Bell Weather

by Dennis Mahoney

  “It was just as I have told you,” Nicholas said, lowering his fork and speaking very slowly. “I followed the sound of her laugh and saw her place the final book. When I threatened to report her, she said—”

  “Yes, I understand, but did you see her running in? Surely she had been working in the room for quite some time?”

  “I had passed the library ten minutes earlier,” Nicholas said, “and nothing looked amiss.”

  “But don’t you see that it’s impossible?” Mrs. Wickware cried.

  Before attempting to explain the obvious again, she picked up the lavender teapot and poured herself a cup, hoping to soothe her throat after hours of fruitless questioning. A long fat leech issued from the spout and overflowed the cup with a quick, dramatic plop. Mrs. Wickware shrieked and swatted it away. The cup exploded on the floor, the pot was overturned, and somehow the leech remained upon the table. She leapt from her chair and backed away, tugging the bell rope so emphatically its tassel tore free in her hand.

  Newton and Emmy promptly appeared, but they could hardly make sense of Mrs. Wickware’s incoherent fury. Once Nicholas explained the commotion, Newton collected the leech and swept the breakage from the floor. When Mrs. Wickware upbraided Emmy for delivering the pot, the kitchen maid grew incensed and said, with a fiery glow, that she had seen Miss Molly creeping round the pot and had chased her off, assuming at the time that she had come to steal the tea.

  “She bedevils us!” Emmy said. “Always sneaking about, snatching food and sullying floors and interfering with our work! I am sorry, Mr. Nicholas, to speak against your sister, but I have never known a girl so bold in all my days!”

  Nicholas bowed his head in woeful resignation.

  “You can’t have seen her in the kitchen!” Mrs. Wickware said. “She is locked inside a closet and has been for many hours!”

  “Then it must have been her ghost, beg pardon,” Emmy said, “or the girl’s spitting image, with the same unruly hair.”

  “Excuse me,” Newton said, gathering teapot shards. “I myself found Molly drawing pictures on the wall. I have only just finished painting over what she drew.”

  “What wall? When? What did she draw?” Mrs. Wickware asked, her voice trailing off due to shallowness of breath.

  “In your own bedchamber, within the hour,” Newton replied. “I would rather not communicate the nature of the drawings.”

  Mrs. Wickware ordered them all to abandon the mess and leave the dining room single file. They followed her up the stairs and down the hall until the four of them stood before a wide-eyed Jeremy, who rose from his stool in front of the closet and handed Mrs. Wickware the key.

  She opened the door and there was Molly, roseate and calm. The closet was large enough to sit in, but the girl had apparently stood; the dust upon the floor and on the trunks was undisturbed.

  Jeremy insisted he had not left his station.

  “I was here upon the stool and didn’t hear a sound.”

  He repeated himself verbatim when Mrs. Wickware informed him of the leech and of the drawings, and when she asked him yet again how Molly might have escaped, he flexed his jaw, smoothed his ill-fitting waistcoat, and refused to speak again.

  Mrs. Wickware knew better than to interrogate Molly herself, and rather than satisfy the girl with fury and frustration, she pretended not to care, sent Molly off without additional punishment, and retired to her chamber with its newly painted wall, where she calmed her ruined nerves with half a bottle of wine.

  * * *

  Throughout autumn and deep into winter, Molly did as Nicholas had instructed, flouting rules and causing trouble at every opportunity. She shouted, laughed, kicked, overturned drinks, vandalized rooms, insulted Mrs. Wickware, bit and spat at Jeremy, stole whatever she could and broke whatever she couldn’t. She kept refusing meals she didn’t want to eat, and the cook, still peeved about the crushberry pie, initially refused to sneak her any food.

  At the dinner table Molly fainted with hunger, only to be revived with spirit of hartshorn and placed, once again, before a loathsome plate of fish. One night when she refused to stay in bed, Jeremy tied her to the bedposts with knots that left bruises on her ankles and wrists. She spent a long, panicked night gagged with a handkerchief, fearing she would suffocate and trying not to cry. She cried on most nights, and sometimes during the day when nobody would see.

  She wondered how much longer she could actively persist, because although her brother’s plan was seemingly in motion, Molly went days without a kind look from anyone in the house, and in the course of her rebellion she began to glimpse herself, reflected in the punishments and faults and accusations, as a creature unworthy of forgiveness or redemption.

  Nicholas encouraged the servants to blame her for everything, including their own mistakes. Some with hearty consciences initially refused, but Nicholas convinced them by explaining the design. Others played along because they welcomed a permanent scapegoat, and because Nicholas rewarded them—using Lord Bell’s money, secretly obtained—far more lavishly than Mrs. Wickware did.

  In their grandest orchestration, Newton had scattered the flowers in the study, the chambermaid had dumped her own ashes, the gardener and coachman had inverted the portrait, Nicholas and three maids had constructed the book castle, and the groom had tracked manure into the house. Molly, who had knelt before the wall as she’d been told, left the spot just long enough for Jeremy to find her missing and returned before Wickware discovered she’d been gone.

  The house was full of Mollys every moment of the day, and not an hour passed that one of the staff did not report a shocking new offense, genuine or faked, and trouble Mrs. Wickware with straight-faced deception.

  As the governess and Jeremy were constantly distracted, Nicholas and the servants were trusted to go about their days largely unsupervised. With the exception of the choreographed disruptions, the household ran superbly and the liberated staff—no longer punished even for their own mistakes—was inspired to harry Mrs. Wickware further. They hatched their own plans, perfected their alibis, and collected their rewards without a pinprick of guilt.

  They began to sneak Molly food when she was deprived of meals, loosen her bonds when they were overly tight, and buoy her with gentleness whenever they were able. Her vigor grew. Her spirits rose. She heightened her attack. Mrs. Wickware, frazzled and increasingly prone to drink, dispensed with punishment entirely and started to bribe and plead.

  “If you finish your dinner,” for instance, “you will be given an extra custard.”

  Or, “Girls who wash their feet deserve a finer pair of shoes.”

  Or, “You may do whatever you like, so long as you leave me in peace this afternoon.”

  To these and other inducements, Molly answered with defiance, until at last she swept through the house like an unchecked fire, and all that Mrs. Wickware could do was treat her own burns.

  Leeches kept appearing in the unlikeliest places: baked into Mrs. Wickware’s puddings, folded into her towels, writhing in her bedsheets. One slithered from a bookshelf and landed in her hair. The weekly bleedings were abandoned and the earthenware jar was taken from the house, and yet the leeches not only persisted but increased in size and number.

  Nicholas stole Mrs. Wickware’s personal belongings. At first he merely moved them into adjoining drawers or rooms; she assumed that she herself, scatterbrained and often tipsy, was responsible. Later he kept whatever he took and encouraged the staff to follow his lead, provided every item was delivered straight to him.

  By midwinter, Mrs. Wickware was starting her days with wine and ending them with peach brandy. She continued to wake at daybreak, but Molly woke earlier to dress herself, eat a secret breakfast in her room, and spy on her governess’s movements through the keyhole.

  One morning she heard the clink of the decanter on a glass once, twice, three times before a glow filled the hearth and Mrs. Wickware could finally be seen, disheveled in her nightgown. The governess lifted her perso
nal lockbox onto a table and opened it using a key she wore at all times around her neck. Her firelit face immediately shadowed. She clawed through the box and finally overturned it, scattering the contents on the table and still not finding what she wanted. Then she ran toward the keyhole, fumbled for the bedroom key, and opened the door to find Molly, prettily dressed, standing there before her with a curious expression.

  “Where is it?” Mrs. Wickware said, leaning close to Molly’s face. “What have you done with it? You have to give it back!”

  “What?” Molly asked.

  Mrs. Wickware shook her by the arms, repeating herself and panting with a sweet-sour breath. But since Nicholas or one of the servants must have stolen the item in question, Molly’s puzzlement was wholly unfeigned and Mrs. Wickware could spot no glimmer of deceit. She released Molly’s arms and backed away, seeming about to fall and supporting herself in the doorframe.

  “It was my husband’s,” Mrs. Wickware said. “My husband, dead and gone … I keep it to remind me of him. Please, Molly, please. It is worthless, but to me— Oh, you must give it back! You won’t be punished, not a whit. You don’t believe me. No, of course! You’re worried I’ll be angry. Leave it out where I will find it, anywhere at all, and we will never have to speak of it again. You have my promise!”

  Molly watched without a word—even with the firelight behind her, Mrs. Wickware’s tears were easily discerned—and took a small step forward, reaching out to hold the governess’s hand.

  Mrs. Wickware flinched like a child from a wasp. She retreated into her own room, inhaled sharply through her nose, and tried to conceal her trembling limbs by hugging herself and narrowing her stance.

  “I’m sorry,” Molly said. “I don’t know what you’ve lost.”

  Mrs. Wickware staggered from the warmth in Molly’s voice, unsure if it was innocence or masterful dissembling. Either way it meant despair—her treasure had been taken—so Mrs. Wickware returned to her table in a slump, where she locked the rest of her possessions into the box and raised her glass of sherry.

  She had poured the drink in the dark, but now that the fire had brightened the room, she was able to see the dead, tumid leech in her decanter. She shoved it away with a spasm of her arm, overturning the decanter and spilling the sherry upon the rug, but after staring at the leech where it lay inside the crystal, she turned to the glass she had already poured and drank anyway, moaning as she gulped.

  * * *

  Before the dawn of a late winter day, Mrs. Wickware awoke from a dream in which she and her husband rode together in a hansom. He was younger than she had known him in life, ruddy with success—he had just cured a government minister’s daughter of dropsy—and was wearing a splendid blue ribbon on the tail of his wig. He squeezed her knee and said, “I am always at your side.” He kissed her earlobe. She pushed him off and smiled out the window.

  Now she opened her eyes in bed, and her attempts to reenter the dream were thwarted by a headache, a marrow-deep chill, and the curious markings, unfamiliar in the gloom, that she glimpsed on the wall beside her mirror. She pulled her covers off, wrapped herself in a robe, and lit a candle from the embers in the hearth. As soon as she raised the light, a single word leapt forth. It appeared to have been written by a finger dipped in ink.

  ALONE

  The room was nearly cold enough to see her own breath, but her skin began to moisten and the wallpaper rippled, like air above a strong source of heat. The shutters were locked. So were the doors. Mrs. Wickware checked them all, including those in the adjoining chamber, which had been empty ever since she had allowed Molly to return to her own private room. The girl’s nightly proximity had finally unnerved her, and yet as soon as Molly had gone, Mrs. Wickware had missed her, feeling gravely alone in the dark and often summoning servants, at ungodly hours, for the sole purpose of seeing another human being.

  She examined the word on the wall. The ink was wet—glistening and fresh enough to smell—and she rang the bell and swigged from a bottle of rum before the chambermaid appeared and was sent to fetch the others, everyone in the house.

  Once the staff had gathered and seen the word upon the wall, she was amazed that none of them could offer an explanation. It was the first offense in months that hadn’t been blamed immediately on Molly, whose hands—like those of the servants—were free of any stain. Nicholas alone had ink upon his fingers, but only from his quill and not enough to warrant Mrs. Wickware’s suspicion. Yet her nerves were disarrayed and she seized both of his hands, holding them up and fixing him with a look more of lunacy than anger.

  Nicholas, a full head taller, straightened up and stared at her with dark, contemptuous eyes.

  “Don’t be absurd,” he said. “If I were to threaten you with words, I would do it to your face.”

  She sickened from his voice, unprepared for his defiance and releasing him at once. But Molly’s pitying expression troubled Mrs. Wickware more. The world was in reverse, with Nicholas, once so frail, now suddenly reptilian, and the girl, so defiant, now angelically serene.

  “Where is Jeremy?” Nicholas asked.

  As if responding to the question, footsteps were heard upon the stairs beyond the room and seconds later he appeared, parting the servants with his bulk and scowling about with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Where have you been?” Mrs. Wickware asked.

  “Someone blacked me hands.”

  “What do you mean, blacked your hands?” she said, her voice an octave higher.

  “Soot,” Jeremy said, looking about and settling on Molly. “I woke and there was greasy black soot upon me hands.”

  His hands were red and clean.

  “You washed them in your basin,” Mrs. Wickware said.

  “Aye.”

  “Bring the basin.”

  Jeremy slouched forward, broadening his back. “I dumped it in the chamberpot. You’re welcome to a look.”

  “How dare you!” Mrs. Wickware said, emboldened by her fear. “What of this? What of this?” she cried, pointing at the wall.

  He saw the word and grunted as if her purpose was to shame him.

  “You know I can’t read,” he said.

  A fact she had forgotten. Jeremy’s well-scrubbed fingers couldn’t be ignored, but she was not yet prepared to openly accuse him, not without proof.

  After she dismissed the staff and calmed herself with rum, Mrs. Wickware stared at the mysterious word for many minutes, thinking obsessively of Jeremy and his demeanor over the past few weeks. She had known the man for years, ever since her husband engaged him—a destitute gravedigger—to carry their belongings to a newly rented flat. He had proved so reliable, so willing to do the most menial chores, that he had been permanently added to their staff. Upon her husband’s early death, Mrs. Wickware had brought Jeremy to her first governessing position, where his brutishness was useful in the care of wild children. He had always been trustworthy, if only for being stupid, pliable, and thankful of better employment after a decade of cold, muddy graveyards.

  Molly’s misbehavior had altered him, however. Because of his failure to constrain or intimidate Molly during the months of her rebellion, Mrs. Wickware chastised him often, in her drunken irritability, both for things that he had done and things that he had not. Jeremy had grown surly. Over the last fortnight, he had greeted Mrs. Wickware with evident displeasure, and although he continued to follow instructions, she feared that he was losing all respect for her authority.

  She kept a very close watch over Jeremy throughout the rest of the day. Indeed, she followed his movements and questioned the servants about his activities with so much single-minded fervor that Molly’s usual mischief went entirely unnoticed. Each of Jeremy’s actions—“He is cleaning his shoes, ma’am,” or “He was walking toward the library”—filled her with suspicion. How had he sullied his shoes? What business had an illiterate man in a room full of books?

  It took a full pint of rum for Mrs. Wickware to sleep. When she woke the following mo
rning and lit a candle, she discovered on the wall:

  I CAN WACH YOU TO

  Mrs. Wickware bolted from her room and rushed downstairs. She lost her footing near the landing, banged her hip against the newel post, and hurried on with tears streaming from her eyes. When she knocked on Newton’s door—the first that she encountered—he answered her summons directly from his sleep, wearing a sleeping gown and robe and entirely bald, much to her surprise, without his customary wig. But it was he who looked amazed to see her there, wild-eyed and pale in nothing but her shift.

  She seized his arm and dragged him along, shouting at every door, “Wake up! Come out at once!” and by the time they had crossed the house and reached the door of Jeremy’s room, a mass of dazed and underdressed servants was assembled in the hall.

  Molly and Nicholas moved to the front, standing on either side of Mrs. Wickware as she knocked, received no answer from within, and opened the door with a trembling hand. Jeremy lay in his bed like someone heavily drugged. The room was hot and smoky from a poorly vented fire, and now with the entire household trying to cram inside, the meaty stink of the chamberpot and of Jeremy’s own rarely washed body made the atmosphere intolerably dense. Newton raised a candle.

  At the moment when Mrs. Wickware spotted the ink on Jeremy’s fingers, Nicholas stumbled into her shoulder, righted himself, and turned with curiosity to examine the floor. He knelt and found a plank that was loosened from the rest, and when he lifted it away and Newton lowered the light, they saw that Mrs. Wickware’s belongings—everything she’d lost—were piled there together in the gap between the joists.

  She fell to her hands and knees and rummaged through the items, picking them up and throwing them aside until the floor was strewn with them, while the staff, backing up, shuffled their feet so as not to be struck by a hairbrush, a pincushion, a hand mirror. Dozens of items emerged, some of which she hadn’t even known had disappeared, and yet the one she wanted most was nowhere to be found: her husband’s glass eye, which she had treasured since his death, often staring at the iris and pretending he could see her. It was the only fantastical thing that Ms. Wickware believed and therefore the strongest. She was lost without the eye.