In a Gilded Cage - By Rhys Bowen Page 0,61

for taste, is there?” He chuckled.

“So you were closely connected with the place,” I said. “Did you happen to meet any of the Johnsons’ relatives ever? I’m trying to trace a couple called Boswell, who were missionaries in China. I’m just wondering if they ever came to visit or you heard anyone speak of them.”

“I don’t recall any relatives coming to stay,” he said. “Those Johnsons pretty much kept themselves to themselves. But I can well believe they had relatives who were missionaries. Very much into their religion, they were. They used to make a terrible stink if anyone hereabouts made music or had a party on the Sabbath.”

“Lydia and Horace took over the rearing of these relatives’ baby when they died in China,” I said. “So they weren’t living here when that happened?”

He shook his head. “I never saw a baby at that house. They must have already upped and gone to New York.”

“So they moved to New York, did they?”

He grunted again. “I’m not sure if that was her doing or his. Some said he’d acquired a whole lot of other business enterprises and wanted to be in the thick of things. Others said that she’d bullied him into going because she wanted to be closer to society and the bright lights. I think it was probably a bit of both. You’d have thought it would have suited them both but I heard that she took sick soon afterward and died. Great pity, that. As I said, she was a lovely little thing. She deserved a better life.”

“And when they went, they just left this place untouched, did they?”

“That’s right. They’d kept a pack of servants and gardeners and whatnot. They just fired them all. Didn’t take a single one to New York with them. I suppose none of us was grand enough for their new life. Always did have airs and graces, that Horace Lynch.”

“So you lost your job with them?”

“I was never a regular employee with them. I worked at Paine’s Lumber Mill for forty years. I only helped out at the Johnsons’ and then the Lynchs’ on the side. So it didn’t affect me much, but I can tell you that a lot of noses around here were put out of joint. Servants that had been with the family for twenty years or more, kicked out without so much as a thank-you. Still, that was Horace Lynch for you. Good riddance, I say.”

I thanked him and left him, my mind fully occupied with what he had told me. If the Johnsons came from Scotland then I’d probably been searching for my missionaries in the wrong places. Now I’d have to start from the beginning again and contact all the missionary societies in England and Scotland. I sighed. Perhaps I could save time by contacting some of the names I had been supplied of missionaries who had worked in China. Surely the British missionaries and their American counterparts must have worked in cooperation with each other. I thought of the men I had spoken with the other day at the Presbyterian missions headquarters, but I couldn’t remember their names. I’d have to go back there and ask them.

Then my thoughts turned to the Johnsons and their daughter, who liked to sing and dance and have fun, and the unpleasant Horace Lynch. It didn’t seem like a love match and I wondered if Horace had been more interested in acquiring her mill, her mansion, and her money. Either way, I felt sorry for Emily and her miserable upbringing.

Twenty

Supper was a good hearty pot roast with plenty of root vegetables, followed by an apple betty and fresh cream. I ate enthusiastically.

“So did you find the old Johnson place?” the landlady asked as she brought in a pot of coffee.

“I did. It seems such a shame that it’s being left to fall down.”

“A waste, that’s what I’d call it,” she said. “Sarah here recalls what it was like in its heyday, don’t you, Sarah?” She addressed this remark to the large, red-faced woman who was clearing the dishes from the table.

“I do,” Sarah confessed.

“Sarah was a maid there, you know.”

“Really?”

She smiled. “That’s right. I went to work for the Johnsons when I was fourteen and I stayed with them until they left. I helped look after Miss Lydia when she was a girl. Sweet little thing she was. Sweet and gentle and eager to please.”

“I heard she didn’t take any of her servants when they moved to New York.