‘He’s waiting for you on the third floor,’ she said and pointed. ‘Use those stairs.’
Who was it that was dying? Blackstone asked himself, as he took the stairs three at a time.
Not the sergeant himself, obviously.
But whoever it was, it had to be somehow connected to the investigation, or Meade would never have called him.
He passed the second floor, his heart beating out a furious tattoo, his head pounding.
Could it be Mrs de Courcey? he wondered.
Or Senator Plunkitt?
Was he about to hear a deathbed declaration from one of them which would crack the Inspector O’Brien murder case wide open?
He had reached the third floor and paused to catch his breath.
Ahead of him was a long corridor which smelled strongly of both carbolic soap and desperation.
And halfway along the corridor, shrouded in their own misery, sat a man and a woman.
As they saw him approaching them, Alex Meade and Mary O’Brien stood up.
‘What happened?’ Blackstone asked.
‘It’s Jenny!’ Mary O’Brien moaned. ‘Poor little Jenny. She’s slashed her own wrists.’
Blackstone felt his stomach knot.
‘But she’s not dead, is she?’ he asked.
And even as he was speaking the words, he was thinking to himself, of course she’s not dead, you bloody fool! If she was dead, there’d be no reason for us to be here.
‘No, she’s not dead — but she is in a pretty bad way,’ Alex Meade said grimly.
‘How did it happen?’ Blackstone demanded.
‘I–I took the children out to Central Park this morning,’ Mary O’Brien sobbed. ‘I thought it might cheer them up a little. I thought that the fresh air would be good for them. I asked Jenny if she wanted to come, too, but she said that she didn’t.’
‘You mustn’t blame yourself, Mary,’ Meade said soothingly.
‘I should have made her come with us, shouldn’t I?’ Mary said, ignoring him. ‘I’m the mistress of the house and she’s the servant. I should have insisted that she came.’
‘You weren’t to know what would happen,’ Meade told her.
‘Wasn’t I?’ Mary asked fiercely.
‘No, you’ve-’
‘When I told her that because of Patrick’s death I was going to have to let her go, I saw how depressed she was. So I should have known then. I should have damn-well known!’
‘Who found her?’ asked Blackstone, as the policeman who never entirely left him took control of his head again.
‘Mrs. . Mrs Kenton. She’s the part-time cleaner who helps Jenny with the heavy work. She. . she wasn’t due to arrive until eleven o’clock, but for some reason she got there at about half-past ten.’ Mary shuddered. ‘The doctor said that if she’d arrived even a few minutes later than that, poor little Jenny would already have been dead.’
She bowed her head and seemed unable to go on.
‘As I understand it, this Mrs Kenton behaved truly admirably,’ Meade said, trying his best to sound cool and efficient. ‘The first thing she did was to apply tourniquets to the girl’s arms to stop the bleeding, then she bandaged her wrists. And having taken things as far she could herself, she stuck her head out of the window and shouted to a passer-by that he should summon an ambulance.’
There was one question that almost seemed too crass to ask, but Blackstone knew that he had to ask it anyway. He gestured to Meade that they should move a little distance away from Mrs O’Brien.
‘It’s a terrible thing to have happened,’ he said, as the knot in his stomach continued to tighten up. ‘A truly ghastly thing. But what I don’t really see is why we’re here.’
‘We’re here because Jenny wants to see us,’ Meade said. ‘Or, to be accurate, she wants to see you.’
‘What?’
‘She keeps losing consciousness, but every time she comes round, the first thing she wants to know is why you’re not here.’
She was the second girl in an hour who’d asked to see him, Blackstone thought, as he felt the heavy weight of responsibility pressing firmly down on his shoulders.
He already knew why Trixie had asked for him. She’d thought he’d have a better — and more sympathetic — understanding of her situation than Alex Meade would have done.
But what possible reason could the servant girl — who had only met him once — have for being so desperate to talk to him?
The girl was unconscious, and was dressed in a white surgical shift which was only slightly paler than her own complexion.
The bed she had been laid on was no more than the standard size, yet it seemed far too big for her. She looked lost in it, Blackstone thought. She looked as if she was drowning in it.
‘What are her chances?’ he asked the doctor, a youngish man who looked as if he had not slept for days.
‘Not good at all,’ the doctor replied. ‘She doesn’t appear to have had a particularly robust constitution to begin with, and she’s lost a great deal of blood. We’ve no idea what state her vital organs are in — they could be failing even now, for all we know — but she’s so weak that we daren’t risk trying any explorations.’
‘Tell me something — anything — that I can pin a little hope to,’ Blackstone demanded.
The doctor thought about it. ‘If she manages to live through the day, I might start being a little more optimistic of a recovery,’ he said finally.
‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’ Blackstone asked.
‘But if she died without ever recovering consciousness again,’ the doctor continued, ‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.’
Blackstone thought back to the dream he had had, only two nights earlier. Not a dream of Hannah or of Agnes, or even of Ellie Carr, but of Jenny. It had puzzled him at the time that she should have a key to his sleeping world, and it puzzled him even more now.
The girl groaned.
‘She seems to be coming round,’ the doctor whispered. ‘Go and stand by the bed, where she can see you.’
Blackstone did as he’d been instructed, and arrived there just as Jenny opened her eyes.
She smiled weakly at him. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Hello, Jenny,’ Blackstone replied.
‘I’m an orphan,’ the girl told him.
‘I know.’
‘I don’t ever remember having a papa of my very own, but I saw this picture of a gentleman in a magazine once, and he looked so nice and kind that I cut it out and kept it.’
‘Did you?’ Blackstone asked, feeling as if his heart would break.
‘I’ve still got it. I used to look at it sometimes and pretend that he was my papa. Isn’t that silly?’
‘No, it’s not silly at all,’ Blackstone said, as a wave of helplessness and inadequacy swamped him. ‘It’s sweet.’
‘And when you came to the apartment that time, with your friend, you reminded me of my magazine papa.’
So that was what this was all about, Blackstone thought.
‘I wish I had been your papa,’ he said. ‘I would have been proud to be your papa.’
‘Would you. . would you hold my hand?’ Jenny asked timidly.
Blackstone looked to the doctor for guidance, and the doctor mouthed back that it would be all right, as long as he was very, very gentle.
Blackstone took Jenny’s hand, and the girl gripped his with what little strength she had left in her.
‘You slit your own wrists, didn’t you, Jenny?’ he asked softly. ‘Nobody helped you. Nobody else was involved.’
‘Nobody,’ Jenny confirmed, almost dreamily. ‘I did it all by myself.’
‘Tell me how you did it.’
‘I waited until the mistress had taken the children off to Central Park, and then I went into the kitchen and took a sharp knife out of the drawer. I. . I. .’
‘Gently, Jenny,’ Blackstone cooed. ‘Take it gently.’
‘I took the knife back to my bedroom. I want
ed to get it all over and done with straight away, but somehow I–I just couldn’t. I must have sat staring at that knife for hours before I got up the courage to use it.’
Not hours, though it may have felt like it, Blackstone thought. But an hour at least.
He could almost see her, sitting there on her bed, looking at the sharp knife she was holding in her trembling hands, and willing herself to find the strength to end it all.
‘If I’d done it just a few minutes sooner, I’d have been dead by the time Mrs Kenton arrived,’ Jenny said plaintively. ‘When you see her, tell her I’m sorry for upsetting her, will you?’
‘There’ll be no need for that,’ Blackstone said, with feigned heartiness. ‘You’ll be able to tell her yourself in a day or two.’
‘No, I won’t,’ Jenny said, with a certainty that was quite chilling. ‘You know I won’t.’
‘Why did you do it, Jenny?’ Blackstone asked, still softly. ‘Whatever possessed you to want to end your life?’
‘I did it because I’m no good,’ Jenny told him. ‘I did it because I’m a very wicked person.’
‘No, you’re not,’ Blackstone said soothingly.
‘You don’t know,’ Jenny said, with as much passion as her weak state would allow. ‘You’ve no idea.’
Up until perhaps a minute earlier, he’d firmly believed that the reason she’d asked to see him was because he’d become her new father figure — a living breathing replacement for the picture she’d cut out of the magazine.
And that was probably just what she believed, too.
But there was so much more to it than that, Blackstone was now starting to realize.
Jenny knew she was going to die, and something deep within her — perhaps the soul she was probably only vaguely aware she even possessed — was driving her to unburden herself before death took her.
And that was why he was there.
Not as a replacement for the man whose picture she cut from the magazine at all, but as a father figure in a much more traditional sense — as a priest, who was supposed to hear her confession and grant her absolution.
‘I’m sure you could never have done anything that other people would consider even remotely wicked,’ he said.
‘Wicked,’ Jenny mumbled, almost deliriously. ‘Wicked.’
‘But if you want to tell me about these so-called terrible things that you think you’ve done, I’ll be happy to listen,’ Blackstone assured her.
‘I betrayed the master,’ Jenny said. ‘He was never anything but kind to me, and I betrayed him.’
The knot in Blackstone’s stomach was now so tight that he was finding it difficult to breathe.
‘How did you betray him?’ he asked.
But from the strange look which had come into Jenny’s eyes, he doubted she could even hear him any more.
‘He’s dead because of me,’ Jenny whimpered. ‘He’s dead because I betrayed him.’
‘Jenny, listen to me!’ Blackstone said desperately. ‘Try to hear what I’m going to say to you.’
But it was hopeless — she was too far gone now.
‘It wasn’t a bullet that killed the master,’ Jenny whispered, her voice so faint that he had to lower his head closer to her mouth to even hear what she was saying. ‘It was me!’
Her grip on his hand had been growing weaker and weaker as she spoke these last few poignant words, and now there was no grip left at all.
The doctor, who had been watching the whole scene from a distance, now stepped forward and placed a finger on Jenny’s neck.
He shook his head sadly. ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid.’
Blackstone just stood there, looking down at the dead girl.
‘You can let go of her hand, now,’ the doctor said.
‘What?’
‘She can’t feel you any longer, so there’s no point in you continuing to hold her hand.’
No, there probably wasn’t, Blackstone thought. And yet his own hand seemed reluctant to release its grip.
‘There are things to do,’ the doctor said, a hint of impatience entering his voice. ‘We have to wash her and lay her out. We’re going to need the bed.’
Blackstone forced his fingers to open and Jenny’s arm flopped back on to the bed.
He turned and walked towards the door, and as he did so, he felt his eyes start to prickle. It was a long time since he could last remember crying — but he was crying now.
SEVENTEEN
There was only enough space for a single bed, a night-stand and a small wardrobe in Jenny’s bedroom, but given her former life at the orphanage, thought Blackstone — who knew all about orphanages himself — it must have seemed unimaginably luxurious to the girl.
He looked down at the blankets and sheets which covered the narrow bed, and which were themselves covered with a dark brown stain.
How Jenny had bled!
How she must have lain there in quiet despair, watching her life slowly seep away!
‘Where are Isobel, Emily and Benjamin?’ he heard Meade ask from somewhere behind him.
‘At the moment, they’re with Mr and Mrs Barlow, our neighbours,’ Mary O’Brien replied. ‘But they can’t stay there for much longer.’
‘Why not?’
‘It wouldn’t be fair to the Barlows. They’re very willing to help, but they’re old people, and it must be a strain on them having even three well-behaved children around.’
‘So if they can’t stay with the neighbours, what are you going to do with them?’
‘The children must come back to the apartment.’
‘Is that wise — after what’s just happened here?’
‘This is their home,’ Mary said firmly. ‘And if it contains unhappy memories — as it unquestionably does — they must learn to come to terms with them. Because you can’t live your life by running away from unpleasantness or pretending it never happened.’
‘I still think you should consider. .’ Meade began.
But Mary had left his side and was already standing next to Blackstone and looking down at the bed.
‘I’ll have to clean this up before they get back,’ she said. ‘I can at least spare them that.’
‘If there’s anything we can do, you know that you only have to ask,’ Meade said.
‘I do know that, and I’m very grateful for it,’ Mary told him. She began stripping the sheets and blankets off Jenny’s bed. ‘I’d like to throw these away, but I simply can’t afford to. Still, the stains will hardly show if Jenny boils them really. .’ She faltered. ‘Jenny won’t be boiling them, will she?’ she continued, with a choke in her voice. ‘Jenny will never be boiling anything again.’
‘Perhaps it might be a good idea if you sat down for a while,’ Meade suggested.
‘There’s no time to sit down,’ Mary said, collecting up the bedding in her arms. ‘There’s still far too much to do.’ She looked down at the mattress, and saw that the bloodstains had left their mark there, too. ‘The mattress is beyond saving,’ she decided. ‘It will just have to be burned. Could you gentlemen. . could you take it down the basement for me, and ask the janitor if he wouldn’t mind putting it in the furnace?’
‘Of course,’ Meade said.
‘Be glad to,’ Blackstone told her.
When Blackstone and Meade returned from the basement, they found Mary pacing back and forth across the living-room floor.
‘There’s a bottle of whiskey on the table,’ she said. ‘Will you please pour us all a drink, Alex?’
‘I’m not sure that’s. .’ Meade began.
‘We must drink to Jenny’s memory,’ Mary said firmly. ‘We at least owe her that.’
Meade poured the three drinks, and handed one to Mary.
‘Patrick always said that it was an insult to good whiskey to drink it standing up, so do please sit down,’ Mary said.
But she did not sit down herself. With her own glass of whiskey held tightly in her hand, she continued to pace the floor.
�
�There is so much to do,’ she said, not for the first time, and in a voice which kept oscillating between the despairing and the frantic. ‘So very, very much to do. The orphanage where Jenny was brought up was run by Presbyterians, you know, and once she came to live with us, we went to great pains to see that she continued to follow her chosen religion.’
Or, at any rate, the religion that had been chosen for her, Blackstone thought, because in that — as in so many other aspects of her life — she had been able to make very few choices of her own.
Do you think the fact that she killed herself means she can’t be buried in consecrated ground, Alex?’ Mary asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Meade replied.
‘It shouldn’t. It’s not fair that it should. But perhaps, even if it does, I can persuade her pastor — who is also the orphanage pastor — that she never intended to kill herself.’ She looked at Blackstone, perhaps hoping for some sort of support, but the inspector could think of nothing to say. ‘Or perhaps I can tell him that she was just punishing her body in the same way as the flagellants punish theirs.’
‘I don’t think Presbyterians do that,’ Blackstone told her.
‘No, I don’t suppose they do,’ Mary said. ‘Or that she did intend to kill herself, but changed her mind at the last moment.’ she continued, as if searching for something — anything — that they could agree on.
‘Perhaps that’s just what she did do,’ Blackstone said, feeling as if the words were being torn from him.
But he didn’t believe it. Not for a second.
Jenny had known what she was doing. Weighed down with her guilt over O’Brien’s death, she had sought the only escape she thought was open to her — and had taken her own life.
‘But even if the church won’t bury her with all the trappings of religious ritual, she still has to be buried,’ Mary said. ‘Can she still have a funeral service, even if the grave is not consecrated?’
‘I don’t know,’ Meade said for the second time.
‘I must find out,’ Mary said. ‘I must arrange for the burial. I must send out the notices.’ She stopped pacing, as if a new, terrible thought had suddenly struck her. ‘There is no one to send notices to,’ she wailed. ‘She was an orphan. She had no family of her own. She had no friends. .’
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