October was dreary. Not only because the sky was slate gray with darker clouds pushed across it by a freezing wind, but because I was missing my daughter. She’d gone a few weeks ago, on a train that chugged her out of my sight and my day-to-day life.
Cease feeling sorry for yourself and get on with things.
I scolded myself silently as I cut cold butter into small pieces and tossed them into a bowl mounded with flour. I used my fingers to break the butter into smaller pieces, pinching the flour into them until I had a bowlful of floury, buttery crumbs.
To this I poured in cream from a pot I’d had waiting on the table, added some salt and a bit of sugar I’d pounded to fine powder, and mixed the lot together.
My thoughts continued to nag me as I turned out the dough to my floured table, patted it into a circle, and cut smaller circles with my dough cutter. I brushed the pieces with cream and set them on a pan to carry to the oven.
“You ought to have had me make them scones,” Tess, my assistant, said as she entered the kitchen, a basket of what she’d brought from the shops on her arm. “Mine come out light as a feather now, you know.” She sounded hurt.
“Takes my mind off things,” I said apologetically. “Your scones are delightful, and everyone above stairs says so.”
Mollified, Tess set down the basket, removed her coat and gloves, and carried the tray of scones to the oven for me. “You’ll be seeing your Grace soon, you know. So you keep saying.”
My visit to Grace was fixed for the end of the month. I’d wanted to go right away, when Grace had first moved to Basingstoke with my closest friends, Joanna and Sam Millburn. With one thing or another, however, my trip had been postponed. The Millburns needed time to unpack for their new home, send their oldest son back to school for his next term, and settle in.
Meanwhile, in London, I’d had to produce a harvest feast for my mistress, Mrs. Bywater, who’d decided to host a lavish supper for any acquaintance she could coax into this large house in Mayfair. The occasion was meant to simply show off that Mrs. Bywater could serve as bountiful a meal in London as those who ran off to the country to shoot grouse.
She’d kept Tess and me and the rest of the staff on the run as we crammed in extra hours to make the house perfect and the repast massive.
I refused to let the extra work interfere with my days out, and Tess’s as well. My Monday afternoons and Thursdays were currently taken up with baking tarts and scones to sell at my new stall in Portobello Road. I’d return from that, exhausted, to stay up until midnight helping Tess with puddings, breads, and the many savory dishes we were expected to create for Mrs. Bywater’s banquet.
I had to admit that the harvest supper had been a success. The house had been filled to the brim with guests, though Lady Cynthia, Mrs. Bywater’s niece, told me that they’d come out of curiosity to see what disaster Mrs. Bywater might produce.
As I’d never serve a less than perfect meal—a dish with troubles would be held back—the guests were pleased. I received many compliments and not a few coins from those who came downstairs to praise me.
By the time we’d recovered and the house returned to normal, it was the middle of October, with the weather dismal and my heart and feet sore.
“Here’s something else to take your mind off things.” Tess closed the oven door and began to unload her basket. “One of me pals is cook’s assistant at a house in Manchester Square. Family is well off, but not nobility or anything. Anyway, the master married this summer, and the new wife is young and beautiful. The staff are taken with her, though they were surprised the master married for the third time. He lost his second wife only two years ago, and some say he never truly recovered losing his first wife.”
“Oh, yes?” I asked absently.
I unwrapped a dough I’d mixed together yesterday and cooled in the larder, beginning the process of my pastry. This dough had to be rolled thin and folded and rolled again, over and over, so it would bake into layers that were crisp and soft at the same time. I had to keep it very cold, which would not be difficult as icy wind rattled the windows. I’d slice one of the apples that waited in a bowl on the table to bake into it.
I looked up to find Tess regarding me expectantly, waiting for my reaction. I didn’t much care for gossip about our neighbors, but I answered.
“It is not surprising that the master married once more, even if he truly loved his late wives. Men want to be looked after. They are a bit helpless without a woman to tell them what to do.”
Tess’s eyes twinkled. “Even Mr. McAdam?”
“Cheek,” I admonished. “Yes, I include Mr. McAdam in my conviction. He has me to look after him now, doesn’t he?”
“True. But that ain’t the interesting bit.”
“No?” I shaped the dough into a rectangle with my rolling pin then carefully folded each side to meet in the middle. I dusted the whole thing with flour and folded the halves together.
“No.” Tess warmed to the tale. “The odd thing, me pal tells me, is that since the new Mrs. Barnes came to live with them, a ghost has moved in as well. Haunting the place, terrifying the life out of them. What do you think of that, Mrs. H.?”
I briskly rolled the dough out again. “I’d say it is nonsense,” I said with conviction. “Someone has been filling your friend’s head with rubbish.”
“You don’t believe in spirits, then?”
“I do not. The cold breezes people attribute to the otherworldly turn out to be nothing but draughts from ill-fitting doors and windows, while the noises come from the rattling of gas pipes.”
Tess separated carrots, shaking their greens that had become entwined. “Well, me friend Annie is usually as sensible as you, but it’s not just creaks in the pipes, she says. It’s thumps and moans, at all hours sometimes. The cook hears them to.”
“Tess.” I laid down my rolling pin and wiped my hands, taking on a patient tone. “The master of the house has just married, to a woman you say is young and pretty. They will be getting up to all sorts together, and not everyone is quiet about it.” My cheeks warmed, as this was not a subject I was comfortable speaking about.
“The master is past fifty, so he’s probably not up to much in that regard.” Tess spoke with the dismissal of one barely into her twenties. “Besides, the noises also happen when everyone in the household is out of bed, dressed, and downstairs—the sounds come from the upper floors. The master says like you do, that it’s pipes or something gone wrong with the drains.”
I folded the rectangle of dough once more, my thoughts pulled from my doldrums.
“Everyone in the house hears it, you say?” I asked.
“They do. Many of the staff have already scarpered, and the cook’s threatened to give notice. Says she can’t sleep of nights.”
“Hmm.” If the sounds were heard by all, the trouble might be more than a kitchen maid’s wild imagination. “The master is likely right, you know. He should have the plumbers in, or the builders, to see where the noises are coming from.”
I heard quick footsteps on the slates, followed by the breezy voice of Lady Cynthia. “Are you talking about the Barneses?”
Cynthia swept into the kitchen, dressed in a man’s suit topped by a well-tailored frock coat, whose tails fluttered as she strode to us. She helped herself to an apple and rubbed it on her coat’s lapel.
“The new Mrs. Barnes—Harriet—is a chum of mine. We survived a year of ghastly finishing school together. Very sound head on her shoulders has Harriet, but even she claims that their house is haunted something rotten.” Cynthia took a loud bite of the apple, grinning as she chewed. “I say we look into it, eh, Mrs. Holloway?”
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