Jean was a well-behaved child, quiet and secretive. She lived in the servants’ quarters and was never in any way a nuisance in the household. She learned very early the useful skills of compliance and self-effacement; the Daltons were scarcely aware of her presence. As she got older, both her mother and Dorothy Nevett saw to it that she learned to perform little tasks about the place.
Bernard Dalton had been dead twelve months when Jean’s mother met her American and jumped at the chance to marry him. She asked Grace if she would allow Jean – then fifteen years old – to remain at Elmhurst until she finished her schooling; in return Jean would continue to do whatever she could in the way of household tasks. If Grace wished to employ her on a formal basis after she left school, well and good; if not, Jean could leave and look for employment elsewhere.
Grace readily agreed and Jean’s mother went blithely off to America. Grace saw to it that Jean kept in touch with her mother, but in spite of her efforts the correspondence soon diminished to an exchange of letters at Christmas. The marriage produced children Jean had seen only in very occasional photographs.
Grace did her best to persuade Jean to stay on at school, take some kind of training, but Jean wasn’t interested. Nor did she show any inclination to leave Elmhurst and go out into the world on her own. Before long, she had established herself as a very useful extra pair of hands about the house; she was always pleasant and willing.
Her position in the household began by degrees to alter. Grace started to make use of her in a more personal way, take greater interest in her; her footing became more like that of a companion help. This alteration found little favour in Dorothy Nevett’s eyes. Dorothy was a firm believer in knowing one’s place in life and sticking to it. She was deeply opposed to any attempt to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. And she was more than a little resentful, though she attempted not to show it, of what she saw as the girl’s favoured position in the household – a girl who had, after all, been born on the wrong side of the blanket.
In her last year at school, Jean had taken classes in shorthand and typing. When she left school she began to assist Grace with her correspondence, proving herself meticulously careful, reliable and conscientious. Grace wanted her to take a proper secretarial course to qualify her for a good post in the business world but Jean quietly and stubbornly resisted.
She had helped with nursing Grace over the last two years and here she had been a good deal less resistant when it was suggested she might take a course. She had been one of those Nina Dalton’s enthusiasm had swept into enrolling. Nina had found a place for her in a course held in Cannonbridge and she had acquitted herself very creditably.
There had been one brief period three years ago when Jean had caused Grace some real concern. She had met a boy two years older than herself, a good-looking drifter. She had fallen in love with him, wanted to marry him, there and then. Grace had put her foot down very firmly and the boy had drifted off elsewhere. There had never been another boyfriend.
Today, when Jean went along to Grace’s bedroom in answer to her summons, Grace gave her directions about various tasks, then she asked how Jean was getting on with her reading. Grace had drawn up an improving reading list and was encouraging Jean to plough her way through it.
As Jean was leaving the room again, Grace asked if Mrs Gosling was in the house and was told she was. Would Jean send her along?
Mrs Gosling came hurrying into the room a few minutes later, a cheerful, motherly woman with a ready smile. Grace asked how her quilting was progressing – Mrs Gosling was an expert quilter and at Grace’s suggestion had embarked on a set of cushion covers to be given as one of the prizes in a raffle in aid of the new hospice. She told Grace she was now working on the final cover and hoped to finish it in a couple of days. Grace was delighted; the draw was to take place next week. Grace had long been a supporter of the present Cannonbridge hospice and had helped from the start to raise funds for the new building, even in her invalid state, encouraging everyone connected with her to join in.
When Mrs Gosling had gone off again, Grace lay back and closed her eyes. She was feeling somewhat fatigued; time for a little rest before lunch. Inside a very few moments she had slipped into a pleasantly somnolent state in which the chirruping of the garden birds, the distant sounds of the household, mingled together in a lulling murmur.
By two-thirty lunch was over, the kitchen restored to order and Mrs Dalton settled down for her nap. Dorothy Nevett was up in her room on the top floor, enjoying an hour or two of leisure. She liked having her room up here, so beautifully private; she had had the whole floor to herself since the staff had been reduced. She paced about the room, her head full of the phone call she had received yesterday evening from her friend, Alice Upjohn.
Alice had lived next door to Dorothy when they were children; they had sat next to each other in school. When Alice was thirteen her father was transferred on promotion by his firm to a branch down south and the family was uprooted. But the two friends kept in regular touch, by letter in the early years but later spending holidays together.
When Alice left school, she began work as a clerk in a local government office; she continued living at home. The years slipped by. When she was forty-five her father died and her mother’s health soon afterwards began to deteriorate; she spent her final years in care. The house was sold to pay the nursing home fees and Alice moved into a small rented flat near the home; her mother lingered on for several years.
Alice had recently been offered early retirement in a cost-cutting exercise and had immediately accepted. She would be finishing work at the end of March; she would have a pension and a lump sum.
Dorothy and Alice had long shared a dream of buying a little cottage to retire to, in their favourite resort on the Dorset coast. As soon as Alice accepted the offer of early retirement, before saying a word to Dorothy, she contacted estate agents in the resort but quickly discovered that prices were way out of reach. Then she had an inspiration. She got on to every solicitor in the area and came at last upon what she was hoping for: a small cottage still to be disposed of at the tail-end of an estate, the executors ready to let the property go for a very reasonable sum if the transaction could be speedily put through. Alice’s lump sum, together with her savings and what she had inherited from her mother, would provide her half of the purchase price, as she had joyfully informed Dorothy over the phone yesterday evening. What about Dorothy? Could she provide her half?
Dorothy had her savings, she’d always been thrifty, but they were nowhere near enough. Then perhaps she could raise a mortgage for the balance, Alice suggested. ‘We’ll have to decide very quickly,’ Alice had gone on to say. ‘We’ll never get another chance like this.’ She had liked what she’d been told about the cottage but hadn’t yet had a chance to view it. ‘Try to get away for the weekend.’ she urged Dorothy over the phone. ‘If we find it’s what we want, you’ll have a few days after you get back to try to raise the money.’
Dorothy had approached Grace at lunchtime to ask if she could take a weekend break but she had said nothing about the cottage. Grace had readily assented.
Dorothy halted in her pacing to pick up from the top of her bureau a long frame holding three photographs of Alice: as a schoolgirl of thirteen, with dark curly hair and a shy smile; as a young woman, on their first holiday together; and the mature Alice, a few years ago, on another of their long succession of shared holidays, her figure almost as slender, her smile little changed.
She replaced the photograph, took down a jacket and left the room. She went quietly down the back stairs, out by a side door into the garden. No sign of Gosling. She spotted a garden lad at work