Charlotte House Affair 01 - My Particular Friend

are as they always should be.
    The realization that my life was as it should be came to me a few days after the New Year, sitting with Mrs Fitzhugh in the drawing-room, we both attending to our duties. My good friend was busy with her embroidery while I was writing in my new journal the details concerning the happiness that Charlotte had brought to Mrs Suthers after her daughter had been unmasked as the mysterious Rajput Singh. The foreign names in the affair had me puzzled and I had scattered about me various atlases so that I might have some hope of spelling the place names correctly.
    My new journal was the result of a conversation I had with Charlotte some weeks earlier when I was chronicling a previous affair. She asked me what I was about, surrounded by a similar collection of her commonplace books and the notes I was writing. I told her that her commonplace books contained all the notes and trivia and news that often precipitated her involvement in some matter but that they did not contain a precise enumeration of the steps she had taken in obtaining happiness for those she helped. I said I was undertaking the job of committing these steps to paper so that they might prove as an
aide-mémoire.
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    In a reprise of an earlier conversation, which apparently she had managed to forget, she replied that she had her memory as her guide in these affairs and could recall that which was needed, while I responded that I had not that facility and benefited from writing down the particulars. She then made some cutting observation that I would benefit from improving my mind. In my early association with her the remark would have stung, but I had learned that my friend’s remarks are not to be a true judge of her opinions.
    Thus I was not surprised that for a present Charlotte gave me several handsome bound journals that I might not have ‘heaps of paper littering the floor whenever I was about my business.’ I was surprised, however, when I discovered a key among my presents.
    ‘What is this?’ I asked that Christmas morning.
    ‘Come with me and I’ll show you, Jane.’ Charlotte led me to the library and shewed me a large strongbox that somehow I had overlooked; a mystery for the delivery of such a massive object should not have gone unnoticed.
    ‘How long has this been here?’
    ‘For as long as I have been in this house and for as long as you’ve been here. You should improve your powers of observations as well as your memory, my dear. May I have the key?’
    I gave it to her and she opened the sturdy lock that secured it and raised the top. I looked inside and found a few papers that I recognized as deeds, correspondence and a few keepsakes, but not such an amount as required so large a box.
    ‘You might consign your writing to the box as needed. This is the only other key—Michael has the copy—and I give it to you for safekeeping although I may need it from time to time to retrieve my own items.’
    She handed me the key and as I took it I realized the reason she did not keep a journal of her involvement in these affairs: should these matters become public it could ruin many lives and expose my friend’s occupation.
    As I was thinking this I bent down to inspect the box more closely. ‘Odd, that the lock of this box, which you say has been in this house for as long as you’ve been here, is remarkably unscratched.’
    ‘Yes, well I am fastidious in my habits.’
    I recalled all this as I sat with my pen motionless in my hand and I heard the ticking of the hallway clock. I closed my eyes and I heard my friend beside me humming a Scots air as she knitted and casting my mind further I could hear Charlotte in the library as she moved a chair and upstairs I could hear Alice’s unmistakable laugh. I could not help but recall the other time when the sound of the clock had focussed my thoughts so intently, when Miss Winslow related the depravity of Mr Hickham.
    ‘It is your home now, Jane. You are a fixture in her life, and in mine, and we could not do without you.’
    I opened my eyes at my friend’s voice and felt tears sting the corner of my eyes.
    ‘How did you know what I was thinking?’ I asked, my voice betraying my emotion.
    ‘Charlotte is not the only person in this house capable of observation. You are sitting with your pen poised above the journal Charlotte gave you and listening to the sounds of the house with your eyes closed and a slight smile. We have had a delightful season and yet there