CHAPTER 9: THE CHILD BY THE WASHHOUSE
The first person to mention a child was not Ada or Rusk.
It was twelve-year-old Sophie Miller, whose mother worked in the ranch laundry.
Sophie approached Eleanor near the washhouse carrying a basket of clean towels.
She asked whether the mistress still owned a bracelet with three blue stones.
Eleanor answered carefully that she owned a similar bracelet without the stones.
Sophie said her mother had once warned her never to touch the blue stones if she found them.
Eleanor asked where she heard the warning.
Sophie pointed toward a crooked shed beyond the laundry yard.
She said the stones had been buried there when she was small.
Eleanor asked whether Sophie knew who had buried them.
The girl said a woman in a dark bonnet had come at night and asked her mother for a needle and thread.
Sophie remembered the woman because her face looked familiar, although she had never seen her before.
The memory troubled Eleanor.
Sophie had been too young at the time to understand what was happening, but she remembered details adults often overlooked.
Eleanor asked whether Sophie’s mother could speak with her.
Sophie said her mother was afraid of losing her employment.
She also said that Vane had recently questioned her mother about the shed.
Eleanor promised not to mention Sophie’s name to Vane.
After lunch she found the laundry worker, Clara Miller, hanging sheets behind the house.
Clara grew visibly tense when Eleanor asked about the stones.
She said children invented stories when adults were too busy to correct them.
Eleanor replied that Sophie had not asked for attention or reward.
Clara looked toward the stable and asked whether Daniel Hayes had been speaking to her.
Eleanor said Daniel had helped her understand an old piece of jewelry.
Clara pressed a sheet between her fingers until the cloth twisted.
She admitted that a visitor had hidden three blue stones in a wooden box beneath the washhouse floor.
The visitor had called herself Margaret and claimed the stones belonged to a sister who could not return for them.
Clara had agreed to help because the visitor carried a letter from Lydia.
Eleanor asked whether Clara still possessed the stones.
Clara said she had moved them after Vane ordered the washhouse floor repaired.
She had hidden the box inside the hollow leg of an old ironing table.
Eleanor asked why the stones mattered.
Clara said Margaret believed each stone carried a small etched mark that identified one of three missing witnesses.
The marks were not names.
They were symbols used by the witnesses when exchanging information.
Eleanor asked whether the witnesses were still alive.
Clara said she knew only one of them.
The first had been the old carpenter, Martin Vale, who built the concealed walls.
The second had been a woman employed in Richard’s accounts office.
The third had never been identified to Clara.
Eleanor asked why Margaret had entrusted the stones to a stranger in the laundry.
Clara said Margaret had recognized that people who worked in the house could move objects without attracting attention.
Richard watched his guests closely,
but he rarely looked at the hands carrying his clean shirts.
Eleanor felt ashamed by how little she knew about the lives of the workers who maintained her comfort.
She asked Clara what she needed most if trouble came.
Clara answered that she needed assurance her daughter would not be punished for helping.
Eleanor said she could not promise what Richard would do.
She could promise to act openly and to take responsibility for her own decisions.
Clara considered the answer and then returned with a narrow wooden box.
Inside were three cloudy blue stones wrapped in separate pieces of cotton.
The stones had once been polished, but years of concealment had dulled their surfaces.
Eleanor carried them to the greenhouse and studied each under sunlight.
One showed a tiny bridge.
Another showed a feather.
The third carried a shape resembling an open eye.
She remembered the eye hidden in the portrait near the staircase.
For the first time, the secret passages and the old land records seemed connected to a plan made by people who had expected their words to be stolen.
