Louisa the Poisoner

by Tanith Lee

  “Lost, am I? Think I daren’t? What a wench it is.” And Georgie touched the rose and its two drops to his lips, licked them off. Swallowed them. “And now—a kiss!”

  “First let me see you ride,” said Louisa. “Just one canter across the lawn. I dearly like to see a gentleman on a horse. Then come back, sir knight, and claim your reward.”

  “Tally ho!” yelled Georgie. “I believe your potion works. I never smelled a rose so sweet!” And flinging his lumpen self back aloft, he took the horse by storm, kicking in the spurs and slashing it across the neck with his crop. Off it went like a ball bursting from a cannon. They ran straight at the lawn and tore along the grass beneath the mullioned windows of the house.

  Louisa stood in the shadows of the beech walk. There was no one else in sight. She had stopped twirling her parasol.

  Georgie gave a hoarse loud cough.

  Then, like a clown in a circus, he rose from the stirrups up into the air and executed, over the rump of the horse, one perfect somersault. By the time he came down, the grey was gone from under him, had bolted in a panic to be free of Georgie, straight across the park towards the lake. Louisa did not wait for more. She hastened along the walk, up some steps, and through a side door of the house.

  Here in a passage she met suddenly with Sheepshead.

  “I was just about to go into the garden, Sheepshead, when I remembered I’d left my gloves behind.”

  “I shall send one of the maids to fetch them, Miss Louisa.”

  Louisa waited in an island of the house, by a polished table with roses upon it. She thought of Georgie in the grass and the horse dashing across the park. Her gloves, removed behind her back and thrust into the sash of her dress, beat with two little cheerful hearts against her serpent waist. Things could not have gone much better. Sheepshead had only been an extra test of her quickness.

  The maid came with some gloves. As Louisa took them, a wild shouting began on the lawn beyond the beech walk. Georgie had been thrown, and his spine was broken. Georgie was no more.

  * * * *

  The funeral of Georgie was lavish. Black plumed black horses pulled the hearse, and all the relative carriages. Georgie in his box was not able to beat these animals, and they moved at a slow and sombre pace. At the graveside Agathena leant on Bleston; she wept and he scowled. The curate conducted the service dramatically. He told them all how they had adored Georgie, how everyone had worshipped him, how he would be missed. Millicent dabbed her lips but not her eyes. White-faced, Maud managed a tear.

  In the carriage returning to the manor, utter silence presided over Agathena’s sobs.

  “Mother, don’t take on so,” complained Bleston, perhaps afraid of rheumatism in his wet shoulder.

  “Not take on—your only brother dead—dead—”

  Lord Maskullance had not attended the funeral. “Forgive me,” he had said, “I feel too frail to witness the burial of one so young.”

  The funeral baked meats were uneatable.

  In the house the days now plodded like the black horses, having nothing to make them go. It was not possible to do anything. To play the piano or cards did not show respect. One might only sit and cry, or sit and read some holy tract for consolation. Millicent embroidered: The lamb is taken unto God. Georgie, the lamb.

  Curbing a desire to abscond to the Blue Room and play there with her trinkets and toys, Louisa stationed herself in the parlour. After all, she would have to get used to these funerals. And her funeral clothes were of the very best, elegant black silk, muslin; black suited Louisa, with her hair already in mourning, in contrast to her eyes and skin.

  Louisa watched, hour by hour.

  Who should be next?

  One afternoon Maud stood on the terrace like a black dump­ling, gazing out across the lawn towards the lake. She might have been reliving in memory Georgie’s tragic end. Nevertheless, a young man, presumably one of the newer gardeners, was scrab­bling about in a border of the lawn. He was a strong young fellow, in dreadful shapeless clothes, and as he toiled the sun lit up his red hair.

  Maud was modern. She said outright to Louisa, “A fine fellow. Sturdy peasant stock.”

  From her books Louisa understood the social levels must not mingle, and what savage scandals had been hinted of when they did.

  “Take care,” said Louisa.

  “What? Impudence. Why should I?”

  “That young man,” said Louisa into Maud’s unshell-like ear, “often looks at you with hot eyes. I’ve seen him. I have thought of telling Lord Maskullance—”

  “Don’t dare,” cried Maud. She bridled and flushed a rosy beetroot. “Does he? Look at me?”

  “Sometimes,” improvised Louisa, “he hides in the bushes when you walk about the park. Once—I hardly dare repeat it—I heard him growl like a dog.”

  Maud was all of a flummox. She did not know what to do with herself. She dithered and skipped about the terrace, fanning herself with her black fan, on which was painted a funeral wreath. And in the midst of all this, the young gardener, inno­cently, raised his copper head from the border, and behind Maud’s back Louisa lifted her hand and vigorously waved. The gardener stared.

  “See. He’s staring at you this minute.”

  “Oh whatever shall I do?”

  “We must go in,” experimented Louisa.

  “No. That would be to make too much of it. After all, these are modern times. A cat may look at a king.”

  “But not growl.”

  “Yes, I’d forgotten the ... growl.”

  “Better to go in,” wheedled Louisa.

  “No, I’ll best him, the saucy fellow.” And Maud took Louisa’s arm by force. “We shall cross the lawn. We shall go by the border. See if he brazens a look at me then.”

  Arm in arm, they rushed over the grass—Maud set the pace. The gardener, beholding the gallop, looked nervous and buried himself in the rhododendrons.

  “I’m shocked,” said Maud when they reached the lake. “To ogle me at such a time, when I’m in mourning.”

  “But it does suit you so, the black.”

  “Yes awful isn’t it.” Maud warmed to Louisa all at once. For a moment, at the start, Maud had been intrigued by Louisa. Perhaps there was something to her after all. They were both girls, (Maud a girl over thirty) pretty and free of heart, bound by the dictates of their elders and now—united in sorrow, Louisa’s dread secret and Maud’s untimely loss. “Lady Findrangle refused to come out of mourning for her husband, you know, the black suited her so well.” Maud glanced back at the border. The gardener had fled. “A coward.”

  “Or perhaps it may be worse,” said Louisa. “Perhaps he has dared to fall in love with you.”

  Maud digested this. It was possible . . .

  “Dear Louisa, you must be my confidante. I’m not sure what I should do. The poor boy—He’d pulled up half the flowers in his nervousness.”

  “Perhaps not always so poor,” said Louisa thoughtfully. “It seems the other older gardeners consider him something of a protege of his lordship’s. One day, Lord Maskullance is sup­posed to have said, that young man may be designing half the great gardens in the country.”

  Maud sat bold upright. She was a pig dreaming of being the scandalous wife of the famous gardener and genius who de­signed half the great gardens in the country. She had once or twice had fancies of running off with a footman, but luckily they resisted their hopes, not able to bring themselves to speak to her of their feelings. Thus she had been spared agonizing decisions of flight and loss. This, though, was different. It was all the rage. So many society beauties had done it—at least in books—that it was almost fashionable.

  “I have a confession,” said Louisa. “The gardener asked me yesterday to bring a letter to you, and I refused.”

  “Refused!”

  “Shall I seek him out and accept the letter on your behalf?”

  “Certainly not. Oh Louisa! Certainly.”

  “What a joy it is,” said Louisa, “to
see the colour in your cheeks again.”

  Colour there surely was. Maud rose like a funereal lobster and hurried towards the house.

  On her own journey there, Louisa caught sight of another red thing, which was curiously flapping above the wall of the kitchen garden—perhaps some kind of strange large bird, maybe an escaped parrot. She did not bother with it, but went to her room, and on a scrap of paper ripped from the back of a book of poems, she penned a gross little note in the awful penmanship of the mire. Her aunt had dealt only in surfaces—easily worthy of an unlettered gardener. Dearist, it said, / have somethink to speek to you off, that is onliforyor owne dear ears.

  It went on to entreat Maud to go out after the dinner hour and down to the lake. There among the trees hearts should be opened wide.

  Louisa did not search out Maud. Louisa waited patiently, as was her wont between deeds, until Maud, unable to contain herself, came knocking on the Blue Room door.

  “I have it,” said Louisa, “but, oh, should I—”

  “Give it here!” roared Maud, and she grasped the paper. She read the missive with slight unease. “What awful spelling. But there, a rough diamond. Does he need to spell in order to work miracles amid the flowers?”

  “Will you go?” asked Louisa, aghast.

  “I must.”

  “Then, let me advise you, dear Maud This evening, before the others, refuse your dinner, make a great display of grief.”

  “What for?” inquired Maud.

  “For your brother Georgie.”

  “Oh, yes. Georgie.”

  “Show your sadness,” said Louisa, “as, until now, you’ve hidden your tears, so bravely, to comfort your mother and aunt.”

  Maud pondered this and managed to add a little moisture to the end of her nose. She wiped it. “Yes.”

  “Then go up to your room. Say you must be left alone with your despair. They’ll honour this. You can slip out very simply. I’ll accompany you for safety to the lake and leave you there. With him.”

  “Louisa you’re a true friend. I won’t forget your sympathy.” They embraced. After a moment Maud said cautiously, “Is it absolutely necessary, do you think, that I refuse to eat? I grow faint very quickly if I omit a meal. Even one of Mrs. Crampp’s ghastly dinners.”

  “I’ll bring food for you to the lake.”

  “Ah, Louisa!”

  As Louisa let Maud from her door, they saw Sheepshead passing at the end of a passage.

  “Can he have overheard?” asked Maud.

  “I don’t believe so,” said Louisa. “He’s old. His hearing is probably impaired.”

  “Uncle’s isn’t.”

  “Lord Maskullance is unusual. But we must be extra careful. Here, let me destroy the letter.”

  When Maud was gone, Louisa dismissed Sheepshead from her brain. She doubted he had listened at the door—her acute instincts would have warned her. He was only troublous in being always in the right place at the wrong time.

  * * * *

  That evening Maud gave a performance of which the greatest actresses of her day might have been envious. She scorned all food, she wept and screamed, squeezing water from her eyes by the sheer volume of her shrieks. How she had loved Georgie, peerless, matchless Georgie, cut down in his prime. Remaining mother and brother could never make up his sum. Oh she recalled his childhood, his scrapes, how he had come to her with his childish scratches, and when the keeper’s ferrets had set on him. And now Georgie was gone, what was life worth? What did she care?

  Dumbfounded by her outburst, no one argued. Maud tossed a small crystal vase at a wall. It shattered near Sheepshead’s left cheek and he moved aside.

  “Leave me alone,” said Maud, (no one had gone near her) “let me go to my room and exhaust myself in misery.”

  They did so, only glad she had vacated the dining room.

  Soon Louisa rose with a headache—they could quite credit she had it tonight. She asked for provisions on a tray.

  Later, in the moonless dark, two women in black crept down to the lakeside, disturbing the feeding ducks.

  “Is he here yet? Good, there’s time to eat that pie. Oh Louisa, old Crampp’s improved! How wonderful this tastes—I never tasted a pie so—” and Maud, having devoured also in her haste one single drop from the glass phial, closed her eyes and fell, with a hefty plop, into the lake.

  The ducks scurried from her impact, but presently returned, encouraged that she did not come up again.

  Louisa retraced her silent steps to the house. She met no one; even the parrot was gone from the kitchen garden. When once she thought she heard a whistle she realized this was foolish. She passed into her Blue Room and a dreamless slumber. From which insane cries aroused her early the next morning, in time to see, from her windows, the drowned body of Maud being fished from the lake.

  * * * *

  They’re dwindling, Louisa,” said Lord Maskullance, as they strolled about the apple orchard.

  “They seem so healthy. Some are even turning pink.

  “Not the apples, Louisa.”

  She met his eyes for three angelic seconds. “Whom, then?” “The dependents of my blood.”

  “Your lordship’s bereavement is barely to be supported.” “Yet, as you see, I do.”

  The funeral had been quiet, quieter than the first. Maud’s suicide—rather her accident, stumbling and falling into the lake—was no longer spoken of.

  As Lord Maskullance and Louisa passed among the apples, Louisa saw Sheepshead moving stealthily after them, behind the trees.

  “Does he often follow you?” inquired Louisa.

  Lord Maskullance did not glance about. “A recent obses­sion.”

  “Has he,” Louisa paused, discreetly, “informed you of its cause?”

  “Not at all. Perhaps a fascination with yourself.”

  Louisa considered. On the evening when she left Maud in the lake, had glasses glinted starlight from the bushes? If Sheepshead had been a witness to the deed, surely he must have spoken out.

  “Your lordship is very attached to Sheepshead,” said Louisa.

  “I remember him from my boyhood,” said Lord Maskul­lance.

  “And for his service, you remember him in your will.”

  “Quite so.”

  They walked across the grass and came upon a View, the sweep of Maskullance Park, its oaks, its meadows, and beyond them the wilderness of the moor, that sea of primeval chaos which, hidden or not, surrounded everything.

  “Do you love your Mr. Sheepshead very dearly?” asked Louisa, with innocent tenderness.

  “I love only you,” said Lord Maskullance.

  “He seems frail,” said Louisa.

  “As are we all.”

  He had not attended Maud’s funeral. It was too distressing for his old bones.

  Now he smiled on the lovely thing he had brought into his house.

  An apple dropped before its time. Mr. Sheepshead slunk behind a tree, cheek bulging.

  * * * *

  They were four at luncheon.

  “Someone must speak to Crampp,” declared Millcent, plying herself with an indigestion remedy. “I’m in agonies after these appalling repasts.”

  “Filthy muck,” agreed Bleston. “I’ll dine at the inn, uncle.”

  “Of course, Bleston,” replied Lord Maskullance. “What luck for me, the impaired digestion and failure of the sense of taste inherent in old age spare me any special distress at Mrs. Cramp’s new diet.”

  Agathena kept to her room. She ate from trays and wept, keeping the laundry also busy with her reams of handkerchiefs.

  Louisa ate daintily and thoroughly. She had been brought up on the messes of the mire.

  Behind the chairs patrolled the impeccable Sheepshead. His cheeks did not bulge; Louisa, by offhand questionings of Prudent and a footman, knew why. Mr. Sheepshead was out of both humbugs and snuff. He must today go down into the village to supply himself.

  It was a sunny, ripening afternoon. Beyond the park
gates, the moor burned up its bracken goldenly. Louisa passed between the smouldered slopes, staying wisely on the path, which in parts was hemmed by standing stones. She had come this way but once before, in the carriage and the rain.

  The late summer village was as she remembered it, and she had no trouble in locating the apposite shop with its displays of pipes in one window and, in the other, black liquorice in jars and beetle-like mounds of humbugs.

  In sailed Louisa, who for the occasion had put on her plainest dress and shadowed her face with a vast straw hat.

  “I be yeer for mey pappy’s bag o’ umbugs,” said Louisa, in a very bad rendition of the local dialect.

  “Humbugs, miss. And surely I knows another gentleman that be partial to them.”

  Louisa ordered an enormous quantity, paid for them with coins extracted now and then from Prudent, and next sent the shopkeeper on a search for some other sweetmeat. During his absence Louisa administered a single drop from her phial to one solitary humbug. It would wait its turn, but its turn would come.

  “I hope as how,” said the tobacconist, reappearing to Louisa without the second sweet, “you haven’t strayed alone across the moor?”

  “Perhaps not,” said Louisa, in rather the wrong voice.

  “For you’ll not have heard the great gun, maybe. A lunatic’s got out of the asylum and be at large, desperate and dangerous. And he’s been gone some time, they do say, and only just come to the notice.”

  “I see my companion on the street,” said Louisa and floated from the shop. Outside she swiftly vanished along an alley between the butcher’s and the inn. In vain did the tobacconist come to his door with the enormous bag of humbugs.

  When Mr. Sheepshead arrived, these lost sweets would be presented to him. It would be irresistible to the tobacconist and sweetseller, who was apparently deferential to all the servants from the manor and to (said Prudent) the butler-steward particu­larly, to offer him gratis his favourite suck.

  Louisa returned to the manor and, on the way, beholding the figure of Sheepshead up the path, she took refuge, rather in his own way, behind a suitable standing stone. He did not seem to notice her and stepped on towards the village.