The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  Millicent

  Chapter 16

  August 1915

  I held the little crochet bonnet in my hand. It was barely bigger than my fist and I imagined a baby’s head inside and how tiny it would be. Were newborns really so small? They couldn’t be, could they? When I had made it, the measurements had been correct; I had followed the pattern exactly.

  I passed the bonnet to the man behind the counter. ‘Is there nothing you can do?’ I said.

  He took it from me and examined the loose threads. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But Flanagan’s is really a dressmaking business, we only stock a few colours of wool and nothing that will match exactly,’

  ‘What about rethreading the loose strands?’ I said.

  ‘We could try,’ he said, ‘but they are damaged, it will never look like new, and I am sure that you would want the best for…’ Then he stopped and looked down at my blouse. ‘Look, Madam, if you don’t mind me saying, it does not seem as if your little one is due for a while, you have plenty of time to start again, we have a better quality wool—’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘My baby has to have this bonnet. It means a lot to me, I cannot give up on it.’

  The man’s eyes were wide and I realised that I must have snapped. I took the bonnet from his hands and tucked it back in my bag.

  ‘I am sorry,’ I muttered quietly.

  I left the dressmaker’s and walked out on to the village green. I sat on the bench under the oak tree and watched the man through the shop window as he draped a mannequin with a Union Jack.

  Outside the church hall of St Cuthbert’s, young men were milling around, smoking cigarettes and talking, but about what I could not hear. There were posters on the church noticeboard and pinned to the oak tree, the same picture of Lord Kitchener that I had seen all over town – plastered on glass, brick and wood – the cap high on his head and his moustache thick. His eyes looked ahead as if surveying the towns and fields of England, his finger extended, pointing out to the country’s people, to the men by the church hall, and to me – ‘Your country wants you’, ‘Kitchener wants you’. The world was moving on, why did I keep looking back?

  I took out the bonnet again. The man in the shop was right – the threads were loose but, even if they were rethreaded, they were yellowed and frayed beyond repair. But I could not throw it out, I could not start again, not when this tiny bonnet was the only thing that I had to remind me of what I had lost a year ago – a baby, but not even that, an existence, something started but never completed, just like the bonnet.

  A thud of boots came from the road. The men who had been milling outside the church hall were now marching along the tarmac. They strode side by side, their heads held high and their chests thrust forward, but their tattered shoes were out of step and they carried spades and broom handles instead of weapons.

  Some turned their heads as they marched past, grinning at me or winking as if I was one of those young girls who throw themselves at men in uniform. I noticed faces that I had seen before on the fields of Sunningdale Farm and in the butcher’s and baker’s in the village. They were faces that I recognised but had never got to know, and maybe never would. These men were not soldiers, but youths, marching to war in tattered shoes.

  Behind them followed some schoolboys, satchels flapping at their hips. They stopped by me to pick up fallen sticks and shot at each other as they ran after the men, shouting ‘bang’, staggering and clutching at their chests, and I marvelled at where children so young had come to learn such things.

  Then the men were gone, leaving only the echo of their footsteps on the empty road.

  From over the hills of Evesbridge came the distant crackle of gunfire and the little boys fell down dead, their corpses silent for just a second before they chuckled and jumped to their feet, running after the marching men, their sticks aimed at their backs, before they too were gone.

  I looked again at the bonnet that I held, and pressed my hand into the flesh above my girdle. How could I protect a new life in this new world?

  *

  As I turned into the driveway of Missensham Grange I passed the vicar of St Cuthbert’s at the gate. We nodded to one another but did not exchange pleasantries as I had not been to church for several months and his grim expression sent a shiver through my bones. Then I rushed to Hugh who stood on the porch waving him off.

  ‘Was it Ypres?’ I said, panting as I hurried up the steps. ‘One of the village boys?’

  ‘What?’ he said absent-mindedly. ‘No, no. It was old Mr Brewer.’

  ‘Mr Brewer?’ It took me while to remember the name. Mr Brewer had been the tenant farmer at Sunningdale Farm, a man whose advanced years and failing eyesight had meant that over the last few years Hugh had assumed much of the farm’s paperwork.

  ‘That is a shame,’ I said, setting down my shopping bag. ‘Although it did give me a fright when I saw the vicar here, I thought that it must be something to do with the war; losses in the Missensham company or something.’

  ‘Don’t worry yourself, darling,’ he said, putting his hand on my arm. ‘It was nothing like that.’

  ‘I will get Arthur to cut some flowers for the funeral and take them to the church,’ I said. ‘Arthur was born in Missensham, he can attend the funeral with me on behalf of the Grange.’ Then I added, ‘That is if you are unable, of course.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hugh quickly. ‘I think it far better that local people attend. Do you know if Mr Brewer had family? The vicar said there was no one immediate.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

  ‘Well, the farmhands must already be aware…’ Then he paused. ‘Although we should let Clement Walker know.’

  ‘Clement Walker?’ I echoed in surprise. ‘I’m sure that Clement and Mr Brewer were not acquainted. I don’t think that Clement Walker has any connection with Missensham folk. In fact he would not be aware of Mr Brewer at all, unless it was in connection with…’ There was a connection of course, and now I saw the way Hugh’s mind was working. ‘No!’ I said firmly. ‘This will not do. Mr Brewer is not long dead and you are already planning on erasing him and everything he worked for. His family has farmed on the estate for generations. I will not sell the farm now and not in this way.’

  ‘If there is no farmer, the estate will be easier to sell and we do not have to evict the tenant. Besides, all the farmhands will join up and all this business about women running things is just ridiculous. It is a good time to sell.’

  ‘We are at war,’ I said. ‘Farmland will be needed; all the crops will be sold this year. Have you not seen the notices? We may not even be allowed to sell, especially not to a developer.’

  ‘The war will be over in a couple of months,’ he said flatly. ‘We can run the farm ourselves until then.’

  ‘But the sale could take months to arrange, we cannot let the farm fall idle, we will have nothing to tide us over until then.’

  ‘We can get the surveys done. Get the walled garden up and running, then we will be well prepared. Women know little of these things.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ I said. ‘It is my land and I will not sell now.’

  ‘But I have discussed it with Clement,’ he said, ‘and we are taking action to progress the sale. You said you would consider it, Milly, you said it before I left for the Red Lion back in July!’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and consider it is just what I have done.’

  He shook his head sadly and left me standing alone on the steps.

  Once inside, I made myself some tea and took it into the drawing room. I scanned the newspapers I had bought in the village, but the Daily Express contained only stories about glory and bravery and the Missensham Herald had only a story about the queues of men who had signed up at St. Cuthbert’s Church Hall and a notice ordering farmers to bring their horses to the village green for selection for war duty. There was nothing about the sale of farmland or food prices and nothing to say when the war might end.

&nbs
p; I gazed out of the window and across the Long Lawn. Hugh was strolling across the grass whistling, not his usual favourite of ‘Greensleeves’ but some brisk military march. Arthur and Jimmy were laying the bricks of the new garden walls and when Hugh reached them, he stopped by their tools and picked up a broom, crooking the brush under his arm. Then he aimed the handle at Jimmy and ‘fired’ the broom at his chest. Jimmy dropped his trowel, clutched at his heart and fell to his knees. Then he stood up quickly and both men laughed and saluted.

  I marvelled at how Hugh saw war as nothing more than a game with the boys or a story at a dinner party. His talk was always of easy victories and daring exploits – stories fit for the matinee or magic lanterns. His monthly training with the reserves had been just a chance to show bravado and meet up with fellow men. I fancied that he actually did not care for women at all, after all we knew so little of war or farming or land sales.

  I put down my tea quickly, I had thought little of what Hugh had said, but now I began to wonder what he had meant when he said that he had taken action to progress the sale. I thought he had just meant some more discussion, maybe a valuation or a cost from a solicitor, but he could not do more than that, could he?

  I rushed into the study and to the bureau and began leafing through the paperwork and files, but I found nothing. I wrenched open the desk drawer and then stopped when I found the big brown envelope marked as deeds to the Sunningdale Farm. It was unopened, with the seal of Croziers, the local solicitors, still intact over the flap. The knot that had been tightening in my stomach now eased and I laughed to myself. How could I think such a thing of Hugh, whose action was only ever talk? I tucked the envelope back in the drawer.

  Then I saw it hidden away in the corner. It was beautiful. A cluster of three jade stones on a gold mount with a delicate gold chain and when I held it in my hand the stones seemed to radiate a colour that was not of my world of dull newsprint, dishwater and battered shoes. It was a colour of the first buds of spring or raindrops caught in sunlight and I could not think how such a thing could exist among brown envelopes and carbon paper. But this was Hugh’s study, and the drawer was his secret place – the place that he knew I would never be tempted to look or clean.

  I had seen the stones before, of course, but not in this way. They were the stones that Hugh had brought back from Tibet, smuggled in his boots. He had shown me them when we first met, tipped them out of his pocket as we smoked cigarettes on the balcony at the Hunt Ball and, as we listened to the band tumbling over the first notes of ‘Greensleeves’, he had told me they were the colour of my eyes. Now I fancied that he must have taken the stones to a jeweller and had them set for me – the necklace was an apology for the way he had reacted to the news of my pregnancy and it was a celebration of our new child.

  I wanted to put it on, to go out to the lawn and show him how good it looked on me but something stopped me. Somehow I had upset him already, this was his way of making amends and I should not spoil the surprise he intended. Reluctantly I coiled the chain and put the necklace back in the drawer, then I hurried outside to join him on the Long Lawn.

  When I reached the new garden wall, I crept up on Hugh and put my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek into his back. I felt him wince slightly but then he put his hands on mine and squeezed them hard.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered. ‘I am sorry about everything.’

  ‘I know,’ he said. It was not an apology but his tone told me that he had softened.

  I moved in front of him and put my hand on his. ‘You know that I would sell the farm if it really came to it,’ I said, ‘but we still have staff, we are not yet impoverished. Let’s just make a go of the garden for now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded, pleased by the compromise. ‘Tell me, Milly,’ he said, ‘Arthur, Jimmy and I were discussing the walled garden. There is already an old orchard on the Sunningdale Farm and we do not have the space for another, I thought we could try something more exotic to bring in a little extra cash, we would need a glasshouse but the restaurants in London would pay a pretty penny if, as you say, the boats can’t get through. I was thinking maybe of vines.’

  I laughed. ‘Grapes in Missensham!’ It sounds wonderful.’

  ‘I’m glad we agree on something.’

  ‘Yes, grapes.’

  And we laughed.

  ‘We can work it out together,’ he said. ‘My darling, my wife, my Mercy.’

  I nodded.

  This was my marriage. It was something that I had worried about just a few weeks ago when I had stood in the nursery and told Hugh the news of our baby, but now everything seemed changed and full of hope. I put my hand to my middle, pressing the soft flesh below my ribs. Hugh and I had been man and wife for so long, but all that was about to change, we were about to become a family.

  Chapter 17

  September 1915

  Old Hilda’s head hung low over the stable door, her hoof kicking rhythmically at the rotted wood.

  I wafted away the flies which encrusted her glassy eyes. ‘Do you think they will take her?’ I said.

  Jimmy shrugged his shoulders. ‘I think so.’

  ‘But she is surely too old!’ I said, patting Hilda’s dusty neck.

  ‘From what I hear in the farms, the army can’t afford to be fussy at the moment,’ he said.

  ‘But all the farms in the area will have to present their horses on the village green tomorrow,’ I said. ‘There will be fitter animals, they can surely spare Hilda!’

  ‘It is our duty, Madam.’

  ‘Damn duty!’ I spat, but then I saw Jimmy’s pimpled cheeks redden and I realised that he thought my frustration was with him and not the war that I was reminded of every time I heard the thunder of the guns at Evesbridge.

  ‘It will look bad for the Grange if we are not at the green tomorrow,’ Jimmy said. ‘The farmers will be losing animals they need for ploughs and carts. We need to show we are doing our bit.’ His voice was quiet but the words sounded bitter and I felt annoyed that my sadness over the loss of our dear horse had seemed like selfishness to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jimmy,’ I said, reluctantly. ‘You are right of course.’ I sighed and stroked Hilda’s nose. ‘So this is goodbye, girl. I am so sorry.’

  I looked along the long low building to the other five stalls, all of them empty but for rusted machinery and stacks of bricks for the walled garden. I fancied that I could see a bridled head peering over each door, the ghosts of the horses from my childhood, throwing back their heads and flicking their ears as they waited to pull the carriage or run with the hunt. Now just Hilda remained, and soon she too could be gone.

  ‘She’s coming to the end of her prime,’ said Jimmy. ‘Who knows what the next few years would have held for a mare of her age. She would be lucky to foal again.’

  ‘I suppose you are right,’ I said, looking into the deep glassiness of Hilda’s eyes and I’m sure that I sensed an understanding between us, something borne of our shared age and sex, but whether the pity I felt was for her or myself, I could not be sure. ‘I will stay here with her for a while,’ I said, checking the time on the clock that hung on the stable wall.

  ‘Of course, Madam.’ Jimmy pulled up a bale of straw and took up the tack he had been polishing.

  I found a place to sit on top of the kennel roof and rummaged in my apron pocket for my crochet and hook.

  Jimmy looked up. ‘Are you making scarves for the soldiers?’ he asked.

  I laughed. ‘I don’t think crochet would keep out the mud of a battlefield.’ I held up the baby’s bonnet for him to see. ‘And white is not a good colour to keep from staining.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said awkwardly, reddening in a way that only the young do when there is little cause to.

  ‘I started it last year,’ I said, feeling that I owed him an explanation for his embarrassment. ‘But something happened to it and the stitches got pulled and, well, I tried to fix it but I could not get it right. It was never quite t
he same and anyway…’ I hesitated as now it was me that felt awkward and I regretted saying so much. ‘Well, it didn’t matter by then because’ – I looked at the tiny bonnet – ‘I suppose it was too late.’

  ‘I heard about your loss, Madam,’ he said, ‘and I am most deeply sorry.’ But his colour did not deepen at this most sentimental of statements and I remembered that he had no family of his own and must have been familiar with grief.

  ‘Thank you, Jimmy,’ I said quietly.

  ‘But you are mending it now,’ he said, his face brightening. ‘You must have some new hope, at least. Might it even mean…’

  ‘It does!’ I said.

  ‘Congratulations.’ He smiled. It was a smile that seemed to transform his whole face, pulling his uneven features to where Mother Nature had intended them. I noticed a shadow of stubble on his upper lip and I realised that a couple of years would see his skin clear and his long limbs pad with muscle. What I had once thought of as afflictions were only due to his youth and now I saw that he might be handsome one day.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, warmed by his enthusiasm. ‘Although I must be cautious – babies come to women of my age with difficulty.’ Then I added, ‘Just like to an old mare.’

  He laughed. ‘I wouldn’t call you an old mare, Madam.’

  ‘I would hope not,’ I said, laughing too.

  Then I happened to glance at the far stall and saw that the door was slightly open. The edge of a thick blanket was wedged in the doorway, a couple of red petals blowing across the wool.

  ‘Babies come with difficulty to an old mare,’ I said, ‘yet easily to the young.’

  He turned his head and saw what I did, his face reddening again.

  ‘You will be careful, won’t you?’ I said. ‘You are both so very young. For you men it is not so bad, but you are not wed and Rosalie has her reputation to consider.’

  ‘It won’t come to that, Madam,’ he said.