After Alice Fell: A Novel

by Kim Taylor Blakemore

  It’s pitch black now. I swallow and then lick salty sweat from my upper lip. A low moan claws from my gut up my throat. My body trembles as the panic stirs and hisses.

  Shh. Shh.

  I flash on the tintype of Lydia, the almost smile that crinkles her cheek. Lydia drowned in the pond. Out past the turn, where the shores pinch tight and the Sentinels stand guard.

  My lids snap wide, though the room is dark. There’s something, prowling at the edge of my vision. Something rustling. A starched apron. Harriet Clough’s. A smell of lemon cake and chlorine bleach. Oily smoke and the fizzle of burning pages in the diaries Lionel took from Kitty Swain. The only way Alice spoke now burnt to char and ash.

  Alice knew something she shouldn’t. And died for it.

  But not before giving the gift of the slides. She must have finished them just before Lionel took her away. Not on the inventory list packed so neat with her belongings. Trusting me to find them. To trust her. To listen. To see.

  I open the wardrobe, pull out a drawer, and rest my hand on a stocking. The glass slides slip across each other. Five slides. I smile, cupping my hand over them.

  I had gambled: Two slides to catch Cathy out. The five others were Old Mother Hubbard.

  Old Mother Hubbard

  Went to the Cupboard,

  To give the poor Dog a bone;

  When she came there,

  The Cupboard was bare,

  And so the poor Dog had none.

  But she’ll soon know I switched them. She’ll come for the real slides. She’ll come for me.

  I watch. My view is the keyhole, and the world of the house flits across it, like the glass slides in Toby’s magic lantern. I see directly to the front door. On my right is Lionel’s office. He enters in the morning, sits and stews, then leaves through the kitchen door, also on my right. On my left is the staircase, the curio cabinet with glass ornaments and the hidden closet with the spring door that holds a broom, a bucket, dust rags, and a mop. Saoirse pops it open and takes out one or the other during the day, and when she sweeps, her skirts sway just like the broom bristles.

  Very little light comes from the parlor on the left. The opening is muddy brown, as if the curtains are always drawn. At night Saoirse lights the sconces in the hall and the lamps in the parlor, then lugs herself up the stairs to light the rooms above. When she’s done, she takes the three short steps to the kitchen to start the evening meal.

  Meals.

  I am brought my food separately, though it is the same as Cathy and Lionel eat. Even a slice of ginger cake cut and set to its own plate. Not glass. Never glass.

  Farther along, on the right, the dining room. There is lovely light in the dining room, and most of the day it brightens the hall and the thick wood door. Cathy wanders in and out, sometimes with an armful of flowers and sometimes poring over papers and tapping a pencil to her lip.

  I press my lips to the metal lock plate on her third trek from the parlor to the dining room. “Where’s Toby?”

  She lifts the corner to the page she’s reading and doesn’t stop on her path from parlor to dining room. “He’s in his room.”

  “Let me out.”

  Her step stutters. She looks into the dining room and then back to my door. “I can’t.” Her fingers bite into the sheaf of papers. She pulls them tight to her chest. “I really truly can’t, Marion.”

  “You can’t keep me here.” I raise my voice. “Is this what you did to my sister?”

  “Your sister knew how to get out.” But she stops, gives an angry jerk of her head, and returns to the parlor.

  I dig my thumbnail along the doorframe. The columns of roses waver; the pattern is mismatched. A small square patch peels along the frame. I’ve seen it before, thought nothing of the penciled marks. I run my finger along the edge abutting the arch until my nail catches on a loose bit of it. Below is yellowed glue and plaster. The paper tears in a strip, straight up to the top of the frame and the turn in the arch.

  There’s a ripple under the plaster. I dig and tear, but here the glue is thicker, and the plaster pulls away in a clump. The strip swings and thuds the door.

  I freeze. But no one comes or calls out for me to be quiet. With a single rip, the paper is free. I stare down to the water jug. If I wet the paper it will come loose.

  The chair wobbles as I clamber down, the seat corner knocking the wall.

  Still no one.

  I crouch, lay the stretch of paper to the rug, and dribble the rest of the water to the clump of plaster. I dig my finger to paper, curling it back. Bit by bit it emerges.

  The plaster crumbles. A swath of fabric. Lemon yellow. A pattern of ferns. Each leaf like a saw’s edge.

  Evidence: One hood. The knots still intact.

  “Are you there?”

  I jerk up, scuttling back from the voice that floats through the keyhole. My teeth chatter and my breath comes out as a moan. “Toby?”

  The knob turns one way, then the other. I scramble for the candle, holding it out. He stares at me, then puts his lips to the lock plate. “I’m going to rescue you,” he whispers. He turns his head. Now it’s his pale cheek I see. Then his eye again and lashes so long they brush the plate. “Don’t be scared.”

  My body crumples then, because I am scared, and I can’t stop the sob escaping through my fingers. I press my palm hard over my mouth and teeth, swallowing it back. “I’m not scared,” I say. “You don’t need to rescue me.”

  Light pierces the keyhole. He’s left. Just the moon cutting through the front window. “Toby. Oh, please don’t go.”

  A movement then, near my knees. Toby’s pushed his fingers just under the door and wriggles them. Slides them right and then left until I catch them in mine. He tugs at them, a motion that sends me to my stomach, cheek to floor. Then he pets the top of my hand.

  “How did you get out of your room?” My voice slips across the doorjamb.

  He doesn’t answer. I hear him breathing, open mouthed. Then he slides a long pin over the jamb. A songbird in blue, tipped with pearls. Alice’s hat pin.

  “She taught you.”

  “Now you can escape. I’ll be right here.”

  We stare at each other. “I don’t know how to pick a lock.”

  A floorboard creaks above us. Toby twists to peer in the hall, then scrabbles along the wall, springing open the understairs closet and sidling inside.

  Lionel’s feet plod the stairs. He stops at the bottom, taking a step to the dining room, hands curled in the pockets of his dressing gown. The blue silk glimmers in the light. His feet are bare and he curls a toe against the parquet before turning into the parlor and rummaging around for a drink. The hinges of the cabinet protest, then give way. A twist of cork and a glug of liquid to a glass. He must bolt it down, because the glass is refilled once more.

  He paces. A minute or ten, I don’t know, but long enough I wonder if he’ll ever leave. But then the glass thuds to the felt on the game table, and he is back again in the entryway. He faces the hall and me and, please God, hasn’t heard a thing.

  He rubs his hands over his face, and sighs. “Oh, God,” he mutters. “Oh, Jesus.”

  And then he takes the stairs again and shuts the bedroom door.

  I wait. Toby waits. The moonlight shifts in the hall until it is a single arc of gray light through the window.

  There is a click of a latch. The small door opening. Toby slips out and steals back to me. He kneels to the floor and I follow suit. I slide the hat pin back to him. “Try.”

  He scoops it up. I can hear the scratch of the pin against the lock tumblers. Silence when he removes it, and then the scratch as he works the lock again. I run my fingers over the brass plate, with its molded whorls of dandelion stalks and feathery pampas bristles. A Snow & Son original design.

  “It’s not the same.” Toby clicks the tip of the pin to the matching plate on his side.

  I sit back, push the heels of my palms to my forehead.

  Think.
/>   “Toby.” I push myself forward to speak through the keyhole. “Can you hide something for me? In your room.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m going to give you something.”

  “All right.”

  I move to the wardrobe, grab out the stocking with the lantern slides, then kneel again to the floor. I press the stocking flat, the tinkling of the glass muted. He can hide them in his room, somewhere behind the books on his shelf.

  I roll on my back and stare at the ceiling, pulling the stocking to my stomach and twisting the top. He’s only a child. If she did look—

  “Auntie.” His fingers trill the floor, expectant. I touch them with mine, to still them, to feel the warmth. He’s torn the nail on his ring finger.

  “Put this to the very back of your toy shelf.” Before I can change my mind, I push the slides to him.

  “Why are you in trouble?”

  I pause. “I think it’s because the constable came. That made your father angry.” My foot catches on the length of wallpaper coiled to the floor. Above me the plaster gapes and the lath looks like ribs.

  “How will I get you out?” he whispers.

  I drag in a breath. “Oh, I’ll be out soon, when I’m not in trouble anymore. You’ll be out, too, if you’re a good boy.”

  There’s no answer.

  “Toby?” I dig into my thigh and peer through the opening. He’s still there. “Toby.”

  “They’re going to take you, too, aren’t they?”

  “No.”

  He sniffs. “I’m scared.” His head disappears from view. The hat pin is pushed back to me, bent at a right angle from his endeavor with the lock. I kneel to look through the lock. He lifts his hand to the balustrade, just able to reach the newel, and I see the weight of this horrible house in the hunch of his shoulders.

  “I’m scared too.”

  Chapter Thirty

  The clink of a teacup wakes me. Then another. A patter of voices and one titter that is certainly not Cathy’s. I roll on my side and stare and listen.

  They are in the dining room.

  Women.

  I sit up in bed. Wait through a bout of dizziness. I appraise the paper I reset to the wall with toothpowder and spit. There is a ragged hole where the hood once was, and nothing I can do to fix it. The chunk that is missing is now stuffed between my arm and the splint. It is a witness. It is a talisman.

  The murmurs run in notes high and low and come from the dining room.

  “Well, of course we would list all the names.” The voice, watery bright, is followed by a crunch of a biscuit or meringue.

  “Of the donors?” Cathy says. She sits at the head of the table. Her voice comes clear through the doorway and is tight with anxiety at this group of visitors she no doubt wished had come last week rather than this.

  “Of the dead.” A wiser voice ends with a disapproving hmph and cough.

  “Yes. Of course. Of course, the dead.” A clink of a cup to saucer, just a hair too sharp.

  “We’re thinking bronze.”

  I frown and try to recall the voice. One of the women from the park. Seeking the right spot for the future Statue of the Fallen Soldier. A statue and fountain.

  “But not a fountain,” she continues. “Everyone’s finances are so pinched now . . .” Her voice trails away.

  “Are you sure Mrs. Abbott can’t join us?” Essa Runyon asks. “Or mayhap I could have a short sit with her?”

  “You know how dreadful catarrh is,” Cathy says. “I wouldn’t want it to pass to you or yours.”

  Shoving the sheets off, I clamber to kneel at the keyhole. The hall is empty. I raise my hand to hammer the door, to call out to Essa, to any of the women.

  “Just catarrh?” an older woman asks. Mrs. Flowers, who passed us by in church. “What a terrible, terrible thing. And in summer.”

  The tone of her voice stops my hand. I can see them all as if I were seated just behind them. The quick glances from one to the other and then averting their eyes from Cathy. Stirring milk to tea. Taking a tong to the sugar bowl and so careful to find the smallest lump. Scraping butter to a biscuit. The silence in the room. The curiosity in the pointed indifference to whatever Cathy might choose to say.

  “Lionel has sent for a specialist. From Concord.”

  The gasp is on cue.

  “Consumption?” one woman conjectures.

  “One hopes only that.” Cathy’s answer leaves what is unspoken clear. “First Alice, now—”

  I kick the door.

  A chair rakes the floor. “Pardon me.” Cathy’s voice is louder. She moves into the hall, her hands to the dining room door, her eyes to the ceiling as if she were asking sympathy from God for all she must bear.

  “Psst.”

  She hesitates, then cuts a quick look toward me.

  I drop to the floor. Stick my hand under and crook my finger for her to come.

  Her knuckles go white as she grips the knob tighter and tighter. “Pardon me a moment. Have another cake.” She gives a quick smile to the women, shuts the door, and comes toward me.

  I tap the floor for her to bend down.

  Her green silk skirts billow out as she lowers herself.

  I snake the hem in my fingers and twist. “I will break every window in this room if you don’t open the door.”

  “If you break every window, you’ll confirm what those biddies are thinking.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “Let go of my skirt.”

  Instead, I pull it, reeling it under the door. “I know what you’ve done.”

  Her knee smacks the frame. “You’re just like her,” she hisses. “They know it. No matter what you do, whether you scream or break things, not one of them will listen.” She yanks her skirt and stumbles back. “Not one.”

  Her shoes are sharp, heels harpooning the wood as she returns to the room, lifting her head high as she enters. “I will be happy to provide funds.”

  The room constricts around me.

  No one will listen.

  In the evening, Saoirse slides the tray to me but doesn’t shut the door. She gives a furtive glance behind her, then reaches in to run her palm on the top of my head. “You must regain yourself.”

  I wince. “Why do you help them?”

  “Child.” Her eyes are weary. She lowers her lids and rattles in a breath. “Leave the milk.”

  Then she is gone.

  I pull the tray toward me, until the corners meet my crossed legs. A single matchstick. Peas. Bacon. A roll. Green apple slices. The milk, with a whirl of cream floating on top.

  I bite a slice of apple. It is tart. Not yet ripe.

  The peas are salted and steamed, as I like them, as Saoirse knows I do, so there is that. She does think of me though she is complicit in all of this.

  The bacon is thick and crunchy. Three slices.

  The milk is poisoned with the opiate Cathy spooned in my mouth when I first returned after the accident to the house. How attentive she’d been then. Each spoon an alleviation of pain and an onset of dreams twisted and chaotic. She’s put it in the water here. To keep me quiet. To keep me pliant.

  My mouth dries with all the salt to the meal. I swallow, pressing my tongue to the roof of my mouth. I stare at the milk. Imagine the cool of it down my throat and the way it will cause me to drowse. Imagine then the hellish visions that follow. As they have done every night until I have come unraveled.

  I kneel and then stand, and push the tray with my foot to the wall.

  I light the nub of candle and pace the room. Count the steps—ten from the mantel and rocker to the bedside table, three at an angle to the wardrobe, five across to the writing desk.

  Lionel has sent for a specialist. No doubt Dr. Mayhew has rid himself of the Snow family, so he seeks help further afield. I am certain it is not a doctor with knowledge or interest in catarrh. More likely it is one with an unnatural interest in female unease. In all the various complexities of hysteria and t
he maladies of our wombs. Why wouldn’t he do so? I have behaved just as Alice, flailing around, deranged, and filled with a self-righteous sense of being unheard. He would see nothing else. All those times he looked at me, the same look we gave each other growing up. Pleading in church to God that it be only her accursed. Only her.

  Or so he will say to the specialist.

  A paper crumples under my foot. I turn a circle, picking my way around the overflow of the chamber pot, the food I’ve left to stale and rot, the sheets spilling from the bed, the metal springs and bits of the clock I worked free in an effort to find anything that would open the door. There is the hole in the wall and the pasted paper so easily spotted. A room for a madwoman.

  Cathy killed Lydia.

  But if I say a word—

  I must be calm. Regain my right self.

  I tap my thumb to the wood of the splint, then pull the sling off, letting my arm free and working my fingers, trying to touch my thumb to the others. Over and over through the stiffness until I am able to pinch it to the middle finger without the room thinning into white and my stomach revolting.

  One button at a time. Each piece of clothing removed and folded to the mending basket. There is enough water in the jug for a quick wipe with a rag. I shrug on a chemise, then Alice’s stays and Alice’s plaid skirt because my own mourning dress is too large. Her bodice sports tight sleeves, for she never was one for pufferies and fancies. Not when the forest called.

  Brush the hair and pin it.

  Shuffle up the papers and set them to the desk.

  Make the bed.

  Cover the piss pot with a pillow casing.

  Push the windows full up to gain fresh air. I press my nose to the wood shutters and breathe in. Horses, hay. Ash. Tobacco smoke. Not Lionel’s. Outside, the cicadas saw, their song a rough throb. It weaves with other voices. I turn my ear to the words. Cathy. Amos.

  Nothing intelligible, just one voice hooked over another, coming from down near the weeping willow. Words traveling on smoke. Words that snare and stop, jab and raise.

  Then, “What about the boy?” Amos is directly below my window.