The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  The walls that had once invited intrigue and escape now seemed to conceal so much and I had to wrestle the solid door open again, the heavy padlock scraping the brick, and I arrived in the kitchen with my stockings ripped and my skirts bristled with burrs.

  Dad was sitting in his armchair, the newspaper in his lap and his legs stretched out in front of the stove as if he had been there all day.

  ‘What were you doing talking to him?’ I screamed. ‘What was he doing here in our garden?’

  ‘Kate!’ he said, leaning forward. ‘Calm down, what are you talking about?’

  ‘What do you think I am talking about? I am not stupid, so don’t treat me that way.’

  He sighed and opened his newspaper, holding it up to his face, so all that I could see of him was his legs and the dusty slippers that I had heard scraping along the paths of the walled garden.

  ‘No,’ I screamed, tearing the paper out of his hands. ‘I saw you, I saw you and him together talking. I had to hide in the glasshouse. I waited in there for an hour before I heard Peter in the garden and I knew it was safe.’

  ‘You have been in the garden?’ he said. ‘But I thought you were in town running errands.’ He made an effort to take back the newspaper but I threw it under the table. ‘Darling, I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You know lots of people come to the house. I saw a man today but he was just someone down on his luck and was looking for work.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘There are no two men in Missensham with limps and scorched faces. This was the same man who attacked mother in the garden nine years ago – the one that so fascinated you, and now I find that you are scheming with him behind my back.’

  ‘He was just a vagrant,’ Dad persisted.

  ‘I’ve seen you deal with vagrants,’ I cried. ‘You can’t bear people coming to the house, you do not invite them into the garden and you do not talk to them for so long, you do not talk to them at all. And you do not hand them envelopes. And now it seems you don’t even talk to your own daughter.’

  ‘Well maybe you should think what you like then,’ he said.

  ‘All right,’ I said. ‘I will. I think that you have known this man all along. This whole mess is somehow down to you. You wanted him to scare mother, you wanted him to attack her. You wanted her to see him at the station that day, you wanted to keep her scared, that is why you are doing this. It was money in that envelope, you paid him.’ I paused, searching for what would hurt the most. ‘You wanted to break up this family!’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No, no, Kate. You can’t think anything like that.’

  ‘But I will,’ I said. ‘I do. What do you expect me to think?’

  ‘No!’

  I sat down wearily. ‘Who is he, Dad?’ I whispered.

  ‘He is someone that used to live here at the Grange a long time ago,’ he said quietly.

  ‘So you do know him!’ I cried. ‘Why did you get me to find out about him if you’ve known who he was all along?’

  ‘No, I didn’t know all along. It wasn’t until I saw the flowers he left at the station that I realised who he was. Those flowers used to grow here, they were admired all around Missensham. Peonies are difficult to grow in most soils in the area but they thrived here – they only grew at this house and one other.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said.

  His hand patted the arm of the chair until it found mine and then he held it tight. ‘He is the same man who attacked your mother in the garden that day and he is the same man who happened to be at the station two weeks later, the missing witness that others said they saw, but nobody could trace.’ He paused. ‘I invited him to meet me today to try to convince him to testify for your mother. I don’t know what I was hoping he would say. Maybe that she looked scared when she saw him, maybe that he was pursuing her. I suppose I really wanted him to say that he saw things from a different angle and that your mother did not push the woman at all, that she fell. But he would not say any of these things,’ he paused and said shakily, ‘He just said that he saw your mother push a woman on to the tracks.’

  So that was it – it was what we had always known. The simple truth was that my mother was a murderess and whether there was a mystery or not, at this point it didn’t seem to matter. We sat in silence with only the crackle from the stove and the hiss of Dad’s breath, his hand resting upon mine.

  ‘You said that he had lived at the Grange,’ I said at last. ‘Could he at least testify for mother’s character?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I could not ask that of him, for I knew that he would not.’

  ‘But why not?’ I said.

  ‘He became embittered towards this house and an alcoholic, so it seems.’

  ‘What happened to make him that way?’

  ‘He was a bad man,’ Dad said, ‘and a selfish one. Even back in the old days, he always acted in his own interests, he—’ But he stopped suddenly as if he knew exactly what he was going to say but had thought better of it and his eyes widened as if he knew he had already said too much.

  ‘Who is he?’ I repeated slowly.

  He sighed and took off his spectacles, rubbing a handkerchief over his eyes, then he took both my hands in his. ‘Oh, Kate,’ he said. ‘His name is Hugh Paxton and he is your father.’

  I heard the words he spoke, saw them formed on his lips, but in that moment I could not understand their meaning. The father I had always known was sat before me, his hand on mine, but as I felt his fingers start to tremble and saw his eyes misting, I started to realise what he was saying to me, and the face of the man that I has always known as ‘Dad’ disappeared in my tears.

  Chapter 24

  September 1940

  The old man sat in the armchair in the kitchen, his legs stretched out in front of the stove and his feet resting on an upturned wood basket. He had favoured that spot for the last nine years, and liked to sit there every morning for a couple of hours after breakfast, reading his newspaper and drinking strong tea from a tin mug, and I had grown used to seeing him there.

  But today as I stood in the doorway and watched him, I did not recognise the man that sat in the chair; the man that I had once called Dad. He had the same familiar spectacles with thick lenses and greying socks pulled halfway up his pale calves. He had the same old slippers, with their familiar biscuity aroma as the soles baked in the heat from the stove, but today something about him was different. I had a strange feeling as I stood and watched him; a feeling as if the part of him that I had loved for so long had disappeared in the night, leaving behind nothing but a stranger, an uninvited house guest who sat in Dad’s chair and wore his slippers and drank from his tin mug, a person that I did not know.

  I remembered the first time that he had sat in that old chair. It was the evening after my mother’s sentencing and I had been reading with Aunt Audrey in the drawing room as we waited for him to return from the court. The news had been telephoned through to the Grange – an escape from the noose yet a life sentence – and we did not know whether the cake that waited on the sideboard should be one for celebration or commiseration.

  At the sound of the front door, we had rushed into the hallway where he stood on the step, a haunted look on his face. Then he had walked past the drawing room where the tea service was set out and right past us as if we were invisible. He had taken the servants’ stairs down to the kitchen, and we had followed and watched silently as he pulled up the armchair and stretched his feet out to the warmth coming from the grille.

  For nine years I had got used to seeing him in that chair and over nine years his slippers had become battered and his body had weakened and his hair had greyed, but little had changed. And I remembered the times that I had walked in on him as a girl and stood in the doorway as I did now and watched, wondering whether to disturb him. But those years were gone and now I stood watching in the same way that I always had but the man that I had watched had become a stranger to me.

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  He raised his head slightly
as if he could not bear to look at me.

  I pulled a chair from under the kitchen table and pulled it over to the stove, positioning it opposite him and leaning forward so that he could not ignore me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.

  I reached out to touch his shoulder but stopped; I had already lost what I knew of him and I feared that what remained might vanish if I touched it.

  ‘Who are you?’ I repeated.

  ‘I am your father,’ he said. ‘The same as I have always been. I am the same man that fed you on the bottle, helped you with your algebra, taught you how to ride your bicycle, bandaged your grazed knees—’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to say any of that.’

  But he said nothing more, as if he had already given the only answer that he could.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Please tell me what happened.’

  ‘Your real father is a man called Hugh Paxton,’ he said wearily. ‘He was your mother’s first husband, he left to fight in the Great War before you were born.’

  ‘But he didn’t die,’ I said. ‘You said that this man who is my father is the tramp from the station, the same man who attacked mother in the walled garden. He is still living, so why didn’t he come back after the war?’

  ‘Well, he was missing for a while,’ he said, ‘and so presumed dead. Then after six months, his death became official. But even if there was any doubt in our minds, we knew he would not return, you see he didn’t have anything to come back for. Missensham Grange has always been in your mother’s family and back then, as now, the estate was losing money.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to the Grange,’ I said. ‘Why didn’t he come back for mother? Or for me?’

  He hesitated as if he was thinking of a response. ‘War does things to people, Kate, it can change them deep inside. You have seen this man with your own eyes, you know that he can no longer care for himself, live or behave in a civilised manner, you can see he is not in his right mind. There was a time that he was a strong and respected man but that was long ago, he is a different man now, a bad one.’

  ‘He came back to Missensham, though,’ I said.

  ‘He has always lived in the area, he knows no other.’

  He paused and I leaned in closer.

  ‘There is an estate the other side of Evesbridge called Chaverly,’ he said at last. ‘That was his home, it has always been the home of the Paxton family.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have heard of it.’

  ‘The Paxtons are an older family than your mother’s,’ he said. ‘They have seen more generations squander their fortune. When Hugh Paxton married your mother, he came to live with her here, at Missensham Grange, and left his mother behind to run the house at Chaverly. The Grange had more grounds than Chaverly in those days and had a large farm for him to manage.’

  ‘So after the war he returned to Chaverly?’ I said. ‘To his mother?’

  ‘No,’ he hesitated. ‘Well, I don’t know, really. I did not even know he was still alive until I saw the peonies you brought back from the station. They always did well in the beds at the back of the garden but the original plants came from Chaverly. When you described an old soldier, carrying red peonies, I knew it had to be Hugh.’

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me any of this?’ I said.

  ‘He was the man who abandoned your mother,’ he replied. ‘I thought I should at least talk to him first. So I went to Chaverly, but his mother could barely utter his name, she said that he had done things to disgrace the family. She would sometimes leave food and messages out for him, but she did not know whether she would see him from one week to the next. When I left a message for him to meet me, it was with the promise of money. So that is how we came to meet in the walled garden.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said “no”.’

  ‘No?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean “he said no”? No to what?’

  ‘Well I asked him to help in your mother’s review of course! I asked him to say that it was him who terrorised her and made her scared at the station, maybe even say that he saw the woman fall.’

  ‘You see my father for the first time in twenty-four years and that is all you ask him?’

  ‘Well what more could we want to do with him?’ he said. ‘He is not right in the head.’

  I sat back and stared at him, but he just shrugged his shoulders as if he had spoken a simple truth and something that I must accept.

  ‘Did he know about me?’ I said. ‘You never said if he even knew about me.’

  ‘Kate, you have seen the man! He barely knows what day it is. He is probably dangerous. I was not about to put you in harm’s way. Remember what he did to your mother!’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘He is dangerous,’ he repeated. ‘Dangerous.’ And I noticed the pump of his ribcage under his shirt and his eyes wide and huge under his spectacles. ‘Dangerous.’

  ‘I will make some more tea,’ I said quickly.

  I stood at the basin, blinking back angry tears. I knew that there would be no more said about Hugh Paxton. The man who was my father was bitter, drunken and dangerous and there was nothing good to be said about him, but there had been so many lies in this house, I did not know who to trust anymore. I still knew nothing of the man sat in the armchair, the one who now lived in the frail body I had so often embraced.

  I looked out on to the Long Lawn, the yellowed grass was flecked with windblown rose petals and a couple of rabbits sat in the middle of the lawn, their faces turned to the window as if mocking me. Then I saw the window frame darkened with mildew and the rusted tap, the cracked paint on the wall and the yellowed ring on the plaster. The man in the armchair, whoever he was, must have seen so many changes in this house.

  When the tea was ready, I took his cup over to him. ‘I don’t mind that the place is falling apart,’ I said, ‘but I miss the motorcar.’

  ‘Ha!’ he said and seemed to brighten a little.

  ‘You said that the estates were bankrupt,’ I said gently. ‘So all those servants that I remember and the radiators and electric lights must have come from you.’

  He laughed. ‘No, no, the money came from when your mother sold the estate’s farm. The money should have been enough for us to live comfortably forever but…’ Then he paused and looked away. ‘Well, I tried,’ he said at last. ‘But such a large house needs proper management and when your mother… well… I just felt I wasn’t able anymore.’

  ‘Mother always talked about how you invested in the walled garden,’ I said kindly. ‘I know that brought in some money for a while, so—’

  ‘Invested! Trust your mother to put it like that!’ He laughed. ‘No, Kate, no money ever came from me. Your mother was not ashamed of me, but she married beneath her and she did it as soon as Hugh was declared dead; to do either of those things was not particularly respectable back then so we married quietly and did not shout about it. Hugh had never mixed much in the village, so was not missed much, and God knows there was so much going on in the world at that time that few people took notice. Anyway, she saw no harm in making me sound like the entitled master of the house, for your sake as much as any.’

  ‘So who are you?’ I said. ‘Tell me!’

  ‘I was not the grand gentleman your mother makes me out to be. When your mother said that I invested in the garden, she did not mean with money but with time and toil and elbow grease. I dug every one of those beds for Mr Paxton.’

  ‘You worked here?’ I said. ‘For him… and for mother.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  He put his feet back up on the wood basket, but now the way that he sat had a certain meaning to it and I imagined the drying of damp socks, and the airing of skin that had been encased in work boots and the stretching of exhausted limbs. There was a stubbornness in his movements, the kind that servants have over their entitlements; their few guarded pleasures.

  It was then that I realised why he had come down here on the
day of my mother’s sentencing. This was the place that had once been his refuge, the place that he had taken his meals, taken a break from the cold outdoors and come for company with the cook or scullery maid. The kitchen had been a place that he understood and one that he longed to return to when the world upstairs had gone so wrong. Slowly I felt that I was starting to see a different person. That the empty shell I had seen when I walked in to the kitchen was starting to fill again, but it was too much to take in. I was not ready.

  ‘I don’t know what to think any more,’ I said. ‘I don’t know who you are. What should I call you?’

  ‘“Dad”,’ he said, wiping his eyes. ‘Call me “Dad”, like you always have.’

  ‘No I can’t,’ I said, ‘but I can’t talk to you, if I can’t call you something.’

  He hesitated for just a moment. ‘Arthur, then,’ he said. ‘Call me Arthur.’

  Chapter 25

  September 1940

  He sat under the kitchen table, his knees hunched to his chest and his hands pressed over his ears. His toes peeped through his battered slippers and his spectacles lay on the floor, a crack spidering over one lens.

  I crouched under the table and put a hand out to him but he neither moved nor spoke.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, helplessly. ‘Try to calm down.’ But there was no calm in my own voice. The man under the table had become a stranger over the past week, but now, as I saw him helpless and alone, the familiarity returned to his face and I felt as if I knew him again. Suddenly my memories of our life together became clear once more: he was the one who had swung the skipping rope for me when my mother permitted a break in my lessons; he was the one who would console me with a game of backgammon when I was not allowed to play out on the village green; he was the one who would hide with me in the stables as we ate chocolate bars; and he was the one who would sit by the wireless with me for the whole of the Children’s Hour. I had once thought of this man as my father and, now that these memories had returned, I believed him to be once more.