by Kim Kelly
That is, if Alec Howell dies. Panic takes me. How do I know I have poisoned him at all? How do I know Ah Ling didn’t give me a bottle of snake oil? Dragon tears. What is that? Nothing more than castor oil; the worthless word of a Chinaman.
I clutch Ben’s arm reflexively, and he bends to me: ‘Don’t worry. Please, Berylda. I will never betray you. I’m sorry you felt you had no other choice. I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t tell me what he was doing to you. Whatever happens now, I will stand beside you. In fact, I insist on doing so. You’re not alone with this any more, hm? It’s the worst shame that you ever were.’
‘Hm.’ How does one thank another for that? When I have stepped far enough away from this black place, I will find the words. I will marvel at this moment, at this plain fact of love for me, this loyalty, but now it is all I can do to continue to put one foot in front of the other.
‘You must be tired,’ he says. ‘Why don’t you get up on Rebel and I’ll lead you the rest of the way?’
Tired as I know I must be, I shake my head. The beat of my boots upon the ground is all that is left of my resolve. I am suspended somewhere above fatigue, above time. Nothing else will happen until Alec Howell is dead.
He must die: he killed Libby.
He killed Libby?
I can scarcely believe this, either. But it is true. I will see the way he recoiled from me at the question for all that is left to me of life: it is true. As true as it is that I am his murderer now – please. Let every footstep make it so. I am his killer, and I am glad.
And careful. Across these final hours and all that is left to me of life, every word and every action must conceal what I have done. Not for my sake – I would take the noose proudly – but for Gret, for Ben, I cannot make one slip. No one will pay for this but me. I feel the stones beneath my boots: feel the dimensions of every one. Make every step a step towards the light.
Bellevue is lit up like a city when we see it; lit up like a fat cigar forbidding the fall of night. My stomach lurches. How I hate this house. But my hatred is a dull, slow thing. Now.
I break away from Ben as we approach the yard, and I make my voice ask him: ‘Could you have Buckley ready Sal with the buggy again, please? I will need it again. Soon. Don’t let him argue with you.’
I cannot make my voice explain my rationale: if things go as expected, I will need the buggy in order to return to the hospital when I am informed that Alec Howell ails there, or to take him there myself after a collapse at home, however things might unfold tonight. And yet Ben nods his understanding.
‘Don’t worry,’ he assures again. ‘Whatever you need, it will be done.’
I glance back at him as we part, as he heads off towards the stable drive with Rebel. How is it possible that we are such friends? I must keep myself from running to him, from shouting out my gratitude.
I step up the front path, across the verandah of this place of misery, but just as I reach the door, it’s flung wide and Cosmo Thompson is before me, grinning: ‘Come in, come in from the cold, would you? I’ve just got a fire going. I don’t know how you live here at all – midsummer and it’s bloody freezing.’
I follow him down the east hallway, unsure if I have stepped into a dream.
He turns back to me as he strides on up the hall: ‘Hungry? Whether you are or not, I think I might force you to have a bite of something. You didn’t eat your lunch.’
I would ask him why he is suddenly being so oddly nice to me, but I suppose it is at Ben’s insistence; I must suppose Cosmo Thompson also knows something of what I have done. Either that, or Lewis Carroll has devised a new and macabre fabulation just for me. I lose my sense of direction; confusion spins around me, as he continues past my bedroom, and Gret’s, and out to the rear parlour.
Where Mrs Weston leaps up from the settee there, rushing at me, and confusion spins again. I am relieved to see her here, of course, as was my plan – that she be fetched for Gret. But does she know whatever Mr Thompson knows, too? I can’t imagine what my face must look like as I fight down each of my emotions all at once.
‘Berylda. Oh my dear girl,’ she is saying. ‘Where have you been?’ Her lavender velvet embracing me, I watch a rose petal fall to the floor from the vase behind her, a little white boat floating down onto the timber zigzags of the parquet floor. ‘I was beginning to worry. Greta, too. Where did you go, my dear? You didn’t go into town looking for me, did you? I came as soon as your maid –’
‘No.’ I sigh; I have to look away, to swallow this wave of relief: Mrs Weston does not know a thing. I pretend some exasperation with my sister: ‘Poor Greta, she’s as muddled as a box of old buttons at the moment, or she must have misheard me. I only went into the hospital, to let Uncle Alec know we’d arrived back and –’
‘Poor dear Greta,’ Mr Thompson interjects and I hold my breath for what might issue from that wild tongue next. ‘Mad. That girl has been completely mad all day,’ he says authoritatively. ‘I suspect she is mostly mad most of the time – judging from her work. I’ve spent the afternoon going through her drawings out here, in the chest.’ He points to the cane trunk she keeps her favourite pieces in, under the table tennis set and quoits that never get used. ‘She said I could – to look for a portfolio amongst them all – and it is my considered opinion that your sister is one hundred and three percent off her sweet little kadoova. It is the creative’s prerogative, and all kadoovaishness is relative to goodness, isn’t it? She is rather good, isn’t she? Don’t you agree, Mrs Weston?’
Mrs Weston blinks at him askance; I’m sure I do too. She takes me by the arm a little way back up the hall, and keeps her voice low: ‘Greta, I’m certain, is perfectly good – she is in fine health. She explained everything to me.’
‘Did she?’ I had counted on her saying nothing. Oh God. Mrs Weston must feel my juddering.
‘Yes. Particularly your high level of concern.’ She smiles in that reassuring, forthright way of the midwife. ‘Berylda, your care for your sister is admirable, wonderful. I wish I had a sister just like you. But a late monthly flow is nothing out of the ordinary, really – or even one missed entirely. Hysterical irregularities are as common as they are mysterious.’ She clicks her tongue. ‘Young women shouldn’t have to go to medical school to learn these things. It should be taught at Sunday school, if you ask me, spoken about frankly and openly amongst the sisterhood, but I despair that it never will be.’
I am embarrassed, thank you, Greta, and all the same relieved once more: she has told Mrs Weston nothing of the truth; the most obvious culprit of absent menses having been thoroughly overlooked. There is no reason for Mrs Weston to suspect pregnancy: she knows Greta is a virtual prisoner in this house.
‘I’m sure you are right,’ I reply, wary of my every word. ‘I should give Gret a hearty dose of Fluid of Magnesia and stop worrying, shouldn’t I, but – Oh but I’m sorry to have caused such an alarm, put you out so. Please, stay with us for supper, won’t you? Let me make it up to you? Having made you come all the way here.’ Please, you must: you must stay here with Gret as her witness that she knows nothing of what I do.
‘You would never put me out.’ Mrs Weston smiles more deeply. ‘I quite understand, Berylda. Your sister is so very dear to you.’
Inarguably. I will pay with my life for her, yes, if I must.
‘She’s just tidying herself up now.’ Mrs Weston squeezes my arm. ‘Let’s share a meal for the pleasure of each other’s company only, what do you say? Girls together. Oh, and the, er, inimitable Mr Thompson, who appears to have invited himself.’ She laughs, and then she peers at me when I don’t: ‘Are you quite all right yourself, Berylda? You seem a little pale, to me.’
‘Do I?’ Even my voice is pale. ‘Tired. Long day.’
‘Miss Jones? Anyone there?’ Ben is calling up from the back door, by the kitchen, I see him at the other end of the hall. My anchor. He clears hi
s throat. Our eyes meet, and he nods that all is well, transport is arranged.
As Greta’s face appears at the door to her room, not two yards away: ‘So there you are. Where did you go off to, Ryl?’
‘I told you – to let Uncle Alec know we were back.’
‘You didn’t say that. You said –’
‘I did say that,’ I tell her to shush with my eyes and glance at Mr Wilberry coming up the hall towards us as if he were the real reason for my absence – let Mrs Weston have seen that too, just to muddy these waters a little bit more. ‘And I can also say Uncle Alec probably won’t be in by dinner, either – they were very busy at the hospital this –’
‘Oh, I know,’ Mrs Weston adds. ‘Donald hasn’t been home in time for dinner for I don’t remember how long. I’m sure they have a private club upstairs there, don’t you?’
‘Mrs Weston, ah, good evening.’ Ben is here; right here. Taking Mrs Weston’s hand.
As Cosmo Thompson bounds in from the rear parlour. ‘Wilber! You dashed dashing thing. Doesn’t he make you want to eat your handbag, ladies? Handbags full of words. Edible, all of them. Is everybody hungry! I am so starving I could eat a shipload.’
‘So, am I allowed out of my room now, sister?’ Gret raises her eyebrows at me, brushing past me: ‘Cosmo, did you find what you were looking for?’
I follow the sounds and the movements, by some automatic instinct. Greta pushing her shoulder playfully against Mr Thompson: ‘Let’s be radical and have supper out in the rear parlour, shall we?’ The edge of Mrs Weston’s steady broadcloth hem brushing the skirting boards: ‘It really is lovely to see you again, Mr Wilberry. I feel we didn’t have a chance to meet properly the other night. How did you find the excursion to the Hill?’ A cry of delight when he tells her of his discovery of a flower by the river. I watch him return her smiles and queries tiredly, thoughtfully, tucking his too-long hair behind his ears. I wonder again if I might have waited, if there might have been another way, if I might have found the courage to confide the truth in Ben and had him go to the police for us; he would have been believed. And I discount the thought again as quickly: Alec Howell would never hang for his crimes, regardless of what son of a cattle king spoke against him. What man today is ever hanged for rape? What man can be hanged for a murder that can’t be proved? None.
I eat creamed potato soup and crisp fried croutons, and I pray that there is justice; that he is dying now.
Is he?
In pain. He deserves to die in pain. He killed Libby. The shock comes for me again and again, with the terror of the truth beneath: I knew this all along. Somewhere inside my scrambling through the signs of the fever, looking for rose spots that weren’t there on her lovely skin: I knew he killed her then. But I was only a child; I was only fifteen; I couldn’t grasp how, or why anyone would do such a thing. He poisoned our Aunt Libby, possibly with some combination of organic chemical similar to that which I have given him; and he killed her for money: for our grandparents’ estate, and then the unexpected windfall of Papa’s. He killed her because she questioned his authority. Because she was a yellow tramp.
Oh my dear God.
And so I must witness his death, if God will not. Please. I look at my watch: Hurry up, hurry up. It’s only ten past seven; eleven minutes past. I stare out into the hills disappearing into the sky outside. I watch the stars begin to prick through each of the three-inch squared mullioned panes.
‘What’s wrong? Ryl – tell me,’ Greta whispers beside me beneath some wide-flung loudness of Mr Thompson; she is still wondering what happened when I went to the hospital, she is asking again, concerned. She knows something has happened; something is happening. She knows I have lied to her somewhere this evening.
‘Oh I might be a bit annoyed you made a fool of me,’ I whisper back, ‘pretending to Mrs Weston that there’s nothing wrong with you.’ I attempt to roll my eyes, but they barely move in my head. I am silently, calmly petrified.
‘There is nothing wrong with me.’ Greta touches my knee under the table. ‘Not now. Truly. Believe me.’
Prince barks out the back on his chain, and a clattering of footsteps on the front verandah interrupts our meal, an urgent ringing of the bell. Mary is calling for Lucy, then thumping up the east hallway herself, muttering: ‘Suppose I have to do everything at once, since there’s three of me.’
It’s a boy from the hospital at the door, raced up on a pony, and jabbering at Mary: ‘It’s Mr Howell – tell the Miss Joneses – he’s been taken ill. He’s got some stomach trouble and it’s got him something bad. Tell the Miss Joneses! Them doctors said it was real bad.’
Time clatters and leaps against exclamations and assurances; of course Mrs Weston will wait with Greta here, and Mr Thompson will wait here too, while Mr Wilberry and I return to the hospital, and Greta says nothing of her thoughts. Only her eyes ask: What have you done? And I look away.
‘Oh my dear, my dear, what a day this is turning out to be for you.’ Mrs Weston clasps my hand as we are leaving. ‘It never rains but it pours, doesn’t it? My love goes with you,’ she sighs us back out to the stables and into the gathering night.
Where Buckley is waiting with Sally and the buggy, as Ben has instructed him to do. But Buckley cannot look at me as I dash out towards him now. Let him condemn me. Let him be my judge. Let him be the only one.
Ben
‘She! She! She!’ he screams at her when we enter the room. ‘She poisons me!’
He is tied to the bed with leather belts, and thrashing against them, almost lifting the bed from the floor. He is livid and streaming sweat, eyes bloodshot and shaking in his head, a demon trapped.
‘It’s the delirium,’ Dr Weston says between us, and he takes Berylda’s hand, cupping it in both of his to assure her. ‘Ignore the outbursts. Typhoid fever, of course – unmistakeable case. No rash as yet but the rest is self-evident. Possibly contracted from a patient, possibly before Christmas, there were a few cases out at Magpie early in December – you know how giving of his time he has always been with the troubles of the poor. Not so considerate of him.’ Dr Weston exhales a gust of misplaced esteem, overlaying the stench of sickly dysenteric excrement with a sharp vapour of Scotch.
‘Was there no clue, no warning?’ Berylda asks him, and her voice is small but assertive.
‘She murders me!’ Howell screams again and writhes ever more violently.
Dr Weston flinches but otherwise ignores the accusation, answering Berylda: ‘Perhaps there was a hint. He has seemed weary, distracted the past few days, agitated, I suppose. But therein lies the benefit of hindsight, yes? I would hazard a guess that he has ignored the signs himself, as most men would, too busy to bother with being unwell, and now it’s come on remarkably strong – and fast. Most awful.’ Weston looks now to me, regretful: ‘You know his wife perished of the same infection. Almost exactly five years ago.’ He pats Berylda’s hand again. ‘But your uncle is physically fit, my dear, in his prime. They do not come fitter than Alec Howell, do they? He is fastidious in his health if ever anyone was. Typhoid takes only the weak.’ He says that last as though he decides it.
But of course, Alec Howell does not have typhoid fever. And I am mesmerised by Berylda yet again and more. She knows so precisely what she does. Her recourse is not admirable, no. But she is. That she can stand here before this foulness without baulking. If I didn’t have her to regard, I would have difficulty keeping my stomach where it belongs. She is a rock of will.
Dr Weston says to her: ‘This must be terribly distressing for you. Now you have seen him as you wished, it is best that you go – go up to his private room, make a cup of tea, I’ll find you there. Leave us to tend him. All will be well if I have my way.’
‘No.’ She will not be moved. ‘No thank you, Dr Weston. I will care for Uncle Alec. Please.’
‘Oh? Well.’ The man is nonplussed, but perhaps his desire f
or another Scotch sways him, and he is quick to yield: ‘As you wish, my dear, I suppose. As you wish.’
As Weston leaves the room, leaving us alone with Howell, Berylda goes to the basin in the corner. She soaks a cloth there and places it in a bowl, takes it over to the night stand by the bed, and then she shifts a chair to sit beside the man who has robbed and defiled all that she loves. He is disgusting in every way. The teeth are bared, moiling to gouge her. But he can do nothing except dare her to draw nearer.
‘There, there, Alec darling …’ She continues her deception and her truth, holding the cloth by him, as though waiting for him to settle for long enough that she might be able to wipe the bile from his mouth. But she does not touch him. She looks into his eyes, she holds him in her eyes, as he raves at her.
‘It’s hell for you, slut! Hell, I say!’
He spits at her and she does not look away. He bawls at her, over and over, the longest notes of helpless anguish.
‘Listen to me!’ he begs me blindly. ‘Listen to me, please.’
I feel only the need of a pistol, and the chill that compulsion brings.
He rails and spews for almost two hours before the bile turns to blood and Weston is in the room again, grave now, declaring the infection fatal. ‘I am so sorry, my dear. It would seem there is nothing to be done, after all. The sepsis has its way. It will be finished soon, however. There will be mercy soon. You need not –’
‘Thank you, Dr Weston, but I shall stay.’ She is stoic; hers is the face made perfect with reflected venom. She is the rare and solitary trigger flower that lashes and consumes the bee. Immaculate.
Howell soon lapses into a shivering silence. The reverend is called for. Drs Weston and Gebhardt bicker in the hall, the German adamant about hand-washing and the spread of germs or some other trivial thing. And Berylda chooses her moment now to lean close to Howell and whisper in his ear.