A Golden Lie Page 5

  As it was more convenient the Hitchins had slept in the rooms opening out of the kitchen which in the past had been used by footmen. It saved Hitchin from walking all the way up the stairs on his legs which hurt him and Mrs. Hitchin who was somewhat unsteady coming downstairs.

  As Devona had hoped there was a small fire in the stove. It was really only a flicker because they were very careful with the logs as Bill brought in so few.

  Devona looked round the kitchen and noticed that it was much tidier than the other rooms in the house. There was a wastepaper basket at one end and she thought that there might be some pieces of paper in it.

  She was not mistaken.

  There was a bag that had come off one of the items Hitchin must have bought at the shops as well as several greasy pieces covered with a small scraping of fat.

  Devona picked it all up and carried it to the stove.

  A little flame flared up as she put the parchment on top of it.

  It took some time to burn and then she looked in a drawer and found some old pieces of paper on which Mrs. Hitchin had written down her recipes.

  They might well be valuable to her, but it was more important to destroy the Earl’s will.

  Finally there was nothing left except little bits of blackened parchment that fell to pieces when she stirred them with a spoon.

  She felt sure that she had done the right thing and at least there would be money to keep the Hitchins alive for the few years left to them.

  She then went back to the study not feeling in the slightest guilty at what she had done and she could imagine if he knew about it how furious the Earl would be.

  The one issue she was really curious about was how much money there would be in the Bank and she was quite certain now that there would be some, although it may not be a large amount.

  ‘Anything is better than nothing,’ she told herself.

  She wondered again what would happen to her and she reckoned that if the Post chaise reached London in four hours it would be possible, if the new Earl was willing, for him to drive to The Hall before it was dark.

  Then she told herself that she was asking too much as he would want time to pack, to notify his other relations and it would be ridiculous of her to expect him to arrive at the earliest before midday tomorrow.

  Then she would know the worst or the best about herself.

  Later, after Hitchin had brought back something to eat for luncheon, she walked down to the lake.

  The kingcups were coming out on the banks and the first baby ducklings were swimming after their mother.

  It was quiet and peaceful and she felt some of the agitation that had throbbed in her mind since she had seen the Earl dead seemed to be smoothed away.

  Perhaps her father and mother, wherever they were, were thinking of her and making sure that the future would not be as frightening as it seemed to be at the moment.

  ‘If they send me away where can I go, Papa?’ she asked.

  She felt like a child who longed for its parents to decide everything and she knew that as long as she held onto them she was safe just because they loved her.

  ‘There is no one left to love me,’ she said to herself, ‘and worse still no one for me to love.’

  She thought of the stories she had read in which the heroine had fallen in love at first sight of the hero and, of course, at the end they had lived happily ever after.

  Living at Narbrooke Hall she had never met any young men and all she knew of them was what she had read in books.

  Now it struck her that she had had a very strange life.

  Everything had been different when her father and mother had been with her. They had been so happy and had so much to say to each other.

  Since they had died, she had sat through gloomy meals with the Earl without saying a word.

  Fortunately in some ways the meals had not taken long because there had been so little to eat and, when she had tried to have a conversation with him, he had either not answered or said something that was slightly unpleasant.

  “I hate him!” she said aloud again. “And I only hope wherever he is at this moment he has realised that he can never clutch at his money again.”

  That at least was some satisfaction, but at the same time she was asking the same question as to what would happen to her.

  When she returned to the house, she went straight to the library because at least there was the comfort of the books she wanted to read.

  There was no disagreeable owner to stop her from taking as many as she wanted up to her bedroom or sitting in the library itself reading them.

  She was still there when Hitchin came to tell her that there was something for her to eat in the dining room.

  “Oh, thank you very much,” she told him. “I am glad that you were able to buy something.”

  “It be rabbit again,” Hitchin said. “It were cheaper than anythin’ else. But the Missus has done it for you in a new way she hopes you’ll like.”

  “You are kind, Hitchin. I think I need something to cheer me up.”

  “Who doesn’t?” he added in a gloomy tone.

  She felt that she had been rather tactless and so she told him that the ducklings had hatched on the lake. He did not seem interested, but it kept them talking until she reached the dining room.

  As she sat down, she realised that it was very early, in fact only half-past six.

  She ate most the rabbit and was glad to have a cup of coffee although it might keep her awake.

  She thanked Hitchin and to her surprise he said,

  “God Bless you, Miss Devona. I hopes as how this new Earl’ll be decent to you, but if he’s anythin’ like his uncle, we’ll all suffer.”

  “I know,” Devona replied, “but I cannot believe that two men could be quite so unpleasant and tomorrow we may have a great surprise.”

  “Of course we might and you see, Miss Devona, that he looks after you. It be only right he should.”

  She left Hitchin and went up the stairs to her room.

  She felt a bit creepy at the thought of the Earl lying at the other end of the passage in the Master suite, dead, in the great four-poster bed hung with red curtains.

  Then she told herself that she must not think about him, but must pray that, when the new Earl goes to the Bank, he would find that there was enough money in it to pay the Hitchins for all they had done and some for herself.

  She still had a few things which belonged to her mother and, because it had been such a job to move them, she had left them in their little cottage.

  There had been no point in moving until the Earl had a tenant for it and he had left it empty. She had left her things there, but it had made her cry and she told herself sensibly that there was no point in being so miserable.

  She climbed into bed and tried to read by the light of the candle, but there was only a very little of it left.

  She realised that she had been stupid in not asking Mrs. Hitchin if there was another candle in the kitchen, as this one would only last for another ten minutes.

  ‘I suppose that it’s not too late to find another one now,’ she thought.

  Then she looked at the clock and saw, as she had eaten early, that it was only nine o’clock.

  She pulled herself out of bed to put on her dressing gown and her soft slippers.

  She knew it was no use looking for a candle in the other bedrooms because she had already taken them.

  She supposed that there might be two or three in the Earl’s bedroom, but nothing would have made her go there while he was still lying on the bed.

  There was still enough light for her to see her way down the stairs.

  She saw that the front door had been locked and the bolts drawn at the top and bottom.

  She walked across the hall and turned under the stairs to go down the passage that led to the dining room and then on to the kitchen quarters.

  When she reached them, there was no one there and she supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Hitchin must h
ave gone to bed even though it was so early.

  ‘I will be very quiet and not wake them,’ Devona thought, ‘but I am sure that there will be a candle in one of the drawers.’

  She knew where Mrs. Hitchin kept them and she was not really surprised that the drawer was empty.

  Then she went into the pantry.

  It was a huge pantry and had been built in the days when the house was full and there would be large parties in the dining room.

  It would be correct in those times, Devona knew, for one of the footmen to sleep in the pantry to guard the silver in the safe and she often thought that it must have been very uncomfortable for the poor young men.

  As she walked into the pantry, she looked round and hoped to see a candle standing on one of the shelves or perhaps on a window ledge.

  To her surprise she was then aware that the safe door was open.

  It seemed to her rather strange because she knew that Hitchin was very punctilious about keeping it locked at night, just in the same way as he bolted the front doors.

  She looked inside the safe.

  Then she thought her eyes must be deceiving her as the safe was empty. I had always been filled with silver, not that the Earl used much of it!

  The silver candlesticks were always put on the table for dinner and there was a silver bowl for luncheon.

  Besides these the mustard and pepper pots were, Devona knew, valuable as they dated from the reign of King George I.

  There was also a mass of silver pieces that she had never even seen and they were wrapped in green baize.

  It seemed incredible that they had all vanished.

  She peered further into the safe which was quite a large one and there was not a great deal of light coming from the window.

  But she could see that it was completely empty.

  Only the polished wooden box which contained the spoons and forks was standing on the floor.

  Because it seemed so incredible, she opened one of the narrow drawers that held the silver in special places.

  The drawers were empty!

  ‘We must have been burgled,’ Devona thought.

  It was a terrible thing to happen on the very night before the new Earl took over.

  She ran out of the pantry and into the kitchen and knocked loudly on the door of the Hitchin’s bedroom.

  Then because there was no reply, she opened it.

  There was nobody there!

  The curtains had not been drawn, so she could see that the bed against one of the walls was empty.

  It was then that she realised what had happened.

  The Hitchins had not believed that they would be looked after in the future and they had instead looked after themselves.

  They had stolen the silver which was entailed onto the new Earl!

  If they were to dispose of it quickly, it would be very difficult for anyone to trace or for that matter to find the Hitchins.

  Devona sat down on a chair in the kitchen thinking in a way that she did not blame them. They were making sure that they did not starve to death in the future.

  They had been treated so badly by the Earl, who had never paid them and they had known that they were too old to find a position elsewhere.

  For what they would obtain for the silver, although it would be far less than it was actually worth, they could be very comfortable for the last years of their lives.

  It struck Devona that was what she should do too.

  She laughed at the idea and to begin with there was nothing to take except for a picture that could easily be traced.

  Secondly, as her mother had said, she was a lady and, however hard it might be, she must behave like one, honestly and decently.

  Without a candle which had brought her downstairs in the first place, she went back to her bedroom.

  There was no need for her to read a book now and she had enough to think about before tomorrow came.

  She would not know until the morning if Hitchin had taken the carriage with him and the horse that drew it, which was quite a fast animal despite its age.

  With the silver piled up behind them, they could be miles away by now and it would be impossible for anyone to pursue them.

  Devona lay on her back with her head comfortably on the pillow.

  She thought that if the new Earl was as nasty as his uncle she would not tell him about the Hitchins. He would never have heard of them and anyway he could easily wish to dispose of the silver himself even though it was entailed.

  It seemed to Devona as if the whole family were, in a way, getting their just desserts.

  They should have prevented in some way the Earl from becoming a miser and could have forced him to keep his house in better order and to be kinder to his employees.

  Then she remembered that the Head of the Family had complete control over his relations and it was he who handled all the money that was available.

  It seemed impossible, yet perhaps all the Brookes were fighting poverty and afraid of starvation.

  ‘It cannot be true!’ Devona said to herself and she knew that she would discover the answer tomorrow.

  One vital question that remained unanswered was what was going to happen to her?

  CHAPTER THREE

  To her surprise Devona slept fairly well.

  She awoke early and it took a moment to bring her mind back to everything that had happened.

  Then when she realised that she was alone in this enormous house with a dead man she felt herself shudder.

  ‘I have to be sensible,’ she told herself. ‘I have to behave as Mama would under these circumstances.’

  She climbed out of bed and dressed hurriedly.

  She put on a black dress that had been made for her mother’s funeral as she thought it was what the new Earl would expect of her when he arrived and anyway her other dresses were almost in rags.

  She walked slowly down the wide staircase.

  As the Hitchins had left, she would now have to find something for her breakfast.

  She went into the kitchen and it seemed even more empty than usual.

  Then just in case something had been overlooked she walked into the larder.

  The first thing she saw was one egg and enough beans to make a cup of coffee.

  Devona knew that Mrs. Hitchin had thought of her before they left and she could not help thinking that they were much kinder to her than anyone had been to them.

  How was it possible that the Earl could have treated them so badly?

  Once again she thought that she would not tell the new Earl who had taken the silver, as, if he pursued the Hitchins and found them, they would be sent to prison.

  There were a few ashes smouldering in the grate and she managed to light the fire and cook the egg.

  She ate it sitting forlornly at the kitchen table, but when she had drunk her coffee she felt better.

  She thought that she had better go to the stables, as Bill might not be aware that the Hitchins had left.

  He would be horrified to find that one of his best horses had gone and in fact there were only two horses that were worth anything anyway.

  She went out through the kitchen door and onto the path that led through the rhododendrons to the stable yard.

  Everything seemed very quiet as she went into the stalls thinking that she would look first at the horses and she wanted to see which one the Hitchins had taken.

  To her astonishment every stall was empty.

  She could not believe it and felt that her eyes must be deceiving her.

  Then, as she walked back into the yard, she looked towards the far end of the paddock.

  There were horses there, three in fact and they were the old ones that were seldom used, but there was no sign of the two best horses that she loved.

  Devona thought that she must ask Bill what had happened, so she went along to what was called his house.

  It was actually two small uncomfortable rooms at the end of the stables and years ago someone must have
put in a stove that did not work anymore.

  Devona knew that Bill had his meals in the kitchen with the Hitchins and she was only surprised at his age that he somehow made it through the winter. He might easily have died from the cold as her mother had done.

  She knocked on the door, but there was no answer.

  Then she saw that it was unlocked and opened it.

  “Bill!” she called out. “Are you there, Bill?”

  Again there was no reply.

  She opened the door further and saw that the two rooms were completely empty and she had a suspicion that the wardrobe in one of them was empty too.

  ‘Bill must have gone with the Hitchins,’ she mused.

  She could understand him wanting to do so and he was doubtless afraid, as they were, of being turned away without enough money to support himself.

  Devona crossed over the yard to the barn where the carriages were kept.

  They were all ancient and there was a large number of them. As nothing at The Hall was ever thrown away, there were even carriages without wheels and others were without any covers to the seats.

  However, Devona saw, the moment she looked in, what was missing – it was the largest and most comfortable of the carriages that could be drawn by two horses.

  It was not difficult to guess what had happened.

  Bill had gone with the Hitchins and taken the best horses and the most comfortable carriage that would take them to London, where they could then sell the silver and it would be impossible to trace them.

  Even more difficult, Devona thought, if she did not tell the new Earl the names of the servants or let him know when they had actually left.

  She walked back slowly to the house.

  Now she knew that she had to think of herself.

  Supposing the new Earl was anything like his uncle he might turn her away without a penny and he would say that her services were no longer required and he did not feel any obligation to her.

  Devona had been frightened last night, but now she felt not only frightened but helpless.

  What could she do?

  Where could she go?

  She only had one friend in the whole world.

  In fact the only person she even had any contact with, except the people at The Hall, was Mr. Alton.