Too Precious to Lose Read online

  However, she knew despondently that it was something that Violet would never allow her to do.

  She put down her book and walked towards the table where her dinner tray was waiting and she thought that if her father asked where she was, he would undoubtedly be told ‘with friends’.

  Even if she tried to see him later, it would be impossible. Violet’s friends were mostly middle-aged men who drank heavily and would stay until the early hours of the morning.

  Then, also, it was unlikely that her father would even be aware that she was in the house.

  Violet had made it quite clear that she did not want her downstairs tonight.

  “Have you not an invitation for this evening?” she asked.

  She spoke in the harsh voice she always used to Norina unless her father was there.

  “No, it is Monday, Step-mama, and there are seldom balls on a Monday.”

  “Well, I am having a dinner party and, if you are present, there will be more women than men.”

  “Then, of course, I will have my food upstairs,” Norina offered.

  It was easy to acquiesce politely. It was far worse to be told rudely what she would do whether she liked it or not.

  Actually, she had no wish to be with Violet’s friends. They either paid her extravagant compliments, which infuriated her stepmother or else ignored her completely.

  She thought they were the sort of men that her father in the old days would have called ‘bounders’.

  But he obviously accepted them now because his wife demanded it.

  She looked at the tray that had been set down without the footman troubling to put a cloth on the table nor had he arranged the dishes on it.

  There was a small soup tureen, a china plate that had a silver cover and a glass bowl containing fruit salad. There was a jug of water, a glass and a piece of bread on a plate. It had a pat of butter beside it because there was no room for a butter dish.

  It was not the way anything would have been served, Norina thought, if the new servants had not taken a lead from her stepmother.

  They considered her of no consequence.

  She sat down at the table and as she did so heard a plaintive ‘meow’. She realised to her surprise that the kitchen cat must have followed the footman upstairs.

  It was a rather ugly ginger cat. It was kept below stairs to catch the mice, which always frightened the housemaids.

  Now it meowed again and Norina wondered if it was hungry.

  She would not be surprised. The servants were so different from those her mother had employed. They would not be particularly interested in animals of any sort.

  In the country there were dogs and cats at home and the servants had been as conscientious in looking after them as they were for themselves.

  The cat rubbed itself against her leg, and she asked,

  “Are you hungry?”

  She took the lid off the small tureen of soup as she spoke and poured it into the plate on which it stood.

  It smelt quite edible, if not particularly exciting and she wondered what they were having downstairs in the dining room.

  She knew that her stepmother took a great deal of trouble over the dinners she gave to her friends and always insisted on the best and most expensive food.

  She also served superb wines which she coaxed her husband into buying.

  The cat was meowing again plaintively and Norina now lifted the silver cover from the plate and saw the reason.

  Fish of some sort had been sent up to her and she thought, as she looked at it, that it did not look very appetising.

  It also had a distinct smell that had attracted the cat and she wondered whether she should give it a few spoonfuls on another plate.

  Then she decided that she was not hungry.

  “I think your need is greater than mine!” she said with a smile, as she put the plate down on the floor.

  She then returned to the soup, finishing what was in the tureen.

  The fruit salad, which contained peaches and strawberries, was delicious.

  She was sure that it was not being served in the dining room. If it were, there would be cream to go with it and doubtless another pudding as well.

  Norina ate the fruit with delight.

  At the same time she was thinking that if she was at Sedgewyn, she would be able to pick the peaches herself in the greenhouse and there would be figs ripening on the trees, as well as plums and nectarines.

  When she put down her spoon, she looked down to see if the cat had eaten the fish.

  The plate was half-empty, but for the moment she could not see the cat.

  Then she realised that he was lying in front of the door as if he was trying to get out.

  “Do you want to go back to the kitchen?” she asked.

  Rising from the table, Norina walked towards him.

  Only as she reached the animal did she think it was strange he should be lying on his side and, as she looked at him, she saw that his eyes were shut.

  A sudden thought struck her and she bent down to touch him.

  Then she knew without doubt that he was dead.

  For a moment she could hardly believe it.

  Yet, as she made an effort to revive him, she knew that it was hopeless.

  The cat was dead and half of what he had eaten was still on the plate by the table.

  She picked it up, looked at it and put it down on the tray.

  She then faced the answer clearly and calmly – her stepmother was trying to kill her.

  In fact, she would have died if she had not given the fish that had been sent up for her dinner to the cat.

  At that moment Norina was not hysterical or even agitated.

  She felt calm and rather cold. If the cat had not come up to her room, she herself would be lying either dead or dying on the floor.

  When she was discovered, her stepmother would have some very reasonable explanation.

  Also, doubtless, she would have a doctor who obligingly would certify that she had died of a heart attack, which was how her mother had died and it would be quite easy to pretend that it was something she had inherited.

  Norina went to the window and stood looking out over the garden at the back of the house.

  It was a garden shared by a number of houses in Park Street and South Street, yet there was seldom anyone in it.

  As a child, when she was troubled or unhappy, she would run into the woods for comfort. She thought now even by looking at the trees, the flowers and the green lawn, that they would give her the answer to her question.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  Everything looked very quiet and serene. Yet the houses on each side of the garden, like sentinels, were imprisoning what lay inside.

  It was then Norina started to pray to her mother.

  ‘Help me – Mama – help me! I don’t want to die. If she fails this time – Step-mama will try again. She hates me and – more than anything – else she wants – your money!’

  Norina had been told by the Solicitor that her father had the handling of her mother’s money for his lifetime.

  If she was not there to inherit it, then it would belong to him, and Violet would be able to obtain it.

  ‘Help me, Mama, help me! I cannot die in such a futile manner!’

  She wondered who she could tell.

  If she went to her aunt, her story might not be believed. If she went to her father, Violet would make quite certain he would believe that she was having hallucinations.

  She could imagine all too clearly Violet saying in her plaintive voice,

  “How can she believe anything so cruel and wicked of poor little me?”

  It was the sort of act she could do so well and naturally her father would have to comfort her.

  It was then, almost like a light in the darkness, she remembered that there was one person in the house she could confide in.

  He was a servant who had been with her father and mother for over thirty years. Dawes was now her father�
��s valet.

  Coolly, not allowing herself to panic, she moved the ginger cat very carefully from the door and placed him in a corner, where he could not be seen.

  She carried her tray outside so that the footman could collect it from the corridor without having to enter her room.

  She wondered how she could speak to Dawes. It might be a mistake to send for him.

  Glancing at the clock, she realised that because she had eaten quickly, the guests would still be in the dining room.

  Dawes would therefore not have gone to the housekeeper’s room for the meal the servants had when they had finished serving dinner.

  She hurried to her father’s room, praying that she was right and Dawes would be there.

  She opened the door and, to her relief, he was.

  He was a man of over forty who had come to Sedgewyn House first as a knife boy and then de had raised himself year by year until he eventually became valet to her father.

  He travelled with Lord Sedgewyn wherever he went.

  Norina had therefore seen very little of Dawes since her stepmother had insisted on going to London, but she had known him when she was a child and her mother had trusted him implicitly and he had always been a very good servant in every way.

  As she entered the room, he was collecting the clothes her father had worn during the day.

  He looked up as she entered and said,

  “Good evening, Miss Norina! It’s nice to see you lookin’ so well!”

  “I want your help,” Norina began.

  Dawes put down the coat he had over his arm.

  “Just like old times, Miss Norina, you comin’ to me with one request or another! I misses the country and I knows ’is Lordship does, when ’e thinks about it.”

  “Please, Dawes, will you come with me? I have something to show you,” Norina said.

  Dawes put down the clothes he carried on his arm and walked towards her.

  She hurried ahead of him and, when they reached her bedroom, she opened the door.

  Dawes followed her in.

  She shut the door behind him and to his surprise locked it.

  Then she said,

  “I said that I had something to show you.”

  She walked to where she had put the ginger cat in the corner and Dawes looked down at it in surprise.

  “Why, it be Ginger!” he exclaimed. “What’s ’e doin’ up ’ere?”

  “He followed the footman who came up with my dinner,” Norina said, “and because I thought he was hungry, I gave him the fish to eat, and when he had eaten it – he died.”

  She spoke quietly, but she felt suddenly, as she said the words, that she might burst into tears.

  Dawes stared at her in astonishment and then he bent down to touch the ginger cat.

  There was no doubt that the animal was stiffening.

  “He ate the fish, you say, miss,” he asked as if he was getting it straight in his mind, “which was intended for you?”

  “It was – my dinner,” Norina said, “and it was – poisoned!”

  Dawes stood up and she knew by the expression on his face that he understood what she was telling him.

  “You have to save me!” Norina said in a voice hardly above a whisper, “otherwise, if I stay here, I, too, will be dead!”

  For a moment Dawes did not reply.

  Then he said,

  “Do you really mean that, miss? I can’t believe ’er Ladyship would go so far!”

  “She hates me, Dawes.”

  Dawes scratched his head.

  “Her’s jealous of you, right enough. Women be all the same and you’ve grown as pretty as your mother and I can’t say fairer than that!”

  “It’s not only my looks,” Norina said. “It’s the money Mama left me. She has only just learnt that if anything happened to Papa, it becomes mine.”

  Dawes’s lips tightened and Norina guessed he was not going to contradict that statement.

  “You’ll ’ave to go to her Ladyship, your aunt,” he said.

  “She will never believe me! You know that she will never believe me and my stepmother will insist that I come back. Next time there will not be a cat to save me.

  “Then what do you suggest, Miss Norina?” Dawes asked.

  She could not bear to stand looking down at the ginger cat that lay at their feet.

  She walked towards the window and after a moment’s hesitation Dawes came and stood behind her.

  “I shall have to disappear,” Norina said finally, as if she were speaking to herself.

  “You can’t go alone, miss, not without a chaperone.”

  Norina had already thought of this and she was silent until she said,

  “Perhaps I could find something to do. I could be a Governess to small children.”

  There was silence while Dawes thought this over.

  Then he said,

  “You be too young for that sort of job, Miss Norina, and too pretty. You’d get into trouble, one way or another, then you’d just have to come back.”

  “There must be something I can do!” Norina cried. “I have been well-educated, as you well know. And I cannot stay here and wait for my stepmother to try again.”

  Dawes was scratching his head and then after a moment he suggested,

  “P’raps, miss, while you thinks it over, you could be a companion to an old lady. Some of ’em likes to have a reader because their eyes aren’t strong enough for them to read for themselves. And at least you’d be safe until we can think of somewhere better.”

  Norina clasped her hands together.

  “You are right, Dawes! That is just the sort of thing. I could keep in touch with you and you could tell me what is happening to Papa. I am frightened for him too!”

  “You don’t suppose his Lordship would believe you if you tells him the truth?”

  Norina made a helpless little gesture with her hand.

  “Would you have believed me if you had not seen the cat?”

  Dawes shook his head.

  “I’d ’ave thought you were a-dreamin’, Miss Norina.”

  “That is why you have to find me somewhere to go – and quickly!”

  She gave a little shudder before she added,

  “I will not eat anything in this house unless somebody else has tasted it first.”

  “You’ll not go ’ungry as long as I’m alive,” Dawes said. “But I agrees with you, Miss Norina, you can’t stay ’ere, but Gawd knows where we’ll find anywhere else.”

  “Surely there’s a place where one engages companions and anyone else who is employed?”

  “’Course there be,” Dawes agreed, “and this lot, though some of ’em are a bit queer, all comes from Hunt’s in Mount Street.”

  “Then that is where I will go,” Norina declared.

  “I thinks that’d be a mistake,” Dawes said. “I’ll go for you, Miss Norina, and all you ’ave to think of is a new name and produce some references.”

  “I can write those,” Norina said, “and sign Papa’s name.”

  “Then you do that, Miss,” Dawes said, “and I’ll go to Hunt’s first thing in the mornin’.”

  He paused before he went on,

  “You understands, Miss Norina, it might not be easy to find somethin’ suitable right away. You might have to wait and while, you’re waitin’, you’ll just ’ave to be careful.”

  “I will not eat the food in this house,” Norina said, “unless you bring it to me.”

  She looked at Dawes piteously before she asked,

  “You don’t imagine she will try to kill Papa too?”

  “Not as long as you’re alive, miss!” Dawes answered.

  Norina gave a sigh of relief.

  “No, of course – I had forgotten that. I have to die first so that Papa gets my money. Then she will get it from him! Oh, Dawes, what would Mama say if she was alive?”

  Now the tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Now, don’t you fret yourself,” Dawes said. “You’
ve been saved by the mercy of God from a woman as oughta hang by ’er neck until ’er’s dead! You’re alive and that’s the way we’re goin’ to keep you, one way or another.”

  He spoke in such a determined tone that Norina smiled through her tears.

  “Thank you, Dawes, thank you! I knew I could rely on you,” she sighed, “and you know that there’s nobody else!”

  Chapter two

  Norina went down to breakfast when she heard her father passing her door and she knew that her stepmother would not be called until at least ten o’clock.

  As she entered the breakfast room, her father looked round.

  “Good morning my dearest,” he said. “I missed you last night.”

  “And I missed you, Papa,” Norina replied.

  “Your stepmother said you had a headache,” he went on.

  Norina did not reply.

  She had no wish at the moment to make any trouble. She thought it was the sort of thing that Violet would say.

  If she had told her father that she had been sent upstairs out of the way, he would have insisted that she come to the party.

  Lord Sedgewyn was helping himself from the silver entrée dishes on the sideboard and Norina watched him carefully, determined to eat nothing he had not sampled first.

  During the night she had thought over what Dawes had said to her. At least her father would be alive for as long as she was.

  ‘I am not really being selfish in running away,’ she said to herself. ‘I am saving Papa’s life as well as my own.’

  She was quite certain now that once Violet had her money safely in her father’s hands, he would have a mysterious accident or an illness from which he would never recover.

  The whole idea made her shudder, but she was determined not to be frightened to the point where she could not think clearly.

  She helped herself from the dishes that her father had already sampled and then she sat down at the table next to him.

  As she did so, she thought that he was not looking as well as he used to.

  There were dark lines under his eyes that she suspected were also slightly bloodshot. His voice was thicker and sounded older than it had been in the past.

  She wondered if she told him the truth and begged him to go away with her whether he would do so.