The moment she entered the house Emma knew that something was dreadfully amiss. She quietly closed the door behind her and went down into the kitchen. The fire blazed as always, the copper kettle hissed on the hob, but the delicious smell of breakfast cooking was noticeably absent. Cook sat in her chair near the fireplace, rocking to and fro, stifling her sobs and wiping her streaming eyes with the end of her apron, which was already sodden with her copious tears. Annie appeared to be reasonably controlled, and Emma strode rapidly across the flagged floor to her, hoping to elicit some information. But she perceived at once that Annie was as distraught as Cook, and she sat so rigidly in the chair she might have turned to a pillar of salt. Like Lot’s wife, Emma thought.
Emma flung the basket down on the floor hastily. ‘What’s wrong?’ she cried, looking from one to the other. ‘Why is Dr Mac here? It’s Master Edwin, isn’t it? He’s sick!’ Neither Cook nor Annie appeared to hear her words. Certainly they paid no attention to her. And the dysphoria and apprehension in the air instantly communicated itself to Emma, so sharply that she quaked inside. The overwrought Mrs Turner now looked up, an anguished expression on her apple-dumpling face, her eyes red-rimmed. She gazed at Emma mutely, obviously unable to speak, and then she burst into further paroxysms of tears, rocking herself more violently than ever, moaning loudly between her sobs.
Emma was frantic. She reached out and touched Annie gently on the shoulder. The petrified girl jumped nervously, as if Emma’s fingers had scourged her. She returned Emma’s questioning look with a mindless stare. Annie blinked several times, very rapidly, and her mouth jerked, but she remained silent. And then she began to quiver. Emma took hold of her firmly with her small strong hands, attempting to calm her, filled with a mixture of impatience, and the beginnings of real panic.
Emma now realized she must go and find Murgatroyd immediately, but at that very moment the butler appeared at the top of the stairs leading to the family’s living quarters. Emma’s eyes flew urgently to his face. It was more dolorous than ever. He was wearing his black butler’s coat, which was also unprecedented at this hour, when he was generally in his shirtsleeves and green baize apron, engaged in his pantry chores. On reaching the bottom of the stairs he leaned against the newel post and passed his hand over his brow in a futile gesture. His arrogant manner had been replaced by a deflated air, and this also registered most forcibly with Emma.
The bewildered girl took a few steps closer to him. ‘Summat serious has happened. It’s Master Edwin, isn’t it?’ she whispered. It was a statement rather than a question.
Murgatroyd looked down at her mournfully. ‘No, it’s the missis,’ he said.
‘She’s badly then, is she? That’s why Dr Mac’s here—’
‘She’s dead,’ interrupted Murgatroyd roughly, in a low harsh voice.
Emma took an involuntary step backward. She felt as if she had been struck across her face with great force. It seemed to her that all of the blood was draining out of her, and her legs trembled. Her voice was unsteady as she cried, ‘Dead!’
‘Aye, dead as a doornail,’ Murgatroyd muttered tersely, his darkening face revealing his distress, which was most genuine.
For a split second Emma lost all power of speech. Her mouth opened and closed stupidly in her extreme nervousness and shock. Finally, she managed to say, ‘But she wasn’t badly when I left on Thursday afternoon.’
‘No, and she weren’t poorly yesterday either,’ intoned Murgatroyd in a woebegone voice. He looked at Emma with gravity, and for once there was no hostility in his manner towards her. ‘She tummeled down t’stairs during t’night. Broke her neck, so Dr Mac says.’
Emma gasped, and, reeling, she gripped the edge of the table to steady herself. Her eyes, wide and dazed, were riveted on the butler.
Murgatroyd inclined his head in Annie’s direction. ‘Yon lass found her at five-thirty this morning, when she went up ter take t’ashes out of the grates. Stiff as a board the missis was. Lying at the bottom of the front staircase in the entrance hall. That she was, and in her nightclothes. Fair scared the living daylights out of yon Annie, who come running ter fetch me like the Divil himself was after her.’
‘It just can’t be so,’ Emma groaned, pressing her knuckles to her blanched mouth. Her eyes welled with tears.
‘Aye, horrible it was, ter see her lying there, her eyes wide and open and all starey like, and glazed. And her head dangling loose like a broken doll’s. I knows when I touched her she’d been dead for hours. Cold as marble, she was.’
Murgatroyd paused in his harrowing litany, and then went on, ‘I carried her upstairs, fair gentle like, and laid her on her bed. And she might not have been dead at all. She looked ever so beautiful, just like she always was, with all that golden hair strewn about the pillow. Except for her staring eyes. I tried ter close ’em. But they just wouldn’t shut. I had ter put two pennies on ’em, till Dr Mac got here. The poor, poor missis.’
The shaken and stupefied Emma dropped heavily into one of the chairs at the table. Tears were rolling down her cheeks, and she fished around in her pocket for the bit of clean rag that served as a handkerchief, and wiped her face. She hunched in the chair, so stunned and appalled she could hardly think. But gradually her composure returned, and it was then that she recognized she had grown extremely fond of Adele Fairley. She was doomed, Emma said to herself. And then she thought: I knew summat awful would happen here, in this terrible house, one day.
The silence in the sun-filled kitchen was leaden, broken only by the muffled sobs of the weeping Cook. After a few minutes, the butler emerged from his pantry and said, with sour bluntness, ‘All this ’ere weeping and wailing like a lot of banshees has ter stop, yer knows.’ He spoke to the room at large, his eyes sweeping over them all. ‘We have our duties ter attend ter. There’s the family ter consider.’
Emma looked at him alertly, thinking compassionately of Edwin and the grief he must be experiencing at the news of his mother’s untimely and shocking death. ‘The children,’ she said, through her subsiding tears, and blew her nose. ‘Do they know?’
‘Dr Mac’s talking ter Master Edwin in the library right this minute,’ Murgatroyd informed her. ‘I told Master Gerald meself, after I’d got the missis upstairs ter her room, and afore I sent Tom ter the village for the doctor. Master Gerald waited for Dr Mac, who dispatched him posthaste ter Newby Hall ter fetch the Squire home.’
‘What about Mrs Wainright?’ Emma ventured.
Murgatroyd threw her a scathing look. ‘Do yer think I’m a gormless fool, lass? I already thought of that. Dr Mac wrote out a telegram, and Master Gerald is ter send it ter her in Scotland, from t’first post office he comes ter that’s open.’ The butler cleared his throat, and went on, ‘Now, lass, let’s get a move on down ’ere. For a start, mash a pot of tea. The doctor needs a cup—’ He glanced around the room and his beady eyes settled on Mrs Turner. ‘So does Cook by the looks of it.’
Emma nodded, and hurried off to do as he had told her. Murgatroyd now addressed Cook in a louder voice. ‘Come on, Mrs Turner. Pull yourself together, woman. There’s a lot ter be done. We can’t all collapse, yer knows.’
Cook lifted her sorrowful face and regarded Murgatroyd fretfully. Her ample bosom was still heaving, but her sobbing had ceased. She pushed herself