She began to take off the many layers Anna had wrapped her in, her broad cheeks once more flushed, a sheen of sweat above her plump lips from sitting so close to the fire. She wasn’t unlike the squire in body, I thought, though that might have been my eyes agreeing with what my ears had heard. That she was his daughter.
‘Where shall we go, Shilly?’ she said now.
‘Where indeed?’ Anna said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
We didn’t speak on setting out to the manor house, though there was much between us that needed saying. I let Anna find her own way to her questions, and by the time the monks’ wall came in sight, she had it.
‘Shilly, when you were in the water, when the squire had you.’
‘Yes,’ I murmured, and felt again the cold air at the back of my neck as he held me over the drop. I shook it away. It was autumn come to the woods, that was all. Such was the way of things now. The leaves would soon fall and the sky would be seen more often in Trethevy. ‘What did you see?’ I asked her.
‘I … I’m not sure. It all happened so quickly. I was trying to find a way down, trying to keep sight of you in case you went under the water and didn’t come up again.’
The fear was still with her. I could hear it in her voice. See it in her hand clutching and letting go her skirt. I took that hand in mine.
‘I’m here now, though, aren’t I? You got me out.’
She nodded, and cleared her throat. ‘I saw a dark shape blown out of the trees. It fell on the squire.’
‘You know what that darkness was, Anna. Who it was.’
‘I …’
‘That was her true self you were seeing. That she let you see, for the first and last time.’
‘I can’t believe that was Mrs Haskell, Shilly.’
‘Then what do you think it was came out of the trees?’
‘I think it must have been some covering from the quarry, blown free. A paulin. They use them to keep the slate-splitters from the rain. The captain told Mr Williams about it.’
‘Did he now? And what about the blade that came out of it? That stuck the squire as if he was a pig?’
‘I did see that. The light caught it, just before the squire began to scream. A knife.’ She wouldn’t look at me.
‘Well, paulins don’t come with knives, Anna, as I’m certain you know, you being so knowledgeable about them.’
‘No, they don’t. But I had a knife. One I can no longer find.’
She looked at me then, and I let go her hand.
‘I didn’t kill the squire, Anna.’
‘He was trying to kill you, Shilly! I’m not condemning you.’
‘Well it sounds like you are!’
‘I just wanted you to know that I saw. I saw that knife go into the squire before he fell.’
‘You don’t know what you saw, Anna Drake, because you don’t know how to look. I didn’t put a knife in the squire’s back. It was Mrs Haskell stabbed him. Mrs Haskell who is not a woman like you or I. Who is something else altogether.’
‘But if it was Mrs Haskell—’
‘Which it was.’
‘Then why would she risk herself like that when she believed Gertrud and Mathilda took Paul? Why not let Mathilda be killed and so save her a job?’
‘She risked herself for me. You and I saved Paul, and Peter too, so she came to save me in return. She told me, when she showed herself to me by the fallen oak, that one day she wouldn’t go back to the skin she was born with. I think that day was today, and she knew it. She knew she’d be leaving her family so she saved me as she went.’
‘And how did she know to come to the waterfall, just as you needed her?’
I thought for a moment, for it did no good to pretend Anna hadn’t asked something. She would go after an answer like a terrier after rats.
‘Because her friends told her to come,’ I said.
‘Her friends? You mean Sarah and all the rest of them, at the cottages?’
‘Oh, there’s many more of them than that, Anna. They fill the wood.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Surely even you can’t miss them. They’ve been following us since we first came to Trethevy. They’re here now.’
She looked around, then moaned with dread.
The magpies had come quietly, and now filled every branch in sight.
I took her arm, and took her from their gazing.
We didn’t speak again until we had left the trees, the manor house before us, and this time it was me who ended the silence.
‘How’s best to tell Lady Phoebe of the squire’s death, and of Mathilda? All out at once, do you think? Or piece by piece? I don’t know which is the kinder.’
‘Nor I. He troubles me.’
‘The squire? He needn’t. He’s gone, Anna.’
‘Something isn’t right. Think back to when we told Sir Vivian we believed Lucy had taken Paul Haskell. What was his reaction?’
‘He was surprised.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And he shouldn’t have been,’ I said.
‘Exactly right again. If he had taken the boy, then surely he would have been delighted to have a scapegoat offered him? We’ve been working in the belief that he was happy to frame Gertrud and Mathilda for taking Paul as a means to incite violence against them. If that supposition is correct, then why would he challenge Lucy’s guilt when it offered him a way to hide his own?’
I had no answer for her, but I thought I saw a way to get one, and told Anna we should go to the stables before seeing Lady Phoebe.
We found Simon in the yard, holding steady a towering beast while the smith rasped its hooves. This was a good find. Simon had no chance to get away while the smith held the horse’s leg bent at the knee.
Simon’s face fell on seeing us, and I wondered if Anna and I would ever be liked by those we called on. To have people dread the sight of you – that was the lot of the detective.
‘You’ve frightened Lucy half to death, telling her she’ll hang.’ He was whispering so the smith shouldn’t hear, though he needn’t have minded. The rasps were loud enough to hide his secrets. ‘How can you think she’d harm Paul Haskell?’
‘You told us yourself she had cause to hate Paul’s father,’ Anna said, ‘given the quarry accident that took both her parents.’
‘She don’t blame James Haskell!’ Simon said. His voice had risen and the horse started. He danced out of the way of her huge feet. ‘Lucy’s the most kind-hearted soul you’ll find in these woods,’ he said, once the horse was steady again. ‘She wouldn’t hurt people like you’re saying – the boys or their family.’
‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘If you help us, Lucy won’t go to the gallows.’
‘Anything. I’ll do anything to keep her safe.’
‘On the day Paul Haskell went missing, where was the squire?’
‘What you asking about him for?’
‘Just try and think back. Did he come into the woods?’
‘Had no chance to. He was away to Truro that day, to speak to Mr Trunkett. Wanted Mr Trunkett to turn the furrin women out the cottage. That’s why I was able to …’ He fiddled with the rope across the horse’s nose.
‘That’s why you were able to go and rob Gertrud and Mathilda,’ Anna finished for him. ‘Because your employer was away from home and wouldn’t notice your absence.’
The smith dropped the horse’s rasped hoof to the ground. ‘Soreness in the flesh here,’ he said. ‘Squire making you give ’em too much grass again, Proctor? He don’t know how to look after his beasts.’
We hurried to the house.
THIRTY-NINE
Mrs Carne said Lady Phoebe would see us in her parlour.
‘That’s if she is seeing visitors today,’ the housekeeper said, ‘because she’s worked herself up into a state. I’ve had the Devil of a job trying to keep that broken window from her. How she heard the glass smash in the east wing, with all the doors proper closed like she asks, that I don’t know. Luc
y wouldn’t say a word about that window but I know it was something to do with you pair.’
‘Tell your mistress our visit is of the utmost importance,’ Anna said. ‘We wouldn’t disturb her otherwise.’
Mrs Carne nodded at a door a little way down the passage. ‘In there. Watch that you don’t break anything else, and don’t you upset her. Sir Vivian will be spitting feathers otherwise.’
Neither Anna nor I said anything to that.
Lady Phoebe’s parlour had two windows, and a long padded chair that was almost a bed. I thought of the little room with the desk, where we had found the por-s’lain figure of the man with the birdcage. The squire’s room. So much smaller and poorer than this of his wife, when she was the littler of the two.
‘We shouldn’t tell her of Mrs Haskell,’ Anna said. ‘It will be too much for her, something so strange as that.’
‘I agree. Learning of Mathilda will be shock enough.’
‘We ought to have brought the doctor in readiness.’
‘We’ll send Mrs Carne if he’s needed,’ I said.
We didn’t have to wait long before the door opened, only a crack, and the slight form of Lady Phoebe slipped inside on her tiny feet. She was clad in a pink dress that made her skin look even more pale than the few times I’d looked on her. I resolved to speak soft and low and kind, to give Lady Phoebe time to take in each surprise, but still I was fearful. I didn’t want to cause her harm.
To my relief, Anna spoke first, thanking Lady Phoebe for seeing us.
‘You have made some progress in your investigation?’ Lady Phoebe said. Her voice was light and sweet as the tinkling of the tiny bell Saint Nectan had left with Paul Haskell.
Anna hesitated, then said, ‘There has been a development.’
‘Please, sit,’ she said, and did likewise, taking the chair that was like a bed, her legs stretched out in front of her and a hand resting on the soft swell of her middle.
She smiled at us. Like a child, I thought, though she was so much older than me, closer to Anna’s age. Perhaps that was why she had lost so many babies. Would that we didn’t cause the loss of this one.
‘Lady Phoebe,’ I began.
‘Ah, there you are!’ she said, looking to the door.
I caught a glimpse of a striped tail weaving through the furniture. Anna tucked her feet under her chair. Lady Phoebe hauled him into her arms. I worried that she’d strain her poor, weak self, picking up such a fat beast, but I needn’t have. She was stronger than she looked.
She fussed the cat, scratched behind his ears and smoothed his enormous whiskers. ‘You’ve been out today, haven’t you, my love? Chasing the birds. Did you catch any? Did you get them?’
His purr was a roaring fire.
Anna cleared her throat. ‘Forgive me, Lady Phoebe, but we must speak to you about a delicate matter.’
‘There now, my love. I must listen to these good women. I must! Sit quietly.’
Pigeon perched on his mistress’s knees, his weight making them splay. He nestled in the space he’d made for himself, if such a beast could be said to do such a gentle thing as nestle.
Lady Phoebe smiled at us again, stroking Pigeon’s rippling back. ‘Now. What is it you must say to me? I’ll be sure to tell Sir Vivian when he comes home.’
‘That’s what we’ve come to speak to you about, Lady Phoebe,’ Anna said. ‘He won’t be coming home. Sir Vivian is dead.’
She ceased stroking Pigeon. He nosed her stilled fingers but she had forgotten him. Her hands fluttered to her belly.
‘Dead?’ she said, and her voice cracked.
‘He went over the waterfall,’ I said. ‘Likely washed out to sea. You should alert them in Boscastle to keep watch, to catch him before the tide takes him out.’
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘I was there,’ I said. ‘I saw it with my own eyes.’
‘I … I don’t understand. What was he doing in the river? Had he fallen?’
I glanced at Anna.
‘The squire was trying to hurt someone,’ I said. ‘Someone he wanted gone from the woods. From his life.’
‘Lady Phoebe,’ Anna said, ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this but Sir Vivian was already married when he wed you, and his first wife was still living at that time. She had borne him a child who now seeks recognition. She is one of the women in Mr Trunkett’s cottage – the other was his stepdaughter, who has very recently died. But Mathilda, the squire’s true daughter, she lives. It was she the squire was trying to throw over the waterfall.’
Lady Phoebe cried out, and the sound seemed to stave her in for she crumpled over her belly. Pigeon slid to the floor with his own noise of upset.
Anna was at her side in an instant. ‘Calm yourself, Lady Phoebe, for the sake of your child!’
But still her cries came. Her hair tumbled across her face. I was afraid to see how red her cheeks were.
‘Quick, Shilly – tell Mrs Carne to send for the doctor.’
I was halfway out the door when I heard Lady Phoebe’s words swim free of her cries.
‘The fool! The utter fool!’
Gone was her child’s voice, its lightness. In its place, hate hissed from her twisted lips. She jerked her legs off the long chair and stood, her hands made claws with the anger running through her.
Anna slowly stepped away, her palms raised as if to ward off an attack from the creature before us. The frail woman the squire had so feared for, unable to bear shock, needing to be coddled. She was gone, if she had ever been real at all.
‘If he had only waited,’ Lady Phoebe spat. ‘Another day and the wretched girl would have gone the way of her sister. To be so close—’ She kicked a chair across the room.
And then I knew whose hatred had poisoned the woods of Trethevy, who had brought back the blinded sisters. It wasn’t Mrs Haskell’s. It wasn’t Gertrud’s.
The hatred was Lady Phoebe’s.
‘How long have you known about Mathilda?’ Anna said.
At the mention of that name, Lady Phoebe made a face as if she’d sipped sour milk.
‘Her! She would take what belongs to my child. I read the letters from the first – read of her greed. My husband is a sentimental fool. He keeps such mementoes of his mistakes when he should have burnt them.’
Pigeon had slunk to the door and now scratched and whined to be released. His mistress ignored him.
‘You took Paul Haskell,’ I said. ‘You made it look like Gertrud and Mathilda had done it, waiting until the boy went to their cottage and then leaving the drawing charcoal in his place.’
‘And the squire knew nothing of your plans,’ Anna said. ‘He asked us to find Paul because he had no idea you were the one who’d hidden him.’
Lady Phoebe gave a scornful laugh. ‘Vivian is a blunderer. I knew that when I married him.’
‘But not that he was a bigamist, I’ll warrant,’ Anna said. ‘A blunderer with an estate and a title – that’s worth putting up with. It must have been quite a blow to discover the truth. With the death of his first wife, your place was assured. No one need know she’d ever existed, if not for the inconvenience of her daughter. The squire’s daughter.’
Lady Phoebe’s fingers tightened on the back of the chair as she glared at Anna.
‘But you are a resourceful woman,’ Anna said, ‘making sure you were sequestered in the east wing so no one noticed your absence when you went into the woods. A strong woman, too. Stronger than your husband thought you to be, Lady Phoebe. Strong enough to carry Paul Haskell to the summer house, to drag his brother kicking and screaming.’
‘You are a flatterer, Miss Drake. Paul needed no carrying. He was confused after the blow, but not incapacitated. He followed meekly enough. His brother put up a fight. A brave boy. Had you not conjured that trick, Mrs Williams … I thought there was only one woman in these woods who could do such things.’
Before that moment such a charge would have made my cheeks flame and my stomach pitch.
My hand would have sought the bottle. But I didn’t mind her words then. I didn’t mind what I was.
‘You knew Mrs Haskell’s true self,’ I said. ‘You knew she’d attack Gertrud and Mathilda if you waited long enough because she’s not like other people.’ I carried on, the truth of it now so clear before me that my words poured from my mouth, swift and tumbling as the Dark River. ‘And when Mrs Haskell didn’t do as you wanted, after you’d hidden Paul beneath the summer house, you tried to take Peter, to push her. You wore that stocking across your face to frighten him—’
‘Stocking?’
‘We found a little scrap of it,’ Anna said. ‘That’s how you did it. How you hid your face. Your eyes. Isn’t it?’
Her voice belied her words, because in that moment she felt doubt, and I could see why. Lady Phoebe was herself looking confused.
‘I had no need of such tricks. My cloak gave me protection enough, and who would have believed the boy anyway, should it have slipped a touch? Now.’ She moved to a fancy cabinet in the corner of the room. ‘How much did my husband offer you?’
Her words took my own. Like a tree falling into the river, stopping its course. Like a feather forced down a throat.
‘What?’ I managed to say.
‘To find the boy. How much?’
Anna licked her lips. ‘Thirty pounds.’
‘Anna! You can’t take her money. She’s the guilty one. We must send her to the magistrates.’
Without looking up from rootling in the cabinet, Lady Phoebe said, ‘And what proof would you give them, Mrs Williams?’ Her anger was gone. She saw that she was safe. That Anna was letting her be safe.
‘I …’ My mouth was dry. I looked to Anna for help but she wouldn’t meet my eye.
‘I would say you are without proof of any kind, Mrs Williams.’
‘There’s the Haskell boys,’ I said. ‘They would speak, be witnesses. You made a mistake not killing them.’
‘I wondered that, Mrs Williams, I did. Those lonely afternoons in the east wing. What if Paul should wake and get free before anyone acted on their rage? Why did I give myself that fear? Weakness. I will own it. They are sweet boys. I could not harm them.’
The Magpie Tree Page 22