LITMIR.BIZ

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anger vanished from the voice and was replaced with an almost girlish excitement.

      ‘Ooh, it’s you, is it? And who’s that there with you? Brought a friend? What must you think of me? I’ll be down in two rattles of a sheep’s whatsit.’

      The face withdrew and moments later the front door opened.

      ‘Fetch yourselves in – don’t be shy. Why didn’t you let me know in the usual way, or use the passage? If I’d known you was coming to visit I’d have spruced the place up a bit and flicked a duster about, and here I am with curling papers in my hair.’

      ‘I’m not going in one of them stone boxes!’ Hesper refused, stepping away.

      ‘Don’t be like that. I’ve got fruit cake keeping fresh in a tin. Happen you’ll not have had fruit cake before. Ooh, you don’t know what you’ve been missing.’

      ‘Nannie Burdon,’ Nettie greeted sombrely. ‘See what we bring – a human child, spat out of the darkness. I fear there’s only a gasp of life left in her.’

      The woman on the doorstep peered through the mist at the girl lying on the ground.

      ‘Get her inside,’ she said sharply.

      And so the Whitby witch and Nettie carried Lil Wilson into the cottage.

      Grace Pickering placed the covered dish of curried mutton and rice on to a tray and shook her head.

      ‘He won’t touch none of it,’ she said, wrinkling her nose at the aromatic scent that had filled the kitchen.

      Mrs Paddock, the cook, leaned across the wide table and rapped the back of Grace’s hand with a wooden spoon.

      ‘The master’s young ward is accustomed to stronger flavours than plain fish and mashed turnip, or whatever else you were used to in your shabby hovel on the East Cliff, my girl,’ she scolded. ‘They wolf down all manner of spiced dishes in foreign parts, them being foreigners.’

      ‘He didn’t fancy that kedgeree this morning, nor them devil’s eggs at dinner time, if he even got so much as a whiff of them. I don’t think Mrs Axmill is giving them to him. And my home weren’t shabby – just crowded was all. Kept it spick and span for my dad I did.’

      ‘Devilled eggs,’ Mrs Paddock corrected. ‘And it was luncheon, you ought to know that by now, Flossy; you’ve been here since Penny Hedge day and here we are at the back end of August. And you just keep those nasty suspicions about Mrs Axmill to yourself. If you start flinging slanderous accusations around, you’ll be out on your ear and worse.’

      ‘Don’t think I’d care much. It were a different household when I joined. It weren’t on its ears back then. ’Sides, I can’t never get used to being called Flossy!’

      ‘That’s what your name brooch says and that’s who you’ll be for as long as you’re in service in this house so you can cut that backchat, else I’ll put a dent in my turbot kettle the shape of your head. The mistress has her quaint fancies and she always likes her maids to be called Flossy. Goodness, you can’t expect her to learn the name of every new chit of a girl what Oakeys her doorknobs and dusts her conversation pieces.’

      ‘But Mistress in’t here – and Esme kept her proper name. It’s not fair. Flossy’s what you’d call a dray horse.’

      Mrs Paddock pursed her lips and the apron that barely contained her meaty frame inflated with indignation.

      ‘Don’t you mention that ungrateful wretch Esme Fuller to me!’ she snorted. ‘Up and vanishing in the dead of night, leaving me without a scullery maid to do the heavy work and wash the pots. I can only wish her the very worst and that’s the Almighty’s honest truth of it.’

      ‘She were frightened, that’s what it were – with good reason. She’d never have gone otherwise. It’s ever since the family went away and he took over Bagdale.’

      ‘Frightened? Fiddle-faddle! Mrs Axmill told me she’d slunk off with some gawky farm lout from the Dales. Disgraceful! Always knew the girl had dirty hands, but it’s a stained reputation she’s got now. Fie and shame! And her with a face covered in more blackheads than a Sunday seed cake. All I can say is they must be powerful short of female company up in them Dales if Esme Fuller is thought to be any sort of catch.’

      ‘That’s unkind, Mrs Paddock. I liked little Esme – and she worked her hands raw for you. There weren’t a bone of a lie nor no wink of slyness in her whole body neither. She would’ve told me if she’d had a young man, and he’d have been the lucky one for it. Don’t care what Mrs Axmill says. I don’t trust her nohow; she’s swanning about the hall like she owns the place nowadays. No, Esme ran off because of the goings-on here.’

      ‘Plain absurdity! Why, there’s less than half the work to do with the family gone and most of the rooms locked up.’

      ‘It weren’t the work.’

      ‘What then, I ask you? It’s clear as custard to me.’

      ‘For one, there’s that wild beast the new master keeps locked in the red bedroom. Why won’t they tell us what it is? That great cage what got delivered was empty when it arrived but it in’t now. I’ve heard the scritching and scratching and the rattling of the bars – and them weird cries it makes in the dead of night, like a tortured child in hell. Scared Esme half to death it did; she swore sometimes it were right outside her window – and she saw eyes looking in at her.’

      ‘Through an attic window? It was in a hot-air balloon, I suppose, or perhaps it’s a Barbary ape and clambered up the ivy? Head full of dreams, that useless juggins!’

      ‘Weren’t just that neither. It’s the horrible feeling something is watching when there’s no one about, things moving on their own. I’d heard about the ghost in this place before I come here, but didn’t rightly believe in it. I does now and Esme said she’d felt foul breath on her face more than once.’

      ‘Chestnut stuffing and nonsense.’

      ‘And then there’s him, the new master. There’s a cruelness in his eyes – gives you gooseflesh it does. Devil’s eggs would suit him. They say Old Nick is dangerous handsome and that’s him right enough. I’m glad he’s not at home tonight – wish he’d dine out all the time so I wouldn’t have to serve him.’

      ‘Oh, the scandal! And him a Most Honourable, a marquess – almost a prince where he comes from! How wicked to think such evil thoughts of your betters! You’re only a squalid jet worker’s daughter. I won’t hear another word of it. Just you convey that there curried mutton to the new master’s poorly ward before it gets any colder.’

      Grace took up the tray and carried it to the door.

      ‘Make sure you set it down in front of him yourself, mind,’ the cook called after her, with a crinkle of concern in her voice. ‘Then come straight down again. There’s an apple dumpling in the oven which will surely get his appetite growling if the curry don’t manage it.’

      Grace caught the anxiety in the cook’s tone. She wasn’t alone in her suspicions then. Young Master Verne was as unlike his guardian as it was possible to be. He was a quiet, timid boy, whose thin face was marked with an expression of loss and grief. From the moment he arrived, Grace had felt sorry for him.

      With a nod to Mrs Paddock, she left the kitchen.

      Built in 1516, as well as being one of the oldest residences in Whitby, Bagdale Hall was also one of the finest. For many years it had fallen into disrepair, having been turned into a tenement, whose lodgers had chopped up the panelling and oak staircase to burn as fuel. Then in 1882 the dilapidated building had been acquired by Dr Henry Power, a renowned London surgeon, who

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