A Golden Lie Read online

  They talked of sending for a doctor, but Devona and her mother knew that there was nothing they could do.

  When Devona had cried herself to sleep that night, she had known that, like her father, she hated the Earl and she could only hope that he too would die.

  Her mother had at first been prostrate with grief and then she had forced herself to go to the Earl to ask what he wanted to do about them.

  Devona was now seventeen and still very happy doing lessons with Mr. Alton.

  All the same Mrs. Campbell thought that the Earl would want the cottage for another man, who would do the work the Colonel had done and they would have to move.

  So she went to see the Earl and Hitchin showed her into the study where the Earl always sat.

  In it was a large writing desk on which there was a gold ink pot and Mrs. Campbell knew that it was worth a great deal of money.

  It seemed somehow ironical that the Earl was now sitting behind the gold ink pot, while her husband was dead because he had economised at the Horse Fair.

  The Earl had not risen when she entered the room. He merely indicated with his hand a chair in front of the writing desk.

  “Sit down, Mrs. Campbell,” he said. “I understand that you want to see me.”

  “I came to ask you, my Lord, what you want my daughter and me to do? I feel sure that you will require our cottage for the man who will take my husband’s place.”

  She paused a moment and then she went on,

  “I am only hoping that you could help us in some way because, as I am sure you know, we have no money.”

  “Your husband had not saved any?” the Earl asked harshly.

  “It was quite impossible to save on what you paid him,” Mrs. Campbell replied. “There were three of us to feed and I can assure you that every penny you paid to my husband was spent only on food and little else.”

  There was silence.

  She was wondering where she should now go to for help if he turned them out.

  The Colonel’s relations were all in Scotland and he had lost touch with them since he married. She had a few relations in Devon, but she had not seen them for years.

  They had been so happy together and so neither she nor her husband had bothered to contact distant cousins.

  As she was thinking about Devona, Mrs. Campbell said pleadingly,

  “Please, please, my Lord, let us stay here if it is at all possible. I feel sure, when he understands our plight, Mr. Alton will teach Devona without payment.”

  Her voice broke as she continued,

  “We can manage, perhaps, in one of the cottages in the village if it was repaired. Two or three at the moment are considered uninhabitable.”

  “That would cost money,” the Earl commented.

  “Yes, I know, my Lord. But perhaps we could do something for you in return,” Mrs. Campbell suggested.

  She thought as she spoke that this had not occurred to the Earl.

  She felt that she could read his thoughts and he was thinking that two healthy women might be an advantage to him in some way.

  He tapped with his fingers on the table and Mrs. Campbell held her breath.

  Then he said,

  “Mrs. Hitchin is getting old. She is always saying she needs help. You and your daughter can move in here.”

  “Do you mean that? Do you really mean it, my Lord?” Mrs. Campbell enquired.

  “I shall expect you both to help look after the house and, of course, I shall pay you nothing for doing so. You will have a bed to sleep on and food to eat. That should be enough.”

  “Of course it is,” Mrs. Campbell said softly. “And thank you very much. We will move in immediately and I can only say that I am very grateful to your Lordship.”

  She walked towards the door and when she reached it she looked back.

  She felt sure that the Earl was frowning as if he was calculating how much this arrangement would cost him.

  Devona was delighted to move into The Hall.

  “That means I can borrow books from the library,” she crowed. “You know what a fuss he made when Papa asked if I could do so. If I am actually in the house, he cannot watch me all the time nor can he count the books in the library.”

  “You must be careful not to upset him, my dearest,” Mrs. Campbell said. “He is a very strange man. I thought when I saw him just now that he was looking very old.”

  “It’s because he eats so little, Mama. He is over seventy, but many people of that age are full of energy.”

  *

  They moved into The Hall with their small amount of belongings.

  Mrs. Campbell thought it wrong not to mourn for her beloved husband and she therefore expended some of the last money they had on buying some black material to make herself a mourning dress.

  She actually had a black coat, which was rather out of date, as she had bought it when her grandmother died.

  With her black dress and black hat, she appeared at her husband’s funeral.

  She was, Devona thought, extremely brave and yet she could not help crying bitterly as they lowered his coffin into the ground.

  The Vicar had retired several years ago and, as the Living belonged to the Earl, he had not been replaced.

  Therefore a Vicar came from the town and he took the Service for which he was not paid.

  “We will have to have a tombstone for your father,” Mrs. Campbell said to Devona. “The only things I have to sell are the miniatures, which belonged to my mother and, of course, my engagement ring.”

  It was not a very large diamond in her engagement ring and yet Devona knew that it would break her mother’s heart to part with it.

  “I am sure Papa,” she said firmly, “would not want you to do that. Just wait, Mama, I feel something will turn up. As soon as I have finished my lessons with Mr. Alton, I will think of some way that I can earn money.”

  Her mother laughed.

  “You will be very clever if you can do that, dearest, unless, of course, you could write a book which would be a success or paint a picture.”

  “I don’t think I would be capable of doing either,” Devona said. “But I am now quite a good cook, because I am helping Mrs. Hitchin, who is getting very doddery and perhaps someone would like to employ me.”

  Mrs. Campbell held up her hands in horror.

  “You are not to talk like that,” she said. “After all, we are ladies and gentlemen. If you think that I am going to allow my daughter to be employed as a servant, you are very much mistaken.”

  “I don’t see much difference in doing what we are doing now,” Devona replied, “and not being paid for it!”

  “But then as far as I am concerned,” Mrs. Campbell persisted, “I am a guest in the Earl’s house and I expect everyone to treat me as such.”

  Devona kissed her mother.

  “Everybody who is anybody would never take you for anything else, Mama, but somehow I will find a way of making money.”

  She thought about it a good deal that winter.

  “If I was good at knitting,” she said one day to her mother, “and I could afford to buy the wool, I am sure I could make people really warm pieces of clothing that will cover them from their neck to their hips.”

  “If wishes were coal,” Mrs. Campbell smiled, “we would have a fire that would warm these big rooms!”

  She gave a sigh and went on,

  “The amount of wood that poor old Bill manages to bring in would hardly heat a cupboard.”

  It was terribly cold in all the rooms and yet the Earl would not pay anyone to cut down more trees and bring the logs up to the house.

  Unsurprisingly therefore, Mrs. Campbell developed pneumonia and she lay in bed all over Christmas.

  Needless to say there were no celebrations because the Earl said that he had no money for such fripperies.

  As she became worse, Devona was frantic.

  “I must have a doctor for my mother,” she begged the Earl. “She is very ill and, I am certain, r
unning a high temperature. Please, send for one, my Lord.”

  “Doctors are always expensive,” the Earl replied, shaking his head. “I don’t believe that there is a good doctor except in the town.”

  “Wherever he is, he must come to see my mother,” Devona insisted.

  “I will think about it,” the Earl murmured.

  “Please, please, my Lord. She really is very very ill,” Devona pleaded.

  Even as she spoke, she knew that the Earl was not listening to her. He was thinking of what it would cost, not that her mother was finding it hard to breathe.

  Devona sat up with her mother all that night and she died just as dawn was breaking.

  She knew, almost as if someone was telling her that her mother was slipping away.

  “Mama! Mama!” she called out to her despairingly. “Look at me! Say something to me.”

  Her mother’s eyelashes flickered and she seemed to hear what Devona was saying.

  Then there was a smile on her lips and, although she could hardly hear, Devona knew that she breathed the name ‘Euan’.

  Just for a moment it seemed as if life was still moving within her and then her eyes closed and Devona knew that she had gone.

  Once again the Vicar came from the town and her mother was buried next to her father.

  There was no tombstone on the grave and Devona thought that there would never be one.

  As she walked slowly back to The Hall, she blamed the Earl for her mother’s death and she knew that she hated him even more than when he had killed her father.

  ‘I hate him! I hate him!’ she whispered to herself as she walked into the house.

  The awful truth now dawned on her that she had no money and nowhere to go.

  Whether she liked it or not, she had to stay with the man she loathed at Narbrooke Hall and she would have to be grateful to him for every morsel of food she ate.

  The only way she could escape from the horror of him was when she went to visit Mr. Alton.

  “I do think, Devona,” he told her one day, “that I have taught you everything I can. You are a very clever young lady!”

  “It’s no use being clever, if you cannot earn any money,” Devona countered.

  “I know that,” Mr. Alton replied. “But now that dreadful War is over, everything is returning to normal and England is becoming prosperous again. I am sure that you will find something that will interest you and also pay you to do it.”

  “And what could that be?” Devona asked.

  “It is something that you will have to find out for yourself. But, of course, I will help you if I can.”

  “You have been wonderful,” she sighed, “and I am very very grateful.”

  *

  She had walked to her lesson that day and when she retraced her steps to The Hall in the afternoon she realised suddenly that it was spring.

  There were smiling buttercups in the long grass and the leaves on the trees were pale green.

  She was thinking how beautiful everything about nature was. Only man was vile!

  She walked up the stone steps into The Hall.

  The Earl had ordered her to report to him when she came back from her lessons in case he had an errand for her.

  He found that she was useful in writing what letters he had to write and also she could add up what he had to pay out, bitterly and resentfully, to anyone he employed.

  She knew that tomorrow he was going to take his monthly visit to the town to collect the money he had to spend on food for the four people he still employed.

  Devona could not bear to see him. Every nerve in her body revolted at coming into contact with him.

  So she went up to her own room and, when it was time for dinner, she thought that she would tell Hitchin that she had no wish to dine with the Earl.

  She and her mother had done so ever since they had moved in.

  ‘I will go and take something from Mrs. Hitchin in the kitchen,’ Devona told herself.

  Hitchin, however, forestalled her when she went to find him in the dining room.

  “His Lordship’s gone up to bed,” he said. “He says he has a headache.”

  “Well, there is nothing we can do about it,” Devona replied.

  She saw that Hitchin had laid a place for her where she always sat.

  “There’s not much for you, tonight, miss,” he said. “I hopes you’re not hungry.”

  “Why? What has gone wrong?” she asked him.

  “His Lordship wouldn’t give the boy who’d snared three rabbits a penny each for them. They’d a few words about it and he takes them home to his mother.”

  “So there is nothing for us to eat?”

  “If you asks me,” Hitchin said, “that were a mistake on the part of his Lordship. That boy’s Mum be an old witch and she’ll take it out on his Lordship one way or another, you mark my words!”

  Devona was not listening to him, as she was feeling hungry and she knew that Mrs. Hitchin would do her best, but no one could make bricks without straw.

  So for her dinner she had a little soup and a very small piece of cheese.

  When she had retired to bed, she decided that this could not go on for ever.

  *

  Devona woke up early and thought that perhaps she would go riding before breakfast.

  She was supposed to ask the Earl every time that she wanted to ride one of his very few horses and now it would be a good excuse to say that, as he was ill, she did not want to worry him.

  She was about to run down the stairs, as Hitchin came out of the Master suite, which was at the end of the corridor.

  Seeing her, he called out her name.

  “Miss Devona! Miss Devona!”

  Devona stopped and then she turned back to walk slowly towards him.

  “What is it?”

  “Come and see his Lordship. Come quick!”

  As he spoke, he turned and ran back into the Earl’s bedroom.

  Puzzled at what could be wrong, Devona walked a little more rapidly along the passage, thinking that if the Earl’s headache was worse, it was his own fault.

  As she entered the room, she could see that Hitchin was standing by the huge four-poster bed, looking down at the Earl.

  Devona joined him.

  As she did so, she knew that the Earl was dead!

  CHAPTER TWO

  “His Lordship – be dead!” Hitchin stammered.

  “What can we do?” Devona murmured.

  “Nothin’, miss.”

  Devona was wondering just who she should contact about the funeral and she thought that she would have to let his relations know.

  She also remembered that, now the Earl was dead, the next Earl would step into his place.

  “Do you know who his relations are?” she asked Hitchin, who shook his head.

  “No! The Missus and I come here to The Hall after he had quarrelled with them. He used to say to me, ‘they are only after all my money, so I have not seen any of my family for more than ten years’. It must be twenty-one or twenty-two by now.”

  Devona had heard him say the same to her, but that did not help at the moment.

  She thought that they ought to send for the doctor, but there would be no point in it and she was sure that the Earl would have thought it a needless extravagance.

  Moving away from the bed because she could not bear to look at the dead man, she now said to Hitchin,

  “We shall have to let his relatives know. Someone must have his address book.”

  “I expects his Lordship has it in his writin’ desk,” Hitchin said. “That’s where he kept everythin’ includin’ his money.”

  “Money!” Devona exclaimed. “He was going to the town today.”

  There was no need to say anything more and both Hitchin and she knew that, if he was not able to go, there would be no money to pay for anything.

  They could not even pay the boys if they trapped some rabbits.

  “I will go to look in his writing desk,” she said
. “Is it locked, do you think, Hitchin?”

  “You don’t suppose he’d leave it open for anyone to pry inside. He carries the key round his neck.”

  “Then could you please get it from him?” Devona suggested tentatively.

  She knew it would be impossible for her to touch the dead man and she did not even want to look at him again.

  Hitchin walked back to the bedside, while Devona looked out of the window.

  A few seconds later he called out,

  “Here it be! Let’s just hope there’s a penny or two inside it. Otherwise we’ll all go hungry.”

  Devona did not speak as she took the key from him.

  She then went down the stairs and into the study.

  The sun was streaming into the room through the window and glittering on the gold inkstand.

  For a moment it was hard to believe that the Earl who always sat at his writing desk, glowering, she thought, at anyone who came in through the door, was not there.

  Then she told herself that she had to be practical.

  She had to find a member of the Earl’s family and he must be informed that their Head, even though he had not communicated with them for decades, was dead.

  She sat down in the Earl’s chair, put the key in the lock and turned it.

  The drawer came open.

  The first thing she saw was a shiny golden guinea and three pennies. She felt grateful that there was no need for them to starve until the relations arrived.

  Pushing the coins to one side she then drew out the papers that were in the drawer. They seemed to be mostly bills and some of them went back for a long time.

  Then she looked on the other side of the drawer that was quite a wide one.

  She saw a notebook and opened it.

  At first glance she realised that it contained some names with addresses under them.

  As she turned over the pages, she saw the name and address of the Vicar who had buried her mother.

  This seemed encouraging and, as she turned further still, she found some familiar family names.

  There were quite a number of Brookes and she had the feeling, because the ink in which they were written had faded, that they would be old by this time.