Page 83 of The Winter Bride

Very slowly, Eunice Taylor-Lloyd withdrew the pillow. His mouth was open in a silent scream and his unseeing eyes were dulling. With a grunt she managed to lift him and replace the pillow beneath his head, then as silently as she could she crept from the room and padded back to her own room. She felt no guilt, no regrets; he had got what had been coming to him and she was glad she would no longer have to tend him.

The doctor had already warned them that another stroke could be fatal for Henry, so when the maid came in to make the fire up, she’d find him dead and everyone would assume he had simply passed in his sleep.

Now all she had to do was wait. It was almost an hour later when she heard the maid struggle up the stairs with the heavy coal bucket, and then came a blood-curdling scream that echoed through the house. Seconds later there came a loud hammering on her door.

‘Missus, missus . . . come quick. There’s sommat wrong wi’ the master.’

Eunice crossed to the door, pretending she’d just been woken. ‘Whatever is the matter, girl?’

‘It’s the master, missus. I reckon he’s . . .’ The girl was crying and close to hysteria. ‘You’d best come quick.’

Eunice followed her back across the landing and when they entered her husband’s room, she feigned shock as her eyes settled on him. He was just as she had left him.

‘Run for the doctor and tell him to come immediately,’ she told the girl, and turning the maid ran out without even stopping to snatch up a coat.

The doctor arrived within fifteen minutes. Eunice had positioned herself on the edge of the bed and was holding her husband’s hand, looking every inch the grieving widow as she brushed away imaginary tears from her face.

‘Oh, Doctor, thank goodness you’re here. I think he’s . . .’ She allowed her voice to trail away as the doctor bent to examine him.

After a few moments, he rose and solemnly shook his head. ‘I’m so sorry, there’s nothing I can do. I’m afraid he’s gone.’

‘B-but how? I only checked on him a couple of hours ago!’

‘I think he must have suffered another stroke,’ he told her gently. ‘And I did warn you that if that happened, there’d be nothing more I could do for him.’

Reggie appeared in the doorway looking bedraggled and still half asleep. ‘What the hell is all the commotion about?’ He’d been drinking heavily the night before and looked awful.

‘It’s your father,’ his mother told him pathetically. ‘I’m afraid he’s passed away, darling.’

Reggie looked suitably shocked as the doctor gently drew the crumpled sheet up across Henry’s face.

‘I’ll write out the death certificate for you, then would you like me to call into the undertakers on my way home, or would you prefer to keep him here?’

‘Oh no,’ she answered hastily. ‘I think I would prefer them to take him to the chapel of rest. Thank you, Doctor.’

He took a pad from his bag, filled in the death certificate and after offering his condolences once more, he quietly left.

Reggie shook his head looking bewildered. ‘I could have sworn he looked a bit better yesterday,’ he commented.

His mother shrugged as she checked the certificate. It gave the cause of death as a stroke, just as she’d hoped it would.

Half an hour later the solemn-faced undertaker came to collect the body and once it was gone, mother and son made their way to the drawing room where the maid had prepared a pot of tea for them.

‘I know this is a bad time to ask, and I wouldn’t if I weren’t desperate,’ Reggie said cautiously as his mother handed him a cup of steaming tea. ‘But I had a few games of cards with the lads last night, and I’m ashamed to say I lost. I wondered if you could let me have a few quid to get myself straight again?’

He was shocked when she looked him full in the face and shook her head. ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t let you have any more money, Reginald,’ she told him coldly. ‘From now on you’re going to have to start supporting yourself. Once your father’s funeral is over, I shall be selling the house and starting again somewhere else.’

Reggie was so surprised that the tea in his cup slopped over into the saucer and burnt his hand. ‘What? But what about me? Will I be coming with you?’

Again, she shook her head. ‘I’m afraid not. We have supported you ever since you came home from the war but you’re going to have to start looking after yourself.’

Reggie was so incensed that he slammed his cup and saucer down and stormed out of the room, leaving his mother with a little smile playing about her lips. All she had to do now was get the funeral out of the way and then she could begin her new life, and it wasn’t a moment too soon.

Word of Mr Taylor-Lloyd’s death spread like wildfire, even as far as London, when Peggy rang Annie to tell her about it three days later.

‘They reckon the maid found ’im dead in bed one mornin’ when she went in to make the fire up,’ Peggy reported. ‘He’d ’ad another stroke apparently.’

‘I see.’ After what the man had done to Nancy’s mother and Eve and the way Mrs Taylor-Lloyd had treated her and Adam, she couldn’t be a hypocrite and pretend to be sorry.