Victoria Holt - The Secret Woman

A secret drawer!

She gave me the benefit of her grim mirthless laugh. “Nothing extraordinary. They had them made to conceal their jewelry from casual burglars or to put in papers or secret documents.”

I was so excited that I could not restrain my feelings and Aunt Charlotte was not displeased.

“Look here, I’ll show you. Nothing very special about this. You’ll often come across them. There’s a spring. It’s usually about here. Ah, there it is.” The back of the drawer opened like a door and displayed a cavity behind it.

“Aunt, there’s something there.”

She put in her hand and took it out. It was a figure, about six inches long. “It’s a woman,” I said. “Oh … it’s beautiful.”

“Plaster,” she said. “Worthless.”

She was scowling at it. Clearly it had no value. But to me it was intensely exciting, partly because it had been found in a secret drawer but chiefly because it had come from Castle Crediton.

She was turning it over in her hand. “It’s been broken off from something.”

“But why should it have been in the secret drawer?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “It’s not worth much,” she repeated.

“Aunt, may I have it in my room?”

She handed it over to me. “I’m surprised you are interested in a thing like that. It’s of no value.”

I slipped the figure into my apron pocket and picked up my duster. Aunt Charlotte returned to her accounts. As soon as she had gone I examined the figure. The hair was wild, the hands were outstretched, and long draperies were molded to look as though they were blowing in a strong wind. I wondered who had put it there in the secret drawer and why, if it were of no value. I also wondered whether we ought to take it back to Lady Crediton, but when I suggested this to Aunt Charlotte she pooh-poohed the idea. “They’d think you crazy. It’s worthless. Besides I overpaid her anyway. If it had been worth five pounds it would have been mine … for the price I gave her. But it’s not. It’s not worth five shillings.”

So the figure stood up on my dressing table and comforted me as I had not been comforted since my mother’s death. I very quickly noticed the half obliterated writing on the skirts and with the aid of a microscope I made out the inscription: The Secret Woman.

* * *

My father came home that year. He was changed, more remote than ever without my mother’s softening influence. I realized that the future I had looked forward to could never be. I had always known it could not be ideal without her but I had had dreams of joining my father, becoming his companion as she had been; I saw now how impossible that was.

He had become very silent and he had always been undemonstrative, and I had not the power to fascinate him that my mother had had.

He was leaving India, he told me, and was going to Africa. I read the papers and would know that there was trouble out there. We had a large Empire to protect and that meant that there would always be trouble in some remote spot on the globe. He had no desire now for anything but to serve the Queen and the Empire; and he was grateful — as I must always be — to Aunt Charlotte, for making it possible for him to feel at ease as to my welfare. In a year or so I should go to Switzerland to finish my education. It was what my mother had wished. A year there, say, and then we would see.

He went off to join his regiment and take part in the Zulu War.

Six months later we heard that he had been killed.

“He died as he would have wished to die,” said Aunt Charlotte.

I did not mourn as I did for my mother. By this time he had become a stranger to me.

* * *

I was seventeen. Aunt Charlotte was now my only relative, as she was fond of telling me, and I relied on her. I was beginning to think that to some extent she relied on me; but this was never mentioned.

The household seemed to have changed little in the ten years since I had first walked through that gate in the red wall, but life had changed drastically for me, though not for the inhabitants of the Queen’s House. They were nearly all ten years older, it was true. Ellen was now twenty-five; Mrs. Buckle had had her first grandchildren; Mrs. Morton looked almost exactly the same; Miss Beringer was now thirty-nine. Aunt Charlotte seemed to have changed less than any of us, but then I had always seen her as the grim old woman she appeared to be at that time. There is something timeless about the Aunt Charlottes of the world; they are born old and shrewd and stay so until the end.

I had discovered the reason why Redvers Stretton was at Castle Crediton. Ellen had told me on my sixteenth birthday because I was, as she said, no longer a child and it was time I started learning something about life which I couldn’t from a lot of worm-eaten old furniture. This was because I was increasing my knowledge considerably and even Aunt Charlotte was beginning to have a mild respect for my opinions.

“He’s got a sort of right to be up at the Castle,” Ellen told me one day when we were sitting on the seat looking across the river to that pile of gray stone, “but it’s what you might call a left-handed right.”

“What on earth is that, Ellen?”

“Ah, Miss Clever, you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

I said humbly that I would. And I heard the story. You had to learn about men, Ellen informed me. They were different from women; they could do certain things which while deplorable and not exactly right were to be forgiven if performed by men, whereas if a woman had done the same thing she would have been cut off from society. The fact was that Sir Edward was a very manly man.

“He was very fond of the ladies.”

“The ships you mean?”

“No, I don’t. I mean flesh and blood ladies. He’d been married to Lady Crediton for ten years and there was no child. It was a blow. Well, to cut a long story short. He took a fancy to his wife’s lady’s maid. They say he wanted to know whose fault it was, his or his wife’s that there weren’t any children, because what he wanted most of all was a son. It was a bit comic in a way … if you can think of anything so sinful as being comic. Lady Crediton found that at long last she was going to have a child. So was the lady’s maid.”

“And what did Lady Crediton say to that?” I pictured her seated in her chair, hands folded on her lap. Of course she would have looked different then. A young woman. Or comparatively young.

“They always said she was a clever woman. She wanted a son the same as he did, for the business, you see. And she was nearly forty. It was the very first and that is not the best time for having children, not first ones at least.”

“And the lady’s maid?”

“She was twenty-one. Sir Edward was cautious. Besides he wanted a son. Suppose Lady Crediton was to have a girl and the lady’s maid a son. You see, he was greedy. He wanted them both. And Lady Crediton, well, she’s a strange woman and it seems they came to terms. The two babies were to be born at about the same time and they were both going to be born in the Castle.”

“How very strange.”

“Well, there’s nothing ordinary about the Creditons,” said Ellen proudly.

“So the babies were born?”

“Yes, two boys. I reckon if he’d have known Lady Crediton was to have a boy he wouldn’t have had all the scandal. But how was he to know?”

Even Sir Edward didn’t know everything, I pointed out ironically, but Ellen was too carried away by the story to complain of my disrespect this time.

“So the two boys were to be brought up in the Castle and Sir Edward claimed them both. There was Rex.”

“He was to be the King.”

“Lady Crediton’s son,” said Ellen, “and Valerie Stretton’s was the other.”

So he is the other.

“Redvers. Valerie Stretton had the finest red hair you’ve ever seen. His turned out fair but he’s more like Sir Edward than like his mother. He was brought up with Master Rex; the same tutors, same school, and both brought up for the business. Young Red, he wanted to go to sea; perhaps Mr. Rex wanted it too, but he had to learn how to juggle with the money. So now you know.”

Ellen then went on to talk of something of greater interest — to her — than the Creditons’ “goings-on”: her own relationship with the fascinating Mr. Orfey, the furniture remover who would one day marry her, when he could offer her the home he considered worthy of her. Ellen sincerely hoped he would not wait too long for she was no longer so young and she would be content with one room and as she put it “Mr. Orfey’s love.” But Mr. Orfey was not like that. He wanted to be sure of what he called a settled future; he wanted to put the money down for a horse and cart of his own from which he would expand.

It was Ellen’s dream that one day a miracle would happen and the money would come from somewhere. Where did she think? I asked her. You never knew, she replied. Aunt Charlotte had once told her that if she was still in her employ at the time of her death there might be a little something for her. That was when Ellen had hinted that she might find more congenial employment elsewhere.

“You never know,” said Ellen. “But I’m not one to like waiting for dead men’s shoes.”

I listened half-heartedly to an account of the virtues of Mr. Orfey and all the time I was thinking of the man I had met — long ago now, the son of Sir Edward and the lady’s maid. I could not understand why I continued to think of him.

* * *

I was now eighteen.

“Finishing schools,” snapped Aunt Charlotte. “That was your mother’s nonsense. And where do you think the money would come from for finishing schools? Your father’s pay stopped with him and he saved nothing. Your mother saw to that. When he died I believe he was still paying off the debts she incurred. As for your future — it’s clear that you have a flair for this profession. Mind you, you have a lot to learn … and one is always learning, but I think you might be fairly promising. So you’ll leave school after next term and begin.”

That was what I did and when a year later Miss Beringer decided to get married, the arrangement from Aunt Charlotte’s point of view was ideal. “Old fool,” said Aunt Charlotte. “At her time of life. You’d think she’d know better.” Miss Beringer might have been an old fool but her husband wasn’t and, as Aunt Charlotte told me, Miss Beringer had put a little money into the business — that was the only reason why Aunt Charlotte had taken her in — and now that man was making difficulties. There were visits from lawyers which Aunt Charlotte did not like at all, and I supposed that they came to some arrangement.

It was true that I had a flair. I could go to a sale and my eyes would alight as if by magic on the most interesting pieces. Aunt Charlotte was pleased, though she rarely showed it; she stressed my errors of judgment which were becoming rarer and lightly passed over my successes which were growing more and more frequent.

In the town we became known as Old and Young Miss Brett and I knew that it was said that it was somehow not nice for a young girl to be involved in business; it was unfeminine and I should never find a husband. I should be another Miss Charlotte Brett in a few years time.

And it was borne home to me that that was exactly what Aunt Charlotte wanted.

The years were passing. I was twenty-one. Aunt Charlotte had developed an unpleasant complaint which she called “rheumatics”; her limbs were becoming more and more stiff and painful, and to her fury her movements were considerably restricted.

She was the last woman to accept illness; she rebelled against it, was impatient with my suggestion that she should see a doctor and did everything she could to continue with her active life.

Her attitude was slowly changing toward me as she relied on me more. She was constantly hinting at my duty, reminding me how she had taken me in, wondering what would have become of me if when I was orphaned she had not been at hand. I became friendly with John Carmel, an antique dealer who lived in the town of Marden some ten miles inland. We had met at a sale at a manor house and become friendly. After that he was constantly calling at the Queen’s House and inviting me to accompany him to sales.

We had not progressed beyond an interested friendship when his visits ceased abruptly. I was hurt and wondered why until I overheard Ellen say to Mrs. Morton, “She gave him the order of the boot. Oh yes, she did. I heard it all. I think it a shame. After all Miss has her life to lead. There’s no reason why she should be an old maid like her.”