After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  “The inn.”

  “Your room.”

  He shifts in his seat near the end of the cot and pulls a thin blanket up my legs. “My bed.”

  I wheeze a laugh and run my tongue against the back of my lip. “The horse?”

  “Cut on the pastern. It’s been seen to. The buggy’s axle snapped.”

  I nod, but it feels like an arrow to the head. He hands me the handkerchief. Allows me to cry and doesn’t look away. He crosses his arms over his barrel chest as he leans back. He is larger than I remember from the asylum; perhaps it is due to the narrowness of the room, the small table. Somehow it is comforting.

  I wipe my nose, wad the handkerchief, and push it under my hip. “You found me.”

  “I heard you, more like.” The voices outside rise and then settle again. A man and woman.

  “The doctor?” Yes, the doctor and his wife. She kept hold of the light when he took my arm to set it.

  Stoakes looks toward the door. The chair squeaks as he presses back into it. “I wouldn’t call him that.”

  “Something spooked the horse.”

  “Did you see something?”

  “I last remember you. You lit the lamps . . .” My vision waffles. “No. Nothing else.”

  “You’ll need a tale. The bone man won’t say anything. I told him I found you on Jaffrey Road, and that’s the only thing he needs to know.”

  “Jaffrey Road is the other side of . . . It’s not my horse. I borrowed him and the buggy. Mrs. Hargreaves. Thomas Hargreaves.”

  “Do they know where you were?”

  “She does. Oh, my God.” I try to sit up. My head swims, then feels like it’s being tightened in a vise.

  He puts a hand to my shoulder and settles me back. “Give me the address. I’ll send a boy.”

  “Did someone kill my sister?”

  He doesn’t answer. Just rests his elbows on his thighs and smokes. Apple smoke.

  “I went to the war to get away from her,” I say. “That’s the truth.”

  “Is it?”

  “My husband and I . . . There was always Alice in the way. Always. I’ve always taken care of her. He knew that . . .” But the vision that comes to me is not the cottage or Benjamin but Kitty. Kitty bent to a crumpled Alice. Holding her hand. Listening to the horrible noise of someone not ready to die. “You told me she didn’t suffer. But she did.”

  “Perhaps she did.”

  “Why do you work there?”

  Stoakes knocks the ash from his pipe to a plate, then lays it crosswise. He takes a draught of his drink—a darker liquor than mine. “My brother Antrim got shot at Bull Run. I was right next to him, just pulling at his sleeve to get him to move. If he’d taken one step. But it got him. Here.” He points to his forehead, above the left eye. “Didn’t kill him. Wish it had. He couldn’t stop the deliriums. Mother couldn’t watch out, not that, not a grown boy. So I received a deferment. I make sure to look after him now. That’s why I’m there. Him and others.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nods and lifts his chin. “You’re shivering.”

  “Yes.” I pick up the brandy, swallow the last bit.

  He shrugs out of his coat and drapes it over my shoulders. It smells of sweet tobacco, and its warmth wraps around me. He sits back and lifts up the pipe again. “Just think. You could have been the one was kind to my brother. Wrapped up his wounds and held on to his hope.”

  “Your brother matters a great deal to you.”

  “That he does. As your Alice matters to you.”

  The stark morning light washes the room. Ada’s eyes are liquid blue, pulling me in like a mesmerist. She sits on the edge of the bed, her arm next to my hip. She picks at the fabric, her fingers pushing it to the mattress, then winding it up. She is still in her walking cloak, the pin holding the neck tight and leaving a thin red line where it rubs the skin.

  Mr. Stoakes was good as his word, had called for her and then slipped us down the back stairs to a cab he’d hired. She said nothing—just stared at me and then gave the driver a tip when we made it across town to the cottage.

  I want Mr. Stoakes in the room; I want him to smoke his pipe and let me cry. Instead it’s Ada peering at me as if expecting some answer. And the blue robins circling the ceiling of Alice’s old room.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  She jerks straight and lets out a long sigh. “My God, Marion.”

  My hand throbs; I need to loosen the splint ties, but when I move to sit, it jostles my arm. I hold my breath for five seconds, then let it out and point at the knots. “This needs to be loosened. The swelling—”

  She unties the sling, a piece of gingham crudely cut, splaying it on my chest and thighs. Then she pulls at the cotton strips, one at a time, unraveling the knots, then, “Put your finger here.” And when I do, she ties the cotton again without shifting the splint, slowing just for me to pull my finger away and give mercy to the ache.

  Thomas was here last night. He followed us up the stairs, his hand sliding along the railing. He’s waiting for the lie I’ll need to tell now because Ada shut him from the room and told him he was no help in the matter.

  “Tell me your story again.”

  “I was visiting a friend.” My lip has scabbed. My tongue hits the back of my teeth as I talk, careful to keep my mouth still as possible. “From Baltimore. From the hospital. The war.” I try to conjure a name, but my thoughts spread like a fine mist. “Dinner at the Phoenix.”

  “Good.” The feather mattress plumps as she stands and paces along the windows. “You had lamb and mint. Strawberry tart.”

  “I don’t like mint.”

  “Stewed apples.” The window casing groans as she opens it. The outside noises slip in: horse hooves and boys calling and the constant rumble of people living life. “Someone might ask.”

  “Thomas will?”

  “Yes. He will. And Lionel. I’ve sent a telegram.”

  “Help me up.” I twist and shove my heel and knee to the bed. I want up. I want clothing. I want my brother to tell me why he lied.

  Ada assists, pushing and plumping pillows.

  “Is he coming here?” I ask.

  She nods. Her eyes flick to me, then she makes a fuss with the sheet that slid sideways. “Did you find your answers?”

  “She was pushed. Someone took her to the roof and pushed her over the edge.”

  Her palms smooth the sheet over my legs. She tucks in the lower corners. “My God.”

  The light flattens and flashes. Black and white, like a train. There—something white and the whinny of the Morgan. But the room returns to the robins and blues, and a knock on the door interrupts us.

  “I let myself in.” Cathy’s voice is muted behind the door.

  Ada rushes over, pulling the door wide, holding it open. She says something I can’t quite hear. She taps her chin with her thumb, listening. Nodding. Then Cathy has rounded the doorway, stands at the end of the bed. She grips a leather travel case with both hands.

  “You’ve got yourself in a fine mess.” She sets the case to the floor, unpins her traveling hat, and lays it atop my feet. Her eyes graze the scrapes and bruises on my face, stop on the stitch in my lip. “That, unfortunately, will scar.” She shrugs. “There are worse things. The arm, for one.”

  “I was out with a friend. To dinner.”

  She picks up the water glass and holds it to the sunlight. “Just water?”

  Ada steps forward. “We’ve no potions. We’re teetotalers. I could bring chamomile.”

  Cathy’s eyebrow lifts and she sets the glass down before bending to the case and unbuckling it. “I’ve brought clothing. You really do need new clothes, Marion. I’ve a shawl you can wear over your chemise. Until we’re home.” She lays out bloomers, a petticoat, a brown twill skirt. “We’ll dye it when there’s an opportunity, but for now, this will have to do. Can you stand?”

  I push my good hand into the mattress to lift myself; Ada ho
lds me under the arm when I stand and tilt too far forward, digging my toes into the rag rug to maintain balance.

  “I’m all right.”

  Cathy is all motion. Here untying the sling, there the buttons of the nightdress, flicking the bloomers in the air as if she’s just pulled them from the laundry line. “Was it only you, then? In the accident, I mean. Were there others involved?” She lifts the bloomers up each of my legs and pulls at the waist to fasten them. “What was her name?”

  “Who?”

  “Step in.” She points to the petticoat. “Your friend. You had dinner, remember?”

  Ada gives me an imploring look, then picks up the sling and fusses it around my arm. “I’ll have you come another time,” she says. “For the girls.”

  “We should contact your friend. Let her know. And your rescuers. I think a note of acknowledgment would be in order.” Cathy pins her hat again and gives Ada a peck on the cheek. “Lionel will talk to Thomas about any damages.”

  It is glaringly bright outside. The buggy is open, the canvas top folded away, leaving the sun to pound at my skin. Ada says nothing as we depart, just stands at the short iron gate. The windows of the houses reflect the glare. I squint against it. Close my eyes. But the sway and bump of the cab and Cathy’s silence make me light-headed and nauseous.

  The buggy whip sits perpendicular to the road. Cathy’s back is just as straight. She takes a route that skirts the town, and I’m thankful for the reprieve from the sun, for the trees are thick and the light dappled.

  I can’t stop the images that skim across my mind. That horrid box. The ice baths and white, white walls. Miss Clough’s starched skirts. Mrs. Brighton’s voice echoing in the hallway. I shudder, as if ice water has dripped on my back. My hands and fingers grow cold and numb. My teeth chatter and clack. I know it’s shock.

  When we turn to Turee Road, she flicks the reins. “You lie as badly as your brother.”

  “I was at the asylum,” I say.

  “Yes. Yes, Ada told me.”

  “Lionel has Alice’s notebooks.”

  “Does he?” She shakes her head. Gives a quick smile and without warning pats my leg. “I think you’re the only one who knew how to take care of Alice.”

  “I met with a matron. The last one—” I gulp back a sob and cover my mouth. “Someone killed her, Cathy. Someone opened her door and dragged her to the roof and pushed her off.”

  She chucks her chin and doesn’t say anything.

  “Miss Clough—”

  “Miss Clough?”

  “I need to see the constable. I want to add to the complaint.”

  “What complaint?”

  “I told you.”

  She pulls the reins hard and stops the buggy on the side of the road. The wheels roll and crush the cicada husks and leaves. “What complaint?”

  “I made a formal complaint. Against Mayhew.”

  “Why?”

  “For negligence. Now I want it for murder.”

  “Oh, Marion. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I should have done it right away. The first day when I thought . . . But now there’s witnesses. There were people who saw it all.”

  “What all? What did they see?” She turns to face me. “What have you started?”

  “I don’t . . . You were there. Last month. When Ada was. She told me so.”

  “I wasn’t.” She shakes her head and turns back to drive. Her skin is splotched. She clenches her jaw, long muscles along the bone tensing and relaxing. “Ada is mistaken.”

  “Cathy.”

  “I wasn’t there. She wouldn’t see me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  My legs can’t hold me. I fall back to the bed, bones and chest hollow, listening to Cathy’s footfalls upstairs, muted steps on the hall runner, the staccato on the wood. Lionel’s voice. Toby’s. There’s a clatter of pans in the kitchen. No one comes to the room for what seems hours.

  “Here.” Cathy finally returns. She tilts her head, then offers me a spoon, the liquid sluicing in the bowl. She reminds me of myself once, sitting on the edge of a soldier’s cot, hip to leg. “Here,” she says again.

  I turn my head away; the liquid has a sharp smell. She touches her finger to my chin to tip it, then the medicine slides like velvet across my tongue. Her touch is warm as she caresses my throat, soothing it into a swallow. The liquid is bitter and I rub my tongue on the roof of my mouth to get rid of the taste.

  She waits.

  The medicine’s already doing its trick; my lips don’t cooperate, are numb and swollen. I want to know what she’s given me. But my mouth doesn’t work, and I can’t formulate words.

  She combs back my hair with her index and middle fingers. “You need to let your sister go.”

  “I can’t.” I lean back, my head to the pillow and eyes too heavy to keep open.

  She puts her hand on my wrist, just at the edge of the splint, and holds her thumb on the skin. Then she leans close. “There won’t be a complaint.” She squeezes then, sending a radiating pain up my arm. “You won’t ruin this family. I won’t let it happen.” She twists, just enough that my vision sparks and flashes. “I don’t care if someone pushed Alice or if she jumped. I do not care.”

  I struggle against her, swing my arm, and then push at her chest. The sheet has twisted around my arm, pinning it and tightening like a noose. I gasp a breath and struggle up. “Let go.”

  “Shush, Marion, shush.” She reaches over, takes the sheet end, and unwraps with the care one gives a babe. “Shush. You’re having a nightmare.”

  “You were just here . . .” But I don’t finish, my words curdling under her gaze.

  Her mouth toys with a smile, one side and then the other, and her eyes are overbright, as if she’s just woken from a high fever. She picks at the ties on my arm, but not with any attention. Instead, she bites at a loose piece of chapped skin on her lip, all the while staring at the cut on mine. “What did she do? When the door was opened?”

  “I don’t . . .”

  “You said the door was left open. There are only two choices: stay or flee. She didn’t stay. Did she? And if she chose to flee, why to the roof and not down the stairs and out to the woods?” Her eyes grow wide and then shift away, move side to side as if she’s unreeling a story.

  “Three doors. One, then another, then another. Up the stairs. It’s a steep roofline, shale shakes. It would take effort to stay upright. You’d need to balance on the cornice. She’d need to be sure that’s where she wanted to be. Wouldn’t she?”

  Her breath is hot and sour sweet. She rubs her lip. Watches something just beyond my shoulder. “Just to the tip of the building, where the ground is lowest, the drop the longest. That’s where she stopped. Arms out, and one foot, then the other. Mm.” Her gaze snaps back to mine. “Yes. Just as she told me she would.”

  My mouth gapes open. I can’t move.

  “Just as she said. Just as she wanted.” She pulls at a button on my nightshirt, then stands and walks the hall to the stairs, the white lace of her shawl aglow. She stops at the turn to the stair, her hand resting on the banister. “Good night.”

  In the morning, I sit on the covered porch in a rocker, brought here by Cathy and Saoirse, with a side table stocked with magazines and a plate of meats and cheeses. Saoirse has made molasses bread, still warm and aromatic. Lionel stole a slice before clambering down the stairs to join Elias and Amos by the boathouse. He waved as he strode backward, then grabbed up a crowbar and called, “It’s all fine.” Though I didn’t know what he meant, and why he wasn’t furious about the wreck of the Hargreaveses’ buggy nor worried I might have lost my life after it crashed. No, just, “It’s all fine,” before hefting the crowbar to the wood and levering out a plank. Amos glances up as he crosses with an old rocking chair slung over his shoulder. He’s clean-shaven and wears a felt hat I recognize as one of Elias’s. His brown hair still touches his shoulders, but there’s more shine in it. It’s his eyes that give me p
ause, though, a gray green that remain a second too long. He gives a quick nod and drops the wood to the rest. Then he shields his eyes and looks up at me. “Are you well?”

  “Yes, Amos. Quite well.”

  But if one were to paint a picture, it would be titled Invalid. I don’t want it; I am restless, and last night’s dreams—for Cathy assures me she did not come down from her room—circle and bite and cower away when I look.

  I pull the shawl she’s brought me, but it’s caught under my hip. I drop the fabric. Even were I to get it loose, it would take a half hour to fling it over my useless arm.

  “So tell me, nurse, how tight or not shall I make this?” Cathy had come early, when the light was still but a glimmer of violet and the loons made their morning plaintive calls. “And I’ve brought this for your sling. Much more fashionable.”

  Certainly. If one were fond of peacocks and fairies, both of which had been printed on the silk. She’s gone to town and promises to bring back something even nicer.

  Now I drop my head to the back of the chair and follow the lines of the porch ceiling. There’s an old spider’s web that flutters between two of the boards and the fried paper and pulp of an abandoned yellow-jacket nest in the corner. Yet the long table is covered in a damask cloth, and breakfast was served on porcelain.

  Maybe it’s true. Maybe Alice chose to jump from the roof. But then why would Kitty be so adamant? And Harriet Clough? I shift my slipper against the wood and recall the hiss of her starched skirts. Brawders House was as paradoxical as this house, with the fine front vestibule and fancy flowered gardens, and yet the paint on the lock plate of Alice’s cell scraped by her fingernails. Maybe it’s true. Maybe there’s only so long someone can abide a place like that before all hope is squelched. If she jumped. Just as she told me she would.

  If I could just see the notebooks.

  “Auntie.” Toby clomps up the porch stairs and runs his palm on the railing before stopping in front of me. He closes an eye and assesses me. Then he moves closer and stares directly into my left eye, so I see only the gold flecks in the blue sea of his. He lifts his eyebrow. “I can see your soul.”