“That raised my Irish.” She chucks her head and gives a tsk of her tongue. “I think an orange. What about an orange?”
Oranges were Eugenie’s favorite. One night, not long before Aurora came to visit, she stole from the bedroom to the conservatory and returned with the single fruit yielded from the young tree. She dropped the peels in the ewer water and spread the segments on a plate.
She pressed a slice to my lips. “Next year the tree will be bounteous.”
I bit down. But the fruit gave no juice, and the pulp was mealy and difficult to swallow. I poured water into a glass, watched a curled peel float on the surface. “What if I’m not here next year?”
Eugenie touched my cheek. “Then you will miss the fruit.” She lifted her glass, which did not hold water, but a small draught of laudanum.
“Why do you drink that?”
She frowned at me, then swallowed the liquid. “It’s hard for me to sleep.”
“That will do you for two nights and the day in between.”
“Don’t talk to me like that.”
I twisted from the bed and stood, shrugging out of her grasp. “I’m helping Cook in the morning anyway. We’re putting up jams.”
I push the trolley mounded high with shirts and trousers toward the tubs and set a brick at the wheel before grabbing an armload and slipping it to the water. Across from me, the mute Margaret drags the thick paddle round the tub edges. She doesn’t talk to me; she has never once broken the rules. Her lips are puckered tight from too many years of scum-topped wash water and a large dollop of self-righteousness. She’ll be first in line for tickets and no doubt shove her way to a seat at the foot of the gallows.
“What’s your favorite food, Margaret?”
Her eyes bug and blink.
“I think you like stew. A good stew with mutton and new potatoes and onions and extra carrots.”
A blurp of noise bubbles across her lips.
“Maybe a little sage and extra salt.” I dump another load of clothes to the batch. “Hemlock tastes a lot like carrots. You wouldn’t know that, though. But I do.”
Her paddle clonks against the tin. She hisses.
“Well,” I say, “maybe next time you’ll follow that with words.”
It’s not just hemlock I’m familiar with. I have been schooled in the uses of arsenic (tasteless), strychnine (acidic). Bitter nightshade. Larkspur. Monkshood. Bleeding heart. Rhubarb. Thorn apple. Elderberry root and jack-in-the-pulpit.
The garden at the Burtons’ was wild with death.
So said the prosecution.
So many choices, Miss Blunt. Which did you make?
John Dreye was called from Boston. He was a doctor of medicine well employed by the police. His opinion mattered. “Not a plant, at all. A more simply acquired poison, indeed,” he stated. “Arsenic. A frightening lot of it.”
“Of course there’s arsenic.” Cook shifted in the witness chair, and I knew her hip pained her much. She crossed her arms to her lap and shook her head. “You can’t run a household without arsenic.”
Arsenic in the larder for the mice. Arsenic in the conservatory for the bugs. Arsenic in the barn for the rats. Arsenic in the face cream for a velvet complexion.
The counsel pulled at the sleeves of his coat, then curled his knuckles to the table. “You do take inventory?”
“I do.”
“As every competent housekeeper should. We took inventory too. It didn’t match yours.”
“That’s not possible. It isn’t possible.” She squinted, then caught my eye where I stood in the dock. “I will not condemn her.”
Chapter Seventeen
“I have a plan.”
I startled awake, shifting to sit up but found my arms pinned under the sheet. Eugenie’s face was inches from mine; her upper lip bore a sheen of sweat. I could not tell if it was from the warmth of my room or a midnight dose of laudanum. She had told me sleep was difficult for her, that night without day sometimes baffled her. She often paced the halls for hours, the creaks of the stairs and errant floorboards testament to her restlessness.
The June moonlight was murky, Eugenie’s features indistinct. I ran my tongue over my lips and cleared my throat. “You’ll cost me my job.”
She shook her head and pressed her cheek to mine. The sheet tightened as she lowered her body on me, and her elbow jabbed my upper arm and pinched the skin.
“Let me up.” I turned my head and gave her a peck on the jaw as she released me. I shimmied up to sit, rolling the pillow behind my back.
Outside, the katydid’s song had grown faint. A tomcat yowled. It wouldn’t do for her to be here. The house would soon stir, and how would I explain its mistress sitting on the edge of my bed? I cut a glance to the door to assure it was closed.
“You shouldn’t be here. It’s too—” My whisper hoarse with sleep.
Eugenie frowned and worried the fabric of her robe. “I can be anywhere I want.”
“Not here.” I leaned to the bed table and lit a candle. The light burred against the silver reflector and fell to dust at the corners. “Not here.”
“Come, then.” With a quick grasp, she pulled me from the bed to the door. My feet tangled, caught in the tail of the sheet. I snatched it from my ankles, irritated enough to sling it against the wall.
I took up the candle, following her as she crept the hall and stairs, slowing as she listened around corners and nodded to continue. My heart thudded as loud as the grandfather clock, and her self-satisfied smile did not ease it in the least.
She stopped in front of the conservatory, gripping both knobs before opening the glass doors wide and stepping inside. Her nightdress floated and settled in the gray light. “Close the doors.”
The roses in the conservatory were heavy of bloom and steeped in the scents of musk and clove and lemon. Here there were no delicate tea roses, nothing pink-tipped and shy, nothing shrinking in violet. No dazzle of alabaster or splash of pale yellow to climb the posts and cover the glass. The sweet alyssums and gardenias of May had lost their luster to the roses of summer. Ruby now. Garnet. Crimson. Deep wine. Petals of velvet meant to handle and stroke. Perfumed air meant to encase like a cape.
Eugenie’s thumb brushed a rose striped in plum and cranberry. She was careful of the stems, her touch hovering and choosing where to land.
I set the candle on a small wrought-iron table and dropped to a chair. My shoulders and feet ached with weariness—for hadn’t we spent the last weeks preparing for the vaunted Aurora, and hadn’t Cook commanded everything be washed and dusted to perfection? I rubbed my eyes. The air was viscous and the smell cloyed. “You can’t come to my room like that.”
Her hand stayed, then settled against her thigh. She picked at her thumb and frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“We have to be careful.”
Her expression brightened. “But we don’t.”
“We do.” I sighed.
“I told you, I have a plan.” She crossed toward me. I took her outstretched hand to guide her to a facing seat. She leaned forward, elbows on the table, not letting go my hand. She tightened her grip, pulling our hands to her chest. Her heart thumped sharp against her sternum, and her breath drew in as she settled my palm to her skin.
“You will be my companion,” she said.
“Your—”
“No more Rebecca. Just you. Just you.”
“What will we do with her?”
“She will wed.” A slow smile grew as Eugenie said this. “You’ll take her place. It’s so simple, isn’t it?”
I felt a twinge but could not discern the cause. I would share her morning table, keep her company through the hours of the day, leave the pots and pans for someone else to wash. Own more than one dress. Have rooms of my own. And I would have Eugenie.
“I’m desperate for you,” she murmured.
“Do you have a suitor for her?”
“The choosing here is . . . well, sparse. I’ve written Aurora. She knows everyone
from Concord to Portsmouth. Though I can’t say I’ll envy the man.”
“We’ll be free,” I said.
She cupped my cheek and gave me the lightest of kisses. “We will be free.”
That night, she sealed her intent with a tin of candied violets slipped under my pillow. When I opened the box, though, it contained two orange blossoms and a bracelet of emerald and gold.
I clutched the slither of band, then let it slide like liquid to hang and sway in the candle flame. My promise of freedom.
I couldn’t say where it is now; it was stripped from my wrist when I was caught, and there’s many a hand my jewel-stitched skirt passed through on its way into evidence. It is considered “officially missing.” I am considered officially a lying thief. Among other things, of course.
They’re taking Laura Reed away. She’s parceled in muslin and leather belts, wrapped tight like an evening’s fish. Two teeth bashed in and a gingham cloth tied to spread her jaw so she can’t clamp down. I recognize the cloth; it’s her favorite and I washed it just last week. Now it will end in the rag bin at the Asylum for the Insane.
She kicks a foot free from her captors, catching the stout one under his chin. He grabs at her ankle, squeezing tight until her moans serrate and cut the air to bits.
“Leave her be.”
No one listens to me. Matron’s tending to her, whispering to her as they move down the short hall—DearLauraPoorLaura—and the cloth she’s pressed to the poor woman’s mouth swells with blood. Matron drops it and pulls out her own white starched handkerchief.
They could have warned me. Matron should have given word as she walked me back from the laundry. Laura’s going to the asylum. It’s very pleasant. She’ll be looked after. You knew the day would come. But she didn’t. She went about serving our noonday meals and said nothing but her normal “Eat up.”
“You can’t take her.” I grab the bars. “She’s the only one left with me.”
Doctor Prescott arrives with wire glasses atilt, fine pale hair mussed and flattened, threading his arm through his jacket. “You’re early.”
The entourage slows for him. Laura twists her head and stares at me. Her scalp is a maze of new scabs and old scars and seethes with the stench of pus and rotten flesh. She garbles some words and lets out a screech that fizzes bright with blood.
Doctor Prescott holds a wad of gauze to her nose and mouth. Ether. “You’ll be a good girl now, won’t you?”
Her eyes glaze over like frosted glass. I kneel and press my cheek to the iron, work my shoulder and arm out to reach her. But the tips of my fingers catch nothing as Matron takes up her singsong OhLauraPoorLauraThereThereLaura until they’ve locked themselves out and me in.
I roll back on my haunches, pushing at my eye sockets, and try to ratchet a breath.
What will happen to Laura now? All she did was steal a horse.
I stumble to my mattress, landing hard on my hip. I scream. I scream because Laura isn’t here to do it. I’d grown used to her shrieks, used to her silences.
The main door hinges scrape and bristle. Matron has returned. She presses her hand to the wall to steady herself, takes wobbled steps to the middle of the floor. She’s left her handkerchief and now she stares down at the sodden mess of it. The stone around it is stained dark. She yanks it up, twisting and pushing it against her stomach, and her face contorts in a grimace.
“You’ve killed her,” I say. “As if you’d done it with your bare hands.”
“Be quiet.”
“You’re as horrible as me.”
She is trembling. Coiled. Then she spits and I’m too slow to avoid it. It rolls down my chin.
“That’s honest, at least.”
Her eyes are flat as she glares. Her mouth twists taut. Then she grabs the solid outer door of my cell with both hands.
“Please don’t do that.” My voice is thin and pleading. “Don’t leave me here.”
The air shards and shivers as she slams the iron shut.
I scramble up, smacking the door with the palms of my hand. I smack until I can’t.
Mr. LeRocque sits on his stool, one hand curled over his knee, the other holding a proper porcelain plate with a slice of pie. The plate is thin, painted round with pea shoots and blossoms. The crust is dotted with butter and sugar.
“Rhubarb,” he says, then raises his finger. His eyebrow lifts in a curve, and he does not let go my gaze as he sets the pie to the floor, nor as he reaches in his coat pocket to conjure a silver fork. He holds it aloft, so the tines and handle glimmer with a coat of oil light. With a clearing of his throat, he sets the fork on the plate and gestures for me to eat.
“I don’t want it.”
“My wife would be pleased if you did.”
“They took Laura Reed.”
“I heard.”
“How did you . . .” But I must have dozed. Matron must have come and gone and left me now with LeRocque.
He’s taken up the pie. The plate rests precariously on his knee. He presses the fork into the fruit and crust, folding a heap into his mouth. He hums as he chews and then swallows the lump. He blinks as he watches me with those infernally odd eyes, neither gray nor green nor brown and yet all of the colors at once.
He’s changed his hair, let it grow so it curls at the collar. His mutton chops, wilder, threaded with gray, do not conceal the beginnings of a well-fed jowl. In a few years’ time, his stomach will get the best of him and he’ll eschew his plaid vests for the slim of solid black. He’ll have a lover: a girl too young, but happy for the flat he loans her for the length of his interest. His wife will continue to bake cakes and trifles, and she’ll still send a slice out the door with him, hoping he’s found another issue of the day to exploit rather than a willing girl with no issues save her naivety and wiles. I should warn him now the girl will leave, and then his wife.
My portents will be waved away as another tale. I call it an educated guess.
Anyway, he’s told me nothing about his absence, so I think I’ll let the warning pass.
“She’ll be better looked after,” he says. The fork scrapes the plate as he takes up another bite. “The doctors are well versed in the mind’s confounding and will be well involved in helping her improve her state.”
“And what happens when she’s improved?”
He gives a half shrug. Chews again and keeps blinking at me. “I cannot say.”
But I could. She would be prodded and poked and her future measured by the tips of a caliper. The medicine men will map the peaks and troughs of her skull and pronounce her a good girl or bad.
She is a creature much determined by her combative and excitable nature. Come, look right here—the zygomatic arch is quite pronounced. And back here the protuberance is exceptional.
I turn to the wall and lean my forehead against it. “Go away.”
She carries all the low traits associated with both. And I would add—
I squeeze my temples with forefinger and thumb. “Is there an Enoch Finch associated with this asylum?”
The fork clinks. The stool leg catches a crack and screeches. There’s a rustle of cloth and the squeak of leather. “I believe he’s on staff.”
“Then God help Laura.”
Enoch Finch came to the Burtons’ as a guest of Mrs. Aurora Kepple. An odd couple they made, if one could call them that. She in her frippery and he in muted black. He was a little man, with the cockerel walk of someone who resented those with longer limbs and an easier stride. He strutted with his narrow chest thrust out against the day. His face seemed pinched and parched, shifting from one close-lipped smile to another. He often murmured, causing Mr. Burton and even Eugenie to lean in a bit closer and ask for a repeat of whatever was on his overstuffed mind.
“The mind,” he said, with a jerking flip of his hand, “is an array of complications and ill-fitting pieces. And they don’t always contribute to a whole.”
He muttered something else then, as he sucked on his pipe and puffed
out a cloud of smoke. It had taken him no time at all to ensconce himself in the Burtons’ sitting room, legs straight before him and head resting against the divan. His lids were half closed against the late-morning sun.
Aurora Kepple rested her elbow on the piano, tilting her chin toward him. She wore the tightest bodice and widest hoop skirt I had ever seen—a gaudy nonsense of pink and lime-green flowers that flounced and swung like a bell. Her hair, a light auburn, was just beginning its fade to gray. “Mr. Finch believes us all preordained to chaos or order.”
“Indeed.” Another puff of tobacco. He ran his fingertip on the top of his glass, then held it out to me. I poured him another lemonade.
Mr. Burton lingered near the windows, arms crossed. He gave a flick of his fingers for me to pass him by, and turned his gaze to the fruit trees below.
“Mrs. Burton?” I rounded the piano toward her.
Eugenie was perched at the end of a settee. She looked at me. “I’ve left my glass—”
“It’s right here.” Rebecca slid forward on her chair. “I saw you left it—she’s always leaving things round—”
“But you’re here to pick them up.” Mrs. Kepple gave Rebecca a hint of a smile. “She’s an ever helpful girl, Mr. Finch.”
Rebecca’s skin stippled red. The glass she held wavered in her grasp. She set it down with a sharp clink. Then she lifted a second one and held it to me. “I would like some.”
I poured the last drops to her glass.
“It’s hot,” Mr. Finch said. His eyes followed a smoke ring as it floated to the ceiling. “Is it always so hot?”
“It’s June,” Mr. Burton said.
“Yes. Yes, it is. Country and all that . . .”
I moved to return to the kitchen.
Mrs. Kepple clapped her hands. “Girl. Bring up sherry and four glasses.”
“It’s but eleven,” Mr. Burton said.
“Which is an excellent time.”
“Sister—”
“Brother—”
The Companion Page 14