The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  For generations, the heiress, the firstborn, had always been tied to this house. Now there was to be another heiress, the one who had made her presence known to me just hours before in the dark of the fields. Someday, she too would stare out of this window and I wondered whether she would see forest or farmland, roads or railways, or maybe the houses of a new development, or her own children playing on the lawn. Maybe, like me, she would just stare into the dark expanse of the night. But she would stand here, just as I did. It would always be this way.

  Chapter 21

  September 1915

  I sat in the armchair in the kitchen, warming myself in a little patch of sunlight from the window. From somewhere above me in the study came a dull thud, followed by the creak of floorboards on the landing and I thought that Hugh must have finished his work for the day and was about to descend the stairs. But then I realised that the noises were not made by my husband and were just the everyday sounds that came to haunt old houses; the banging of water pipes and the expansion of aged timbers in the heat of the day. The house was empty and Hugh was gone, and as clouds passed over the garden, the little patch of sunlight faded from the window.

  Three weeks had passed since Hugh had left me and in that time the leaves in the garden had begun to rust and the harvest was being brought in from the farm. Jimmy had kept the stable in order and helped to finish the garden walls but he rarely ventured into the big house and would look at his shoes when I attempted to speak with him, his shame for the role he had played in Hugh’s deception still fresh and raw.

  With neither a girl in the housemaid’s room nor a husband in my bed, Missensham Grange had become emptier than ever and lighting the fires in the rooms upstairs had seemed frivolous, so I had taken to staying in the kitchen for the warmth of the stove. I did not like to admit it to myself, but I always made sure that I was in the kitchen at Arthur’s break times. We would often sit at the table and share a boiled kettle, loaf of bread or slab of cheese. We spoke of very little, and never of what had happened on that fateful night, but although I could have taken a plate upstairs, or he taken a tray to the cottage, neither of us did so.

  Arthur seemed different without Hugh around, but I could not quite put my finger on how – he went about his business in the same doddering way as always, and wore the same work shirt and worn trousers. His skin was still red and weathered and he still spoke in the same mumbled tones common among the old country people – but, in Hugh’s absence, I was starting to see a new side to Arthur, something that was somehow purer and I felt that, despite the years he had served us, I was only just getting to know him.

  Another thud, and then several more, but this time louder, sharper and from outside. By now I had come to recognise the boom of the guns over the fields of Evesbridge. I stood up to look out of the window but Arthur was crouched quietly in the flower beds as he set gin traps for the rabbits and did not flinch at the sound. Then shadows from the clouds fled from the lawn and my little patch of sunlight appeared again and swelled across the flagstones, a tiny green glow reflecting from under the basin cupboard, and when I went over and peered under the gap, I knew instantly what I was looking at – it was the necklace, the green jade stones that Hugh had plundered from Tibet, the ones that he had always said were the colour of my eyes.

  I picked the necklace up, the uneven halves of the torn chain hanging limply from my fingers. It must have broken when I had grabbed at Rosalie’s throat, yet nobody had seen it fall. I closed my fingers around it and walked to the dresser, thinking that I could bury it in a drawer, but then I changed my mind and set it out on the table, matching the broken ends of the chain together. I could still see it so clearly around Rosalie’s neck; the gape of the material at her neckline as she stretched to fix her hair, the stones so bright against the mauve fabric of her dress, yet I was determined that the necklace would not be tainted by any memory of her. After all, it had been me that Hugh had first shown the stones to, it was my eyes that he had said matched their deep tone. Hugh had once intended the stones for me, so I had every right to them and I would wear the necklace until the day that it could pass it on to Hugh’s daughter when she was grown. A couple of links had been severed but there was still plenty of chain to spare. I sat on a chair and draped the chain over my shoulders, knotting the ends together at the front. The links seemed to knit and hold it fast, then I moved the pendant round to hide the join. I stood up and looked at my reflection in the shiny preserving pan and I realised that wearing it, even if just for a while, did not feel so bad.

  Then I glimpsed the letter that Arthur had thrust into my hands the night that Hugh had left. The one that detailed the wages that I would receive from Hugh’s enlistment. The kitchen had become the place that I came for sanctuary from my memories of Hugh, yet I found that the sudden intrusion of the necklace and the letter were not unwelcome and reminded me of a love that once was, and how, despite what had happened, Hugh, in his own way, wanted to make amends.

  But as I looked at the army insignia on the paper, it was not only Hugh that I thought of. Hugh had been a husband and master of the house but there had always been more to the Grange than he and I. There had once been others; a tight little group, but one that had been torn apart, and one that was about to get even smaller and I vowed that I would not let that happen without healing the wound.

  I got up and hurried to the stable.

  In the yard, Jimmy sat on the cart, polishing his boots with a rag. He wore an old-fashioned army jacket that was bright red and a domed white helmet that rested on the fold of his ears.

  ‘Madam!’ He put down his boots and rubbed his hands on the straw.

  ‘No, don’t get up,’ I said hurriedly. ‘Please, just continue.’

  He started polishing again, staring at the leather, his brow furrowed as if feigning deep concentration, and I fancied that he was still too ashamed to look me in the eye.

  ‘You look quite the part, Jimmy,’ I said.

  ‘It was my granddad’s old kit, Madam,’ he said. ‘I hear things are changed now, though. These days all this red might make me an easy target, but I thought I would make an effort, you see, try to impress the officers.’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ I said, but the helmet slipped down over his eyes as he spoke and I noted that he had turned up the cuffs of the jacket. He looked no more a soldier than a little boy who had raided a dressing up box.

  He grinned. ‘The master always spoke so fondly of his time abroad, I think it is time to set off on an adventure of my own.’

  ‘Right you are,’ I said, swallowing hard.

  ‘And now that the master is doing his duty; well, I know that I have made the right decision.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, but inwardly I cursed Hugh for the damage he had done to my life, to Rosalie’s reputation, to his friendship with Arthur and his relationship with Clement Walker, and now to the life of this poor naïve boy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jimmy quickly. ‘It was wrong of me to speak of the master so soon.’

  ‘It is all right, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘I understand,’ then I added, ‘I’m sure when you join the Missensham company you will meet with Hugh and you can sit together as you keep watch and drink cocoa under the stars. He can tell you his stories over and over again and soon you will have your own stories to tell.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking excited at the prospect.

  ‘And you will be sure to make us proud.’ It was the words that I could not bring myself to say before – on the occasion that we had sat in the same spot less than a month ago at a time when the loss of a horse was the most of my worries. But so much had changed since then, people I had felt close to had left my life and now another was about to go.

  Jimmy’s face reddened and he looked down at his boot again and I wondered if he remembered that conversation too. He had lied to me about Hugh, or had he? It was me that had done most of the talking on that day, had I been putting words in his mouth? Saying what I wanted to he
ar? Had I refused to see what was happening in front of my face?

  ‘You will be sure to make us proud,’ I repeated but more softly this time.

  ‘I’m sorry about everything,’ he said. His voice was shaky and I remembered that he might be a soldier but I was a grown woman, more than ten years his senior, his social better, and one that he had wronged. And suddenly I realised that he feared me, just as Igor did, and I wondered what he had seen in me that made me more terrifying than the Kaiser’s army. ‘I wish things had worked out better for you,’ he stammered. ‘I—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘I understand.’

  He looked at me awkwardly and then said, ‘Well, at least your husband gave you the necklace before he left.’

  I clutched my neckline. ‘Yes,’ I said dully.

  ‘The master trusted me to collect it for him from the jeweller at Partridge’s all by myself,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen such big stones.’

  ‘Hugh brought the jade back from the Himalayas as a gift for me. He always said that they were the colour of my eyes,’ I said. ‘And my daughter shall have the necklace when she is grown.’

  Jimmy seemed cheered to hear me talk of Hugh in this way. ‘As you know, I do not have any family of my own,’ he said. ‘It is only because I have none that I know how important family is.’

  ‘Yes, Jimmy,’ I said, resting a hand on my stomach. ‘It is.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘my new comrades will be leaving for the training ground in Evesbridge in half an hour, it would be a poor show if I was late on my first day.’

  ‘Yes, it would be.’ I laughed.

  ‘Goodbye, Madam.’

  ‘Goodbye, Jimmy.’ I leant down to him and we hugged and all the awkwardness we had felt in the conversation was gone in the embrace.

  He smiled and pulled his boots on, but as he leant down, the helmet fell from his head. He took it up and handed it to me. ‘I suppose this will be no good to me after all,’ he said.

  I laughed and shook my head.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘You had better take it for me and—’

  ‘—And keep it safe for when you return to us, Jimmy,’ I said. ‘Which I hope will be very soon.’

  He nodded but could no longer look me in the eye, and as I watched him walk slowly to the driveway, I found that I was already starting to remember him: the way he had fallen when Hugh had shot at him with a branch; the way he was entranced by Hugh’s stories; the awkwardness of his speech; his blushes and downcast eyes; the jacket that was too big for him and the helmet that had fallen from his head. He left as a soldier, but a soldier is not what I would remember, as, after all, he was no more than a boy.

  Kate

  Chapter 22

  September 1940

  The next week Jemima was sent off to Tower Vale as planned. I walked with her and Aunt Audrey to the station and stood alone on the platform as I waved them off, biting my lip as the little girl pressed her tear-stained cheek against the glass of the carriage window. As the train slowly pulled away, the glass became misted with light, the window framing their faces as if a photograph capturing the memory; the last moment of mother and child together.

  I had to run some errands in town afterwards. Dad had asked me to take an old pocket watch into Partridge’s and I had planned to visit some shops and treat myself to a tea in the café on the green while I waited for it to be repaired, but with Jemima’s tear-stained face still fresh in my memory, I felt that I could not face such idle pastimes and I set off for home, with the broken watch still in my pocket.

  The house was eerily quiet when I returned and I thought that Dad must be out in the garden, but when I stood on the Long Lawn and called out for him, there was no answer.

  It was then that I saw that the door to the walled garden was open. I had walked in the garden on the day that Dad had reopened it – the day that I had seen the peonies in Peter’s wheelbarrow and followed the stripe that it had left in the grass all the way to the open door. But that had been in early May, almost four months ago, and the beds had been overrun by brambles and bindweed had carpeted the paths. I had not rediscovered the place that had lived in my memory for so long and I had not cared to linger. But now it was early September and I feared that the summer would soon fade. I saw a vine creeping round the door, the pointed end leaf twisted upwards, as if beckoning me to enter.

  I ran into the house, through the kitchen and into my bedroom. After seeing little Jemima so distraught, I found that I longed to be close to my own mother again, so I grabbed the stained blanket that my mother had kept from my birth and her old copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which had been used to steady a wobbling table, and I ran the length of the Long Lawn and through the door into the walled garden.

  The garden seemed like a different place, and I marvelled at how it had changed each time I walked through the crumbling brick arch. The pathways had been cleared, the roots that pushed up through the mortar removed and the bricks re-laid. The vines that had choked the glasshouse had been cut back and a few shattered panes patched with brown paper. There were large pits where tree stumps and saplings had been wrenched from the earth and a rusted roller and plough that I remembered from my childhood had been removed. Peter had worked hard in the garden but four months had not been long enough for one gardener to tackle nine years of neglect and the brambles had snaked back in among the fruit canes and bindweed choked the spindly potato plants. Even some of mother’s flowers bloomed defiant among the struggling crops – chrysanthemums and dahlias poked through a bank of long grass and I even fancied the dark pointed leaves that nestled against a wall were the peonies that Peter thought would return.

  I lay my blanket under the pear tree but found that my skirt became damp and the pale sun beamed only an illusion of heat, so I moved into the old glasshouse and cleared a space under a shaft of light that pierced the glass and vines.

  I opened the book but could not find a comfortable position for reading, so I wrapped the blanket around me and lay back on the bricks, enjoying the escape from the chill. I cleared a space between the flowerpots on the floor, so that I could rest my head and peer through the low mildewed panes and watch the blurry shapes of the robins as they hopped along the paths.

  The garden was in silence but for the scrape of breeze-blown vines, the chirping of the robins and the crinkle of the dried weeds on the path and, after the bustle of the station and the wailing of the distraught Jemima, the peace was welcome.

  I closed my eyes and let the sunlight warm my face, but then I saw darkness under my eyelids and my skin chilled for just a moment and I realised a shadow had passed by, too dark to be a wavering vine and too quick to be a passing cloud and I squinted through the misted glass to see what it might be.

  There was a long shadow, the shape of a man, his silhouette stretched tall in the afternoon sun, followed by footsteps, not the hurried scrape of Dad’s slippers, but slower, with a long, heavy tread.

  Then I saw him, neither sound nor shadow, but the man himself, walking with slow, lurching steps along the path that ran parallel to the glasshouse - the same man that I had seen here nine years ago. He wore the same old work coat and walked with the same limp, the skin on his face the same colour I remembered, as if the wound was still fresh and raw.

  I felt a stab of cold deep inside me and looked around frantically. The glasshouse was empty but for old flowerpots, and the spade that had once deterred the tramp was long gone, and so too was my protector. Suddenly I felt as a child again, but this time one who was alone. I took up a piece of pot, a jagged shard of terracotta, and clutched it like a dagger.

  The man walked slowly, not taking his eyes from the path, until he was almost at the pear tree, then he stopped abruptly and I thought him at exactly the same spot that he had confronted my mother all those years ago. He did not speak but he seemed to draw himself up and raise his chin and I fancied that he could see my mother stood before him again – see her raising herself
up to him, the spade in her hands and her necklace glinting in the sun – the encounter playing in his head word by word.

  I wondered then if he had been neither inebriated nor insane on that day so long ago, and that meeting my mother had held a deep meaning for him and was something that he could not forget. As I watched him through the tiny mildewed pane, I realised that my heart had stopped pounding and my fingers had relaxed, the pottery shard falling out of my grasp. It had been the memory of fear that had caused the chill in my stomach, and not the fear itself. I was watching an echo from my past but, without my mother, it was incomplete.

  The tramp, as I had come to know him, was neither ghost nor nightmare. He was older now of course and at that time of his life where strength wanes with every passing year. The man that had lived in my memory for so long was shrunken and frail. His eyes still wavered, but I no longer saw rage in them, but nerves broken and adrift, a mind in disarray.

  In the distance, the bells of St Cuthbert’s struck out the hour and the man lifted his head towards the noise and checked a pocket watch. He looked towards the brick archway and the door that led to the Long Lawn, in anticipation, I thought, as if sensing something that I could not.

  Then I heard the creak of the door and more footsteps – this time familiar, the hurried scrape of slippers on brick – and Dad entered the garden.

  Chapter 23

  September 1940

  There was nothing good about that garden. My childhood memories of flowers and sunshine were gone, the blooms faded and the light pale and cold. The stink of rotten leaves scoured my throat as I stumbled over the hard earth, cursing every jagged snake of bramble that caught my skirt and every razor of grass. My hands shook and my heart pounded but all I could think of was what I had seen from the glasshouse – the meeting of two men by the flower beds, the shake of their hands and the conversation that I could only sense from the movement of their lips. Then an envelope had passed from Dad to the stranger, followed by a nodding of heads and a parting wave as the men left the garden, one a few minutes behind the other, leaving me alone and too scared to move.