by Jane Jakeman
And wrapped carefully inside the parcel of linen, deep inside, is a little bundle which she has made to put inside the bigger one. In this there are a couple of gold guineas. And though of course there is no way a gypsy could honestly have come by those same guineas, she wants to make doubly sure. So she has added Crawshay’s silver watch, unmistakable, initialled: a dozen persons will swear this was old Crawshay’s own timepiece that never left his weskit chain. She did not need to deliberately smear it with blood, for a stain got upon it as she was pulling it out of the old devil’s pocket.
There is a smell in the air, but the smell of animal blood is not uncommon on a farm and the gypsy thinks nothing of it.
He thanks the gentle Mistress Crawshay, departs.
The governess will be due back from Callerton very shortly.
Marie’s preparations are almost ready. There was blood on her gown, but she has changed into a fresh one. The stained dress is taken into the laundry room, the fire beneath the boiler lit, the dress fed into the flames. It must be cut up and put into the grate scrap by scrap, to make sure it is all consumed in the flames, but there is not much time left now and some of the pieces are thickly folded together and do not entirely burn.
And she has forgotten the tiny round pieces of lead covered with the material of the gown — the buttons, some of which melt into little silver splashes, which Lord Ambrose will note. And some of which are only partly melted, forming little misshapen discs.
Which Tom Granby will notice with puzzlement when he rakes out the ashes of the grate, thinking to spare the ladies of the household that dirty task. Tom picks them up, not knowing what they are, meaning to ask Mistress Crawshay if they had been thrown in the fire by mistake.
He puts them inside his shirt.
And Ambrose Malfine will take them from Tom’s body, and will know that a woman killed him.
Soon, Marie will go and discover the bodies. She will do so as soon as she hears the sound of the pony and cart returning from Callerton.
CHAPTER 23
“And then, you see,” whispering as the candles guttered, murmuring her story with a terrible detachment, as if she was explaining some moderately unpleasant task such as the wringing of a chicken’s neck, “and then, you see, I had to do it again. It was your man Tom that time. He began to be suspicious. I came down to see to my dress, the one I had cut up and put in the fire of the boiler. I had not had an opportunity to make sure it was all burnt, you see. There seemed always to be someone with me — Elisabeth, or you, Lord Ambrose, or Tom. Until that night — that was the first chance I had to slip downstairs. I don’t know how I awakened Tom. He was sleeping well, I thought, I looked in his room and he seemed fast asleep. But it was a hot night. Perhaps he was restless.
“I went downstairs to make sure all the scraps of my dress had been burnt away in the stove.
“But Tom must have woken up and followed me. I heard someone coming down the stairs and slipped behind the door, and then Tom came into the laundry room. I saw him looking at the boiler and the stove, and then he got the poker and raked around in the ashes, and then he was holding something up in his hand, holding it up to the moonlight. I could see what he was holding quite plain. There were some buttons and a scrap of cloth in his hand.
“From my dress — the one I thought had all burnt away.
“Then he turned and went back up the stairs to his room.
“So I had to do it to him. Because he was on my track. I could see that. Tom might catch me and the gypsy-man might go free. Poor Tom, sad, wasn’t it? But you do see why I had to do it.
“It wasn’t so difficult. I couldn’t use the guns again, not with that yellow-eyed woman in the house to tell all the world she had heard a shot in the middle of the night. But I used a knife. We’ve all seen pigs being killed, when the butcher comes round, haven’t we? I knew how to do it.”
Marie suddenly began to giggle.
“And something else as well — I thought I was very clever. Now you won’t be shocked, my lord, will you? Do promise me you won’t be shocked, sir. How do you think I solved this problem? I mean, the problem that had led me into this fix in the first place. The blood on my clothes. After all, it was in trying to get rid of a bloodstained dress that I had given myself away in the first place, was it not? So I knew I mustn’t make the same mistake again. What do you think I did?”
She broke off into a fit of laughter.
“I took off all my clothes. Every stitch! There was I, running round the farmhouse stark naked in the night! It was wonderfully cool. I stood there, naked, for a while before I got on with what I had to do. Do you want to know where I got the idea? There was a story going round the village of Mrs. Philp of Brighton who was lately tried at Lewes Assizes. She got a maid from the workhouse and took her clothes away and made her serve the dinner and clear away the dishes and dust the parlour — all stark naked! Imagine it!
“Anyway, I realised that going naked would be the best way for me, for blood is easier to wash away from skin than from clothing, is it not? But, like a silly creature, I stood there, wondering about how to get Tom Granby back down from his room.
“Then of course I knew what to do. I just walked up, bold as brass, without a stitch on. I opened the door of his room, and stood beside his bed and touched his shoulder.
“Oh, you should have seen him, the great booby! The look on his face when he opened his eyes and saw me standing there! As if he had never seen a naked woman in his life — well, perhaps he had not, my lord, unlike you gentry, with your grand pictures of nudes all on show in gilt frames. I daresay all he knew were the dirty petticoats who uptailed for him behind some pothouse.”
She stopped and laughed again.
“So I ran out of the room and downstairs. And, of course, he followed me, exactly as I knew he would! How could he know there was a woman with no single stitch of clothing running about the house in the dark without being tempted?
“He came looking for me. I was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. I picked up the knife first from the kitchen, then I went to the stairs holding the knife behind me, and when he came down I pressed myself against him all naked as I was. So of course he didn’t notice the knife. And I jabbed it where I knew his heart would be — it went in quite easily and he fell on top of me. And then I wriggled out from under him and I was covered in his blood, of course.”
She paused for a moment or two and slid her hands up and down her body.
“So then I went and washed it off under the pump in the kitchen. And poured the water away. I ran upstairs and put on a loose nightgown. And that was that. Or so I thought.”
“How did you … how did you move him?”
“To Wayland’s Mound? Ah, there I had the most wonderful stroke of luck. I could never have moved him on my own, you see. He was a great big man, Tom Granby, far too heavy for me. I thought I would have to make up some story about how I had found him lying there, in his own blood!
“But then it was all so fortunate. At least, that was what it seemed like. Everything I was praying for seemed to come true that night. Tom had followed me downstairs just as I wanted, then the knite had killed him just as I had planned it would. And my clever idea of taking my clothes off — that was just right, too.
“I thought it would be better to get the body out of the house — then there would be no suspicion of me, you see. It would be thought that someone outside the house had killed him. I tried to drag him along. But I couldn’t move him at all, you know, he was just far too heavy. I tried, yes, I did. But I couldn’t. I lifted up both his arms and tried to pull him along. But it didn’t work. I was just going to give up when I heard someone moving about.
“Well, I was frightened then, I can tell you. But I had a sort of confidence, too. I had just killed one man, weak though I was. Why should I fear another?”
Why indeed should Marie fear? I wondered. It was De Carme, I supposed. De Carme come looking for his wife, who was going under her m
aiden name of Anstruther. She was living as Elisabeth Anstruther in this very farmhouse — anyone in the district would have told him the name of the governess at Crawshay’s: there could be no turnip within a fifty-mile radius who had not heard the scandalous details.
So De Carme had come here at night, in search of his Elisabeth. For what? For revenge? Perhaps to ask for her help? We would never know.
Marie was talking again.
“It was that man called De Carme. The one who was here again, the one you were fighting. But that first time, he broke in then, too. I heard him, scrabbling at the door, and then he crept in.”
To see her crouching over a body.
They had made a monstrous pact, the two of them, over Tom Granby’s dead body.
“I could accuse him, you see. All I would have to do would be to say he had broken in and I had seen him standing over Tom’s body. It would have been just the same as I had done with the gypsy. They would have arrested him straight away. But on the other hand … ”
“He could give you away. And they might have believed him,” I supplied.
“Exactly. You see things so clearly, my lord. Who would believe the word of a gypsy against me? But this might have been different. I could tell that this man had been a gentleman once — he still had that in his voice, his manner — and he might have had powerful friends or kin. He was not like some wandering Romany whose life mattered not a scrap to anyone of position. This man was more dangerous. I had to come to some arrangement … We made an agreement. He would help me with the body.
“He was stronger than I thought, for all his crippled leg. I got the pony out of the stable — I kept her on the grass, so her hooves wouldn’t make any noise. And then we got Tom on her back — we pulled him over her back, between us. I was very frightened then, I must admit — it seemed to take so long. I wanted to tip him in a ditch, somewhere nearer, but then I thought of Wayland’s Mound. No one goes near places such as that, for they are believed to be cursed by the Old Folk, and the body would never be found there. And it did take a long time to find it, didn’t it? I hadn’t thought of the flies. The flies gave it away in the end.
“By the time we got the pony back in the stable, it was almost dawn. There was one more thing to do — I had cursed old Crawshay many a time for keeping those old flagstones on the floor, instead of having timbers laid like everyone else, but you may be sure that I blessed the stone floor then! It was quite easy to get the blood off.”
“You said there was a bargain. What did he gain from it?”
“He was to come and go here secretly as he pleased. I was to give him food and shelter — and money if he needed it. I had to agree to whatever he said, didn’t I? Or else he could have told people what he had seen. But I knew that once he had helped me with the body I was a lot safer. Because then he was an accomplice, wasn’t he? He couldn’t inform on me without involving himself. They would have said, ‘Why didn’t you tell us straight away, this tale of seeing Mistress Crawshay at night, pulling at the arms of a dead man?” Again there was that high-pitched giggle.
“But to tell you the truth, I was always afraid that he would give me away. The threat of it was always there. So when I shot him, as you were struggling on the stairs with him, I didn’t really care which of you I hit. Because I knew that you, my lord, were getting close to the truth, so it would keep us both safe, the cripple and me, for a little longer if I killed you. But if I hit him, I would silence the witness against me. Either way, I thought I would gain. People might have thought I had shot him to save your life. But I didn’t: I took a chance!”
Marie began to laugh, the laughter that you hear at puppet shows, the laughter of a cruel child who sees Mr. Punch hitting Judy over the head. It stopped abruptly, and the room was horribly silent, except for the rustling of the curtains as they lifted and sank in the draughts that blew about. Suddenly Marie sat up in the bed and clutched at my hands with her thin fingers.
“Get it for me, I plead with you, get it from the closet.” She sank down on her pillows, spittle staining the lace that trimmed them, but she was still whispering urgently, harshly. “I beg you, sir, bring me my little bottle of medicine from the box in my closet. Let me have it now … please give it to me … oh please, I beg you. I have told you everything now, there is nothing more.”
I turned to Elisabeth. “We can allow her to have a little laudanum now.” There was a small silver spoon in an old-fashioned gilded wine glass, on a table beside the bed.
“Give her a spoonful from the bottle in the little box.” Then I thought of the child, Edmund, brought up with the notoriety of being the son of a murderess, of the boy perhaps hearing from some tavern idiot of how his mother met her end, how she was turned off the ladder on the scaffold and kicked her legs in the air as she choked in the noose.
And of something that might be even worse — of the men who had menaced the gypsies, of how they would react in the village if they found out that Marie was the murderess. She had killed not only the Crawshays, but Tom Granby, Tom, the carpenter who had played the fiddle at the country feasts and weddings — he was dead, and by Marie’s hand. I did not know if I would even be able to get her to Callerton if they came for her from the village. I had saved the gypsy — but with Tom’s help, and he was no longer at my side. God alone knew what they would do to Marie if they learned of her guilt and laid hands upon her.
“You can’t stay forever in a nightmare,” Marie had said to me, “you must wake up some time.” Waking or sleeping now, Marie was forever in that nightmare.
I took the bottle from Elisabeth’s hand as she was about to pour out a spoonful of the laudanum. “Let me do that — do you fetch a cloak or something to put around Mistress Crawshay’s shoulders when we take her downstairs — why, there is such a draught here!
“I have to make some arrangements,” I added, as Elisabeth was leaving the room. I took care to speak with my mouth close to Marie’s head, so that she must hear my every word. “I’ll have to get Marie to Callerton — they take women prisoners there. She’ll be among the drunken hags, the petty thieves, locked up in Callerton Gaol. They sleep on dirty straw and sell themselves to the turnkeys merely to get food. And after a few months of that hell, she’ll be taken out and put up on a scaffold, and they’ll put a hempen noose around her neck and hang her.”
I saw by Marie’s terrified eyes that she was visualising what kind of existence there must be in store for her, once she was taken out beyond the walls of this room.
The door closed behind Elisabeth.
“You know what I must do, Marie, for I am sure you can still understand me. There will be a little time before I take you from here. You may make your preparations.”
I still remember her eyes as they looked up at me, her lids swollen and empurpled with weeping. The little silver spoonful of ruby-brown opiate was halfway to her lips. She understood.
I placed the bottle beside the bed and left her there.
CHAPTER 24
What I had done was not right, I know; I had prated virtuously about law and justice to these country clod-pates.
But it was a human thing to do, and I had begun to rejoin humanity.
“I did not think she would take so much,” said Elisabeth, later, “but I suppose she had an almost-full bottle of laudanum, the one I had brought from Callerton.”
This was after we had found Marie, curled up in the great feather bed that her Edmund had bought to enjoy his wife in. The bottle of dark-blue glass lay on the floor, where it had fallen, empty, from her hand. Her eyes were closed; there was no trace of life.
Elisabeth and the child I took to Malfine, for they could not be left in that house.
“What of the gypsy?” she asked me. “He is still in the gaol at Anchester, is he not?”
“I shall write a report for the authorities,” I said. “I will say only enough to secure his release; there is no need to expound upon our personal histories.”
She understo
od that I was assuring her of my discretion, and nodded her head. Elisabeth had not told me all the truth, yet I myself could not pretend to any greater virtue, for had I not replied in kind? I recalled the words I had spoken to her, there by the stream as she traced my scars with her fingertips:
“I fought in Greece. For Greek independence.”
So I had, but it was not the whole story. Like Elisabeth’s account, it was a partial truth. I found myself admitting something I had never before confronted: I did not fight for the purest of motives, solely for the restoration of ancient liberties to a country in chains. I fought for human love, for a woman, for my mother’s claim to land, for all the mixed bag of earthly motives. Who am I to condemn Elisabeth Anstruther because she withheld the truth from me, when I have deceived myself for so long?
I continued:
“But what of you, where do you desire to go now?”
“Oh, I have nowhere.”
“Perhaps your father will take you in — if he knows what has happened, that De Carme is dead.”
“I will not ask him to.”
“That is what I had hoped you would say. You need somewhere to live. Young Edmund needs someone to look after him. Come to Malfine, both of you.”
“You would have such an infamous woman under your roof?”
“With alacrity! It will be the talk of the turnips! And we might even open Malfine again — at least, those parts that have not entirely fallen down!”
What I fought for has long gone, in any case. Perhaps I have a life here in England after all, among these country timber-heads who are my own kind.
We shall see, Elisabeth Anstruther and I, we shall see.
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