Victoria Holt: The Secret Woman

“Oh come on, Ellen,” I cried. “Don’t be silly. Tell.”

Ellen pressed her lips tightly together. I knew this mood and had never so far failed to wheedle from her what I wanted to know. I cajoled and threatened. I would betray her interest in the man who came with the firm of furniture movers and who often conveyed pieces to and from the Queen’s House; I would tell her sister that she had betrayed certain Crediton secrets to me already.

But she was firm. With the expression of a martyr about to be burned at the stake for her faith she refused to talk of Redvers Stretton.

If she had it would have been easier perhaps to forget him. But

I had to have something to stop my brooding on my mother’s death. Redvers Stretton supplied that need; and the fact that his presence at Castle Crediton was a mystery helped in those weeks to lighten the melancholy caused by my mother’s death.

The escritoire was put in the large room at the top of the house which was even more overflowing than the rest. This room had always fascinated me because the staircase leading to it was one of those which opened into the middle of it; the roof sloped at each end so that the ceiling was only a few inches from the floor. I thought it was the most interesting room in the house and tried to imagine what it had looked like before Aunt Charlotte had turned it into a store room. Mrs. Buckle always complained about it. How she was expected to keep that lot free from dust, she did not know. When I had come home from school last holidays Aunt Charlotte told me that I should have to sleep in the room which led off this top room because she had bought a new tallboy and two very special armchairs which had to be kept in my old room, so that I would not very easily be able to reach my bed. At first I had felt it rather eerie up there, but later I had begun to like it.

The escritoire was put between a cabinet full of Wedgwood china and a grandfather clock. When a piece came it was always thoroughly cleaned and I asked Aunt Charlotte if I could do this. She gruffly said I might and although it was against her principles to show pleasure she could not hide that this was how she felt about my interest. Mrs. Buckle showed me how to mix the beeswax and turpentine which we always used and I set to work. I polished that wood with extra loving care and I was thinking about Castle Crediton and chiefly Redvers Stretton and telling myself that I must find out from Ellen who he was when I was suddenly aware that there was something unusual about one of the drawers in the escritoire. It was smaller than the others and I could not understand why.

Excitedly I ran down to Aunt Charlotte’s sitting room where she was busy with her accounts. I said I thought there was something rather strange about the escritoire, and that brought her up to the top of the house at great speed.

She tapped on the drawer and smiled. “Oh yes. An old trick. There’s a secret drawer here.”

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.