An Improper English Mission Read online

  Margery was breathing faster now, and her dark eyes were like pointed arrows aimed directly at her husband.

  “It started out with penny numbers, a little here and a little there. Then, when no one took notice, the numbers started going up. I opened an account in a Swiss bank, and I can say with some confidence that in the intervening years we have become quite wealthy. We can do what we want, just not when we want. The timing from now on is critical. When it’s all done and dusted, Sir Gregory’s obligation to my mother and my grandmother will be paid in full, and you and I will be far away.”

  Chapter Two

  By the beginning of September Celia Attison had been managing director at The Moorlands for four months. She had been the board’s first choice out of the final three candidates because of her outstanding qualifications, references and much needed energy and vision. They hoped she could breathe new life into the elegant but stodgy old establishment and, with their guidance and counsel, bring it into the twenty-first century.

  There were, however, those within the organization who held a very different view. They felt someone from the inside should have been promoted to that position. Someone with more seniority, who knew everyone and understood how things were done there, should have been given that job. Someone who knew the governing rules of the establishment and wouldn’t ask questions. Celia was not that person.

  Of late, the tensions between vision and tradition, between growth and comfort, between the elevated and pushed aside, were near or at the breaking point. There was no question among some present that Celia Attison had to go, and the sooner the better. So it was that one evening when only a couple of paying guests were in residence, Margery invited a select few of the longtime staff to the Moselys’ cottage for a little chat.

  She carefully described the instability of the present financial situation, the real threat to all their livelihoods and the urgent need to assist Mrs. Celia Attison safely out of her position at The Moorlands.

  “Nothing bad or hurtful, you understand,” said Margery, looking concerned and sounding almost kindly in her approach. “She’s a good woman who can’t seem to understand that she shouldn’t be working here. Little things have to happen that will convince her this is not the best place for her—simple blunders and minor accidents, meetings that get put off, tasks that are done wrong, things that inconvenience the guests and make her appear, uh, less than adequate to the job. Such things as never happened before she came to work here will show everyone how she’s not doing the job for which she was hired. We need everyone, and in particular the board of governors, to see how seriously the place is getting away from her.”

  Alex Brant, the second assistant groundskeeper raised a cautious hand. “But wasn’t she the one who was supposed to make it better? We all know this place has been going downhill for years. Maybe we should give her more of a chance. If The Moorlands goes under we’ll all lose our jobs. Where will we be then?”

  Margery spoke slowly. “No, Alex, that’s just it, please try and understand. If she stays we’ll lose our jobs. She’s planning to cut staff to lower expenses. What’s that going to do to us, to you and you and you?” She pointed at each of them.

  He nodded, but it was clear he was not comfortable with the idea.

  Margery was relentless. “The key to this is to make sure whatever it is that finally succeeds in convincing Celia to, uh, move on in no way causes any harm or points to any one thing or person. This is for the good of all of us,” she assured them, all the while nodding her head to emphasize her point. “We’re a team. We’re the old guard. We know what works here; she doesn’t. Celia Attison isn’t one of us, and if you really think about it, it will be to her benefit as well. She wants to do a good job, doesn’t she? Well, I say she can do a good job somewhere else, and we need to give her that opportunity. Funny thing is, I wouldn’t be surprised if one day she comes back and actually thanks us.”

  Alex nodded doubtfully. He was still not fully convinced, but he was willing to join the effort.

  Margery Mosely knew job security and tradition were on their side, but time was not. She remembered a line from Macbeth she had read as a schoolgirl: “If it were done when 'tis done, then ‘twere well it were done quickly.”

  She smiled almost benignly as she made her final summary. “The point is, Celia never should have been given the job in the first place. She can’t do it. It’s a cruelty, really, to let her keep struggling, but the board doesn’t see it that way, so in the end, if we want to preserve our life here, it’s going to be up to us to make it happen.”

  She was answered by a few nods and murmurs of cautious assent as she looked down and squinted at the pendant watch pinned to her blouse. “Goodness me, I’ve kept us all up far too late. If any of you have thoughts or ideas on the matter, come and have a word with me. The fact is our dear Mrs. Attison is simply not of the quality required for The Moorlands. She will either bankrupt this place before our very eyes, or it will happen by itself, and she will try and blame us. I’m afraid we have no choice but to see that she doesn’t have the chance to do either. Come on, Robert, it’s time to give our Thomas his supper and let these good people go to their beds.”

  Margery Mosely had come a long way from her days as the shy and awkward granddaughter of the disgraced wife of a Lancashire pig farmer. No one, not Celia Attison or even her good solid husband Robert, was going to deter her from her mission.

  Frederick looked up from his book as his newly espoused wife entered the room. “Who was that on the phone, my love?”

  “You aren’t going to believe this,” said the Reverend Doctor Olympia Brown.

  “I’m not going to believe what?”

  “How do you fancy a trip to England?”

  He put down the book.

  “That was Richard Attison, my minister-friend from the UK. He’s asked if I’d like to come over and be on the teaching staff of a church leadership seminar he’s doing.”

  Frederick leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms. “Hang on a minute. Out of the blue, a friend you haven’t seen for years just up and calls you and asks you to come over there and teach a course. Now why don’t you tell me the rest of the story, because I know there is one.”

  “Funny you should ask.”

  “I’m waiting,” said Frederick.

  “Well, there seems to be something nasty going on at a certain religious retreat house in West Yorkshire where his wife Celia is the Managing Director.”

  “Such as?”

  “That’s what he’d like me to find out. He thinks someone there, possibly one the staff members, has taken against her and is trying to making life so miserable that she’ll resign, and they can be rid of her.”

  Frederick was looking less convinced and more skeptical by the minute. “That sort of thing happens all the time in business. It’s mean spirited, but it’s not new. How is this particular campaign being made manifest, and why is it so bad that he thinks you should make an appearance?”

  “Richard said that lately, all sorts of things have mysteriously and inconveniently gone wrong—toilets backing up, power going out, reservations getting lost, and staff calling in sick more and more frequently or not turning up at all. Last month the freezer quit on the weekend before a huge posh wedding, and all the food was spoiled. His wife is beginning to think some of these occurrences are neither accidental nor coincidental, but rather there’s an organized effort on the part of one or some of the longtime staff to make her look incompetent. He says it’s like the plagues of Egypt with each successive unfortunate incident getting more pointed and more damaging. And we all know what the last plague was, although I think I might be carrying the metaphor a bit too far.”

  “Crikey,” said Frederick, “and just what does he think you’d be able to do in such nefarious circumstances?”

  “He thinks if a total outsider, someone with no knowledge of the history of the place or the interpersonal dynamics of the people involved, were to come and do a little …”

  “Skulking around?” finished Frederick.

  “Well, something of the sort. He thinks I might see things that others don’t and ask the kinds of questions that proper English people would never think to ask.”

  “Oh, you’d do that, all right. I’m not entirely sure if England’s green and pleasant land is ready for the likes of you, my dear.”

  “Whatever do you mean?”

  “I mean that you do fit some of the stereotypes we English hold deep in our hearts about you Yanks.”

  “Such as?”

  “No offense, Reverend Lady, but you never hesitate, even for a moment, to say what you think. You often go where you shouldn’t go, and you don’t ever take no for an answer, and that’s only chapter one.”

  “And you think there’s something wrong with that?”

  “Certainly not in your way of seeing things. However, it might rather dismay the landed gentry for you to hit them full bore without proper warning. You are rather a force of nature, you know.”

  “All of that notwithstanding, what do you think?”

  “Think about what?”

  Olympia made a face. “This is getting circular. I started all of this by asking if you wanted to go to England for a couple of weeks.”

  At first Frederick looked resigned, and then he brightened. “I say, we never had a proper English honeymoon. If we were to go, I could take you to meet the family.”

  “Frederick, we’ve only been married for six weeks.”

  He gasped and clapped the back of his hand to his brow. “Is that all? It seems like forever.”

  “Frederick!”

  He winked at her. “Call your friend Richard back and find out more of what he’s thinking. If he can make arrangements to
put us up, I can probably get a couple of weeks off from the bookstore. You don’t have a church commitment in the immediate future, so as long as we can arrange cat care, there’s nothing to hold us back. Someone’s got to look after you, and I do speak the language.”

  “Very funny, but let me sleep on it. Actually, I think I’ll check in with Miss Winslow, as well,” said Olympia.

  “As our resident house-ghost in charge of looking after us, she doesn’t exactly come to call, you know.”

  “No, Frederick, I mean I’ll just take a couple of minutes and read a few pages in the diary I found when I first moved into this house. It’s amazing how her life of a hundred and sixty years ago has so many parallels to my own. Not word for word, mind you, but in her vision and her ways of thinking. I wish I could have known her.”

  “Ah, my love, but I think on some cosmic level you know each other very well.”

  As Frederick picked up his latest Guardian crossword, and Olympia reached for the diary, the clock on the mantel, the one that didn’t work, chimed not once but twice.

  “Well, fancy that,” said Frederick. “If I’m not mistaken, she’s getting positively conversational.”

  November 4, 1862

  The leaves have almost all fallen now, and the bare branches creak and snap in cold November wind. No doubt winter will soon be upon us, and we are well prepared. How good it is to be back in my own home. The two months I spent in Cambridge with Aunt Louisa were most productive. With her to care for little Jonathan, I was able to make significant progress on my first novel, Bright Days, Dark Nights. In many ways it is like writing a second diary; I find myself time and time again writing my own story. I suppose this is what all writers do, and I can safely hide behind my pseudonym, CK Barrow. Only Aunt Louisa and my dear neighbor, Richard Fuller, know the truth, and they have sworn to keep my secret safe.

  My darling Jonathan is almost two and has enough energy for all of us. He talks like a little boy now and no longer a baby, although I must say his favorite word is still no.

  But I am chattering. I confess to having a problem and no immediate solution. My child needs playmates, and I need adults with whom I might keep company and befriend. I am fond of my own company, but Aunt Louisa suggested I might be too fond of it.

  Richard, my kindly neighbor, has become a very good friend, but it is awkward to go out in public with him because we are both unmarried. And while I do not live in a town of gossips, people can assume things which I would prefer they did not. I am not inclined to marry, nor is he. There must be a way for a man and a woman to be simply friends.

  More anon, LFW

  Chapter Three

  Celia Attison locked the office door behind her, sat down at the desk and began massaging her temples. She was not going to let this get the best of her. She’d managed to hang on this long, and the last thing she’d do would be to let them see any sign of weakness. Then she whimpered as another spasm twisted her stomach. She’d been having violent spells of cramps and diarrhea for the last several days, but today of all days she could not call in sick. Celia opened the lower drawer of her desk, took out her ever-present bottle of Imodium tablets and swallowed one. That should get her through the morning and the board meeting she’d been dreading. After that, who knew? But today she would start asking questions. Somebody had to. After that … well, there was no telling, was there?

  She was startled by a tap at the door.

  “Are you in there, Mrs. Attison? I’ve brought you a cup of tea.”

  It was Annette Darcie, one of the newer hires in the hospitality staff. Celia stood up and opened the door. “Oh, thank you, Annette. How did you know that’s just what I needed?”

  Annette smiled shyly. She was an earnest young mother from the village who had applied for some part-time work while the children were at school. She worked hard and seemed eager to please. Celia worked her pained face into a weak smile and invited her to sit down.

  “Well, I notice that you usually come into the kitchen before you start your day. I saw your car parked outside, and I was in the dining room setting tables, and I never saw you come in, so I thought I might bring you a cup.” She lowered her voice. “And to be honest, the cook’s in a fair fury, she is, and I was just as glad to get out of her way for a while.” She held out the cup and saucer to Celia and then reached down into her apron pocket. “I brought you a couple of biscuits, as well, just in case you might be a bit peckish.”

  Even though she wasn’t hungry, Celia gratefully accepted the biscuits and turned back to her desk so that Annette would not see the tears of gratitude welling up in her eyes.

  “Can I get you anything else, Mrs. Attison?”

  Celia smiled and shook her head. “Not that I can think of, Annette. You should probably get back to setting your tables for lunch.”

  Annette rolled her eyes and asked, “Shall I check in later?”

  “Maybe after the board meeting this morning; it’s quite possible I might need a little something.”

  Later on that same day Robert Mosely called his wife Margery into The Moorlands’ sitting room on the pretext of pointing out a small crack in one of the windows that needed repairing. From where they were standing they could see anyone entering the room, as well as anyone passing by outside, and thus be assured they would not be overheard.

  He spoke in a low voice. “I need a word.”

  “You look pretty grim, luv, is there a problem?”

  “The short answer is yes; the longer answer is what I think needs to be done about it.”

  Margery leaned closer and dropped her voice. “What seems to be the trouble? I thought we were pretty much on schedule. Celia’s definitely showing the strain. We’ve had several complaints from the board and the guests about inefficiency and poor service. Annette, the new dining room manager, was overheard to say that Celia became completely undone when she learned the staff meeting had been cancelled without her knowledge or permission.”

  Mosely stepped closer and made a great show of pointing to the corner of the window where the offending crack was supposedly located. Margery bent closer to examine it.

  “That’s just it. One of the kitchen staff told me Annette overheard Celia say that if she didn’t know better, she might think people were deliberately trying to make her look bad so she’d resign.”

  “Well, that’s exactly what we’re trying to do, isn’t it, make her look incompetent so she’ll either resign or get fired. It’s much less awkward that way. It has to look like it’s her decision. She knew the place was failing when she was hired. She was supposed to be the answer to everyone’s prayers. It’s not our fault if she’s not up to the task.”

  Margery blew out a little puff of irritation and then continued. “I can’t help it if things didn’t work out as planned. Who would have thought she’d be so high minded and mulish? We got stuck with her because Michael Herlihy changed his vote at the last minute. We were supposed to have promoted Penelope Long, the office administrator, to the position. Then the board changed direction and insisted we needed fresh blood. Well, they’ll get their fresh blood all right.”

  “I’m not sure if I like the sound of that. Exactly what are you talking about?”

  Margery dropped her voice even further. “I didn’t want to rush this, but we may not have a choice. I haven’t said anything to the others, but I talked to Penelope, and she says Cecilia’s starting to ask more questions, serious questions. She said that if the finances are as bad as they appear, then maybe they should arrange for a full audit. That’s why we cancelled the meeting this morning. If she does that, the whole thing could come undone before our very eyes. There is another very unpleasant aspect to all of this.”