The Midnight Peacock Read online

  With that, she sailed out of the door. Sophie grinned at the two boys, and then followed behind her.

  Billy and Joe exchanged glances over the mess of tea things they had left behind them.

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Billy, shaking his head. ‘That’s just absolutely typical.’

  Far from London, the snow was also falling on Winter Hall. When Tilly peeped out into the dark, she could see that the flakes were coming down thick and fast. She let the curtain fall back across her bedroom window, and scrambled gladly into bed under the weight of the heavy blankets.

  Her room was at the top of the house and was almost always cold, especially at this time of year. It was a very plain room, like all the maids’ bedrooms: simply furnished with two little beds, a chest of drawers, and a washstand. She shared with Sarah; under-housemaids and scullery maids were not considered important enough to have rooms to themselves. Now, she could hear the heavy sound of Sarah’s breathing in the next bed: she was already fast asleep after a long day of scrubbing and washing in the scullery. Tilly didn’t mind that; some nights she felt like talking, but tonight she wanted to think. She snuggled down under the covers, tucking her cold feet up underneath her, and thought back to that moment in the East Wing when her candle had snuffed out, and she’d been plunged into darkness.

  She admitted it to herself now: she had been frightened out of her life when that awful shadow had reached out towards her. She had even screamed – thank goodness no one had been around to hear her! But she’d managed to get up and scramble away, back down the passage. She hadn’t dared stop to catch her breath until she was back in the dazzling light of the hallway, with the door to the East Wing closed firmly behind her. She hadn’t even had the nerve to take a peep and see if that dark shape – whatever it was – had tried to follow her. Instead, she’d walked back as swiftly as she could to the servants’ quarters, trying to look cool and calm when a footman came by with the coffee tray for the Drawing Room.

  Of course, she hadn’t breathed so much as a word about what had happened to the others. She knew that Lizzie would crow over her about it for weeks if she did. Besides, she felt quite sure now that whatever it was she had seen, it must have a rational explanation. She knew there were no such things as ghosts – and that meant she had seen a person, someone who was trying to frighten her.

  Strolling back into the Servants’ Hall as though nothing unusual had happened, she’d carelessly tossed the duster over in Lizzie’s direction – but it didn’t have at all the effect she had expected. In fact, the other housemaid paid her no attention whatsoever. William, His Lordship’s valet, had come in with news about the Christmas house party, and everyone was gathered round him, hanging on to his every word. Christmas at Winter Hall was always a grand affair, and the servants were all eager to know who would be attending this year.

  As Tilly joined the little circle, she saw that Charlie, the under-footman was there, and she stared at him through narrowed eyes. There was no doubt that frightening the life out of her and Lizzie was exactly the sort of idiotic thing he’d find hilarious. But if he’d been pretending to be a ghost in the East Wing five minutes ago, however had he managed to get back below stairs before her? At that moment, Charlie caught her staring and gave her a cheeky wink. What was that supposed to mean, she wondered indignantly? Was it meant to be some kind of acknowledgement of what he had done?

  ‘It’s such a shame that Miss Helen won’t be joining us for Christmas,’ Lizzie was saying.

  ‘She’s Mrs Godwin now,’ William corrected her. ‘And of course, she’ll be spending Christmas with her husband and children. That’s quite right and proper. But Mr Vincent is here – and Miss Leonora will be coming home from Town tomorrow.’

  Miss Leo! Tilly forgot all about the ghost for a second, as her stomach gave an excited flip of gladness. It would be wonderful to have Miss Leo home again.

  ‘Also arriving tomorrow is the Countess of Alconborough, and with her, the Whiteley family – Mr Charles Whiteley, Mrs Isabel Whiteley and Miss Veronica Whiteley,’ announced William importantly. There was an interested murmur at this. The Dowager Countess of Alconborough was a familiar face at Winter Hall – but the Whiteley family were new.

  ‘That’s three ladies’ maids, then – and likely a valet too, for the gentleman,’ said Emma, the head housemaid, whose mind ran on very practical lines. ‘Who are they, these Whiteleys?’

  ‘Mr Whiteley is in the mining business,’ went on William, his tone making it evident that business was to be considered a little coarse and improper. ‘Mrs Whiteley is his second wife – and before she married, she was Miss Isabel Hampton-Lacey, of the Staffordshire Hampton-Laceys.’

  They all nodded approvingly at this. Knowing the ins and outs of all the society families was an important part of working at Winter Hall: Mrs Dawes’ copy of Debrett’s was even more well-thumbed than Her Ladyship’s own.

  ‘Miss Veronica is his daughter from his first marriage,’ William explained. ‘She is about Miss Leonora’s age – or perhaps a little older – and she made her debut this summer. I believe she is a very pretty young lady, with a large fortune.’

  Lizzie pounced on this at once: ‘I’ll bet you they’re thinking about a match for Mr Vincent!’

  ‘Surely they’ll not be thinking of marrying him off just yet, poor fellow,’ said Charlie.

  Ella giggled. ‘Ooh – I wish they’d marry him off to me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I think Mr Vincent is ever so handsome!’

  Ma came bustling in from the kitchen, just in time to overhear this last remark. ‘That’s quite enough of that sort of thing,’ she said at once. ‘Mrs Dawes would have your guts for garters if she heard you talking like that, miss – and well you know it. Besides, we’ve got plenty to do without standing around gossiping. William, you’d better finish clearing the Dining Room – and Sarah, there’s a stack of washing-up waiting for you in the scullery. Give her a hand with the drying, will you, Tilly love? I don’t want butterfingers here breaking His Lordship’s best brandy glasses.’ But she patted Sarah gently on the shoulder as she said it: Ma’s bark was generally much worse than her bite.

  Tilly followed Sarah through into the kitchen, rather glad to have an excuse to get away and think. But as she carefully dried the glasses and put them away in their proper place, all she felt sure of was that the apparition in the passageway couldn’t possibly have been a prank of Charlie’s. He was only a lad – he might be tall, but he was too much like a beanpole to have been that big threatening figure, with its heavy plodding footsteps. Besides, he’d never have been able to beat her back to the Servants’ Hall.

  Now, as she lay in bed, she decided three things. First of all, she would go back to the East Wing tomorrow morning, and have a good look around. Secondly, when she was dusting the Library later, she’d pinch that book she’d read before – the one about ghosts. She wasn’t supposed to take books from the Library, of course – she couldn’t even imagine the dressing-down Mr Stokes the butler would give her, if he ever caught her at it. But she’d been doing it for as long as she could remember, and she’d never been caught yet. After all, it wasn’t as though His Lordship would miss them. In spite of having all those hundreds of books, Tilly had never seen him read much besides the newspaper.

  Thirdly, and most importantly, she decided she would tell Miss Leo all about it when she came home tomorrow. Whilst she didn’t fancy talking to Sarah or any of the others – she’d likely work them up into even more of a tizz about ghosts if she did – Tilly knew that she could confide in Miss Leo.

  She snuggled down further under the blankets, hugging the thought that her friend would soon be home. Miss Leo, or to give her her proper name, Miss Leonora, was three years older than Tilly, but, perhaps because she had been very ill with polio as a child, and had spent so much time in bed, she had always seemed younger than she really was. She was quite different from her older sister and brother – and not only because of the crutch she had used ever
since her illness. She was the only one of the family ever to be seen in the Servants’ Hall. She had been everyone’s pet when she was small: Ma would always let her scrape out the mixing bowl, or give her a bun hot from the oven. ‘Poor little mite,’ she’d say, when Miss Leo had gone.

  In those days, Tilly and Miss Leo had played together, just as if they were sisters. Miss Leo had been Tilly’s best friend in the world. They understood each other: Miss Leo knew that Tilly would prefer tinkering with the workings of a clock or reading a book about scientific inventions than sewing or polishing; just as Tilly knew that Miss Leo would rather paint or draw than sit primly in the Nursery embroidering in a pretty dress.

  Tilly knew too that Miss Leo’s life was a lonely one. She’d never been to school or spent much time with other children – and when she did, she had to put up with their whispers and giggles, all because she had a bad leg. Tilly knew how that felt – she’d spent enough time at school being taunted and jeered at because she didn’t look like the other girls. She knew how to deal with that: she just put her head in the air and ignored them, knowing that they’d be laughing on the other side of their faces when she came out top of the class. But Miss Leo had never had the chance to toughen up. When she wasn’t with Tilly, she was always by herself.

  What was worse, as they got older, Ma and Nanny, who ruled the Nursery, did not seem to approve of their friendship any longer. They wanted to keep Tilly and Miss Leo shut up in their separate boxes: Leo in the Nursery, all dressed up in a velvet frock with a frilly white petticoat; Tilly in the kitchen, shelling peas or doing a bit of mending for Mrs Dawes. It was as if they were two dolls, Tilly used to think, neatly tidied into their rightful places like the porcelain figures in Miss Leo’s big doll’s house.

  ‘Know your place,’ Ma told her, but Tilly had found ways to make sure she and Miss Leo could keep being friends. After school, she made sure she was always on hand to hang up Miss Leo’s clothes or run her bath or stoke up the Nursery fire. ‘She’s getting to be a good little maid, isn’t she?’ Ma said proudly to Nanny, but Tilly and Miss Leo just grinned at each other, knowing they had found a way to make sure they could still spend time together.

  Ma approved of Tilly waiting on Miss Leo. ‘You’re a bright girl,’ she’d say, as she rolled out pastry for a game pie, or stuffed the mutton for a luncheon party. ‘Quick and handy – and so sharp you’ll cut yourself one of these days. Miss Leo’s of an age to be needing her own lady’s maid soon, and if you play your cards right . . .’

  She hadn’t needed to finish the sentence. Tilly knew exactly the picture that was in Ma’s head. She was imagining Tilly as a proper lady’s maid in a black frock with a lace collar, permitted to sit up at the top of the table in the Servants’ Hall, and to take her tea in the housekeeper’s room. Only a housekeeper or a butler ranked higher than a lady’s maid, and Ma had grand ambitions for Tilly. But what Tilly had never admitted to Ma is that she wasn’t so sure that she really wanted to be a lady’s maid at all. Waiting on Miss Leo was a good way to make sure they could spend time together, but there were so many more interesting things that Tilly could do than fuss about with hairstyles and dresses. His Lordship had recently bought his first motor car, and Tilly hung about the garage whenever she had a free moment, breathing in the wonderful petrol smell, and staring at the big shiny machine with its roaring engine. She wondered how it would feel to drive it. Could girls be chauffeurs, she wondered? She’d much rather do that.

  Then Miss Leo had managed to persuade Her Ladyship and His Lordship that she should be allowed to go off to London to study art. Tilly couldn’t even imagine what London might be like, though she’d seen photographs of it in the newspapers that His Lordship left scattered about the Library. Fascinating pictures of big new buildings and busy streets jammed with people and bicycles and automobiles and motor buses. She wondered what it would be like to live somewhere like that – London or maybe Oxford, where Mr Vincent had gone to university. Tilly knew from Miss Leo that young ladies could study there too, although they wouldn’t be awarded a proper degree, as the young gentlemen were. But they could still learn Latin and Greek and science and mathematics. For a moment, she imagined going there herself. She’d study mechanical sciences, she thought, so she could learn all about how machines worked.

  Ma always said that these kinds of thoughts did her no good, and that Tilly oughtn’t to ‘get ideas above her station’. It didn’t matter tuppence to her that Tilly had always been top of the class at the village school, nor that Alf, His Lordship’s chauffeur, said he’d never known any lad get his head round the workings of a motor engine half so quick as Tilly. There would be no thought of any more schooling for a girl like her. Even spending too much time in the garage was frowned upon. ‘You keep your feet on the ground, my girl,’ Ma said. Tilly sighed to herself in the dark.

  But at least Miss Leo would be back tomorrow – and Tilly could hear all about what London was really like. Thinking of tomorrow, she rolled over and blew out the candle in one sharp breath. She’d have to be up before six to sweep the grates and make the fires and take up the early morning tea trays. Putting all thoughts of ghosts – and Miss Leo – firmly out of her head, Tilly closed her eyes and made up her mind to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mr Lim raised his eyebrows as he peered at the newspaper. ‘A New Year’s Eve Ball? So this is Mr Sinclair’s latest scheme!’

  ‘It’s going to be his grandest yet!’ said Lil. ‘There are all kinds of special entertainments planned – but the best part will be the fireworks on Piccadilly Circus at midnight.’

  Mei Lim was looking over her father’s shoulder at the newspaper, her long black plait falling forward as she did so. ‘Is it really true that the King is going to be there?’ she asked, her eyes wide.

  ‘It sounds unlikely, I know,’ admitted Sophie. ‘But apparently the Queen is a great admirer of Monsieur Chevalier – and the King knows Mr Sinclair too, of course.’

  ‘Mr Sinclair knows everybody,’ added Lil. ‘The King is even going to make a special appearance to the crowds outside, from the balcony of the Marble Court Restaurant. It’s supposed to be a secret but of course, everyone knows about it.’

  Sophie smiled, knowing exactly what she meant: a secret was never a secret for very long at Sinclair’s.

  ‘Well, I s’pose the King does have good reason to think well of Sinclair’s,’ said Mei’s older brother Song, from where he stood at the stove, stirring a big iron pot that smelled deliciously of ginger and spices. ‘After all, it’s thanks to Sinclair’s very own detective agency that he got back the painting that was stolen from him,’ he went on, with a grin.

  The rest of them were crowded around the table in the little back room of the Lim family grocer’s shop. L.LIM & SONS couldn’t have been more different from the grand Sinclair’s department store, but it was one of Sophie’s favourite places in the world. Tonight, the back room felt even cosier than usual, in the light of the flickering gas lamp, with the snow still coming down outside. At one end of the table, Mei and Song’s younger brothers – the twins, Shen and Jian – were drawing with a new packet of coloured chalks that Leo had sent them as a Christmas present. Whilst Lil regaled Mr Lim with a lively account of one of Taylor & Rose’s recent cases, Mei and Sophie helped Song bring the dishes over to the table, and a few moments later, Mrs Lim came bustling through from the shop to join them for the evening meal.

  ‘So how did it go this evening?’ she asked, squeezing in between Lil and Mr Lim, adding to the twins: ‘Boys, put those away – it’s time to eat.’

  ‘Do you know, I really think it might have been our best session yet,’ declared Mr Lim proudly. ‘Some of our young ladies are proving themselves very talented.’

  Song chuckled as he took his seat on a stool next to Sophie. ‘Maybe some of them are a bit too talented. I was worried that Miss Clifton was going to do Lil an injury!’

  ‘Huh – that’s what you think!’ declared Lil,
brandishing her fork. ‘I could get the better of Connie any day you like.’

  ‘And are you girls still telling people that you all belong to a sewing society?’ asked Mrs Lim.

  Lil grinned. ‘Of course. We say we’re sewing banners for the suffragettes to carry in their parades. Even Billy and Joe don’t know what we’re really up to.’

  ‘I still don’t understand why it has to be such a secret,’ said Song.

  ‘We promised that we’d keep it quiet,’ Sophie explained. ‘Some of the girls are worried that their parents wouldn’t like it. They’d think it improper.’

  ‘And a sewing society sounds so frightfully innocent,’ said Lil with satisfaction. ‘Not even the most prim mama could possibly object to that!’

  Mr Lim frowned. ‘I hope that none of the girls’ parents would have any serious objections to the classes,’ he said in a worried tone. ‘I wouldn’t want any of them to find themselves in trouble at home.’

  ‘Trouble at home isn’t the half of it!’ exclaimed Lil at once. ‘Why, some of these girls are doing awfully dangerous things – taking part in rowdy protests, and chaining themselves to railings, and goodness knows what else! It’s fearfully important that they can defend themselves properly.’

  ‘It’s a good thing we’re doing, Dad,’ Song reassured his father.

  ‘I think so too,’ agreed Mrs Lim decisively. ‘The way I see it, a young girl should know a little about how to defend herself. With any luck, most of them won’t need it – but there’s certainly no harm in being prepared.’