After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

I drop it to the desk and flop back in the chair. Stare at the ceiling and the glow of the candle. When I blow out a breath, the light wavers, then steadies.

  My arm throbs. The cut on my lip has scabbed over and itches. My head aches—from lack of sleep, from the fall—from my sister dying.

  On the bed stand is the tonic Cathy has generously poured in my mouth and dripped into my tea. A brown glass bottle without a label, a laudanum more opium than brandy.

  I grab it up and push the cork against the edge of the table to open it. If I drink it, I will sleep. If I drink it, I will lose myself in terrible dreams. The liquid sloshes against the glass. I unlatch the shutter and pour the medicine to spatter the ground below.

  There’s an orange dot out near the far side of the pond. I turn down the oil lamp and pull the shutter just enough to watch. The light jigs and lifts. A cigarette or pipe. Yes. There’s the flare as it’s lifted to someone’s lips and the smoke dragged in. Amos. He stands in one place and smokes. That orange light lifting and dropping and then tamped out.

  As if he’s watching us.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Cathy startles me awake. “You need to get up.”

  She grips the back of the rocking chair I’d fallen asleep in sometime during the night and stares at me. She’s dressed in a hurry, in a summer chintz that hangs loose around her hips. No petticoats. A button missed at her waist. Her hair twisted into a knot.

  I rub my face. Wince when my hand brushes and pulls at the scab on my lip. “What time is it?”

  She lets out a frustrated breath, then moves to the windows and pushes open the shutters. The light is early-morning peach and violet, the air cool from night.

  “What’s the matter? Is it Toby?”

  She yanks open the wardrobe and throws out a dress, followed by stockings. “The constable.”

  “What?”

  “The constable.” Her words are a hiss.

  I stand, tugging at my nightdress, fumbling it off, grabbing and pulling the clothing on. My hands shake. “Help.”

  Chemise and drawers. Stockings rolled—Cathy’s hands tremble, too, as she works the garter buttons.

  “Arms out,” she says and settles the working stays, circling to my front to cinch it up. Blouse and bodice, stockings and shoes. All the while, she breathes in and out and moves me about like a doll and misbuttons both the blouse and my left shoe.

  Finally, she flicks the gaudy fabric for the sling and bungles the knot. She yanks the fabric and jostles my arm.

  “Lionel?” I query and pray he’s left already.

  She shakes her head, her hands busy again with the knot. She’s rough as she pulls at my hair, braiding and pinning it. “You make this right.”

  “It’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.”

  I nod at her to open the door. Then I take in a breath and hold it all the way down the hall. The men murmur from the parlor. My step hitches. There are three voices. All men. Lionel, yes, I hear his laugh, though there’s no mirth in it.

  I pull and smooth the sling on my arm. Set my shoulders and enter. “Constable Grent. How kind of you to finally choose to visit. I thought you’d quite forgotten . . .” But my words drain away as the men’s gazes swing to me. Lionel at the window, his face blotched with anger. Dr. Mayhew stands next to him, his bowler held to his chest. He gives me a perfunctory nod.

  “Mrs. Abbott.”

  Lionel gestures to the constable before clasping his hands behind his back. “This is Constable Grent. Come for you, Marion.”

  “Why—”

  The constable, whose knee creaks as he crosses one fat leg over the other, fans himself with a sheaf of papers. His white mustache flutters and his eyes peek from his cheeks. His gaze is hard as malachite.

  “Do you ignore every complaint,” I ask, “or just mine?”

  The man lowers his lids and curls the papers. “May I ask after your injury?” Then his eyes pop back open, and he looks at me as if anything I say will be misheard or ignored.

  “You may not.”

  He blinks again. “But I may.”

  “It was a carriage mishap.” Cathy has slipped in the room, closing the door. She lurks near the corner card table and taps a nail to the felt. “I don’t think that’s illegal.”

  I pull in a rasp of breath; my knees are too wobbly to move. “You never answered my complaint, Mr. Grent.”

  The constable rolls the papers in his hands. The tips of his fingers are stained brown from tobacco, and a faint stale smell of mildew wafts from his clothes. “I am here now.”

  “I have more to add. To my statement.”

  Dr. Mayhew gives a tight, quick smile. “But I have a countercomplaint. Trespassing on private property. Which you did. And in which”—he points his hat—“you injured your arm.”

  “I was with a friend in town. At the Phoenix.”

  “I do recognize there is a bit of road that needs repair,” Mayhew says, and looks to Lionel, “so have made payment to Mr. Thomas Hargreaves for the replacement axle.”

  “No,” I say.

  Grent flicks the papers on his lap and glances at Cathy, then Lionel. “We would like to talk to Mrs. Abbott. Make sense of this complaint. Alone.”

  Lionel swallows and sulks to the door, taking Cathy by the arm. “I would like to—”

  “Alone, Mr. Snow.” And Grent’s smile is wide as a walrus’s. He waits until the door has clicked shut. His smile remains as he watches me. “Will you sit, Mrs. Abbott?”

  “No, I’m quite well here.”

  The sofa cushion wheezes as Mr. Grent settles back. “Mrs. Hargreaves states that you took their buggy. An Abbot-Downing.”

  “She offered.”

  Grent’s eyebrows raise near to his hairline. “That is not what she has written.” Now he unfolds the papers, licking his thumb and flipping the corners until he finds what he wanted. “I heard a commotion in the barn and could not stop Mrs. Abbott from leaving. She perseverated earlier upon the grievances she believes were committed at Brawders House. I thought I had dissuaded her but was not successful in my attempts.”

  I step back. My heel catches the doorstop and twists my ankle. Ada . . .

  Constable Grent coughs.

  “That’s not true, I . . .” But why wouldn’t she say that? How else does she explain to her husband she’s mixed up in this, even if only as a messenger. “Did you read my complaint?”

  “Indeed, I did.”

  “My sister was pushed from the roof of his asylum.”

  Mayhew turns to the constable. “As I said.” He tosses his hat to a chair and leans against the window frame. “Your sister was not pushed. I answered that before, Mrs. Abbott.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  He purses his lips. Combs his fingers through his sideburns.

  “I believe I did. But let me answer in simple words even a woman can understand. Your sister picked the lock on her door. She evaded the ward attendant, found her way to the roof, and took her life.”

  “What were the attendants doing? While my sister snuck her way from her room, through whatever other locked doors there may be, without anyone once stopping her and asking what she was doing? Someone pushed her.”

  “Our investigation showed all ward attendants that evening had done their duty. The rounds sheet was duly checked off at appropriate times. I put much faith in my attendants.”

  “And yet you all let someone die.” I clench and unclench my hands. Dig my nails into my palms. “I know about the box. That chair. You strapped her in. I know someone was watching her. She knew. She knew what you did to that other woman.”

  He stares at me. His words are careful when he speaks. “Your sister was violent, uncontrollable, and delusional. There were necessary precautions for her safety and others’. That included restraints. The mind can fill with too much chaos, and nothing works. Hydrotherapy worked for a short while. I thought we’d turned a corner.”

  “The ice baths.”

&nbs
p; “You know of it?”

  I stop myself from saying how much I know and what I’ve seen. Stoakes and Miss Clough both so careful to remind me to lie. That I had never been there, never seen any of it. “I have heard of its use for consumptives.”

  “The blood slows, the heart calms, the mind cools. I’ve seen wonders.”

  “But not with her.”

  “You can only leave someone in ice so long.”

  “Did you leave Beatrice Beecham in ice, or tie her down in the ice?”

  He crosses his arms over his checked vest, his thumb playing with the chain of his watch. His attention has shifted to the window. I follow his gaze to the front yard. Elias and Amos push two wheelbarrows to the stone fence to make repairs.

  Mr. Grent clears his throat. “Dr. Mayhew.”

  His glance snaps back to the room. “As I stated, your sister was violent and . . .”

  “She was murdered within your facility. As was Beatrice Beecham.”

  “There is no Beatrice Beecham, Mrs. Abbott. She’s a phantom. Be good or you’ll go like Beatrice Beecham. I’ve heard the women say it; I’ve heard the matrons threaten with it.”

  Grent stands. “Mrs. Abbott—”

  “I stand by my report,” Mayhew says. “And I stand by the well-being of all those under my care, though you may not believe it. Every last one of them. I won’t have you sully my work nor that of anyone else who chooses such a career. You have been speaking to staff. I can guess who. And I will call them to court to state under oath that you trespassed on my property. That you disturbed the peace of unstable and fragile patients all under the irrational notion that someone chose to willfully murder your sister.”

  Blood beats in my temples. “I will call those same said staff to speak for me. Because someone did willfully kill my sister.”

  “Who?” He raises a palm. “If those staff believe something so untoward happened, then who?”

  My mouth dries up. I sift through the memories—Kitty, Stoakes, Harriet, Alice’s notes that she was soon to die—all the innuendos that someone had done something. None of them seeing anything specific. A turn of the head. An open door. “I don’t know.”

  “Why did your sister stop talking?”

  I take in a breath, dizzy from the change in subject. “She was fourteen.”

  “Not when. Why.” His cheek gives a tic.

  “There wasn’t any why. It was just Alice.”

  “Your mother died that year. She was ill quite a while. It often runs in the family, but you would know that, wouldn’t you?”

  “My mother was of sound mind.”

  “Mm. Miss Snow intimated you smothered the poor woman. With a pillow embroidered with snap peas. And you ordered her to never say a word, or you’d cut out her tongue.”

  “No. That never . . .”

  “Whether it did or not, it’s in her records. Which would, by law, be unsealed. In the case of your formal complaint.”

  “I didn’t do anything of the kind.”

  “But you did something. Most delusions have an element of truth in them. At least I’ve found that to be the case. Which element that is can be up for interpretation. Usually determined by those with a medical background. Mm. Poor girl. Every morning to wake up thinking, If I utter a word, my sister will cut out my tongue.”

  “That’s a monstrous . . .” My legs shake. “That is a lie.”

  “She tells the truth or she doesn’t, Mrs. Abbott. Which is it?”

  “You’d drag a lie into court.”

  “Just as you would drag insinuations. And no one would believe Kitty Swain anyway.”

  “How dare you.”

  “Sit down, Mrs. Abbott.” He clamps his hand to my wrist and gives a sharp pull. “Sit down.”

  I drop to the seat. He releases my arm, sniffs, and smiles wide. Then he signals to Grent to hand over the pages, then scours through them. “Yes. Yes. I see that you were thorough in your complaint. Doors and locks and women dropping from rooftops. And then you returned. A matron told you she saw nothing at all because she was downstairs assisting with another patient. Isn’t that correct?”

  “She was killed.”

  He tilts his head. “Harriet Clough has been removed from service. She was negligent, as you say in your complaint, and left a door open that should not have been. I am fully disclosing this in front of the constable so you may record it as you see fit, Mr. Grent. Kitty is a half-wit. She was abnormal in her relations with your sister. That information will not leave this room. Kitty has her own delusions, and the only truth in them is she watched your sister fall. But your sister had no delusions that night. She had opportunity to end her suffering, and she did so.” He turns again to the window, a frown pulling his lips. Elias works a stone to the fence as Amos chisels another. Then Mayhew turns to face me fully, a thumb hooked in his vest pocket. “Your complaint is as meritless as the ones your sister chose to incessantly write. All of which will be pulled into court, as will you and your brother and the initial reason for Miss Snow’s commitment. She held a small boy out a window and would have let him drop to his death. If you wish to drag all of that into court, you will need to be prepared for the questions. Of your own stability and delusions and responsibilities. Do we understand each other?”

  Mr. Grent stands next to Mayhew, a hand to his pocket and an expectant look to his face. “Withdraw the complaint, Mrs. Abbott,” he says. “Your father was a good friend; there’s no need for this to tar the family. And Dr. Mayhew will be most generous in withdrawing his.”

  I clamp my teeth. “No.”

  We are silent. Mayhew picks at his watch chain with his nail. Grent lifts a small spoon from a cup and saucer Saoirse must have served on their arrival. He dips it into the cup and stirs. Knocks the rim of the cup and puts it again on the plate.

  “What do you say?” He slurps the dark liquid and balances the drink in his hand.

  “No.”

  “Your sister attempted to kill a child,” Mayhew says. “She confessed to holding the boy out the window with the intent of dropping him to the ground. She confessed. And I have a witness to prove it. Do you have witnesses?”

  I grit my teeth. The walls narrow until they press against my shoulders and push Mayhew closer and closer until I see the veins in his cheeks. “You’ve turned it all around.”

  “I think not.” His skin flushes, and he pins me tight with his gaze. “Your sister, if you continue, will forever be known as a monster.”

  My chest caves. All the breath I’ve been holding is expelled. Unsteady, I grab for the corner of the card table, knocking it into the wall.

  He is right; he will win. I have nothing to give, just innuendo and gossamer strings of stories. I have no money of my own to pursue the matter; Lionel would never support it if I did. And to have Alice known as a monster—no. I can’t. I won’t.

  “Constable, to confirm, the clinic has waived the last months of fees, of which the family was in arrears. Miss Snow’s headstone was paid for directly by me; Mrs. Abbott sent me the bill.” He lifts his own cup and slurps. Sets it down, then takes the papers from Grent and folds them to his coat pocket. “I believe we are agreed?”

  I drop my head and nod.

  “Then our business is done. I leave you to your day.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  “You were lucky, Marion.” Cathy and I watch from the window as Grent hops on one foot, the other in the stirrup, as his chestnut horse curves away from him, avoiding the man’s weight. Then the man heaves himself up. Mayhew sits straight, hand on his thigh, his pinky ring glimmering against the black serge of his trousers. He looks to the window, to me, pulling his gloves from his chest pocket.

  He slips the gloves on one finger at a time. He swings his gaze to the house, smug face, and tips his hat. He’s a liar.

  The horses’ hooves kick up dust as they trot to the road. Elias and Amos don’t look up as they pass by. But Mayhew slows his horse and says something to them. To Amos. Receive
s a shake of the head and a turned back.

  Lionel closes the front door and stops in the entryway. He claps his hands. “Well, then. Who wants a drink?”

  Cathy stares at me, her eyebrow lifting. “Is it over, Marion?”

  “I withdrew the complaint.”

  “Well, then,” she says. “We can finally give Alice her rest.”

  Lionel busies himself pouring brandies into three glasses. He hums, and then laughs, turning to hand us the drinks. “I can say, that gave me a start, the two of them showing up. Just . . . well, a start. As if I’d done something wrong.”

  His cheeks are red, a jovial host. He skirts a look around the room and out the window, looking everywhere but at me. “It is over, isn’t it, Marion?”

  I slug down the brandy. It burns the back of my throat. “I’ll have another.”

  Cathy makes a small noise of approval, then lifts up the bottle from the sideboard. She holds it by the neck, letting it swing so the liquor sloshes against the glass, then pours too much. The brandy trickles over my hand to the floor. She lifts the corner of her mouth in a smile. “My apologies.”

  The bottle is set back with a snap. She raises her glass. “To Alice.”

  I throw the drink in her face.

  She blubbers and spits and blinks. “What are you—”

  “You have no right to say her name.” I put the empty glass next to the bottle and move to the door.

  “You’re just like her,” she says.

  I hesitate, my hand to the doorframe, then lower my gaze to the floor. “I’m sorry. The morning’s events have overcome me. I’m not in my right mind.”

  She throws her glass; it shatters against the wall just by my head. “You should be careful what you say. You might end up just like her.”

  “Stop it.” Lionel steps between us. He presses his hand to Cathy’s shoulder.

  “Get your hand off me.” Her words are low as a hiss.

  “New life,” he says to her. Then he looks at me. “New life.”

  I give a curt nod and walk out.

  Most delusions have an element of truth.

  Not snap peas. The pillow was embroidered with more delicate flowers. Sweet alyssum.