At the Sign of the Golden Pineapple Read online

  At The Sign Of The Golden Pineapple

  M. C. Beaton/ Marion Chesney

  Copyright

  Published by Constable

  ISBN: 9781472101822

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1987 by Marion Chesney

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. Constable & Robinson

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  www.constablerobinson.com

  For Maria Browne

  With love

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Miss Henrietta Bascombe and Miss Ismene Hissop stood with candle-lighters at the ready, waiting for the sounds of the arrival of their first guest.

  Unthinkable that they should light the candles beforehand. Henrietta and Miss Hissop were both well-versed in every penny-pinching way of impoverished gentility.

  Although it was winter, the fire had not yet been lighted. Warmth, also, had to wait for the guests.

  Henrietta had lately inherited a “fortune”—five thousand pounds was a fortune after years of trying to make ends meet—but she did not want to waste a penny of it.

  Her father had been a country doctor who had earned so little that he had often acted as vet to supplement his small income. When he had died, he had left Henrietta his small house and pocket-size garden and very little money. With the sensible view that two impoverished ladies can live together more cheaply than in separate households, Henrietta had offered a home to her old friend and former schoolteacher, Miss Hissop.

  Together they had worked at trying to exist on as little as possible while keeping up appearances. They wore cotton dresses instead of silk, claiming they preferred washable materials; they bought yesterday’s bread from the bakers “to feed the birds,” and gave genteel card-parties where, with grim determination and flushed faces, they played for shillings and sixpences as if they were the most dedicated gamblers of St. James’s, playing for thousands.

  The “fortune” had come as a great surprise. The money had been left to Henrietta by the local landowner, Sir Benjamin Prestcott, in his will. He had turned religious before his death and, conscience-stricken that he had never paid Henrietta’s father for any of that poor man’s excellent services, he had decided to make amends by leaving Henrietta the money with a view to providing her with a dowry.

  But Henrietta had other plans for the money. So the evening’s entertainment was not just a tea party. It was to be more like a council of war.

  For Henrietta meant to go into trade.

  In vain had Miss Hissop protested. Henrietta was determined to open a confectioner’s in London’s West End, and nothing Miss Hissop could say would move her from that resolve.

  Henrietta would need shop assistants, and the best London confectioners always had the prettiest of girls. To that end, she had invited two ladies from the neighborhood to tea, knowing they were unhappy with their present life, and confident they would enjoy the chance to share this new adventure with her.

  In them lay Miss Hissop’s last hope. Both ladies were of the gentry, and she was sure their horror at Henrietta’s suggestion would change that determined lady’s mind.

  It was not as if dear Henrietta could not get a husband easily, thought Miss Hissop. Henrietta had dark-brown glossy hair that curled naturally, a trim figure, and wide brown eyes. But Henrietta would point out that the only eligible men in the village of Partlett were antidotes. Miss Hissop could see nothing wrong with the eligibles the village had to offer.

  Men were men, and it really didn’t matter what they looked like. Miss Hissop often found it hard to tell them apart.

  A reddish sun sparkled over the frost on the garden outside. Miss Hissop shivered, wishing the guests would arrive so that they could light the fire.

  And then they were there, coming up the garden path, Mrs. Charlotte Webster and Miss Josephine Archer.

  The small, dark parlor was bathed in a soft light as Miss Hissop and Henrietta lighted the candles. Then the fire gave a cheerful crackle, and the first flames shot up to disperse the bone-chilling cold of the room.

  Miss Hissop removed her large woolen shawl and hurried to answer the door.

  “Welcome,” she said to the two ladies on the step. “Come in. Such a bore having to answer the door oneself, but our Martha has gone to visit her mother.”

  Miss Hissop’s servant Martha was a pure fiction. Neither she nor Henrietta had ever had a servant. This was a fact well-known in the little village, but Miss Hissop had persuaded herself that everyone actually believed in the perpetually absent Martha.

  Henrietta studied them with a calculating eye. Yes, they were both as pretty as she had remembered them to be, although she had not seen either since the death of her father.

  Josephine was the daughter of the local squire, a chestnut-haired beauty dressed in scarlet merino. It was hard to tell from her fashionable clothes and calm, beautiful face that she led the life of a dog with her widower father, who cursed her and beat her every time he was in his cups, which was often.

  Charlotte was too thin for true beauty, and had high cheekbones, a definite setback in an age where women deliberately rounded their cheeks by stuffing them with wax pads. But she had beautiful black hair, and her eyes were sapphire. She had a natural grace and elegance.

  She had married an undistinguished army captain and been thrown out by her family for doing so. The captain had died, leaving her with only an army widow’s pension.

  Henrietta did not know them as friends, only as former patients of her father. Josephine had been treated for cracked ribs after one of her father’s more severe beatings and Charlotte for fainting fits, which turned out to have been brought on by semi-starvation.

  Usually Henrietta served tiny sandwiches—yesterday’s bread being carefully damped to make it appear fresh—and minuscule tea cakes.

  As soon as the ladies were seated, she surprised them by serving soup laced with wine, followed by peasant-size sandwiches filled with beef.

  Watching delicate color beginning to come into Charlotte’s thin cheeks, Henrietta talked of this and that and held her fire until she was sure they were all thoroughly warmed.

  Without opening her mouth, Miss Hissop was sending out distress signals. Her weak eyes pleaded with Henrietta to abandon the vulgar idea of trade.

  Miss Hissop was much addicted to wearing cravats and jockey caps and gave all the appearance of a strong-minded woman. She was in her forties and had a harsh-featured face, weak eyes, and a thin mouth that turned down at the corners.

  Only Henrietta knew that behind this formidable exterior lurked the soul of a rabbit. All Miss Hissop wanted out of life was to pay for her own funeral and not to be buried in a pauper’s grave. In the way that young girls had a
“bottom drawer” or wedding chest for their trousseau, Miss Hissop had a funeral closet in which she kept the little money she had saved in a tin box, a hand-embroidered shroud, black armbands for the mourners, and a long list of instructions as to the funeral arrangements.

  Henrietta waited until tea had been poured and then rapped her spoon against the side of her cup for silence. Charlotte and Josephine, who had been discussing knitting patterns, broke off and looked at her in surprise.

  “I have invited you here for a reason,” said Henrietta.

  “I am sure, my dear, Mrs. Webster and Miss Archer accepted your invitation to tea, you know, because ladies take tea and do not do… other things,” said Miss Hissop incoherently.

  Henrietta ignored her. “I have been left five thousand pounds in Sir Benjamin Prestcott’s will. He was my father’s patient, you know.”

  The ladies murmured their congratulations.

  “I do not mean to use the money as a dowry,” said Henrietta.

  “More tea?” bleated Miss Hissop. “You will feel so much more rational after tea, Henrietta.”

  “I mean,” said Henrietta firmly, “to go into trade.”

  “But there is no need for that,” said Charlotte, wide-eyed.

  “There are no men in this village I would even look at,” said Henrietta.

  “But with a dowry like that,” protested Josephine, “you could go to some spa and attend balls and parties. There are plenty of eligible gentlemen at the spas. Tunbridge Wells, for example, is not so expensive as Bath.”

  “There you are!” exclaimed Miss Hissop, beaming all around. “Just what I said.”

  “I do not think I want to have to marry,” said Henrietta. “I do not think I want to be married at all.”

  “In that case,” said Charlotte, five thousand pounds properly invested would keep you in relative comfort.”

  “But that is not the case,” said Henrietta. “I want to be rich. Very rich. Now, merchants take sums of money and turn them into more money. We all have a talent. Everyone has some talent, but women are never allowed to exploit it. I, for example, am a first-class confectioner and baker.”

  There as a murmur of assent. Henrietta could conjure delicacies out of next-to-nothing. Charlotte still remembered Henrietta arriving with her father when he had attended her, bearing a small bottle of cordial and two slices of delicious home-baked cake.

  “Therefore,” Henrietta went on, “I wish to lease premises in the West End of London and start my own confectioner’s shop. I mean to rival Gunter’s.”

  Gunter’s was the Almack’s of the confectioners’ trade. Situated in Berkeley Square, it attracted all the members of the ton, and Gunter’s ices were legendary.

  “No, I do not mean to serve ices,” said Henrietta, although no one had spoken. “Not at first. I could not afford shipments of ice from Greenland like Gunter.”

  “I see you have asked us here for advice,” said Josephine, with a sympathetic look at Miss Hissop.

  “It is just not done. What if your venture did not succeed? What gentleman would entertain the idea of marriage to you after you had been in trade?”

  “Perhaps a merchant,” said Henrietta sharply. “I am tired of gentility. Look at my poor father’s life. Never would he press for payment, because a gentleman did not do that sort of thing. Although he was from a landed family, he was nevertheless only a country doctor, whereas Mama was the daughter of the Honorable Edward Devere, and people told her and told her she had married beneath her, until she made father’s life a misery, and I swear she died of discontent!”

  “Henrietta!” exclaimed Miss Hissop. “Your poor, dear mama!”

  Henrietta turned red. “I am sorry, but I only speak the truth. We are all kept in chains by the fact that we are genteel women. Let me speak plain. You, Charlotte, could do with three good meals a day. You were considered to have married beneath you, and so your family has cast you off. Josephine—well, the least said about Squire Archer the better. He would not treat a son thus… or a horse. No, I am determined to make my own way in life. If I am going to be a social outcast, I shall be a rich social outcast.”

  “But,” said Charlotte timidly, “it appears you did not, after all, ask us here for advice. So why…?”

  “I am about to come to that. Now, everyone knows a good confectioner’s has the prettiest of girls. You and Miss Archer are both beautiful, and so…”

  “You are never suggesting that Mrs. Webster and myself should serve behind a counter?” said Josephine, two spots of color burning on her cheeks.

  “Yes,” said Henrietta baldly. “I am offering you both jobs. I shall put up the money, and the profits will be divided among the four of us.”

  “The four!” squeaked Miss Hissop. “Dear Henrietta, it never crossed my mind that you would expect me to work!”

  “Working in a successful business in London is surely better than living in this backwater,” said Henrietta roundly.

  Charlotte’s long, white, almost transparent fingers fluttered helplessly. “I am sorry, Miss Bascombe,” she said in a stifled voice. “It was good of you to ask me, but I must refuse.”

  “And I,” said Josephine firmly, rising and drawing on her gloves. “I am sure that when you think calmly about the matter, you will find it would not serve. Only very common people go into business.”

  “I am before my time,” said Henrietta sadly. “I am sorry you will not be joining me in my venture, but I shall go ahead alone if need be.”

  The two now highly embarrassed ladies found their shawls. With many flurried and hurried good-byes, they made their way out into the freezing cold of the late afternoon.

  “Oooof!” said Henrietta, retreating to the parlor and sinking down into a battered horsehair armchair in front of the fire. “They were shocked.”

  “And quite rightly, too,” said Miss Hissop. “Let us go to bed early tonight, Henrietta. I am persuaded you need more rest.”

  “We always go to bed early,” said Henrietta gloomily. “We’ve never, until the windfall, been able to burn candles after the sun goes down. But, in any case, I shall need a good night’s rest. It’s a ten mile walk in the morning to meet the stage at Oaktree crossroads.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Henrietta yawned. “I am going to London to lease premises for a shop.”

  “Oh, no,” moaned Miss Hissop. “Only bad can come of this idea. I am glad, yes, glad, that neither Mrs. Webster nor Miss Archer encouraged you in your folly.”

  “They have not had time to think about it,” pointed out Henrietta. “They may yet come about.”

  “Not them,” said Miss Hissop with conviction. “Certainly not them!”

  Later that evening, Josephine Archer lay in her bed, a handkerchief soaked in cologne held against one bruised cheek. Squire Archer had been drunk when she returned from Henrietta’s. She had not been expecting him to be home and had therefore been taken aback by his sudden drunken appearance in the drawing room. She had let her contempt and disgust for him, usually so carefully concealed, show in her eyes. And the furious squire had struck her in the face with his fist.

  Josephine eventually dried her eyes and thought about her strange conversation with Henrietta. She began to wonder if she herself would ever marry. Unlike Henrietta, Josephine had found several gentlemen in the village and local county quite pleasing.

  But her father’s mad drunken rages had driven away any suitable callers.

  Henrietta might be lowering herself to go into trade, but she would be in London, not hidden away in some English village, dreading the sound of her own father’s voice.

  Father would chase her to London in any case, thought Josephine dismally. But just suppose Henrietta had not told anyone else other than Miss Hissop or herself or Charlotte what she planned to do. Then it would be possible to leave a note for the squire saying she had run off to Scotland with some man. Just suppose…

  Josephine sat bolt upright in bed. Henrietta�
��s offer, which had seemed so outrageous earlier in the day, now seemed like a golden chance of freedom. If only Henrietta had not told anyone else.

  Charlotte Webster awoke during the night and lay shivering under her thin blankets. Food. Mountains of food. That’s what she had been dreaming of. A confectioner’s. She could see it now, the golden pineapple over the door, the piles of oranges and pineapples and dainty cakes. The smells of hot chocolate and coffee. Her stomach growled ferociously.

  That is what maintaining the status of lady of the parish does for me, thought Charlotte bitterly. All I have to show for my gentle birth is a rumbling stomach and a freezing bedroom and winter days stretching out to an infinity of more rumbling stomachs and more freezing nights.

  She had once been a plump headstrong girl, but hunger and more hunger had broken her spirit.

  Somewhere inside her, that old rebellious Charlotte was beginning to argue, was beginning to say in a louder and louder voice, “Go to London. Go to London. Go to London, you widgeon. No one will miss you. You can eat. Even if the business is a failure, you will be able to eat while it lasts. Go to London!”

  Henrietta, setting out the next day for the long walk to meet the stage, had two notes handed to her, one by the squire’s footman, the other by a village boy.

  The first was from Josephine. In it she said she would go with Henrietta and work for her provided that no one in the village, especially not her father, should find out her whereabouts. The second was from Charlotte Webster. The paper was blotted with tears, and the note said pathetically, “Thank you. I must accept your offer. I am so very hungry.”

  Henrietta retreated indoors to tell the startled Miss Hissop the good news and warn her to tell no one at all about the venture. Miss Hissop dumbly shook her head. She had never mentioned a word to anyone, hoping against hope that Henrietta would change her mind before she disgraced herself.

  Henrietta set out again. The day was glittering with frost, but the sky was blue, and the sparkling, shining road led straight as an arrow out of the village of Partlett.