The Magpie Tree

by Katherine Stansfield

  ‘Mathilda!’ Anna called. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s only Shilly and me.’

  She went into the bedroom and I heard her murmuring to Mathilda. I knew I should follow but the noise from Miss Franks drew me to her. Then I froze.

  The coat was twitching.

  A thought struck me – a thought so bad it sent me trembly and I thought I’d fall.

  What if we’d been wrong about the two women?

  What if they could make things do as they didn’t ought to? To breathe again, when by rights Miss Franks’ breath should be gone forever? The people of the woods had been so sure the Devil was helping them. Could it be that they were right?

  I approached Miss Franks. The muddied coat I’d covered her with had slipped in its twitching, showing her crown and in it the first inch of the deep furrow I knew carved down her face. The rest of her was still. Her hand hung over the chair’s arm, reaching for the handkerchief it would never get. Or so I had thought.

  My shaking fingers closed on the coat. The wool was stiff with the old, dried mud. I took a deep breath, and wrenched the coat away.

  My shrieks brought Anna from the other room.

  ‘Whatever’s the—oh. Well, what do you expect, Shilly? She’s been dead a day.’

  ‘But there’s so many!’

  ‘That’s the nature of flies. Come and help me with Mathilda. There’s nothing we can do for her companion right now.’

  I scuttled from the writhing dark river that Miss Franks’ wounds had become, and within the river the whiteness of maggots. None of the Devil’s doings. Just the nastiness of death we all would face.

  ‘She should be buried,’ I told Anna as I followed her into the bedroom.

  ‘I agree.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So what’s more important, the living or the dead?’

  Mathilda was still on the bed, still tied up. She didn’t appear to have moved since we’d left her. She was staring at the ceiling, her eyes glassy. A different smell was in this room, a sharper smell, and when I saw the dark patch on her dress I knew what it was and I felt wretched for leaving her that way. The poor girl. What had she done to be so ill used?

  ‘We’ll take her to the summer house,’ Anna said.

  ‘And then?’

  ‘One step at a time, Shilly.’

  We began to untie the knots, I at the girl’s hands, Anna at her feet.

  ‘She’ll be safer with us than left here on her own,’ Anna said. ‘We can protect her.’

  ‘But what if Mrs Haskell’s spies see us take Mathilda to the summer house?’

  ‘Her spies?’

  ‘The birds.’ I helped Mathilda sit up. Her head flopped, as if she had become a rag doll.

  ‘Shilly,’ Anna said sternly, ‘whatever might have happened earlier, with Mrs Haskell, I can’t believe that—’

  Mathilda knocked her to the floor.

  I was so taken aback that for a moment I could do nothing but watch the girl run from the room. She was no floppy rag doll now. She was a hare leaping from the hounds.

  ‘Go after her!’ Anna managed to croak.

  I did – I ran, and I was faster than Mathilda who was not so lean as me. Who was stiff after being lashed to a bedframe for hours on end. I caught her at the old gatepost, got my arms around her waist and used the little weight I had to drag her to the ground.

  She gabbled away in her German speak. I couldn’t understand her words but her clawing my arms was loud enough. She wanted to be away. But the light was going. Mrs Haskell would soon come for her.

  ‘It’s not safe!’ I said. ‘She’ll be back – the one who killed Gertrud. You’re better off with me and Anna. You must believe me, Mathilda!’

  ‘You leave me there! You tie me so I am trapped there, with Gertrud … Shilly, I thought you were my friend.’

  ‘We are friends. I’m sorry we tied you up. That was Anna’s idea, but we’re going to look after you now, honest we are.’

  Still she fought me. Her strength had returned to match her anger. She was going to get away, run into the woods and so to her death. I had one last means.

  ‘You can trust us, Mathilda. Look – look at this.’

  I held something before her, something I’d been carrying to make Miss Franks open the door to us, so long ago now. It was the framed picture I had found in the ruined mill. The picture of the woman who looked so much like Miss Franks herself.

  ‘See what I found for you – saved for you. We won’t hurt you, Mathilda. We won’t, I promise.’

  I held the picture close to Mathilda’s face until she slackened in my arms. Her tears came then.

  Anna reached us, holding her side and grey about the face. She’d taken so many knocks since we’d come to the woods. I had my own cuts and bruises, and had suffered much in my head. What a wretched pair we were. What a wretched place it was.

  Anna leant against the gatepost. ‘Is she going to fight us all the way?’

  I looked at the weeping girl at my feet who stank of piss, was covered in dried blood.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘Good.’ She took hold of Mathilda by the elbow, but kindly. ‘Up you come. We’ve a little way to go before we can rest easy.’

  Mathilda kept hold of the picture and every so often murmured to it, but said nothing to Anna and me, and I couldn’t blame her for that. She had lost her companion, in a terrible way, and just when she needed love, those she had thought friends had treated her badly. She had every reason to hate us, but that was the way of detection. It didn’t allow for kindness. I didn’t like that part of it.

  The girl lagged. Anna and I waited for her to catch up, and as I caught the sound of her tears I wondered again at what Mathilda and Gertrud had been to one another, if Mathilda had felt for Gertrud as I felt for Anna. One thing I knew for certain, for I could see it, even in the last of the light, as Mathilda reached us. Her shaking hand shook no more. Had that to do with losing Gertrud? Had that to do with love? Or fear?

  Dusk was all but fallen by the time we reached the summer house. Mathilda wasn’t keen to follow me up the steps.

  ‘You will tie me?’ she said, and I felt so bad all I could do was shake my head.

  Slowly, looking at me askance the whole while, she came inside, but then seated herself as close to the door as she could.

  I gathered the few candles we had and set them on the window ledge amongst the things we had placed there – the lump of coal, the rabbit snare and the broken por-s’lain figure of the woman. Mathilda wouldn’t look at me, but she murmured thanks to Anna for giving her a blanket, and I hoped that was the start of her making friends with us again.

  I got the fire going, to help us forget the damp rather than for warmth, and Anna sat next to me on the floor, her knees creaking and her thin face drawn. It was easy to forget, when we were so busy with detecting, that she was older than me.

  After a little time I spoke, and did so low, so that Mathilda shouldn’t hear.

  ‘You told Mrs Haskell you’d get her before a judge, have her tried for killing Gertrud. Did you mean it?’

  ‘Of course I meant it,’ Anna said. ‘But what a judge would make of the case, let alone a jury, I can’t begin to imagine. The squire might believe us. He thought Miss Franks and Mathilda were the guilty party. It might not be too hard to make him see that he was looking at the wrong women.’

  ‘But Mrs Haskell has done what he wanted – gotten rid of them. She’s killed one and is forcing the other to leave. He’s hardly going to want to punish her.’

  ‘Or pay us,’ Anna said quietly, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. ‘If we can just get to the bottom of who took Paul, we might still be able to claim the reward. That was part of the agreement with the squire. If we manage that then we might convince him to bring Mrs Haskell to justice for the other crime.’

  ‘But how will we do that?’

  She stood and took from the window ledge the coal I’d found on the road to Boscastle. �
��This is coal for burning, but it was drawing charcoal left where Paul was last seen, wasn’t it? Outside Miss Franks and Mathilda’s cottage.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, it could have been left there on purpose, couldn’t it? To put blame on them for Paul’s disappearance, just as Simon Proctor did later when he left coal in place of what he stole.’

  I took the charcoal from her and weighed it in my hand, as if that would tell me something of its secrets. ‘So whoever took Paul wanted to make it look as if Miss Franks and Mathilda were responsible.’

  ‘Yes,’ Anna said, ‘and I think it matters that they chose not to kill him. They wanted to cause his family pain. That’s why they tried to take Peter too. And who do we know has reason to want to cause pain to the Haskells?’

  ‘Lucy at the manor house,’ I said.

  I gave Anna back the charcoal and wiped its dust on my hands.

  ‘Tomorrow, then,’ Anna said. ‘We’ll go and see if we can’t make this case come right after all.’

  ‘What will become of Mathilda?’ I looked over to the girl who had fallen asleep with her head against the door, the blanket heaped around her middle.

  ‘We could take her to Boscastle,’ Anna said. ‘See her safely into a coach.’

  ‘With money in her pocket? She hasn’t anything, Anna. If we could help her …’

  Anna groaned and went over to the sleeping Mathilda. ‘This case has ended up costing us instead of earning.’ She pulled up the blanket, tucked the poor girl in.

  ‘The next work we get, that might pay,’ I said.

  ‘It’ll have to. You’d better pray to Saint Nectan, Shilly. Ask him to grant us some vanishings, but tell him we want more deaths and fewer needy causes.’

  I told her she was wicked, and then she let me kiss her.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘You must keep it locked. Locked – you understand?’

  Mathilda nodded.

  ‘And the chair. When we go, you must put it like this.’ I shoved the chair into place beneath the door handle. ‘You see? Then no one can come in. Not until we come back, and we’ll look after you then, I promise.’

  She nodded again, but I wondered if she believed me.

  When I had woken with the light, she was already awake, staring out of the window. Anna had given her something to wear, for the girl couldn’t put her soiled clothes back on, but the only things in the travelling case that would fit were those belonging to Anna’s men – the dresses were too snug for Mathilda’s hips. I hadn’t yet met the man who wore this loose shirt and trousers so strongly pattered with little black and white squares that my eyes strained to look at them, but I knew such a man could not be serious as Mr Williams was. Mr Williams wore only dark clothes, and them all neatness.

  Anna called me from outside, told me off for shilly-shallying again. I stepped out, onto the top step, pulling the door to behind me. As soon as it met the frame, Mathilda locked it and then I heard the thump of the chair put in place. Her fear would keep her watchful. That was something, at least.

  I followed Anna across the clearing. The magpie tree wasn’t worthy of its name that morning for its branches bore only the last leaves of summer and no birds among them. I hoped with all my heart that Mrs Haskell believed Mathilda had left the woods. But it couldn’t be true for there was anger, still, in that place. I felt it like cold rain beneath my collar. Both the Haskell boys were safe, so whose rage was it?

  ‘Lucy’s,’ Anna said when I spoke aloud my feeling. ‘She’s the end point of this case. Our last chance for the reward.’

  ‘And if she won’t speak to us?’

  The Dark River poured itself over the lip of the fall, tumbling to the pool far below. The air was wet with its spray. The pool was a nest of foam, the river fighting to escape and race to the sea. To freedom from the woods’ brooding heart.

  ‘Lucy will have to speak to us,’ Anna said, ‘because we know what lies beneath her clothes.’

  ‘So you believe it now – her sickness?’

  ‘She believes it. That’s all that matters.’

  The kitchen door was closed, as it had been before, to keep out Pigeon. Closed but not locked.

  ‘What are you wanting in here?’ a sour voice said. It was Mrs Carne, up to her elbows in potato peelings, a pail of dirty water beside her on the table.

  ‘We need to speak to the scullery maid,’ Anna said.

  ‘I’d like a word with her too.’ Mrs Carne slashed at a potato, taking half the flesh as well as the skin. ‘She’s taken to her bed again.’

  ‘Well you’ll have to get her out of it,’ I said.

  ‘Will I now?’ Mrs Carne jabbed the knife at me and I was glad the table was between us. ‘And why would I be going all the way up to the eaves when it’s her fault I’ve got to get the dinner ready? As if I haven’t enough to do.’

  Anna took the knife from the housekeeper’s hand as if it was nothing more threatening than a spoon. ‘You’ll fetch Lucy because otherwise the squire will hear that you stood in the way of justice, Mrs Carne. We’ve come about the disappearance of Paul Haskell.’

  ‘Have you now?’ Mrs Carne said, in a voice of wonder. ‘So that’s why the girl has been hiding upstairs.’ She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘I’ll fetch her, but you can’t be waiting in here.’ And with that she shooed us into the passage, quite cheered by what Anna had said. ‘The squire will have to turn her out now. The sooner he finds a new girl for the scullery, the better off we’ll all be.’

  And so grumbling cheerfully she went to drag Lucy from her bed. Had I not believed the girl had kidnapped Paul Haskell, I might have felt some pity for her.

  The passage was dim for the doors on either side were closed. My foot brushed something. A clutch of soft grey feathers, and within them a lump, dark red and sticky. I pushed the feathers aside with the toe of my boot and saw the innards of some poor creature.

  And then, very slowly, with a long, terrible creak, the door to my left began to open.

  I clutched Anna’s arm and felt her stiffen. An inch wider – two.

  A thick, striped limb reached round the bottom of the door, and then a striped head appeared, forced it open.

  Anna pressed herself against the wall as Pigeon stalked past, a low growl rolling from his fiendish body.

  ‘I won’t miss coming across this animal.’

  ‘I will. Wait – where are you going?’

  She had darted into the room Pigeon had just left, and I darted after her. It wasn’t the room with all the tables and chairs where last we’d spoken to the squire. This room was smaller, with only one table – a desk, covered in papers and an inkpot in the corner. Anna snatched up something next to the inkpot and thrust it at me.

  It was a figure made of por-s’lain. A man.

  ‘Look, Shilly – his waistcoat. It’s the same colour as the dress the broken woman wears.’ She quickly turned him upside down. ‘The maker’s mark is the same as the one on the woman. And he’s holding a birdcage.’

  ‘To catch the birds at the broken woman’s feet!’

  ‘They’re a pair, Shilly. Made to be together.’

  ‘He won’t like you touching that,’ a voice said. Mrs Carne was in the doorway, arms folded across her chest and a look of great satisfaction on her tired old face.

  ‘This belongs to the squire?’ Anna said.

  ‘Until he married there was no end to the things I was dusting. Crates of them, he brought back. Thankfully Lady Phoebe got rid of most of them. That was when she thought about the work it took to run this household.’ Mrs Carne turned and was heading back to the kitchen. ‘The girl’s coming. I told her she was going to the gallows and that got her backside moving.’

  ‘Mrs Carne, wait. What do you mean about the squire bringing back crates? Where had he been?’

  ‘All over.’

  ‘All over where?’ Anna said.

  ‘I don’t know. Foreign places. Like all young gentlemen do.’

  �
�Germany?’ I asked.

  ‘He wouldn’t tell me, would he? And I wouldn’t go asking him, either. He don’t like talking about his trips. You’ve let the cat out, I see.’

  ‘Mrs Carne?’ I said.

  ‘I told you, the girl’s coming. Go up there yourself if you want her any faster.’

  ‘Tell the squire we need to speak to him.’

  She threw up her hands and went back down the passage, cursing us for not making up our minds.

  Anna and I stared at each other.

  ‘He didn’t just meet them in Boscastle,’ I whispered.

  ‘He met them years before.’

  ‘But he’s a magistrate. Oh, Anna! A magistrate!’ I had to lean on the desk to steady myself.

  ‘Calm yourself, Shilly. We still don’t know if he’s done anything wrong.’

  ‘He’s lied to us!’

  ‘Shh! We have to think—’

  ‘He says he’ll see you in the sitting room,’ Mrs Carne said loudly.

  Mrs Carne had decided she’d wasted enough time on us already so we found our own way back to the room with too many chairs and tables. The squire was facing the cold hearth, and when he turned at the sound of us coming in, his usually florid face was grey.

  ‘Mrs Carne says you have made a discovery, and not before time. My wife grows more distressed by the hour.’

  ‘Two discoveries,’ I said. ‘Paul Haskell is alive. We found him locked under the summer house.’

  The squire clamped me round the shoulders and I near fell over. ‘That is wonderful news, Mrs Williams! And Miss Drake! Wonderful! He is well, the boy?’

  ‘Thankfully, yes,’ Anna said. ‘A little weak after being without food for some days, but he will soon recover.’

  The squire sat down and gave a great sigh, of relief, I thought. ‘Lady Phoebe will rest easier. All will be well. I have proof against them now.’

  Anna and I shared a glance.

  ‘That brings us to our second discovery,’ Anna said. ‘That of the person responsible.’

  ‘Surely you mean persons, Miss Drake. There are two of the wretches!’ He was smiling, as if Anna had made a joke.