by Jess Kidd
At the coach-house the driver reins in the horses and the carriage stops. A casket is unloaded and carried quickly inside, as if the light of day is a dangerous thing.
At first sight Bridie could be deceived into thinking Albery Hall hasn’t changed at all. On closer inspection, it’s evident that nowadays the dogs let loose in the grounds are of the kind wild to feel something pulsing between their teeth: every gate is locked and the walls are three feet higher.
Having left their carriage down the lane, tethered out of sight, our friends stand at the maze gate, the least frequented of the house’s entrances. The gate is screened from the road by dense thickets, giving onto the grounds behind the hedge maze at the far edge of the property. Legend has it that Albery Hall’s first owner created the gate to allow him, under the maze’s cover, to slip out to the local tavern.
The dogs, such as were on patrol, are succumbing to the stupefying concoction Cora scattered through the gate, a powder they lapped up readily. They turn in circles, padding the ground, to sleep where they fall.
‘We’d better make it quick, they won’t stay like that for long.’
‘Where did you even get that, Cora?’
‘Dr Prudhoe. I keep it in the pantry for your more disagreeable clients.’
‘You haven’t . . .?’
‘I was tempted to slip Dr Harbin a little.’
Ruby laughs.
Cora forces the lock and they’re in, running across the grounds, scattering silently, using hand signals. Cora heads round to the front of the house, whilst Bridie skirts the side, towards the servants’ entrance.
For Bridie, this is as strange as a dream, this garden with its stone urns and topiary and the sunlight on the lawn and the river there in the distance – all just as she remembered. Only the grounds are oddly empty. There’s a tense feeling, a bated-breath feeling about the place. Bridie has the sensation of being watched, although she sees no one. She runs faster, cursing her petticoats. Keeping to the lawn at the edge of the gravel path, she reaches the door. It’s propped open, as it always used to be in good weather. Ahead: a whitewashed corridor with a line of silent servants’ bells. She listens. Hearing nothing but the blood belting in her ears, she proceeds, Ruby follows.
Making her way past the servants’ hall and the housekeeper’s office, she finds no sign of life.
Ruby stops by a closed door. ‘There’s someone in here.’
Bridie takes a breath and enters.
In the kitchen that belonged to Mrs Donsie, next to the cook’s old range, in the cook’s old chair, sits Bad Dorcas.
*
Dorcas Chapman sits in the patch of sunlight laid out by the kitchen windows. She wears her years heavily; the sunlight doesn’t flatter. Even so, Bridie can still see the face Dorcas wore when she was a young housemaid and Bridie was an Irish street rat. Bridie recognises the wide-apart eyes, very blue, the strong bulk of her body and her nimble thief’s hands. She can also see that this woman has a terrible infection, doubtlessly fatal. The leg in question is up on a stool and divested of shoe and stocking. The toes are without nails and suppurating, three of them no more than pus-filled stumps. Ulcers adorn her leg, which is hideously swollen. Next to her chair, a card table is set with a bottle, a box of matches, a cigar and a book, open face-down.
‘Bridie Devine.’ She selects the bottle and holds it up in a toast.
‘Dorcas Chapman.’
‘I haven’t been called that for years.’ She unstoppers the bottle. ‘Mother Bibby’s Quieting Syrup – assuages agony, soothes the fractious, grants cloudless serenity. Want some?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘So here we are, back at Albery Hall, dependent on the mercy of Dr Eames. Nothing changes.’ She stoppers the bottle and puts it back on the card table.
‘His mercy?’
‘You are trespassing on his property and I rooked him sideways.’ Dorcas looks Bridie full in the eyes. ‘We are sunk.’
‘You and Dr Harbin were to steal the child from the baronet for him?’
‘Such a simple plan,’ Dorcas admits. ‘Only I’m treacherous, and so, it turned out, was Harbin. You’d expect a bit of perfidy from me. Harbin, on the other hand, was a disappointment.’ She straightens her skirts.
‘Careful, Bridie.’ Ruby moves to her side. ‘She has a revolver.’
‘Keep your hands where I can see them, Dorcas.’
Dorcas turns her hands palm-upwards and puts them on her lap. ‘Berwick, the old goose, had a golden egg he could keep neither secret nor safe. Gideon, knowing this, tried to strike a deal, through his agents of course.’
‘Kemp?’
‘If you like. Berwick refused but Harbin didn’t. Gideon offered the doctor a partnership, touring the world, exhibiting the child. Not publicly, mind, to favoured gentlemen of scientific leanings.’
‘But Harbin threw that up – why?’
Dorcas smiles. ‘I encouraged the doctor towards an understanding that Gideon Eames takes no partners and splits no profit. Hard choice: deliver to Eames and be dead, thieve from Eames and likely be dead. Besides, there was a deal of money to be made. It was the money that swayed the doctor.’
‘So Harbin took his chances.’
‘Paris, a big show. He would try and outrun Eames’s reach.’
‘So you stirred all of this up?’
‘Now, I was only a cog in the machinations of these gentlemen.’ She glances down at her hands. ‘Do I have to sit like this? I’d like a nip and a smoke. Time’s fleeting and all that.’
‘Slowly.’
Dorcas reaches for the bottle. ‘But the doctor was a weak spoke.’
‘So you killed him and sold the child to Lufkin?’
‘That silly circus bastard thought she was rotten dead. She was sloughing.’
‘Then Lufkin sold her to Kemp, who works for Gideon.’
‘Full circle,’ says Dorcas. ‘And the wheel of fate rolls to crush me down. So, you’ve the whole story now.’
‘You must have known Gideon would catch up with you. Why did you do it?’
‘For the money.’ Dorcas grimaces and takes another nip. She holds the bottle to her breast. ‘What will you do with her?’
‘Find her a home.’
‘Oh, set her free, put her in the water,’ says Dorcas. ‘Then you’ll all be frigged.’ She laughs.
‘She’s only a child, Dorcas.’
‘Tell yourself that.’
Ruby at the kitchen door, listens. Voices outside in the grounds. ‘We need to move, Bridie.’
‘She’s a baby yet, full grown she’ll drown the world.’ Dorcas puts the bottle on the table and picks up her cigar. ‘She will have her way with me first.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘My penance.’ Dorcas strikes a match and waves it towards the card table. ‘Last supper.’ She lights her cigar with a few quick puffs; she closes her eyes as she inhales. ‘Gideon wants to test her capabilities.’ She blows out the match. ‘I have volunteered.’
‘Then you believe she kills – you’ve seen it?’
Dorcas looks at her cigar. ‘I don’t know why Kemp smokes dung when Eames has clutches of these.’ She takes a deep draught and then: ‘Do I believe she kills? I believe this leg will do for me sooner.’
Bridie draws nearer. ‘An amputation—’
‘No, ta.’
‘I could clean it up. Dress it.’
‘You’d do that for me?’ Dorcas smiles and leans forward in her chair, biting her lip against the pain. ‘I remember the first time I saw you: hopping with lice, the clothes stuck to your back with filth.’ She points across the room. ‘The old laundry, through there, I helped to bathe you, remember? No one understood a bloody word you said.’
Bridie keeps her eyes on Dorcas. ‘I never asked to be here.’
‘Eliza loved you, as much as she loved that little bastard.’
‘Edgar?’
‘Kemp,’ says Dorcas, waiting.
Bridi
e speaks slowly. ‘Edgar Kempton Jones. Kemp is Eliza’s boy.’
‘Dr John Eames’s spot of trouble.’ Dorcas turns back to her cigar. She takes another slow draw, as if to prolong the suspense. ‘After his banishment, Gideon tracked down his half-brother and brought him to live abroad with him. It was a shrewd move.’
‘Why?’
‘Kemp inherited a good share of the estate and, of course, his inheritance wasn’t dependent on him staying away.’
‘Why did Gideon return?’
‘I’m more surprised that he stayed away.’ She fixes Bridie with a sharp eye. ‘But then John Eames trussed his son up like a market fowl on your say-so. No annuity and the threat of arrest hanging over him should he return.’
Bridie frowns. ‘How would you even know that?’
‘Let’s just say’ – Dorcas pats the arm of the chair – ‘that I’m the inheritor of old Mrs Donsie’s wisdom.’
Raised voices come from the garden; Ruby walks out through the wall.
Dorcas takes a pull of her cigar. ‘But now Gideon has his own money and his own powerful friends. The old master is gone, Bridget.’ She breathes out, watching the smoke spread. ‘You might not be popular with the new master of this house.’
‘You told him my part in his being sent away?’
‘You’d take me for a peach?’ Her smile is strained, as if offended. ‘I merely agreed with his theories. His main one being: you had it in for him.’
‘He was guilty: I found the evidence. He attacked Eliza and left her for dead.’
Dorcas’s smile fades. Bereft of it, her face is empty. ‘You’re sure of that, Bridget?’
‘Everyone knew he did it.’
‘Gideon was guilty of many things, of course, but not that particular crime.’
Bridie stares at her. ‘What are you saying—’
‘Here is my confession: forgive me, Bridie Devine, for I have sinned.’
‘You attacked Eliza?’ Bridie draws forward. ‘But the evidence – his ring, his boots—’
‘You went digging so I left you something to find.’
‘If Gideon knows I was involved . . .’ Bridie falters, understanding. ‘He must believe I fabricated the evidence against him.’
‘Bull’s-eye.’
‘Who did he think attacked Eliza?’
‘Not me.’
Bridie thinks on this. ‘You gave him an alibi.’
‘He couldn’t prove he wasn’t there.’ Dorcas crosses her arms high on her chest. ‘And Gideon was grateful. Which is why I’m still here, with my leg up, supping tincture of opium and smoking a Havana.’
‘Why did you do that, to Eliza and to him?’
‘She was an upstart and he was a prick.’ Dorcas shrugs.
‘She was my friend.’
Dorcas studies her cigar. ‘I had a friend once, lived out past Cranbourne, all on her own. Barmaid at the Fleur de Lys.’ She puts the cigar to her mouth. ‘Wheel of fate.’
‘Della Webb,’ Bridie says, quietly.
Dorcas flinches. She shifts her rotten leg. ‘They say you live your whole life again, drowning. I am wondering if the noose would be better than letting Gideon’s prodigy at me. I must say you have a capacity for survival too, judging by the face on you.’
‘I was burgled.’
Dorcas smiles and taps her mouth. ‘And you lost something other than your full set of dominos, didn’t you?’
‘You know: you sent him—’
‘A snap job like that? I would have come in person.’ Her expression brightens. ‘Harbin in a hatbox, that was all my own work.’
Ruby passes back through the wall. ‘No sign of Rose yet, but the footman and the head groom are searching the house. They know something’s going on.’
Bridie nods. She turns to Dorcas. ‘Inspector Rose is after you. He’s on his way here.’
Dorcas exhales. ‘He can have my bones.’
‘Bridie—’
‘All right, so.’ Bridie turns to go.
And Dorcas’s voice: muted, tired. ‘The merrow is in the nursery,’ she says. ‘Kemp fights the dirtiest but neither brother will observe fair play. Nor will they finish you cleanly. They both know their way around the human body. Take from that what you will.’
Bridie pulls a twist of Prudhoe’s Bronchial Balsam Blend from her pocket, steps over to Dorcas and puts it on the card table. ‘Have you a pipe?’
Dorcas shakes her head.
Bridie takes out her pipe and leaves it next to the tobacco.
Dorcas looks amused. ‘What’s this?’
Bridie glances at Ruby, half in the hallway, waiting on her. He shoots her a harried smile.
‘Something for the pain,’ says Bridie, heading for the door.
‘Under the counter,’ calls out Dorcas. ‘The old ship-chandlery shop, Deptford. Put Lufkin’s money to good use; orphans, alms for the fucking merrow—’
But Bridie is gone.
Chapter 41
The servants of Albery Hall are having a trying day. Cora Butter has been rounding them up as and when they cross her path – the cook, assorted maids and a weeping valet have now joined the butler in the cellar. The butler has uncorked several bottles to treat the shock subsequent to being corralled into a windowless dungeon by a seven-foot-tall housemaid armed with a poker.
Bridie is aware of none of this, noting only the uncanniness of a big house deserted of servants. She passes through the baize door up into the house proper and along the passage, finding nothing. Ahead of her: the drawing-room. Having sent Ruby to look for Christabel, Bridie must rely on her mortal senses. She listens carefully and, hearing nothing, goes inside.
The room is exactly how she remembers it.
Here is the spot where Maria Eames dispensed judgement with her embroidery needle. There is the fireplace, where Eliza would laugh at a carving of a cupid; an imp among the cherubim who was the spit of Edgar. Bridie draws closer to see that the face is identical to the others, so that perhaps she is mistaken in her memory. And the wallpaper, although yellow still, seems to be of a paler shade than she recalls.
Bridie advances past the dining-room, the library and toward the study. Becoming aware of a dragging of her feet, a knotting of the stomach and a sense of inevitability.
Dr John Eames’s study has hardly changed. Here is the window seat where Bridie sat, there are Dr Eames’s bookcases. Bridie can almost feel his presence, obsolete now, shuffling in a corner, or drifting with the dust motes, a question forever forming on his lips.
Gideon, a sheet of paper in hand, walks into the room, closing the door to the laboratory behind him. He sits at his father’s desk, picks up a pen and begins to make notes.
Bridie could run, pull out her pistol and shoot him, or shout to Cora for help. Instead she stands very still. Which surprises her. She waits with breath held. For one mad moment she imagines he hasn’t seen her.
Gideon, eyes down, points to the spot in front of the desk.
Where she stood all those years ago, dressed in a dead man’s blood.
Where she stood to deliver the lie that changed Gideon’s life.
If she’s not going to run or shoot or shout she will at least choose a different bloody spot to stand.
She walks slowly over to a window framing the lawn and the river in the distance and the sky clouding over. But Bridie is marking the man, not at the view.
Gideon Eames puts down his pen, leans back in his chair and looks up at her.
‘You, Bridget Devine, always were a fucking nuisance.’
*
Bridie tells herself to breathe, she tells her heart to beat, she tells her legs to hold, under the burden of his blue, blue, terrible eyes.
She isn’t a child now, but she is shaking and her tongue is a stone in her mouth. And then, with relief, Bridie sees Ruby move across the room, so that he is standing beside Gideon’s chair.
‘Look at me, Bridie.’
She looks at him.
‘Grand, so, you h
ave a pistol,’ says Ruby. ‘He doesn’t. The nearest doors are behind you. If you can, run.’
Bridie turns her eyes to Gideon Eames.
He is watching her face. ‘Did you think I was dead?’
‘Yes.’
‘You hoped.’ The chill of his smile.
Bridie doesn’t answer. She hears someone come into the room behind her, the door opening and closing softly.
‘Ah, no,’ groans Ruby. ‘Kemp.’
Kemp walks over to the desk holding Myrtle Harbin by the hand. She is dressed outlandishly, in a costume of blue spangles and sea-green netting, her light brown hair in ribbons and ringlets.
She smiles at Bridie, a small, polite smile, and extracting her hand from Kemp she runs to Gideon, clambering onto his lap with surprising familiarity. He strokes her cheek and she ignores him, picking at her bare toes.
Kemp crosses to the bookcase, takes out a cigar, lights it. Bridie catches the smell of Hussar Blend: cat shit and straw
If she is going to run she ought to get on with it.
Bridie notes the exits and obstacles, the clear lines of flight. How would she manage to scoop up Myrtle? And would the running set off some predatory urge? If not in Gideon, then in Kemp it would. He is staring at her with feral enmity.
She studies the young man. There’s more than a trace of the unwholesome boy she knew; it’s plain, now that she knows. And she remembers him, playing at Mrs Donsie’s kitchen range, wiggling his scrap of string, or after the attack on his mother, whinging and stumbling after Gideon and Bad Dorcas.
‘What happened to you, Edgar?’ she asks.