recovery, the time of the accident remains a kind of blank in the brain.’

‘Oh dear!’ cried Dido. ‘How very inconvenient!’

Mrs Harman-Foote laid a hand upon her arm and gazed tenderly across the room to Georgie who had now abandoned the doll and was standing between Lucy and Laurence, teasing them with questions. ‘It is a great deal more than inconvenient,’ she said, ‘for here is my poor Georgie – and his sisters too – wanting so very much to know the whole story. And children must always be told the truth. It is a principle of mine. I must have a rational account to give them. I cannot allow their heads to be filled with stories of ghosts.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ said Dido anxiously. She might care little about young Georgie’s delicate sensibilities, but she cared a great deal about unsolved conundrums. ‘There must be something we can do to come at the truth,’ she said eagerly. ‘It cannot be so very obscure. Perhaps if I were to return to the ruins and look into the gallery again …’

‘Yes. That is precisely what is needed. So you will enquire into the matter and find out the truth?’

‘Well, I shall try, but …’

‘It is extremely kind of you Miss Kent. I am very grateful indeed.’

‘But I cannot promise …’

The protest went unheard. The carriage was announced and everyone was on the move.

And, as she watched Lucy cross the hall still flushed with heightened imagination, Dido could not help but think that a cool sensible explanation of events might benefit her as much as Georgie. In fact, the sooner the spectre of the Grey Nun was laid to rest, the better it would be for all concerned.

Chapter Five

It was not until the third day after the accident – and rather late in the afternoon – that Dido was able to revisit the abbey ruins. The demands of sewing, damsons and jelly-making did not permit an earlier escape. But her determination to solve the mystery was, by that time, increased rather than diminished.

For, although Penelope was recovering more rapidly than they had dared to hope, and her periods of consciousness becoming longer, it seemed that Mr Paynter had been right to doubt her memory of the accident. Questions on the subject elicited no more than a gentle shake of the head. She remembered nothing after their leaving the nave to climb the stairs.

And meanwhile, Lucy Crockford had altogether too much to say upon the subject for Dido’s liking.

‘Oh my dear friend,’ she murmured when she visited the vicarage two days after the accident. ‘I blame myself! I blame myself entirely! I who knew what terrible forces haunted the ruins! I should never have taken my poor friend there. Indeed I should not.’ She put a hand to her brow and arranged herself upon the hard sofa of Margaret’s parlour with all the grace that her stout little form would allow.

‘I am sure you have nothing to reproach yourself for,’ said Dido briskly. ‘Penelope lost her footing …’

‘Oh Dido!’ exclaimed Lucy so slowly that there seemed to be an eternity of pity in the words. ‘You do not understand.’ And she sat for a moment sorrowfully shaking her head, too much overcome to continue.

She had a plump, freckled face which was, in truth, ill-suited to sensibility: the eyes were too small and sharp, and there were ill-natured little lines between her brows betraying the peevishness which broke out all too easily when her languishing sentiments passed unheeded. She wore her brown hair pushed back in a careless tumble of curls. Lucy professed to be indifferent to her appearance; but Harriet had once confided to Dido that the careless curls were sustained only by the constant use of papers – and the freckles received generous, but unavailing, applications of Gowland’s Lotion.

‘It is all so very awful,’ she continued in a slow, thrilled voice, ‘for, you know, there must be some kind of trouble coming to the family of Harman-Foote. The ghost would not otherwise have appeared. She only comes as a warning.’

‘I do not think,’ said Dido firmly, ‘that we need concern ourselves with imagined woes. We have trouble enough with poor Penelope lying sick …’

‘Oh! But it cannot have been Pen’s fall the ghost came to warn of. Because …’ she paused a moment to add weight to the announcement of her great insight, ‘Penelope is not a part of the Madderstone family.’

‘No, of course she is not, but …’

‘No, Dido,’ Lucy shook her head. ‘I am afraid it is indisputable. There is some other disaster yet to