by Abigail Agar
And a fire would be lovely …
It was only when they turned from the open moonlit main streets and down a gloomy alleyway that Vera began to worry about the reputability of her companion. Somehow the idea of anything scandalous happening between an obvious commoner like him and someone of her stock had bypassed any possibility of danger from this man. Her instincts simply told her that he would offer her respect, and she would return with condescension.
Now in the dark of the alleyway, some inkling of the true nature of men and women came to her. She realised that in this dark place, without witnesses, he would have no trouble overpowering her, robbing her, murdering her or – as he had delicately put it – worse.
Mr Fielding looked at her, and his smiling face was lit by the hellish red glow of his pipe. His smile now seemed a horrible leer. She wanted to run, but something told her that if she did so that would signal to him to chase her.
If only she had heeded her dream! To be woken from hiding among wolves to find herself running alongside this wolf in the night. He had even admitted his criminal nature to her. Perhaps if she screamed …
Then they turned another corner and before them was the public house light pouring from its windows and the murmuring conversations of those drunks whose commitment to drink kept them out long after the church tower had rang out the third or fourth hour of the morning.
Above its doors swung a heavy wooden sign which read: The Worm in the Rose with an illustration of a dying rose wound about by a pale white snake.
If I sleep just a few hours here, she thought, I can find my way to the post office and send a runner to Sir William. They will know where to find him.
Sir William Fitzwilliam had taken on the role of managing the Bathcombe constabulary because, as he had claimed, he wished to help all with justice.
The Bathcombe Gazette had suggested he had taken the role due to being disinherited by the aunt whom he had depended on. He needed the fees paid for the running down of criminals and to collect and present evidence for the prosecution. Sir William maintained in public that his reasons were purely charitable, the Bathcombe Gazette continued to aver otherwise.
Either way, there would be costs to living while away from home, and she had only a few pennies and a single silver shilling in her purse. That would feed her and perhaps buy her a glass of Madeira and water, but she would need to return home for funds soon.
The thought filled her with dread. The cramped little study where she had almost been found, almost lost my life, and those long corridors down which sinister men could tramp, beating at every door until this time – this time – she could not bear to finish the thought.
Mr Fielding spoke calmly and without menace to her, his conversation having both paternalistic tones and patronising words, and yet it was punctuated by the respect owed to her obvious class. So he bobbed between his ironic ‘dear cuz’ and his deferential ‘m’lady’ and never seemed to quite settle where she fell in his personal hierarchy of the soul.
The Worm in the Rose, on the inside, was lit warmly by the glow of oil lamps and the flicker of a wood fire still glowing in the grate. The wine they gave her when she asked for her drink was neither Madeira nor particularly watered down, but it was warm and numbing and by her second cup it had taken away the aches of her walk and even dulled the sharp pangs that reminded her that she would never speak to her father again, nor her mother, nor sweet Mishka.
As she sat staring into the fire sipping her drink, she quite forgot to ask for food, and as the ravages of the day caught up to her, her tiredness returned to fill her up as gradually as the tide coming in, until she could no longer keep her eyes open, and at last, she slept.
Once more, she was in the forest, clad in the wolves’ skin, but now as she ran alongside the wolves she snagged her covering on branches and thorns which tore her disguise away until she was standing surrounded by wolves with nothing to protect herself but her father’s musket.
She pointed the barrel at the biggest wolf and pulled the trigger. There was a loud snap as the flint fell, but she woke up knowing that the gun had not been loaded.
She had a terrible headache, and it took her a few moments to remember where she was, so blurred was her vision. Eventually, the fireplace swam into focus, and her mind registered the smell of beer-soaked sawdust.
Her mouth was dry and cracked and tasted as though her teeth had grown velvet fur. In the chair beside her, the gentleman Fielding was dreaming, his lungs become bellows which played the organ of his nose in the most remarkable range of snores for both volume and variety.
In his hand was nestled Vera’s purse, clutched tight. Anger flashed through her, and she snatched the purse from his hand.
He woke up cutting himself off mid-snore with a sudden bellow of ‘Tarnation, Plimpton!’
As he sat up straight looking around like a bear startled out of hibernation by a careless hunter, her anger subsided. He had looked after her last night and not run away; he was sleeping with her purse in plain view in his hand. This was not the behaviour of a thief.
In fact, more and more of the discussion around her was returning to her mind. The kindly barkeeper Mrs Plimpton who appeared to run a tight, if slatternly, ship.
Three men were summarily flung out for starting a fight – one went so far as to draw a weapon, a clear taboo from the reaction of Mr Fielding who had not only confiscated the man’s short sword but used the flat of it to deliver a thorough thrashing at Mrs Plimpton’s command.
The barflies had all seemed to know each other and had extravagant aliases like Cutter Joe and Red Fella, a pair of Irishmen who seemed to deal in false coinage, from the repeated joke Mrs Plimpton made of checking every coin they gave her with fastidious detail.
An elderly, toothless man with a wooden leg, which had resulted in his nickname of Peggy, passed through the bar regaling anyone who would listen with tall tales.
There was a safe familial atmosphere despite the dangerous company, and it seemed that Mr Fielding held a place of particular esteem within the walls of this house, due in part to his apparent connection with Mrs Plimpton.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Vera, hearing the croak in her own voice.
‘Sorry, for what my pet?’
‘I thought you had stolen my purse when clearly you were looking after it.’
‘Was I now?’ he said looking unconvinced. ‘Perhaps a man’s criminal instincts can be beat after all? And perhaps I stole it but was too drunken careless to hide my crime from my detective cousin.’
Unsure if he was joking or not, she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. ‘Well. Thank you for protecting my coin all night either way. May I buy you some bread and cheese for breakfast if they have such in store?’
‘No charge for me here. Allow me to treat you to a free meal. My generosity knows no bounds in such matters. Then you must tell me your story.’
As they ate, she related to him the events of the previous day to which he listened closely interrupting only twice. Once to swear horribly at the name of Sir William Fitzwilliam and once at the mention of the unusual carriage.
‘How odd,’ he said when she had described the vehicle.
‘What is?’ she asked.
‘Why it was only a few days ago that the priest – he is not a real priest, you know, but the owner of a nunnery of a very different sort to that of the religious class – but that’s by the by … The priest was telling me of that carriage and the unusual owner who had hired a room in his establishment but asked for no girls, in fact, specifically demanded to be left alone when he was there. One of the girls told the priest that he was a Russian prince. There can’t be more than one old coach decked out like that in the whole of Somerset.’
Vera’s heart leapt at this. She would be able to tell the constables exactly where to go. Why, they could have the murderer in prison by this evening and on the scaffold before the summer solstice was upon them.
Chapter 5
; After eating the proffered meal, she thanked Mrs Plimpton and Mr Fielding and wended her way through Bathcombe to the courthouse which stood on the banks of the river.
The courthouse was a majestic neoclassical edifice with a relief of blind justice in the local sandstone carved into the elegant column that divided the pair of double doors at the front.
Smog from the coal fires of the city had darkened the yellow stone and rain had run the soot in dark rivulets down over the sandstone blindfold giving Justice a smeared and besmirched air.
The day was warm, and the hot smell of effluence steamed up from the river making Vera feel nauseous. The cheese and bread felt like a hard bolus in her stomach, and an unpleasant churn had developed in her innards that signalled her fear even more strongly to herself than her own mind could. Her corset pinched, and she felt sweat beading at her neck and under her bonnet which she wore low as a kind of protective screen from passersby.
At that hour of the day, the road was heaving with foot traffic through which the occasional grumpy coachman or cabby guided their passengers. Vera stopped below the courthouse steps feeling the bustle of humanity that moved around her. She felt that stepping out of the crowd would in some way expose her to danger.
Through the crowd, she could hear street vendors advertising their wares in long loud calls of: ‘Get yer fresh fruit and vegetables’, ‘Penny off on all hot meats’, and ‘Extra, extra read all about it …’
She stepped out from the crowd and started up the steps, the clamour from behind her seeming to recede much faster than was possible at the rate she was climbing the stairs.
‘Extra, extra …’
Her blood froze. It took a moment for the words to sink in, to confirm her fear.
‘Read all about it …’
What had the newspaper boy said? She stood beneath the grubby face of Lady Justice and heard from behind her the day’s headline:
Bathcombe Family Murdered By Daughter – Killer Still At Large
‘Read all about it …’
Behind her, the crowd recognised her, seized pitchforks, lit torches, and moved to seize her and improvise a gibbet.
She turned to look at them.
There were no pitchforks, no torches or rope, no one so much as glanced up at the accused murderer standing on the courthouse steps to visit the man who would condemn her in court to hang for this crime.
Despite their indifference, the crowd still felt different to her. No longer the safe huddle of people in which she could hide and by whom she might be protected. Now every face under every hat or bonnet was an informer who might turn her in.
Curiosity drew her to the paperboy, who stood with a paper in one hand and a crude, homemade walking stick supporting a lame left leg. Despite his unfortunate health, his lungs were strong, bellowing out ‘Read all about it’ so loud that he turned every head in the area.
For one of her last pennies, Vera bought a copy of The Gazette.
Sure enough, the front page was a brief but sensational description of her house as a murder scene. Then came the astonishing paragraph:
One Mrs Miniver of Edgecomb Road stated that Miss Ladislaw had fired a soldier’s musket at Mrs Miniver on a previous visitation to the Ladislaw residence.
This combines with the witness of two notable gentlemen who attended the residence to speak to Mr Ladislaw shortly before his death who stated that the daughter appeared hysterical. Further searching of the premises revealed a pair of notes determined to be in Miss Ladislaw’s hand stating that she intended to kill her family and servants as part of a profane delusion that she was doing God’s work.
Miss Ladislaw is currently assumed to be criminally insane.
How had they found a note that she had never written? Why weren’t the gentlemen named? She felt bewildered; her world had been torn asunder, and until now she had been held together by the plan to deliver justice to those two men who had torn her family apart.
To be on the run from the law instead of in its protection was too much. She felt faint, but fear that anyone assisting a fainting woman would recognise her from the short description in the paper kept her upright, walking as if in a dream.
Thank the heavens the papers are printed quicker than wanted posters.
She could run, and make her way to somewhere she was less known. It would be hard to find work if she had no proof of who she was. But it would only be a matter of time before the constables closed in on her.
None of her old friends could be relied on for assistance.
What am I to do?
She was a wanted murderer. Her family was dead. Mishka too killed and the whole case cut and dried against her. The forgery that appeared to be her own blood-stained handwriting. The testimony of Mrs Miniver that she attempted to shoot her in front of witnesses and then laughed like a madwoman. This was all too much.
What could she do? To go to court was to throw herself at the mercy of a man already poisoned against her by her persecutors.
The light sandstone facades that had seemed so beautiful and bright on previous visits now seemed to her like the light shone into dark places to root out whatever hides there.
She was trapped in the straw coloured streets, just like the rats pursued through the hay-ricks by little Jem Butcher’s terrier. There was no one or nowhere to turn to.
Respectable people did not shelter children who killed their parents. The church would grant no sanctuary. She would have to live like a criminal. Perhaps she could beg her way in the park.
The Park! Of course. Mr Fielding. He and his compatriots at The Worm in the Rose!
They had their ways of avoiding the law. Sir William’s search would only go so far and last so long. In a city like Bathcombe, there was always some new nemesis rising to challenge the public peace. Mr Fielding would know what to do.
She turned down a side street and wended her way away from the main street towards the cheaper side of the river.
When she entered The Worm in the Rose, Mrs Plimpton was speaking to a young boy of about sixteen in raised tones. ‘You fool,’ she yelled. ‘You’re not much good to me hanging from the gallows. You’re damned lucky no one caught you stealing silver from the place like that. You can’t go back my boy; you’ll have to come work here again. I won’t have a child of mine going down the same road as his old dad.’
The boy’s head hung low. He wore a rather better suit, in plain black, than Vera had expected of a Plimpton child. It must be provided in some way by his employer, she thought.
Just then Mrs Plimpton looked up and her face brightened into a smile. ‘Why if it isn’t little Miss Fielding. How did you do? Run your villain to earth yet?’
If Vera thought she was keeping her despair from showing, the sudden look of motherly concern on Mrs Plimpton’s face dissuaded her of that illusion. The barkeeper had the look one takes when watching a sickly relative attempt to speak through a tubercular cough.
Her hands went immediately to the wine bottle and, ignoring the feckless child, she poured a large glass from the bottle, took a sip from the glass herself, and handed the bottle across to Vera.
The warm glow of yesterday evening offered its temptations up in the mouth of that bottle, and Vera drank long of it.
‘Now. Tell me what happened,’ said Mrs Plimpton.
What despair, what abject misery, filled Vera’s heart. Where to begin with the tale of unspeakable injustice?
The story spilt out of her in bursts, punctuated by regular draughts from the bottle and still more regular sobs.