having seen the sterner side of Mrs S’s nature many times since then, feared her reception wouldn’t be so welcoming today. She must have spent an hour or so in Albert’s company: she really was very late.
And so it proved. Mrs S bore down the corridor towards her as Ella attempted to hang up her coat and slip unnoticed into the kitchen with her purchases.
‘Wherever have you been?’ Mrs S demanded, her gaze direct and angry. Scarcely waiting for a response, she continued, ‘You’d better smarten yourself up at once. Mr Ward wants a word with you. He’s in the library. With Mrs Ward.’
Ella was vaguely aware of pale, worried faces peeping around the kitchen door behind Mrs S’s back. There was a hush over the whole area, the usual noise and bustle subdued. Ella sensed that the other servants were frightened, but of what she couldn’t begin to imagine. She hastened to wash her hands and to tuck stray strands of her reddish-blonde hair under her cap, hurriedly pinned in place so that she looked like a proper parlourmaid as she pushed through the green baize door into the house itself, and into the chill of the hallway.
Her mind was in a whirl. Could she really be in this much trouble just for being late? Or had something happened at home? Surely, if this had been the case, Mrs S would have been the one to break the news? This had a much more serious air altogether. For the second time in less than a quarter of an hour, Ella took a deep breath and steeled herself. Then she knocked on the heavy door of the oak-panelled library, pushing it open when the murmur of voices within stilled and Mr Ward called ‘Enter’.
Mrs S was summoned to conduct Ella from the library to her room. Very little was said as they crossed the threshold through the green baize door and climbed the steep and narrow back stairs to the servants’ quarters, tucked away in the attics. Ella looked out of the windows as they crossed the half-landing on each floor to mount the next flight. The sky outside was darkening and, over the fields beyond the garden wall, lights were beginning to twinkle through a greying dusk. The rush to get everything ready for Christmas had resumed down below, but up here it was cold and quiet.
Mrs S broke the silence. ‘I’ve moved Doris out of the room. She can share with Rosa until it is decided what’s to be done.’
She pushed open the door to the room and Ella passed through, automatically heading for the window to gaze out.
‘You’d be as well to put your things together. I don’t think the master will be wanting to keep you after this.’ Mrs S sighed and closed the door. Ella, staring unseeing out of the window, heard the key click in the lock.
Her cheeks were hot with shame and indignation, her mind a jumble of words unsaid. The thought that floated to the top of this seething mass was the likelihood of the loss of her job. How would her mother manage without the money that Ella sent home to her? How could she begin to tell her what had happened?
Ella turned away from the window and sank onto the bed. Scenes from just a few minutes earlier began to play out in her head.
Mr Ward had been sitting at his desk, Mrs Ward silhouetted in the window, her back to the light so that Ella had found it difficult to read her expression. There was no mistaking Mr Ward’s mood, however. His brows were drawn together in a frown and his mouth pursed into a thin line.
‘Ella, we have reason to believe that you may have been involved in an act that has proved injurious to the health of one of our guests.’
Ella was puzzled, her mind racing to make sense of this turn of events. So it was nothing to do with her late return from town, or her family? This was something quite unexpected.
Mr Ward continued, ‘I see you do not deny it. You must have been aware of the potentially fatal consequences of your actions when you entered into this ridiculous pact with Grace. I would like you to go away and think very hard about your behaviour. I have already consulted Mrs Sugden about your character and, whilst she assures me that you have conducted yourself in an exemplary fashion whilst in our employment, I am not minded to be lenient in my view of this. You have run the risk of bringing my good name, and that of my family, into disrepute by your actions. You will go to your room, Ella, and think long and hard on this.’
He turned his attention back to papers on his desk, to signify the interview was at an end. Mrs Ward had not moved throughout Mr Ward’s speech but, as Ella turned to leave – stunned by what she had heard and unsure of how she might defend herself – she saw that Mrs Ward was gazing on her husband with an expression that was very hard to read.
On the silent walk to her room, Ella had struggled to piece the jigsaw together. Something had clearly happened that involved Grace, the youngest daughter of the household, and somehow Ella was taking the blame for it. With a sinking heart, she pictured the small bottle she had handed over to Grace earlier in the week. Stoppered by a cork and without benefit of a label, the pearly glass held a dark, mysterious liquid.
‘Shake it well,’ she’d whispered. ‘And mind, no more than two or three drops in his drink. Be sure to keep the bottle well hidden.’
Over on the other side of town, Albert could barely remember how he had found his way home from the tearoom after Ella had delivered the terrible news. After she’d gone, he’d been vaguely aware of curious glances, of conversations briefly stilled, of whispering behind hands. Within a minute or two, though, the large room was filled with its previous level of chatter and he had paid quickly and left, the atmosphere deeply at odds with his shocked frame of mind.
Alice was dead. Ella had given him no further details of what had happened to her sister, of how or exactly when it had happened. He couldn’t comprehend it. Throughout his apprenticeship, spent living alone in York, he had been sustained by the thought of the woods and valleys that surrounded Northwaite, his true home, and of Alice going about her day-to-day routine there. At first, he had thought more often of Alice than of his family, reliving her companionship on walks to the mill in the morning, his visit to see her at home when her baby Beth was born, the warmth and welcome of her family in such contrast to his own. He’d longed daily to be back in Northwaite, but as time passed in York and the opportunity to return home hadn’t arisen, the longing had faded into something held at a distance, in the back of his mind. Alice and Beth, he realised now, had become frozen in time, exactly as he had left them, seven years ago. Seven years! Albert was startled to realise just how much time had passed. No wonder seeing Ella had given him such a shock; she must be almost the same age as Alice had been when he had left Northwaite.
Albert had arrived home without being conscious of how he had done so, his feet treading an automatic path while his thoughts were engaged elsewhere. He needed to find Ella again, to discover exactly what had happened to Alice, and he knew he would have no rest until he had. And if he couldn’t find her, then he would return to Northwaite as soon as possible and seek the truth there. It wouldn’t be the return he had imagined, the return he had subconsciously been putting off until the moment was right. He had wanted to go back as a success, to show his family what he had made of himself, but above all to impress Alice. For well over a year now, his skills had been sought after both in York and elsewhere as word had spread within the close community of stonemasons. So why hadn’t he gone back? Had he feared that the vision he had held in his mind for so long, a fantasy of the part he could play in Alice’s life, could never be realised?
Albert thought back over the events of seven years ago. He tried hard to put the shocking news that he had just heard in context to see how it impacted on everything he knew. His career as a stonemason was a direct result of the fire at the mill, which had employed the majority of the working-age population in his home village of Northwaite. Alice had once worked there, Ella worked there and he himself was a nightwatchman there. On that fateful night, he had tried to put out the fire but it was beyond him, and the mill owner’s