The Letters

Kate had gone to Kedleston looking for answers. By the time the carriage returned her to Derby, she had acquired several more questions.

Catherine Bell had not stolen the brooch from Nathaniel Curzon’s apartments. At least, not as the official story had it.

Whatever had disappeared from his rooms, Catherine had already left the house before she could have reached them.

There was one person who might have known why.

Judith Pike.

She had travelled with Catherine after Kedleston. She had lied about the drowning at Duffield Bridge. She had helped leave the cloak north of the bridge and allowed everyone searching for Catherine to believe that the river had taken her.

If Catherine had told anyone what actually happened at Kedleston, she would have told Judith.

Kate returned to the newspaper office. The clerk recognised Kate before she reached his desk and looked briefly as though he might hide. Nevertheless, he helped her once more through the bound volumes, this time in search of Judith.

Judith Pike appeared occasionally over the next several years. There were advertisements for performances in Derby, Chesterfield and Nottingham. Her name moved gradually down the bills as younger singers appeared above it.

In 1781 she married Thomas Harland.

Marriage notices led to parish entries, parish entries to names that proved to belong to entirely different Harlands, and one promising Thomas turned out to have been a hosier with six children and no apparent interest in music.

Kate found the right family eventually.

Thomas Harland had died in 1809. Judith had remained in Nottingham and taught singing for some years afterwards. A notice of Judith's own death, thirteen years earlier, gave her age as seventy-one and mentioned an only daughter, Margaret Weston.

Another search turned up Margaret's marriage to a Nottingham music teacher some thirty years earlier, and his death several years before Judith's. A commercial directory supplied the rest.

Mrs Margaret Weston taught music from a house near High Pavement.

Kate wrote before travelling.

The answer arrived four days later. Mrs Weston would be pleased to receive her.

Nottingham was busy when Kate arrived, the streets crowded with carts and people making the most of a dry morning between two days of rain. High Pavement stood above much of the town, its older houses pressed along the street in a mixture of brick and stone.

Margaret Weston’s house was narrow and plain. A brass plate beside the door announced lessons in singing and piano.

Kate knocked.

Music stopped somewhere inside.

After a few moments the door opened and a woman in her mid-fifties appeared. Her greying hair was drawn back severely, but the smile she gave Kate was warm.

“Miss Bell?”

“Yes.”

“Come in. You are fortunate. My pupil has just murdered the same scale for half an hour and her mother has finally taken pity on us both.”

From somewhere deeper in the house came an indignant young voice.

“I heard that, Mrs Weston!”

“I intended you to!”

A girl of about fourteen emerged carrying a music book, followed by a woman fastening her gloves. They made their farewells, and Margaret waited until the door had closed behind them.

Margaret led Kate into a small parlour overlooking the street. A piano occupied one wall. Music was stacked upon almost every horizontal surface except the two chairs beside the fire.

“I received your letter,” Margaret said. “You said you were looking for information about a woman my mother knew.”

“Catherine Bell.”

Margaret had been reaching for the teapot.

She stopped.

For a moment she simply looked at Kate.

Then she smiled.

“Well,” she said. “Mother would have enjoyed this. She always said somebody would come asking about Catherine one day. I think she had hoped it would have happened in her lifetime.”

“I take it nobody else ever did?”

“You are the first.”

Margaret poured the tea.

Kate looked down at the cup she had been given.

“My grandmother was Catherine’s cousin. I found something she wrote about visiting Catherine’s memorial the year after she died.”

“My mother loved Catherine very much. They had known one another from their days performing together, before I was born. She always said Catherine was the better singer and she the better judge of an audience.”

Kate smiled despite herself.

“That sounds like the sort of distinction friends make.”

“Oh yes. Mother said they had been rivals, of a sort, when they first joined the company. It did not last long. They remained close all her life.”

Kate looked up.

“All her life?”

Margaret’s expression changed.

“Of course.”

The words settled between them.

“You mean Catherine was still writing to her, after… After what happened?”

“Oh, for years, yes. Mother spoke of her often. I never met her myself, yet from all her tales I feel as though I grew up with Aunt Catherine. Mother told me Catherine had made another life and that she was happy in it. She told me never to believe what was said about her. Beyond that, she was careful.”

“Even with you?”

“Especially with me, I suspect.”

“Did your mother ever see her again?”

“I don’t know. I asked once. She said some promises were easier to keep if one did not answer every question put by an inquisitive daughter.”

Kate laughed softly.

“She sounds formidable.”

“That she was.”

Margaret regarded her for a moment.

“Would you like to read Catherine’s letters?”

Kate stared at her.

“You have them?”

Margaret rose before answering and left the room.

She returned carrying a wooden box with a sliding lid.

“My mother kept correspondence from everybody. Bills, invitations, notes asking whether she might perform at assemblies she had no intention of attending. I spent months sorting through it after she died.”

“I've been doing much the same with my grandmother's things,” Kate said.

Margaret placed the box on the table.

“These were kept separate.”

Inside lay several bundles of folded papers tied with ribbon. The uppermost had a single word written across it in Judith Harland’s hand.

Catherine

Kate reached towards them, then stopped.

“May I?”

“Of course.”

The papers had yellowed, and several sheets had broken along the folds. The outer address panels had been cut away; whatever postal markings they had carried were gone with them.

Kate read several in order, smiling at the easy familiarity between the two women.

One in particular caught her eye. It was dated June 1777.

Dear Judith,

You may refrain from telling me that you warned me, because I remember perfectly well and have no wish to give you the satisfaction.

I am ridiculously happy.

He came yesterday when he knew the others would be out. We walked almost as far as Mackworth before I accused him of having no intention of turning back at all.

You were wrong about one thing. He does not treat me as a diversion.

He brought me a gift. A brooch of gold set with small garnets, far finer than anything I have ever owned. I said it belonged to his family and ought to remain with them. He said that it was his to give, and that he wished me to have something which could not be mistaken for a trifle bought for any girl who happened to please him.

It is much too fine for me. That did not prevent me from keeping it.

He says our company is to perform at Kedleston later in the summer. I accused him of having arranged it merely so that he might see me there, which he denied so badly that I am certain it is true.

You may disapprove when next we meet.

C.

Kate stopped.

Margaret had been watching her.

“The brooch,” Kate said.

She unfolded the next letter.

It was dated 14 August.

Judith,

It is done.

He married her three days ago.

When I first heard, I thought someone had made a cruel joke of me

His message arrived this morning. He reminds me that we are to perform at Kedleston on Sunday and says he wishes to speak to me while I am there. There are things, he says, which cannot be put in writing.

He also says I am to bring the brooch.

I do not know which part angers me more, that he has married another woman or that he now writes as though the gift were a loan which has reached the end of its term.

I cannot withdraw from the engagement now without causing difficulty for you and the others. So I shall go, and I shall hear what he has to say.

C.

“Mother never forgave him,” said Margaret.

“Nathaniel?”

“She did not often speak of him. But when she did, it was never kindly.”

Kate turned to the next sheet.

Its date was almost two weeks later.

Dear Judith,

I am safe.

I must thank you again for all you have done for me. You risked much that night, whether you knew it or not. I am sorry they have turned their suspicions upon you. Everything happened so quickly that I thought only of getting away, not what it might cost you. I pray the consequences are not severe.

I have kept north as we agreed. I changed coaches twice and walked farther yesterday than I hope ever to walk again. I no longer know whether every man who looks at me is merely looking or has recognised me.

I am sorry you had to remain behind.

I know you will say there was no other way.

There ought to have been.

Before I left him, he asked who would believe me if he said the brooch had never been given at all. I thought it only anger. Your message tells me otherwise. Perhaps I ought to be astonished, though I find that I am not.

You ask what name I shall use. I do not yet know, only that I shall leave the old one behind. If Catherine Bell has drowned in the Derwent, then I mean to allow her a proper death. Whatever name I choose, it shall carry no echo of the old one. For now, send nothing until I write again.

C.

Kate looked at Margaret.

“She knew everyone believed she was dead.”

“Yes.”

Kate folded the letter carefully.

“And she let them.”

Margaret did not answer immediately.

“I used to think that was cruel,” she said. “Mother said it was easy to think so from a comfortable chair years afterwards.”

Kate glanced towards the fire.

“My grandmother was a girl of ten when the stone was raised. Her mother took her there the following year.”

They continued looking through the correspondence.

Some of the letters were brief. Catherine asked after old acquaintances Kate did not recognise. She complained of prices, weather and an innkeeper who had charged extra for a room with a fireplace whose principal achievement had been producing smoke.

In another she mentioned having found temporary work teaching two girls to sing.

The next letter which held her attention was dated several years later.

Judith,

You will laugh when I tell you that I have married.

He knows enough of my history to understand that there are things I cannot give him, including the name under which I was born. He says he has no particular use for it.

Edmund is patient, which is fortunate because I am not.

We have taken rooms in the city for the present. I think I prefer it here. In a village every stranger becomes a subject of enquiry before she has removed her bonnet. Here one may pass three people on the stairs and none will care where the others came from.

I have kept my promise to you and myself. I have not gone south again. Derbyshire lies far behind me, and so does Kedleston.

For the first time I believe it may remain there.

C.

“Edmund,” Kate said.

Margaret nodded. “She seemed happy. From what Mother said about Edmund, he was a good man.”

Kate read further.

Years passed between the letters Margaret selected.

Children appeared without announcement, first as infants who did not sleep and later as young people whose opinions were apparently both numerous and unwelcome.

One daughter wished to marry a man Catherine considered too solemn. A son broke his arm after climbing somewhere he had expressly been forbidden to climb. Edmund became ill one winter and recovered in time to complain about the cost of the physician.

The brooch was mentioned only once again.

Judith,

Mary found that old brooch among my things and asked why I never wear it.

I told her it was given to me when I was young and foolish.

She asked whether I regretted keeping it.

I realised I had not thought about that question for many years.

I do not.

That seemed answer enough.

C.

After everything that had followed it, the object itself had required only a few lines.

The letters continued.

The paper became newer. Catherine’s handwriting, once quick and sloping, grew heavier.

One letter was dated 1818.

Dear Judith,

The move across the city is finished at last, though the house looks as if every possession we have acquired in nearly forty years has been tipped into the rooms from a great height.

I like it already.

Edmund says the white paint makes the house cheerful, though it does rather stand out from the rest of the street. I told him it makes every mark of soot visible from afar.

The bells remain my only serious objection. I had thought myself accustomed to them before we came here, but on Sunday morning the windows shook so violently that Edmund accused me of exaggerating until his teacup rattled in its saucer.

The way is narrow enough that everyone knows when a delivery has arrived for everyone else. Yesterday two carts met almost nose to nose and neither driver would retreat. Half the street came out to advise them, which naturally made matters worse.

I confess I enjoyed it very much.

C.

Kate smiled.

“I think I should have liked her.”

“So did Mother.”

There were only three letters after that.

The last was written in 1824.

Judith,

I am slower now.

I dislike admitting it, so you will kindly not mention that I have done so.

I still walk through the city most mornings when the weather permits. I take the narrow passage beside the large brick house at the end of the road, because it saves me going the longer way around. Edmund says one day I shall admit the passage is too narrow and the longer way more sensible.

He will wait a long time.

The bells are no quieter. I may be.

We have not seen one another in more years than I care to count, yet I still find myself thinking of things I must tell you before remembering that I shall have to put them on paper.

When we were young I thought beginning again meant leaving everything behind. In truth, it did not. I carried more with me than I knew, some good and some otherwise.

I did not know what would become of me when we parted.

But it became a life.

That is more than I expected on the road north.

C.

Kate reached the end and found herself reluctant to fold the sheet.

For the first time since opening her grandmother's diary, Catherine Bell no longer seemed fixed at twenty-five.

She had been frightened and angry. Then she had simply gone on living.

She had married. Raised children. Complained about smoke, physicians, soot, neighbours, bells and the obstinacy of cart drivers.

She had grown old.

Kate looked at the date again.

“1824.”

“Mother died the following year,” Margaret said.

“Did you ever meet Catherine?”

Margaret shook her head.

“Neither did Mother, after 1777, from what the letters say.”

Kate returned the letter to the table.

“None of these give the name she was living under. Nor an address.”

Margaret picked up one of the folded sheets.

“Mother always cut the address panels away before she stored Catherine's letters.”

“Then she must have kept Catherine's address somewhere else. Did she have an address book?”

Margaret blinked.

Then she laughed.

“My mother kept everything.”

The address book was larger than Kate expected.

Its leather cover had split along the spine, and several loose pages had been pushed between others where Judith had evidently run out of room. Names were crossed through and rewritten. Addresses had arrows directing the reader to newer addresses elsewhere in the book. One unfortunate Mrs Wilmot appeared to have moved four times.

“This could take a while,” Kate said.

“I did warn you.”

Margaret brought more paper and left Kate at the table.

At first Kate copied every woman whose entry could conceivably belong to Catherine.

Then she began again and removed those Judith had plainly known before 1777, relatives Margaret could identify, and women whose deaths were recorded beside their names.

The list that remained still filled both sides of a sheet.

Kate copied it once more, more neatly.

Mrs Jane Langley	25 Church Street, Ashbourne	Mrs Frances Shaw	27 Friar Gate, Derby
Mrs Katherine Bower	5 King Street, Bakewell	Mrs Anne Fletcher	9 Ogleforth, York
Mrs Eliza Brown	52 Town Street, Duffield	Mrs Mary Harcourt	2 South Bailey, Durham
Mrs Hannah Bell	17 Bridge Street, Belper	Mrs Lydia Ward	5 Precentor’s Court, York
Mrs Rebecca Gould	8 Snitterton Road, Matlock	Mrs Catherine Price	15 Wardwick, Derby
Mrs Dorothy Webb	5 Hall Bank, Buxton	Mrs Eliza Mercer	22 Minster Yard, Lincoln
Mrs Sarah Porter	63 Saltergate, Chesterfield	Mrs Kitty Walker	16 Sadler Gate, Derby
Mrs Martha Ellis	1 West Gate, Mansfield	Mrs Susannah Whitby	12 Abbey Square, Chester
Mrs Ruth Green	19 Kirkgate, Newark-on-Trent	Mrs Mary Bell	19 Iron Gate, Derby
Mrs Lucy Hall	86 Bridge Street, Worksop	Mrs Frances Hartley	26 Abbey Street, Carlisle
Mrs Abigail Whitby	8 St Mary’s Hill, Stamford	Mrs Catherine Foster	34 Stonegate, York
Mrs Phoebe Cooper	29 Highgate, Beverley	Mrs Anne Mercer	11 St Mary’s Gate, Derby
Mrs Martha Ward	25 Frenchgate, Richmond	Mrs Katherine Bellamy	41 Goodramgate, York
Mrs Jane Bellamy	15 Castle Street, Saffron Walden	Mrs Sarah Harwood	86 Bridge Gate, Derby
Mrs Charlotte Harcourt	70 High Street, Grantham	Mrs Catherine Hales	26 High Pavement, Nottingham
Mrs Eleanor Price	20 Market Place, Boston	Mrs Eleanor Bellwood	33 Castle Gate, Nottingham
Mrs Susannah Mercer	124 High Street, Knaresborough	Mrs Kitty Morley	24 Low Pavement, Nottingham
Mrs Anne Foster	37 Eastborough, Scarborough	Mrs Lydia Ford	26 Beacon Street, Lichfield
Mrs Eliza Hartley	27 Silver Street, Gainsborough	Mrs Grace Ellis	14 Vicars’ Close, Wells
Mrs Ruth Moore	41 High Street, Market Harborough	Mrs Kitty Moore	46 Micklegate, York

Margaret returned carrying a plate of bread and cheese.

“You have been very quiet.”

“Somewhere in this book is Catherine.”

Margaret glanced at the page. “Then Mother did not make it easy for you.”

Kate smiled.

“She did leave clues. Though, I expect, not intentionally.”

Kate looked back at the letters and placed the address book beside them.

She had begun with a memorial to a woman who had died at twenty-five.

Now, for the first time, she had enough to find the woman who had lived afterwards.