by Sarah Rayne
We had to walk past two windows to get to the front door. Small windows they were, with thick, slightly wavy glass, criss-crossed with lead strips. I knew, of course, that you did not look through people’s windows. Very ill mannered, mother always said. But this was Acton House – it was a big, grand place, not as big or as grand as Bondley Manor, but nearly so. And it was where she lived. So, greatly daring, I looked through one of the windows.
At first the room seemed entirely ordinary and the two people in it seemed to be doing ordinary things. The only thing unfamiliar to me was the piano – a glossily black instrument standing at the far end. I had never seen a house that had a piano.
Isobel Acton was sitting on a button-back sofa, very upright, very composed. She was wearing a soft fine gown, pale green silk, exactly as I had pictured her, and her hair, which was dark and glossy, was scooped on top of her head. I wanted to stay there and watch her for ever.
She was embroidering, which I knew was what ladies did. People like my mother hadn’t the time for such frippery stuff; if they sewed anything it was mending of socks and shirts.
A tray of cups and saucers stood on a low table in front of Isobel, together with what I took to be a thin, tall teapot. I know now that it was a coffee pot, but I had never seen one then.
Simeon Acton was seated on the other side of the fireplace. He had been reading, but he had put the book down, and he was watching his wife with a look of deep love and pride – I had never seen anyone look like that, but I knew the expression for what it was.
Neither of them saw me, but after a moment Isobel put down her sewing, and leaned over the small table to pour coffee into a cup. She glanced over her shoulder, then tipped something into the cup – white powder it looked like and it could have been sugar. She stirred it in, then carried the cup to her husband. He smiled up at her as he took it, and drank. Then he stopped and frowned. His hand went to his throat as if something had clutched it, and he started up from his chair, his face turning a dull ugly crimson.
Isobel had stepped back and she was standing on the pale rug, watching her husband. She stood very still, not speaking and I waited for her to call for help, to go to him, but she did not. As God is my judge, Isobel Acton, that beautiful silken creature with that midnight velvet voice that had spun an enchantment through my nights, turned her back on the man writhing in agony on the floor. With apparent unconcern, she walked to the piano standing in the big bay window, sat down and began to play. Light, cool music, cold and fragile as icicles, drifted across the room, and whether or not she was doing it to mask the sounds of her husband’s struggles, or for some other cause altogether, I have no more idea now than I had then. But it was as if white painful light was spiking into my mind.
Acton had fallen to the floor and he was writhing and gasping, clutching his stomach. His lips had taken on a bluish tinge, and his eyes were almost starting from his head. He made a dreadful bubbling sound in his throat, and then vomited wetly on the pale rug. I felt my own stomach lift in nausea and for a moment I thought I, too, would be sick, there against the beautiful red-brick wall. I bent over, but nothing came up, and after a moment I was able to straighten up again and look back into the room.
I thought: surely she will have gone to him now, but she had not. Simeon twisted and turned on the ground, arching his back as if trying to escape the pain, and horridly and incredibly his gasps were in exact time with the soft chords coming from the piano. As if the pianist was playing her music to coincide with his agony.
I didn’t think that then, of course, but I’ve thought it since, and I’ve heard that grim rhythm and those gasping moans over and over in my mind. And it’s one of the memories that’s stayed with me so strongly. That image of her coolly making that beautiful music, in which the waves of pain and terror from the struggling man seemed so tangled. (And that dreadful light still slicing through my mind, piercing my brain . . .)
It seemed as if Simeon Acton’s struggles went on for a very long time, but I don’t suppose it was more than a few minutes. I wonder, even now, what would have happened if Isobel Acton had not turned her head and caught sight of me at the window.
Between one heartbeat and the next she changed. In place of the cold detachment there was a panic-stricken, distressed woman. She sprang up from the piano and ran to the window, flinging it wide.
My mother, who had been in the deep old porch, turned at the sound, and at once Isobel called out to her.
‘Help me! Please!’ She stepped back from the window, and seconds later there was the sound of the porch door opening.
My mother paused only long enough to bid me remain outside – ‘On no account are you to come into the house, Samuel,’ – and I obeyed. I was too frightened to do anything else and I was still feeling slightly sick and my head was aching. But I don’t believe anything could have stopped me looking through that window.
It was like watching a play – I had seen a play when a troupe of actors came to Caudle Moor to the church hall. Mother said play-acting was sinful and play-actors were painted whores and libertines, and I was not to go. But father winked at me, and said we would go along together, he and I, and if there was any sin then the vicar would be there to deal with it anyway. So we braved mother’s disapproval and went to see the actors. I remember the piece was called Maria Marten in the Red Barn, and very gruesome it was.
But what I saw through that window that fine spring afternoon was far more vivid than any play-acting on a lit stage.
My mother bent over Simeon Acton for a moment, then said, quite sharply, ‘Where is Eliza Stump? The other servants?’
‘They have the afternoon off. Please help me. I don’t know what to do.’ Isobel’s voice sounded shrill and frightened, but I heard the false note, like a cracked bell, and the dreams splintered deep inside my mind. I thought: you cheating bitch. And bitch was not a word I was ever allowed to use, even in my mind.
My mother strode to the window and opened it, calling out to me.
‘Samuel, you’re to go along to Dr Brodworthy’s house directly, and tell him he’s to come to Acton House at once. You understand.’
‘Yes. But—’
‘At once, Samuel.’ She was already turning back into the room, saying, ‘An emetic. Warm water and a good dessertspoon of mustard.’
The window closed with a snap and I ran for all I was worth, back down Gorsty Lane, and into the village. It’s a fair distance and running so hard made my head feel as if it might be splitting in two, but I didn’t stop until I reached the doctor’s house and was hammering on his door. That was your father, of course, Doctor. Old Dr Brodworthy we call him nowadays, meaning no disrespect, for a very good man he was. He lived in this very house we’re in now, although it was a sight different then, for he hadn’t the electricity and he still used wooden instruments for sounding people’s chests, and gave all the children brimstone and treacle for regular habits.
His man harnessed up the donkey cart, and we drove back down Gorsty Lane at a fair old lick. A storm was blowing down from the Pennines and there were huge purple bruises in the sky where there had been cotton-wool clouds earlier. Flurries of huge rain spots dashed against our faces.
The storm broke as we turned in through the gates, forked lightning splitting open the skies, so you’d think the heavens were being ripped open and something – God or the devil – was about to reach down and snatch you up. Rain lashed down, drenching the gardens, but it was cooling, and it seemed to quench the lights inside my mind a little.
With Dr Brodworthy there was no nonsense about me staying outside. He strode into the house and I followed, even in those confused moments noticing how beautiful Acton House was. I thought: if ever this house is destroyed, there should be another in its place as nearly like it as possible.
It was too late to save Simeon Acton, of course. I learned later that mother had tried the mustard emetic, but I think he was already dead by then.
You know what happened aft
erwards, Doctor, for everyone hereabouts knows, even after all these years. Your father, who was a conscientious man, sent for the local police constable to enquire into Simeon Acton’s death and the machinery of the law ground into action.
And the nightmare that was to stay with me all my life began in earnest.
Nell came briefly out of the world of Samuel Burlap to the warm safe bedroom of The Pheasant, and shivered, drawing the covers around her. It was extraordinary how vivid the account of Simeon Acton’s death was, and how the young Samuel’s reactions leapt off the page.
She glanced across at the other bed where Beth slept soundly, apparently untroubled by any bad dreams of the evening’s macabre terrors.
There were only a few more pages of the statement, and Nell knew she would not be able to sleep unless she read to the end. With the feeling that she was stepping deeper into a macabre pocket of the past, she picked up the final pages.
TEN
Continuation of Samuel Burlap’s statement:
Simeon Acton’s sister came to Caudle Moor two days after his death, and she treated the village to a fine display of high drama, wailing and carrying-on, publicly calling Isobel several names I had never heard until then and haven’t often heard since. She was a tall thin lady and my father said she had a face like sour milk. My mother said Miss Acton should think shame to make such a public exhibition of her feelings, but that was after Miss Acton had walked into The Pheasant, bold as a brass farthing, and denounced Isobel as a Messalina and a creature in whose blood ran the juices of the Black Widow spider. Some versions accredited Miss Acton with flinging an entire tankard of cider over Nehemiah Goodbody who happened to be the nearest person and had been peaceably supping his evening potation, which he had done every night for the last fifty years.
None of it was behaviour anyone in Caudle Moor had ever witnessed, and no one quite knew how to deal with it, apart from helping Nehemiah Goodbody to mop the spilt cider off his jacket. But then young Mr Poulson, who walked out with Eliza Stump and was a kind-hearted soul, took charge and persuaded Miss Acton into one of the private rooms, after which he called out Dr Brodworthy who drove her back to her lodgings in the pony cart.
Everyone was shocked. Folk reminded one another that no decent woman would have dreamed of entering the tap room under any circumstances whatsoever, in fact few woman would have entered The Pheasant at all, except it might be for a meeting of the Ladies’ Sewing Circle or the Girls’ Friendly Society if the church hall was not available. But, as my father pointed out, Miss Acton was in a distraught frame of mind, so allowances should be made.
Then it became known that Simeon Acton had been poisoned, and people immediately pointed out to one another that poison was a woman’s weapon.
Isobel paid none of this any attention. She remained inside Acton House, the curtains drawn, as befitted a house of mourning, receiving no one and going nowhere. I imagined her in that room with the piano, sitting in the shadows, weaving her plans. Had she killed her husband because she wanted his money? Or because she loved someone else?
She would wear black of course, a widow’s weeds, but it would be black silk or velvet and her skin would be like polished porcelain against the black, and she would be beautiful. But it would be the deceiving beauty of a fruit that was velvety and tempting on the surface, but rotten and pulpy within. She was no longer that magical creature I had thought her; she was Jezebel, a murderess who had cared so little for her victim she played music while he writhed in his death throes, just as Jezebel in the Bible had cared nothing for the prophets she had slaughtered.
Isobel did not attend Simeon’s funeral. This shocked the village to its marrow, although, as my father remarked, it was surprising her absence was noticed at all, since the whole of Caudle Moor, along with Caudle Magna and several other neighbouring villages attended, and the congregation was packed tight with only those at the front able to see or hear the actual service. My mother was forced to have a back pew, which annoyed her very much.
Isobel Acton’s housekeeper, Eliza Stump, was there, of course. ‘And very overdressed, too,’ said Mother, but when Miss Stump came along to our cottage two days later she accorded her a very cordial welcome. It’s probable that she was more pleased to see Miss Stump than was the wolf when Red Riding Hood skipped up to his cottage. My father was pleased to see Miss Stump, as well; he liked a lady with a bit of liveliness, he said.
So Miss Stump, who was lively enough for three, and had hair as golden as a copper warming pan, was ushered into the parlour and offered tea from the best cups.
‘Such a fortunate chance I had baked this morning,’ said Mother, who had baked every day in the hope that someone – anyone – would call to discuss the terrible happenings. Several had, of course; Caudle Moor was a gossipy place in those days, well, it still is.
Miss Stump partook of tea and cake, praised the lightness of the baking, and settled down to be every bit as indiscreet as Mother could have wished.
It isn’t something I’m proud of, but I crouched on the stairs just outside and listened avidly. It was rather dark on our stairs, and there was a faint smell of baking soda and borax from the cupboard where Mother kept her cleaning rags and scouring powders. I didn’t hear everything, but I heard most of it and it’s been printed on my memory ever since.
The servants at Acton House had been given the afternoon off, which Miss Stump said was ‘not unknown and generally meant madam was going to be up to a bit of no good with some gentleman, pardon my frankness, Mrs Burlap, but you’ll understand my meaning.’
There was a vague murmur of assent from my mother.
‘I’m not one for gossip,’ said Miss Stump righteously, ‘but all manner of gentlemen visit the house when the master’s away – some of them London gentlemen and ones you’d think above that kind of carrying-on. In quite high walks in life, they are. And they come into the house as stealthy and slinky as if they were tomcats going on the randy.’
My mother said something about all men being beasts, and added she had always known Isobel Acton to be a trollop for all her famous beauty.
‘Many a pretty face hides a wicked heart, Miss Stump.’
Eliza Stump said this was very true indeed, but howsoever, she and the two girls had gone off as instructed that afternoon.
‘And a very nice afternoon we had over to Caudle Magna. Tea and scones at a very genteel teashop in Magna, and I found some silk ribbon at the draper’s to trim a bonnet.’
There was a rustle of bombazine as Miss Stump leaned forward to impart further confidence. ‘When we got home . . . Well, Mrs Burlap, you know what we found when we got home, for you were there already, and that’s why I wanted to come and tell you what has happened.’
The springs of my mother’s chair creaked as she nodded and leaned forward. She said, ‘I know well enough what you found, Miss Stump. Poor good Mr Acton dead as last week, his innards all eaten up with poison, and Dr Brodworthy not able to do a thing about it. I mixed a draught of mustard and hot water, as you know, but we couldn’t get it down him, for he was writhing and struggling. And the sickness that overcame him – well, that was something terrible to witness.’
‘It quite spoilt the Persian rug,’ nodded Miss Stump. ‘I set the girls to scrub it with white vinegar and soda, but it’ll never be the same.’
‘Then the doctor came and said the poor man had gone,’ went on my mother, who thought Persian rugs frivolous. ‘He gave me a powder for Mrs Acton to take – a bromide or some such he called it – and she retired to her bed.’
‘And still there the next day, calling for cologne to bathe her head, and wailing and sobbing fit to wake the dead – meaning no disrespect – and asking us all what she should do without her beloved Simeon.’ There followed a snort of disgust. ‘Beloved indeed! Beloved of his money, more like,’ said Miss Stump, ‘and wanting to have the freedom to entertain her gentlemen callers, and to hold the reins of Mr Acton’s fortune, that’s my view, and . . . Wel
l, yes, I will have another cup of tea, thanking you kindly, and perhaps just a small slice of your delicious cake. I’m very partial to seed cake.’ A pause. ‘I dare say you knew Miss Acton, the master’s sister, is here?’
‘I did hear,’ said my mother. ‘Staying with the Gilfillans, so they say.’
‘That she is, for Madam won’t have her in the house. I never cared much for the Gilfillans,’ said Miss Stump. ‘Always a bit above themselves in my opinion – although not above taking a paying guest in that cold house of theirs, and forever reminding folk how saintly they are. And that boy of theirs – no older than your Samuel he isn’t, but walks around with a Bible, telling everyone how Jesus is our saviour. Well, Mrs Burlap, Jesus may well be the saviour of us all, but what I say is, it ain’t natural for a twelve year old to go about saying it.’
‘I suppose,’ said my mother, who frequently held up Edgar Gilfillan to me as an example, ‘it was only right that Miss Acton should come here after her brother died. And she’d want to stay a while to know the findings of the medical gentlemen.’
‘I’ll grant that,’ said Miss Stump. ‘And I’ll grant, as well, that she’s sorrowful at his death – yes, and the manner of it. But her behaviour . . . Well, Mrs Burlap, it’s scarcely sane at times. Why, she comes to Acton House every single day demanding to see madam, never caring that madam has given orders not to let her in. She bangs on the doors, and if we don’t open them she taps on the windows. Positively eerie it is to go to a window of a night, perhaps to close it against the twilight, and see that sour face peering in.’
‘I expect,’ said my mother, ‘that there’s money at the root of it. There so often is. Tell me – is there a will?’
‘Oh, a will there’ll be, sure as eggs is eggs, the master not being one to leave his affairs in a disarray. I’d lay you a year’s wages that everything is left to that young madam. That’ll be why she wanted to get rid of him,’ said Miss Stump. ‘And she thought as she’d got away with it, I’d say. But because of what happened this morning she’ll be thinking differently.’