A Web of Silk by Fiona Buckley

Author:Fiona Buckley [Buckley, Fiona]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781780291130
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2019-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Unromantic Interlude

It looked as though Brockley’s hope was not to be fulfilled. The very next day, Dale fell victim to the complaint that had already felled three of Frost’s employees. It seemed to be a kind of chesty cold. Sybil and I looked after her, in the intervals of continuing with the embroidery lessons. Sybil and the twins had developed a beautiful design based on the parterre garden and I introduced the girls to the technique of couching, in which a group of long stitches are fixed to the fabric by other stitches laid over them, crosswise and close, to make a smooth raised surface.

We were not surprised by Dale’s illness since she was prone to this type of thing, and fortunately none of us succumbed. The maidservant Bessie did, but mildly and she was soon about again. Dale’s attack was also quite mild. She was out of bed and attending to her duties, albeit wanly, on the Wednesday of the next week.

The manservant in the attic, however, was not so lucky, and throughout all the time of Dale’s illness he remained in his bed and we had no chance at all of investigating the attics. But on the Sunday, we did not go to church and Brockley searched Lambert’s room and the Hambles’ quarters while Lambert was holding a service in the chapel. The twins and Susie all attended too and I made a hurried search of their rooms as well.

We found nothing suspicious, but by then we were all certain that if the chest was hidden anywhere, the attics were the place to look.

For the time being, however, we couldn’t. So on the Monday, when I was sure that Dale was recovering properly, I took a day off, left her with Sybil and rode with Brockley to Hawkswood, where we collected Dr Joynings, and went on to Guildford to look in at Julius Stagg’s premises and inspect the progress of the new window. I was pleased with what I saw and so was Joynings. The design was finished and the making of the glass panes under way. I had already had a chance to look at the examples of Stagg’s work in the Knoll House chapel and knew it to be good. Brockley and I accompanied Dr Joynings back to his home beside his church. We then rode on to Hawkswood House to make sure all was well there and talked to Adam Wilder and Gladys, who both asked what the new window would look like. Gladys was grumpy about it.

‘I shan’t ever get to see that window close to. I’ll only see it from inside the church, where it’ll be up over my head – too far off for my old eyes to see rightly.’

Stagg had explained that when the panes were ready, the window would be assembled in his workshop and brought to Hawkswood by cart – ‘A very slow cart, with a placid pony in the shafts and the window safely wrapped in lambswool.’ I promised Gladys that when the cart arrived, she could be there to see it unpacked.

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