by Alex Reeve
I didn’t know what to feel. After all this time, surely, I should feel something: some anger, some hatred, some new onslaught of grief. I sought inside myself for a boiling rage, setting my eyes on the stain on the deck, fixing it in my mind. Perhaps I should crawl to that spot and die upon it. Wouldn’t that be romantic?
But the truth was that the stain probably didn’t mark the place. It might have nothing to do with Maria. This was a working boat and things got spilled all the time, and I would be dying upon a dropped pot of coffee.
Miss Gainsford was gazing out over the river, scanning along the opposite bank, her eyes resting longest on the little lanes heading south, away from the city. The wind was getting up and the chop had grown stronger, so she had to hold on to the rail.
When she spoke again it was in a small voice. ‘You’re wrong. What you believe doesn’t matter, but …’ I could see her welling up. She took a slow breath. ‘She didn’t die on the river. She died back at the house.’
My own vision was blurring too. I tried to wipe my eyes, but my hand was greasy with blood.
‘You mean Bentinck’s house?’
‘Yes. After she’d opened the strongbox, she must’ve heard me come in. It was morning, and James was away. I think … I think she heard me, and ran upstairs. I had work to do, and was bustling around, and she must’ve been hiding up there for some time. Hours, I think.’
‘So you murdered her at the house and dragged her body down to the river?’
She shook her head. ‘No, you don’t understand. I was in the house, and suddenly I heard her. I would know her voice anywhere. She shouted something but I couldn’t make out what it was. As if she was in pain. At first I thought she must be outside, and then I realised she was upstairs. I ran into the hall just in time to see her fall from the top of the stairs. But there was no one else there, no one else in the house. She just fell. She was there and I looked up, and she just … fell.’
I couldn’t understand what she was saying. It didn’t make any sense. ‘You can’t think that she would … no, she would never hurt herself deliberately.’
‘She hit her head on the pommel of the bannister, and by the time I got to her she was quite dead. I didn’t know what to do.’ Miss Gainsford clenched her hands together so hard I could hear her joints crack, even over the noise of the wind. ‘She was wearing a satchel with the money inside, and I took it. It was my due, but I’d pay every penny back a hundredfold to have her here now, with me. Hugo and I cleaned everything up, and he brought her body down to the river to drift off on the tide. But I couldn’t bear it, the thought of it. She deserved a proper funeral. So I told someone and they fetched the police. I watched them take her away. You know the rest.’
In my mind, a vision flashed like a lamp guttering as the gas runs thin: Maria’s eyes, cold and still in the mortuary. Conjunctiva inflamed, Mr Hurst had said, but he never thought to find out why. He was in too much of a hurry.
And then, quite suddenly, I knew everything. I knew exactly what had happened. Not suicide; Maria was far too full of life for that. Something else. It was a weight that almost crushed me.
You don’t have children, do you? You don’t know how it is.
I could hear distant voices shouting.
Miss Gainsford looked past me and narrowed her eyes. She went to the back and loosened the last rope, working quickly, and the boat eased and settled on the water. When she returned, she had a bottle in her hand. I could smell it and almost taste it. She clamped my nose between her thumb and forefinger and shoved my head back. She was remarkably strong.
‘Enough talking,’ she whispered. ‘Sleep tight.’
She upended the bottle, and the black water filled my mouth. I felt no fear, clung to no hope, offered up no prayer. There would be no suffering. My last thought before I closed my eyes was: I will never wake up from this sleep.
The voices were getting louder.
‘Leo! Leo! Leo!’
29
I almost swallowed it. I was so close, savouring the bitterness in the back of my throat, my body yearning. Swallowing would be so simple. One moment and it would be done.
But I could still hear Rosie.
‘Leo!’ she called again.
I made as if to swallow and then swooned and sank down. Miss Gainsford had moved to the back of the boat and was standing with the tiller in her hand, her eyes fixed on the mouth of the dock where it met the river. The sound of the engine grew louder, and clouds of smoke wafted over us as the boat bobbed in anticipation of forward motion.
I sat up and spat out the chloral. My shirt was wet and I was feeling dizzy. I dug my fingers into the cut in my side to wake myself up, but there was no greater sharpness to the pain. My wound had become abstract, a dislocated agony.
On the quayside, people were running. The weasel was at the front. He was coming straight down the lane that led to the dock, so I had a good view of his red face and billowing coat. He kept looking back over his shoulder. Rosie was giving chase, lifting her skirts with one hand and holding her shoes in the other, her hair streaming behind her. But it wasn’t Rosie he was afraid of. Pallett had rounded the corner and was pounding down the hill in great strides, his helmet flying off and bumping along the ground.
The weasel sprinted full pelt towards us. I could see him waving, beckoning for Miss Gainsford to come back for him, but she was gunning the engine, nosing the boat towards open water. It was slow, hindered by its own inertia, but the gap was widening. As he reached the edge of the quay he leapt, but not far enough. Our eyes met and his mouth gaped, and then he disappeared out of sight into the river.
I struggled to my feet, holding on to the rail just to stay upright. With my wrists tied together it was hard to get any balance, and the boat was rocking more than I had expected.
If I didn’t do something now I would be dead for certain, and the railway clerk’s daughters would be sold into slavery in Belgium. I had to act, but my arms felt like wet string. All the strength I had was going into shaking.
Am I brave? Is this what heroism is? If so, I didn’t feel it. If anything, I was afraid of everything. It wasn’t bravery that drove me forward, it was pure desperation.
Miss Gainsford was looking back at the shore. I launched myself forward and attempted to run at her, but misjudged the movement of the boat and fell hard against a cleat. She turned and saw me, and might have shouted something. I tried to stand but the boat was spinning, and all I could do was shuffle towards her on my knees.
She picked up a spanner, a heavy, blackened thing, and took a step towards me, holding it high. I had one last chance. One last breath.
The deck veered sideways and I ducked under the spanner, crashing into her and the tiller both. She weighed almost nothing. For one second we hung together, arms flailing in the air, and then we pitched over the side and into the water.
The shock of the cold squeezing my skin, and then a hand, pushing me down. I shoved her away and managed to get to the surface and steal a single, precious breath, furiously pushing the water downwards with my bound hands. She grabbed for my head again and I didn’t know whether she was trying to drown me or be rescued by me.
We were still in the shadow of the boat, and the engine noise was deafening. With no one steering, it was circling in the narrow dock. I tried to kick away, into its wake, but I couldn’t get a breath, and the next thing I knew was a huge blow on the back of my head.
I went straight down, under the hull, into the blackness and the throbbing, churning roar. Something solid struck against me, an unyielding force, and I clutched at it wildly as I was bumped and spun into deeper water.
And then there was almost silence, a plentiful warmth, a numb relief. I was too tired to swim, so I let myself go. The current was gentle as I sank down into it. I could feel it brushing through my hair, and then grasp me, a strong hand at my collar, hauling me upwards. I broke the surface and gasped, breathing in water. It was foul and salty, making me retch.
<
br /> And then a woman’s voice: ‘Stop bloody struggling or I’ll punch you on the nose.’
I opened my eyes, and there was Rosie, in the water with me, tugging me towards the quay where it sloped up to the street. The boat had swung away towards the shore, and there was a flash of colour, something clinging to it: Nancy Gainsford.
My eyes locked with Rosie’s. We were still twenty or more yards from the shore, on the edge of the current. I could feel it pulling at us. She couldn’t hold on to me and stay above water, and she slipped under. I reached down as far as I could but she came up anyway, tossing her head, stretching for my hand and clasping it, turning on to her back. Her teeth were gritted, but her strokes were getting weaker and the quay was getting further away. I knew that if we passed out of the mouth of the dock and into the main flow of the Thames, we would be lost.
I could see from her face that she knew it too. Still, she gripped my hand in hers, and kicked.
There was a metal ladder down to the water at the very corner of the dock, the last possible thing to grab before we were swept out into the river. It was close, ten feet. Ripley was there, shouting, and Pallett too, jacketless, leaning down. She kicked again, stretching out a hand for the ladder, and I held my breath. Four feet, but it was slipping past. Five feet now. Six.
She tugged on my hand, but I snatched it away.
Our eyes met.
‘Leo! No!’
I shoved her feet forwards, pushing her with all my strength towards the ladder, and myself backwards into the stream. The cloth of her skirt drifted through my fingers as I was swept away.
I couldn’t paddle any more. I heard her shout my name one more time as my mouth filled with water.
I woke up choking.
The ground was mercifully solid.
I was lying on my side on the quay while someone pounded on my back, sending great waves of agony from my wound through my whole body.
‘Enough! Please.’
Rosie ceased, and started adjusting a bandage wrapped tightly around me. For a second I panicked that I’d been exposed, but then realised it was my cilice, slipped down. She was studiously careful, tying it under my shirt and covering my shoulders with a blanket.
I couldn’t speak, but it was all right. She was doing enough for both of us.
‘You’re a bloody idiot,’ she was saying. ‘What’s the point of my trying to rescue you if you won’t be rescued? A fine fool I’d be looking if this handsome constable hadn’t dived in after you. You’d have washed up God knows where.’
Pallett went red at the compliment. He was sitting against the wall of the dock with his foot propped idly on the weasel’s back.
I heard a laugh from Ripley. He was in his shirtsleeves, already smoking, holding Nancy Gainsford by one arm. She was bedraggled and bony like a dead starling, her blouse clinging to her skin.
‘How did you know I’d be here?’ I asked.
He tossed his still-glowing cigarette on to the ground. He was intolerable. Was it really so hard just to step on it like everyone else?
‘Mrs Flowers makes the best pies in London,’ he said, nodding to Rosie, who shrugged as if that much was obvious. ‘So we went back again for lunch and a glass of beer. Just as we’re leaving, I spot this nasty piece of work go into the shop.’ He pointed at the weasel. ‘So we keep an eye.’
‘He told me they were going to murder us both,’ said Rosie.
‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ grunted the weasel. ‘You can’t prove anything.’
Pallett pressed his foot down a little harder.
‘Next thing we know,’ continued Ripley, ‘he’s round the counter with a knife in his hand, trying to accost Mrs Flowers. She smacks him in the chops with a cudgel, and very fine work it was too. And he legs it down here. So we give chase.’ He stretched his back and winced. ‘Constable Pallett was a little quicker, given my current infirmity.’
Pallett raised his eyebrows.
‘Good thing you did,’ said Rosie. ‘For them too.’
Two young girls were lying half under Ripley’s jacket, still sleeping soundly, dressed in calico frocks the colour of cheese rind. Neither looked older than eleven. They seemed unharmed by their spell in the coffins.
‘Well, anyway, that’s that,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s all over now.’
‘Almost over,’ I said.
Rosie and I were sitting on our own, sharing the blanket in a patch of sunshine by the wharf gate, watching a barge manoeuvre Bentinck’s boat back alongside. The railway clerk’s daughters had woken up, confused and hungry, and had been taken away to the hospital, and Pallett and Ripley had left with the prisoners in a police carriage.
‘What is it?’ asked Rosie. ‘What’s wrong? We need to get you to the infirmary.’
‘I need to know the truth, Rosie. About Jack.’
‘What truth?’
‘You said he used to hit you. And your children.’
She looked into my eyes, and then lowered her own. ‘Jack was a bastard. To start with it was just me, when he was drunk or had lost at cards, but it got worse. He was an unhappy man, always around people richer than himself. He resented it. He started hitting me more often and then little Robbie and Lillian too. Back of his hand to start with, but soon it was clenched fists and then his belt. Once, he picked up a knife and I had to stand between him and them while he raged and raged, yelling all sorts. I thought he’d kill us all.’
‘You’d had enough.’
‘I put up with it for years. It wasn’t so bad when it was just me, but the children … when he hit Sam, my youngest.’ She started to sob. ‘He’s two years old. After that, I knew he would never stop until we were dead.’
The barge was churning up the water, trying to nudge the bigger boat towards the quay. Briefly, the noise was too loud to talk over, but it died down and we could hear the seagulls again, crying along the shoreline.
‘So you decided to kill him.’
She wiped her eyes. ‘How did you know?’
‘When I first spoke to you, in the hospital, you were so interested in what had happened to his satchel. And again when … with Bentinck. There must’ve been something in it that concerned you.’
She nodded, calm again. She seemed almost relieved to be telling me. ‘We keep arsenic in the shop for the rats. I mixed it in with some sugared plums so he wouldn’t be able to tell. I made a beautiful plum pie. I put it in his lunch and waved him off for the day.’
‘Enough arsenic to kill him?’
‘Oh yes. No half measures. I thought, if I’m arrested and hanged, at least the children will be all right. Alice and Albert will look after them. When I met you and that young policeman at the hospital after Jack was dead, I thought for sure you’d found out. But then you said what had happened, and I’ve never felt so grateful in all my life. He was drowned before he had the chance to eat it. He never even touched that pie.’
No, but Maria did.
Mr Hurst had been in too much of a hurry to examine her properly, and the cause of death was obvious. So he ignored the inflaming of her conjunctiva – the skin on her eyes – which was a symptom of arsenic poisoning. A simple test of the stomach contents would have confirmed it, using granulated zinc and sulphuric acid. But why bother? After all, she was just a whore.
It was so appallingly simple. Rosie had made a poisoned pie for Jack and she’d put it in his satchel. When he went to steal from Bentinck, he brought the satchel to put the money in, with his lunch still inside. And when they caught him, they put the whole thing back in the strongbox: satchel and money and plum pie.
It was all there for Maria to find. She stole the money and hid upstairs from Miss Gainsford, and while she was there, she ate the pie. Agonised and delirious from the arsenic, she fell down the stairs and hit her head on the pommel of the bannister.
All this time I’d wanted to know what had happened, and now I did, I’d give anything not to know again.
I closed my eyes.
&nb
sp; In the glorious heatwave of last summer, we had lain on her bed with the sun blazing in through the window. Maria’s face was alive with the pure joy of it, and her fingers were sticky with juice as she made as if to pop a plum into my mouth but at the last moment ate it herself, and fell back giggling, and apologising through her giggles, and then doing the same thing again, giggling and apologising even more, until neither of us could eat or speak or breathe for laughing. I could see her hair and her hands and the little ramp of her nose, and her stain and all the parts of her, all one, all moving. She was always moving, my Maria.
She adored plums more than anything.
30
The rain had stopped, and it was just about warm enough for Alfie to have put a table out on the pavement with a couple of chairs. I was resting my eyes beneath the rim of a new bowler hat and trying to ignore the stiffness in my side. Later, I was planning to go to chess club, and wanted to be on form so I could give vent to my anger with Jacob by slaughtering all his pieces.
‘You’re snoring.’
Rosie’s green eyes were looking down at me. She helped herself to the other seat and arranged her skirts. Since that day at the dock I’d seen her only once, when she’d visited me briefly, but Alfie had been there at the time and we hadn’t been able to talk.
‘You’re feeling better then,’ she said, a statement not a question. ‘Just as well it was a shallow cut. Fuss about nothing.’
‘It’s healing. I’m just tired.’
She nodded and angled her face up to the sunshine. She had a pretty profile.
We were interrupted by a young woman exiting the pharmacy, the doorbell clanging. Alfie followed her out in his dentist’s apron.
‘I can’t believe it,’ he said. ‘We’re completely booked up. All these ladies wanting their teeth attended to, I’ve not got enough hours in the day.’ He glanced back into the shop to where Constance was perched on her stool, and lowered his voice. ‘I’m not complaining, and I’m grateful to you, Leo, as I hope you can tell. But I know I’ve become the whores’ dentist.’