A Necessary Murder

by M. J. Tjia

  Mrs Lovejoy said she’d be out all day, but I want to be quick, in case she returns early. I riffle through the pages, and stop at a date from almost three years ago. It’s almost unbearable to go into the kitchen with that photograph there, displayed on the wall. Me in that ghastly uniform. I begged Erasmus to insist upon it being taken down, but he thinks it’s a fine joke, and I don’t want to make a fuss because then those scrawny bitches will think I care. I wonder if she means Cook and Ruth. Or is it Emily she’s referring to?

  I continue to leaf through the diary, my gloved fingers whisking the thick pages across. I learn that the new Mrs Lovejoy couldn’t stand the housekeeper, but kept her on because Erasmus wouldn’t fire her, and that she resented every cent spent on poor Joshua and Emily. She’s actually kept a tally of expenses the older children incur in the top right-hand corner of certain pages and, on the 12th of June two years before, she’d listed the reasons she put forward to Erasmus for denying Joshua further schooling at the expensive college he attended.

  Glancing up, I see that Cyril is almost out of bread, so I flip forward to the latest entries in the diary. I take in a sharp breath. Scrawled across the page, so deeply the pen nib has scored through the paper onto the next page, is the word EVIL. I turn to the page before, but it’s just a recount of a meeting with Hatch, and her anxieties about being left a widow.

  “Nursie, Nursie,” Cyril calls, running over to me. “Nursie. No bread.” He points to the pond, but the ducks are already cruising away.

  “I don’t have any left,” I tell him. I rummage in my bag, and bring out my cache of sweets. “Why don’t you sit quietly for a moment, and you can have another candy.”

  He puts his hand out, but I shake my head, tell him he has to sit next to me quietly. He climbs onto the bench and takes his sweet, pops it in his mouth. His cheeks and the tip of his snub nose are rosy from the cold and he beams up at me, his lips pursed shut over his treat. I really don’t mind the little brat.

  I go back about a quarter of the way through the diary and stop at a page crammed with Mrs Lovejoy’s spidery writing. She’s even written in the margins, curled her text up the sides of the page.

  Today I arrived home early from the village and that vile Nurse Marie, that cursed hussy, came out from Erasmus’s study again. When I stopped her last time she insisted the master was just asking after the children, but I swear, I swear on the lives of my children, that she smirked at me this time. Turned her head from me and smirked!!! I am sure of it. And when I went into his study it was so warm in there, and there was a smell, I know that smell, it reeked. I am not stupid. I am not stupid. Does he think I’m stupid? Did he not play these games with me? But he denies it, looks at me like I’m mad. That’s how he used to look at the first Mrs L., the stupid cow. Am I the stupid cow now? I will kill him, I will rip apart all that he loves before I become that stupid cow! I cannot believe he would do this to me but I should have known, because isn’t this how he made Mrs L mad in the end, urging me to turn the children from her and to share my bed with him while she seeped away in their bed, which is my bed now my bed my bed my bed. I feel sick. I want to fall to the floor, bring up all that I have eaten, oh Lord but isn’t that how Mrs L died? Am I to be next? That TROLLOP TROLLOP TROLLOP. I wish it were her breast that I lashed right now with this pen, stealing everything from me. I won’t I won’t I won’t I won’t. They don’t know what I’m capable of but they…

  What madness is this? I’m torn. I sympathise with her rage, yet I’m alarmed at the tone of the passage.

  I realise Cyril is tugging at my sleeve. “What is it, Cyril?” I ask, dragging my eyes from the text.

  “’Nother sweet please, Nursie.”

  I shake out another yellow candy from the bag, hand it to him. I flick through the next few pages and find more of the same. She’s unhinged. Full of fury, paranoia. By the time the boy asks for another sweet, I tell him it’s time to return home. The little beast ensconces himself further into the back of the park bench and folds his arms. That stormy look descends on his face, and as much as I’d like to ignore his wails, I also want to avoid having to carry a screaming boy tucked under my arm all the way home.

  “Look, Cyril, if you behave yourself, I will give you one more candy when we get home. But not before. But if you start to cry, I’m leaving you right here. The wolves can have you.” He must see in my eye that I’m quite willing to leave him behind so he hops off the seat, takes my proffered hand.

  We walk through the park’s gates and wait by the side of the road for a carriage to pass. Once across, Cyril presses his nose against the window of the bakery, admiring the sweet buns and pastries. I wander ahead and peer into the gloom of Sullivan’s rag-and-bone shop. Looks more like a pawnshop to me, the type Amah loves, where she might find a set of bone buttons or exotic coins; refuse from others’ lives. I glance back at Cyril, call him to me. I won’t drag him inside. It would bore him. But I do take him into the apothecary’s and he waits patiently enough while I have an ointment made up. I only have to ask him four times to stop touching everything.

  As we stroll along Lordship Road, Cyril lugs on my hand as he jumps over anything he deems an obstacle, be it a stick or horse manure. The journalists have moved on, and all is quiet. We’re just entering through the front gate of St Chad’s Lodge when I notice a person step out from behind a large elm tree. He’s wearing dark clothing and a wide brimmed hat like American men sport. He looks very familiar, but out of place somehow.

  “Cyril, run ahead and knock on the door,” I say to the boy.

  It’s difficult to see from this distance, but I think the man’s eyes widen in surprise when he sees that I’ve noticed him, and as I approach, he turns heel, runs around the nearest corner. By the time I reach the bend in the road, he’s long gone, a black figure in the distance.

  My cousin, Jakub. What the hell is he doing here?

  I deliver Cyril to Nurse Marie who’s setting out luncheon on the nursery table. Looking right and left along the corridor to make sure nobody sees me, I creep into Mrs Lovejoy’s room. Standing by her bed, I bring out her diary and have one last flick through it. I pause at the word EVIL, shake my head. I wonder what’s on the woman’s mind. I’d very much like to know if she means the evil that took her husband and child, or an evil deed of her own?

  I tuck the book under her pillow again, pat the bedspread across it.

  “What are you doing?”

  I swing around. Emily.

  “You really must stop looming up on me like this.” I straighten a cushion across the bedspread. “I was just righting your mother’s bedlinen. I’m afraid Cyril messed it up when he was hiding from us.”

  Her eyes, almost as dark as onyx, take me in. I can tell she doesn’t believe me.

  “Actually,” I say, brushing past her, “I picked up something for you in the village.”

  I look back. She hasn’t moved from her spot, only follows my movements with a turn of her head. “Come along,” I say. Strange, strange girl.

  I feel in the pockets of my coat that I’ve left hanging in the nursery and bring out the small jar from the apothecary’s. Returning to the corridor, I find her standing by the pictures on the wall.

  “Come, take a seat with me over here.” I lead her to the two parlour chairs arranged neatly between her bedroom and her brother’s.

  She stares at me, suspicious. There’s a thud in the nursery, Cyril cries out. Not until we can hear Nurse Marie murmuring endearments to the boy does Emily approach me. Even then she lowers herself slowly onto the chair, sits right at its edge.

  “I bought this for you at the apothecary’s.” I hand her the jar. “It might help clear your complexion. The man said it was the best treatment for specks.”

  She takes the ointment, frowning, but says, “What business is it of yours?”

  “Well, you are supposed to be in my care, after all.”

  She glares at me for a moment from under her thick brows, then l
ooks down again at the jar in her hands. “What’s in it?”

  “I think he said it’s camphor with a little lime water. Nothing harmful.”

  Emily thrusts the jar into my lap. “I don’t want it. I don’t trust it.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t trust it? It’s from the apothecary’s. Of course it’s fine.”

  She stares down at the jar, and I realise that she is actually quite eager to try it, but wary too.

  “Here,” I say, unscrewing the lid. “I’ll put some on first.” I dab a little on my finger, swirl it on my cheeks and smooth it in. “There. Now you take this jar, and when you see that my skin doesn’t peel away or that I don’t fall down in a swoon, you can try some too.”

  She takes the jar again, cradles it in her hands. Cyril squeals, and she looks up. “Aren’t you supposed to be looking after Cyril?”

  “Nurse Marie can manage for the moment.” I twist in my chair, peep through the open door into her bedroom. I wonder if I’ll ever have a chance to explore their rooms for the missing wrapper. Although if Emily or her brother did use it, no doubt they’ve burnt or disposed of it by now. “What do you do with yourself all day?”

  The girl goes to stand up, but hesitates as she answers me. “Sometimes Josh and I play cards, but mostly I read.”

  “What are you reading? I love reading too.”

  “I like Dickens, and Braddon too.”

  “Oh, I adore Braddon. I just finished one of hers last week, in fact.”

  Her shoulders seem more relaxed now, although the expression on her face is still sour. She lowers her eyes and mumbles, “Actually, my favourite is Radcliffe.”

  I almost laugh aloud. Of course this poor, plain, bored girl loves Radcliffe.

  “Do you get them from the library?” I know she doesn’t have any funds to buy them herself.

  “Yes.” She nods towards Mrs Lovejoy’s rooms. “She has a subscription.”

  “And she allows you to borrow what you like?”

  Emily bows her head, like she’s talking to the ointment. “If I do some chores for her, she lets me borrow one book a sennight.”

  “What sort of chores?” I ask, surprised.

  “Some light mending. Embroidering the handkerchiefs and smalls. Sometimes I polish the silver, when the housekeeper is too busy. But she’s gone now so I guess I’ll have to do it all the time.”

  What an old cow that Mrs Lovejoy is, making her stepdaughter do the menial work for which she has servants. But I see an opening here. “Cannot the woman who does your laundry take care of such things?”

  The girl shrugs.

  “Of course, the cook did tell me of the problems you have with the laundry woman, now I think on it. It’s no wonder Mrs Lovejoy doesn’t trust her with the mending. Loses clothes, doesn’t she? Lost the cook’s wrapper, I believe.”

  I watch for Emily’s reaction. Her eyes narrow and her head slides around to look at me, like a snake slithers in the zoo. There’s something in her eyes—suspicion, anger, fright? I can’t tell.

  “I don’t know anything about that,” she says.

  CHAPTER 23

  I step out from the cab onto Tottenham Court Road. I’ve told the cook and Nurse Marie that I have an appointment with a dentist. I even try to bring attention to the chip in my front tooth, suck on it while I eat lunch like it pains me. In fact, I’ve received word from Hatch to meet him in town so that I can join him when he questions the servants’ agency that Nurse Marie is with.

  I find him outside Duke’s Superior Servants’ Registry. I can already see it’s a cut above Bower’s, the one I visited the other day, further down the street. The shop windows are elegantly curtained, the signage painted in refined, curling script.

  “Thank you for meeting me, Mrs Chancey,” he says. “Any news?”

  “Actually, I think I have a few interesting points,” I say, as two women bustle past us to enter the agency.

  Hatch looks around. “It might be best if we have a cup of tea in the teashop across the way first. We can return here to ask after Nurse Marie once you’ve brought me up to date.”

  I’d much prefer to have a drink in the public house next to the teashop, but doubt Hatch will concur.

  We take a seat at a window table, and Hatch orders tea. “I’m afraid you will probably only have the one more night at St Chad’s Lodge.”

  Home. I can go back to the comforts of my home. Back to Amah. But I’m also disappointed that we haven’t solved this murder yet. “That seems a pity. Is it the superintendent?”

  “Yes.” His voice is heavy and a little colour comes into his pale face. “If an arrest is not made by tomorrow, I am off the case.” With that, he flips open his notebook, asks me to report all I have found out in the last twenty-four hours.

  “You know that Cook said Mr Lovejoy had a penchant for his nursemaids?” The detective nods. “Well, I found Mrs Lovejoy’s diary—the present Mrs Lovejoy. And she knew all about it. She was furious.” I frown as the girl slides the tea things onto the table. I think of the disjointed sentences, the agony behind the words. “No, she was more than furious. I can’t remember the exact words, but there was something about making him pay. Mr Lovejoy.”

  “You think it was a threat? Against him? Against their children?”

  “I’m not sure. She seemed quite tormented.” I pour the thin tea into his cup, then mine. “And there was another thing. She referred to the first Mrs Lovejoy’s death.” I screw my eyes together, try to recall what she wrote. “Something along the lines of how she died, and was she going to die the same way. It could just mean that she thought she might die from disappointment like the first Mrs Lovejoy, but I did wonder if she meant there was something more… nefarious behind her death.”

  He’s quick to understand. “You think that they had something to do with Mrs Lovejoy’s death?”

  “I’m not sure.” Taking a sip of my tea, I wait for Hatch to makes notes. “And I met the gardener the other night. What a dreadful creature. Are you sure he didn’t do it?”

  A smile hitches the corners of his lips and he nods. “Horrible man, isn’t he? But yes, I’ve had him checked. He was at home with his unfortunate wife. Arrived at the house just after the maid found the girl and just before dawn when he found Mr Lovejoy. The nightsoil man can corroborate this.”

  “Was that the other person who found Mr Lovejoy?”

  “Yes. On his way home, I believe.”

  “The nightsoil man didn’t notice anything else?”

  The detective shakes his head as the girl plonks a plate of soggy crumpets, already buttered, onto the table between us.

  “I’ll tell you what I find interesting,” I say, as I stir another spoonful of sugar into my tea. “The cook, Nurse Marie and the gardener each believe that the older children are responsible. In fact, the gardener goes as far as to say he thinks that Mrs Lovejoy and Cyril are in danger of being next.”

  I tell him that the current Mrs Lovejoy doesn’t treat Emily and Joshua well, that she’s responsible for ruining their relationship with their real mother.

  Hatch chews on some crumpet, wipes his fingers on his handkerchief. “And what do you think?”

  I want to be fair, but I think of all the times they’ve crept up on me, especially Emily; his vacant stare and her sullen face covered in angry pustules. “They’re quite disarming, I have to admit. Between the two of them, they could have taken Margaret, killed her and arranged her body in the outhouse. That’d be much easier than on their own. They could’ve overpowered their father too.” Again, I imagine Joshua binding the old man’s arms while Emily draws the razor across her father’s throat. Unfortunately, it’s an easy picture to visualise, when it involves those two.

  “And Nurse Marie?” He takes another crumpet. “Maybe Mr Lovejoy didn’t give her what she wanted.”

  “Such as?”

  “Marriage? Money? Maybe she killed them in revenge?”

  I fiddle with the handle of the teacup.
Somehow, I don’t think this is the case. A servant like her would know better than to expect so much. Money? Maybe. Marriage? No. I shake my head. “No. I don’t think she would’ve murdered them for such a reason.”

  Hatch takes one last sip of tea and says, “Well, if you’re finished here, we will go over and find out what we can about this Nurse Marie. See if there are any other reasons she might have resorted to murder.”

  We tread across the plum carpets of Duke’s Registry, and wait at a desk for a number of minutes, while a clerk, her grey hair piled high on her head and the ruffles of her blouse clasped together with a cameo brooch, serves a couple who seem to be searching for work together as butler and housemaid. The clerk tells them they must be patient, that they might need to wait a while for a household in need of both at once.

  Duke’s Registry, just like Bower’s, has posters on the wall. Inventories of available servants, but also those who are on the blacklist. I wander closer, my eyes taking in the likenesses drawn in graphite. I marvel at the pettiness of the charges against the servants, although one particular fellow, who has an almost gnomish face, is purported to have garrotted all his master’s dogs before taking off. Further on, I smirk as I read of those who are “permissive” or “sinful”, although my lips tighten as I gaze into the face of a pretty young girl, and wonder if her sin had been thrust upon her.

  Hatch is talking with the grey-haired clerk now, but my eye is caught by a face that seems all too familiar. Yes, she’s slimmer, younger, her black hair neat under a nurse’s bonnet. But there’s no mistaking those heavy, straight eyebrows, the handsome cast to the face. Mr Lovejoy’s second wife, the present Mrs Lovejoy. My eyes skim over the words next to the likeness, and then I read it through again more slowly. Catherine Chandler, sometimes Challenor. When not “baby farming”, as it is referred to by the authorities, she finds engagements as a nursemaid. Beware.

  “Hatch.” He’s writing something down in his notebook. “Hatch,” I say again, beckoning him.

  He joins me. The woman is not far behind. “What is it?”