Oliver Twist and the Mystery of Throate Manor Read online

  The creature snapped some instruction to her companion, and then the pair moved towards the dining room. The girl’s face was a mask of decorum, but Roger could tell from her eyes that she was unhappy, desperately unhappy. His heart went out to her, but he remained where he was. He reasoned that any approach now would not only be futile, but it may well land the girl in trouble with her disaffected employer. Within seconds they had disappeared into the dining room.

  Had Roger Lightwood been privy to Felicity Waring’s innermost thoughts he would have been shocked and dismayed. He had been accurate in his deduction that she was unhappy, but her unhappiness had nothing to do with her employer, Lady Wilhelmina Whitestone. After two years in her employ she had grown used to the ways and manners of the cheerless harridan and had learned to build an immunity against her carping and rudeness. Felicity regarded her as an ill-tempered pet one had been left to care for while the owner was on holiday. Ideally you would like to cage the beast and stow it in a dark cellar for the duration, but in deference to the owner one had to show it kindness and be prepared to tolerate its unpleasant and often hurtful behaviour.

  The cause of Felicity Waring’s unhappiness sprang from another source entirely. It was a source that would have wounded Roger Lightwood deeply. She was missing the man she loved. The man she hoped one day would marry her and, indeed, take her far away from the vituperate termagant who at this moment was seated opposite her at the dining table complaining about the soup.

  From practice Felicity filtered out the irksome croaking voice with its interminable babbling criticisms and allowed her mind to wander back to Milford Mansion, Lady Wilhelmina’s town house, and in particular to Arthur Wren, the leading footman there. Like a mirage, Arthur, tall, sandy haired with the neatest moustache imaginable, came wandering across the floor of the restaurant smiling at her. Or so it seemed, because she wished it. He had a manly military bearing, appropriate to his position, but he was also in possession of the kindest, sweetest nature.

  Initially they had been brought together by a mutual loathing of their employer. Each in their own way was constantly derided by the aged shrew. They were close targets for her foul petulant temper and her irascible wounding outbursts. Then as time wore on, they had formed a bond of intimate friendship which in the contained hot house of Milford Park, eventually germinated and blossomed into deep affection.

  ‘Do you hear me, child? Do stop daydreaming.’ Lady Wilhelmina’s harsh guillotine of a voice sliced through her daydream. Her ladyship thumped the table with vigour. ‘Do pay attention to me. That’s what I employ you for.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Felicity humbly. ‘It must be this sea air. It’s making me drowsy.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ came the reply. ‘You are always slipping off into your own little daydream world. It is time you got a grip of yourself, my girl. I did not engage you to think of other things other than me.’

  ‘Of course, Lady Whitestone.’

  ‘Now attract the waiter’s attention and see if it possible to obtain a piece of fresh bread to accompany this cold, unappetising soup.’

  Felicity did as she was bidden. She always did as she was bidden.

  The meal progressed as all meals with Lady Whitestone progressed: with a barrage of complaints and criticisms. Things were too soft, too hard, to hot, too cold, too bland, or too spicy. There were insufficient portions, there was too much; the meat was tough; the chicken was tasteless, the pheasant was too gamey; the pork was too greasy. Felicity wondered at the range and variety of her employer’s complaints. She never seemed to be at a loss in creating a fresh failing. And yet while she derided the inferior quality of the food, she always ate it.

  ‘Do you think we shall take to the promenade tomorrow?’ asked Felicity in an attempt to placate her employer.

  ‘How on earth should I know?’ came the churlish reply. ‘It all depends upon the weather. I require a moderate temperature. If it is too hot like today, I would shrivel in the heat.’

  It was an attractive image for Felicity.

  The meal completed, all courses complained about by Lady Whitestone but all courses devoured completely leaving a series of shining clean dishes, she sat back in her chair with a sigh. ‘Brighton is not like it used to be in my youth. There seems to be no society here at all, no culture, no people of breeding and refinement. Not one person in this hotel has come to pay their respects to me since I have been here. I may as well be just one of the ordinary guests.’

  For all her guile and ingenuity, Felicity had no notion how to respond to this minor diatribe so she turned on her standard sympathetic smile of agreement. As usual Lady Whitestone ignored it. ‘I tire,’ she said, emitting a dramatic sigh. ‘Come Miss Waring. It is time to return to our rooms.’

  ‘Very well, Lady Whitestone.’ Felicity rose quickly, circled the table and drawing back the chair, helped her employer from her seat. With the exaggerated stance of a female Moses parting the Red Sea, Lady Wilhelmina Whitestone made a theatrical exit from the dining room. Despite all her efforts, the majority of the diners did not notice. Those who did merely grinned at such clownish pomposity.

  Lady Whitestone’s routine of getting ready for bed was a long and tedious one. There were so many lotions and potions to administer to preserve ‘her youthful good looks.’ With patience Felicity Waring arranged the jars in order of application along the dressing table in her boudoir and applied the unguents to the appropriate location, be it her neck, her eyelids, her cheeks, her elbows or her hands. Then there was the session of hair brushing. Lady Whitestone unleashed the tangled grey web of hair from its elaborate and ridiculous arrangement until it fell free of the pins and slides which had kept it imprisoned during the day. Now it was kinked and wild, falling around her face not unlike a horse’s tail both in shape and texture. It was then Felicity’s task to brush in a constant rhythm for ten minutes.

  Once ensconced in bed with a little gin and water, Lady Whitestone laid back while Felicity Waring read to her, read to her until the old crone began to snore. This could take up to half an hour or longer for when she seemed almost on the brink of slumber, she would struggle to regain consciousness in order to indulge in another sip of gin.

  Eventually, sleep came to her and the rasping tones of her snores filled the chamber. It was then that Felicity Waring was released. The chain was temporarily severed and she was a free woman until daylight when her incarceration began again with Lady Whitestone’s morning ablutions which involved further potions and creams and the reversal of the hair procedure.

  As the buzz-saw breath resonated around her, Felicity sat back in her chair, closed the volume from which she had been reading and gave an almighty sigh, while asking herself the question which she did nightly: how much longer could she put up with this drudgery. The answer was depressing and wretched; she would put up with it forever. She was a young lady in possession of no fortune or prospects. She was and always would be at the beck and call of Lady Whitestone or some other selfish, pampered creature like her for the rest of her life. Even if dear Arthur proposed marriage, financial constraints would dictate that they retained their current positions within the penitentiary of the moneyed monster. The future looked bleak.

  Felicity turned down the lamp and repaired to her own modest bedroom next door. She gazed out of the window at the moon and shed a tear. She felt like a prisoner, gazing at freedom through her cell window.

  And then a reckless thought struck her. She glanced at the clock on the mantel shelf. It was only nine o’clock. Nine o’clock on a summer’s evening when the world was still at play, enjoying the pleasures and wonders of the night and she was relegated to go to bed. Go to bed! Why should she? Why must she? No, she would not. The spark of revolt flared within her. In an instant she had donned her bonnet and wrapped a light shawl about her shoulders and left her room. She carried out this procedure with great alacrity; her mind focused solely on the task in case cautious and sensible thoughts crept into her mind
and robbed her of the courage to carry out her plan. In the great schemes of the world, this was the simplest, the most innocuous of plans and yet to Felicity Waring it was daring with an air of rebellion about it. She intended to walk a while along the promenade, to mingle with humanity, to listen to the rish-rushing of the waves and gaze at that bold yellow, serene face hanging in the heavens surrounded by a myriad of twinkling stars.

  Of course, it was not the done thing for a respectable lady to take the air at such an hour unaccompanied but for once Felicity was of a mind to do what was not done.

  The air was still balmy along the promenade, despite the gentle breeze oozing in from the sea. And indeed there were still many people about who appeared to share a similar notion to Felicity’s. They would stroll awhile and then stand and stare up at the moon in a kind of delighted wonder.

  Felicity did not intend to wander far from the Royal Court. No matter how bold and determined she felt, she also maintained an element of protective common sense. However, so pleasant was the evening and so unfettered did she feel once she had left the confines of the hotel that she strayed further than she had planned. Suddenly she was aware that she had wandered beyond the crowds, the lights and the noise.

  She turned on her heels to retrace her step when a gravelly voice came to her from out of the darkness. ‘Hello, Miss,’ it said. ‘Lost yer way, ‘ave yer?’

  She could not see the person who spoke to her but the tone and nature of the enquiry told her quite clearly that this was a man she did not want to meet. Without a word, she moved on with greater speed only to bump into the owner of the voice, a tall, rough looking fellow dressed in the most eccentric manner as though he had borrowed his clothes from a series of disparate friends. He sported a grey top hat which had seen better days, a green checked jacket with a canary coloured waistcoat, brown jodhpurs and he carried a bamboo cane with a curled handle. Like his hat, his face had also seen better days. It was heavily lined and the pitted bulbous nose and bleary bloodshot eyes told of his liking for drink. A pair of decrepit whiskers lurked at either side of his unprepossessing face as though they were ashamed to make their presence known. At this moment in time, this gruesome fellow was grinning, revealing a graveyard of teeth. Those that still remained in situ were discoloured and pitched at an angle.

  He raised his hat in a charade of politeness. ‘As I was sayin’… you lost yer way, have you, miss?’

  Felicity shook her head and managed to elicit a reply. ‘No, thank you’, she said, before trying to sidestep the man and get past him. Practised at foiling such manoeuvres, he sidestepped with her and still remained a barrier.

  ‘A young lady like yourself shouldn’t be out this time o’ night out on your own. Who knows what mischief might occur. There are some very unpleasant coves about, I can tell you.’

  ‘Please let me pass.’ Felicity was surprised at the brusque confidence of her tone. It was no doubt fear that prompted this false courage.

  ‘Not so fast, my lady. Not until you show me what you got in that little bag of yours.’

  ‘I have nothing that would interest you.’

  ‘Come now, that can’t be the case, can it? Smart lady like yourself. Must have a few trinkets and some money in there.’

  ‘No, I do not. Now please let me go.’

  ‘You can go when I’ve taken a peek in your bag.’ A great hairy hand appeared out of the shadows and took hold of her bag with some force, but Felicity clasped it to her. The hand tugged harder but she held fast.

  The man’s face crumpled into a scowl. ‘Give it ter me or I’ll do yer,’ he grunted, all false civility extinguished, his piggy red-veined eyes flashing with fury.

  It was at this moment that Felicity gave a scream. So loud and piercing was it, and so unexpected by the brute before her that he released his grip upon her bag in surprise.

  Sensing her freedom, Felicity once more stepped to the side, but again her assailant in a bizarrely delicate terpsichorean action matched her movements and, casting his cane down on the ground, once more grabbed her bag, this time with both hands. For a few moments there was a farcical tug of war and then Felicity noticed that a strange white growth had materialised on the fellow’s shoulder. It took her a few seconds to realise that this was in fact a hand – a human hand. It belonged to a shadowy figure that had suddenly appeared behind the brute who was tugging at her handbag.

  The hand gripped her assailant’s shoulder and dragged him away from her and spun him round.

  The shadowy figure then bellowed, ‘You villain!’ before hitting the thief squarely on the jaw. He gave a cry of surprise and his knees began to buckle as though someone had suddenly removed the bones from his legs, but he recovered sufficiently to rise to his full height again, snarl and utter an oath before striking wildly at his foe. His fist smote thin air. Once again his opponent smacked him on the jaw with a powerful uppercut. This time his hat flew off and he sank to his knees. In desperation he reached out for his cane lying on the ground just within his grasp, but the shadowy figure observed the gesture in time and stamped hard with his foot on both the cane and the villain’s hand. He cried out in pain and surprise.

  ‘Me ‘and,’ he bellowed, scrabbling to his feet. ‘Me poor bleedin’ and.’ And with this testimony of his hurts, he disappeared swiftly into the darkness, leaving behind both his hat and cane.’

  The man stepped forward. ‘Are you unharmed?’ he said gently.

  Still shaking from this most unpleasant and dramatic episode, Felicity shook her head. ‘I am a little unnerved but I am not injured.’

  ‘Thank heavens for that’, said the stranger moving closer.

  She gazed up at her Sir Galahad and recognised him straight away. It was the young man who had bumped into her earlier in the day.

  He beamed at her and raised his hat. ‘We meet again, Miss…?’

  On this occasion he was vouchsafed her name. ‘Waring. Felicity Waring.’

  ‘Roger Lightwood at your service,’ he replied, bowing theatrically.

  She smiled in amusement. ‘I have much to thank you for, sir. If you had not chanced to come along at that moment…’ The smile faded and she shuddered. ‘I dread to think what would have happened.’

  Little did she know that Roger Lightwood had not chanced to come along at that moment. He had been following her, watching her, longing to make contact with her and capricious Fate had provided the opportunity in the shape of Barney Rickles, the opportunist thief who at this very moment was heading for a nearby ale house nursing his bruised knuckles.

  ‘I think it would be prudent if you allowed me to escort you back to your hotel. It is late and there are many more ruffians about at this time of night.’

  ‘I would like that,’ she demurred.

  ‘Please, take my arm.’

  She did as he requested.

  And so the pair strolled quietly back along the promenade to the Royal Court Hotel. It took a mere ten minutes to reach the destination but in that ten minutes the lives of these young people changed forever. Sometimes there are brief moments when Fate creates a kind of electricity between two individuals, two lonely souls, which bonds them together for eternity. Such a magical process occurred between Roger Lightwood and Felicity Waring in that short perambulation. The conversation was light and tinged with awkward politeness, but both felt strong undercurrents that made them tingle and as they occasionally caught each other’s glance, they both felt and knew what was happening.

  By the time they entered the hotel, they had exchanged brief biographies, placing their lives in context. Suddenly all awkwardness fell away. Polite decorum was abandoned allowing a closer intimacy to sweep in.

  Roger took Felicity’s hand in his. ‘Before you retire for the evening, would you take tea with me? I am sure it will help to calm your nerves’.

  Felicity did not hesitate. ‘Of course,’ she said, her eyes flashing with pleasure.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For Oliver Twist dinner that e
vening was a trial. To begin with, his mind was still awhirl with the implications of the task which had been set him by the respected client of Gripwind and Biddle, Sir Ebenezer Throate. It was a most surprising and onerous challenge. He had expected merely to review the details of the old man’s will and return to London, the business all done and dusted and consigned to the shelves in the firm’s vaults until it was time for his lordship to shuffle off this mortal coil. The prospect of finding the baronet’s illegitimate son filled Oliver with dread.

  Then there was the dinner itself. It was a stilted, excruciatingly formal affair in the draughtiest dining hall he ever had the misfortune to visit. From where he sat, he was prey of the sharpest and most penetrating shaft of cold air that Throate Manor could conjure. Conversation was desultory. Sir Ebenezer barely uttered a word while eating little and drinking copiously. Lady Amelia exchanged a few stilted pleasantries initially but subsequently ran out of steam also.