Hannah Poole knelt on the wet stones and understood that she had one more thing, and that saying it would finish her at Duke Street inside a week. "No, sir," she said, "but I know who she was frightened of, and it is not you, and I have known that since about the fourth fitting."
***
Mrs. Gill had it by four o'clock on the Friday, which was two days, and Hannah never found out from whom. She had a fair idea. There had been a verger at St. Bride's standing in the passage door at about eleven, and Hannah had seen him and had thought nothing of it. And a verger who has seen a dressmaker's girl kneel down in the mud with her arms around the bridegroom does not keep it to himself past Thursday.
"Shut the door," said Mrs. Gill.
Hannah shut the door.
"I have had a letter from Mrs. Vane."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Do not 'yes, ma'am' me, girl. I have had it in my hand for two hours and I have read it four times." Mrs. Gill put it down on the table. "She says that a person from this establishment was seen in Vine Court on the 4th of June in conversation with the Duke of Marchford, and that she is given to understand that the person made statements respecting Miss Vane's state of mind during the fittings. And that she cannot conceive that I would knowingly permit such a thing, and that she awaits my assurance."
"I did say it."
"I know you said it." Mrs. Gill's hands were flat on the table and she was, Hannah realized, quite as frightened as Hannah was. "That is not the question in front of me. The question in front of me is that I have eleven ladies in that book who are sisters and cousins of Mrs. Vane, and if I write back and say that my girl told a gentleman what she saw in a fitting room, I lose the whole of that book by Michaelmas and there are four girls in the room upstairs."
"Then turn me off, ma'am."
"Do not be a fool and do not be noble at me. I have not got the patience for either." Mrs. Gill sat down. "Hannah, sit down and tell me the whole of it and do not leave anything out. And then I shall decide, and I shall not be deciding it about you. Four girls."
Hannah told her the whole of it. It took eleven minutes. Mrs. Gill heard it out and then sat for some time with her hands in her lap.
"The fourth fitting," she said at last. "Say that part again."
"The 11th of April, ma'am, at Bruton Street. It was in the afternoon and Miss Vane was on the box and the mother was out of the room, and there were footsteps in the passage and a man's voice. I could not tell you what he said. It was two words, and she went entirely still and put her hand out and took hold of the glass." Hannah's own hands had gone cold with it again. "Not startled, ma'am. She went still the way a rabbit goes still. And when he came in, she was perfectly pleasant to him, and so was he to her. And it was about a horse, and he went out again in four minutes."
"Who was it?"
"Her brother," said Hannah. "Mr. Edmund Vane."
Mrs. Gill shut her eyes.
"And the other three times, the 9th of May, he came in and stood behind her and looked at the gown glass for about a minute and did not say one word, and she did not move the whole time. And when he had gone, she said, 'Is it not looking well to me?' in a voice about half the size of her own." Hannah looked up. "And the 28th of May, the mother said something about him, and Miss Vane put her hand up to her collarbone. She did that whenever he was spoken of, every time. Eleven fittings, and I could tell you every occasion his name was said in a room without looking at my book."
"You have a book?"
"I have got the fitting book, ma'am, same as always." Hannah's voice was steady now. "Date, measures, alterations, and what wanted doing next time. Every gown in this house has one, and I have kept mine since I was sixteen because you told me to."
Mrs. Gill of Duke Street sat in her own workroom for about eleven seconds. Then she got up and went to the press and took down a ledger of her own. And Hannah, who had been in that house seven years, saw a drawer opened that she had not known opened.
"Sit there," said Mrs. Gill. "I'm going to tell you something that I have never told any girl in this house, and I shall be extremely obliged if you never repeat it while I am alive. I have been at this trade one-and-thirty years, and I have measured about four thousand women. And there is a thing you learn in the first three years and never once say out loud, which is that a fitting room is the only place in England where a woman of that sort takes her clothes off in front of somebody who is not her husband or her maid, and stands still for an hour and cannot get away."
She put her hand on the ledger.
"There have been eleven occasions in one-and-thirty years," said Mrs. Gill, "when a girl of mine has come back from a house and told me a thing. Two of them I did nothing about, and I have thought about both of those for twenty years. The other nine I dealt with, and I dealt with them the same way every time, and it has never once come back on this house."
"How, ma'am?"