The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  I did not answer her and I did not have to, for her face showed that no answer was needed.

  ‘You know,’ she said slowly.

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I know that the secrets had started long before the murder – when my father, the real one, did not return home to us after the Great War.’

  ‘Oh, Kate, I am sorry,’ she said, holding out her arms to me.

  But I ignored her. ‘You always said that Dad was a changed man after the war, Aunt Audrey. If only I could have guessed what you really meant by that!’

  She dropped her arms into her lap, and I thought that at last she realised that this was not something that could be solved with empty embraces.

  ‘After all this time!’ she said, almost to herself. ‘Both Scotland Yard and the press had their noses into everything to do with the Bewsey family; things were unearthed, printed in the newspapers, read out in court, and sniggered about in town, for God’s sake! But still we managed to hide it from you. And now you find out. How is that so?’

  ‘It doesn’t really matter how I found out,’ I said, ‘because it was there all along, wasn’t it? Someone in the village must have noticed that the Grange had a new master of the house so soon after the old one was reported missing. I would have found out in the end.’

  She stared at me, silent for once, and I suppose that she must have known that her usual flighty changes of subject and sugary platitudes were no longer enough.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I said.

  ‘It was not my business,’ she said shortly.

  ‘But it was mine,’ I cried. ‘It was my business!’

  ‘Well, as I said before,’ she replied, ‘I had my reasons.’

  ‘Your reasons!’ I said. ‘And what could those possibly be?’

  ‘Look at me, Kate,’ she said firmly. She reached out her arms and traced a large circle in the air around her then drew her hands into the middle, jabbing her fingers into her chest. ‘No, not as if I was scolding you. Look at me as I am; all of me.’ She paused, for effect I thought, but then she continued and her tone was quite serious. ‘I was a young newlywed, trying to make an impression on London society. I had heard no news from the Grange for many months so imagine my surprise when I learned that my sister had given birth and that her husband was missing on the Front. So I hurried back to the Grange as soon as I got the news, but when I arrived, I found another man sleeping in the marital bed and doting over the baby and—’

  ‘But you still haven’t said why you kept it from me,’ I cut in.

  She raised her eyebrows as if I was a difficult child, testing her patience. ‘I could not have my calling card turned away from the houses in London or Missensham,’ she said quite slowly and deliberately. ‘And I could not have anyone knowing that Arthur was neither Milly’s husband, nor the father of the child, especially since Hugh had not even been declared dead.’ Then she hesitated and I think she saw that I had little understanding of her argument, so she just shrugged her shoulders. ‘Oh you are too young to understand,’ she said lightly. ‘Things were different before the Great War – people were different.’

  And suddenly I felt that I did understand her. She was right, of course; the Great War had changed people, but Aunt Audrey – with her love of fashion and society – had not been one of them. And then I did look at her, just as she had asked, but this time I felt that I truly saw her: the manicured nails with the varnish unchipped; the powder still mat on her cheeks; her hair set in perfect horizontal waves, and the Chanel suit that she had worn indoors all day – the kind of thing that most of the people round Missensham would save for Sunday best. She was still dressed as the society newlywed she had spoken of, yet her ankles seemed swollen above her patent leather shoes and her perfectly set hair was quite grey at the roots. Every bit of a connection I had felt with her that day we sat on the bed with the old suitcases was gone. There was nothing to connect with; she was hollow inside.

  And then suddenly her face seemed to fall and I fancied that she saw what I did, and realised that her explanation was a mere excuse – a poor justification for her years of silence.

  ‘And you, Kate, of course,’ she said quickly. ‘I was always thinking of you. You were my other reason for keeping quiet – just think what it would have done to you if you had known. You would have not been able to hold your head up high in this squalid little backwater. Just imagine if you had told someone and the news had got out, you would have lost everything. Your mother with another man so quickly after the other is declared missing, and after all, it is better for people to assume you are the child of a gentleman than a gardener.’

  ‘People!’ I yelled. ‘Who are these people you always talk of, and what do they matter?’

  But she did not answer, just waved my words away as if she was being bothered by a fly. Then she raised a manicured hand and started to massage her temple. She pointed out of the window to where Peter was heaving the mower across the lawn. ‘Oh that man!’ she snapped. ‘That noise is just grating in my head. Why can’t he just buzz off when we need some peace!’

  ‘He is doing his job,’ I said. ‘He is a gardener, just like Dad was.’

  ‘What’s your point?’ she said grumpily.

  ‘I don’t have a point,’ I said. ‘I am just trying to understand, that is all.’

  She seemed to soften at this but still held her hand to her temple. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘I just want to know why you accepted a gardener into your family back then, and one who was not married to mother, at least at first. It is most unlike you considering…’ but I did not need to finish the thought when a glance out to the man mowing the lawn and the closed curtains of the old gardener’s cottage was enough.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘we make do with what we can, don’t we? After all it might be better for people to assume you are the child of a gentleman than a gardener, but it is also better for them to think that you have a father at all and were not sired by a man who abandoned his family.’

  ‘I don’t think it is fair to say that he abandoned us,’ I said, shocked at her bluntness. ‘You have to remember that when my real father returned from the war he might not have known that I was his child and, if he had returned home to the Grange, he would have found my mother in bed with the gardener. He may have even planned to return home, but nobody gave him that chance.’

  ‘No, Kate, it wasn’t like—’

  ‘My real father is an old man now. No matter what he did in the past, he may even now be regretting that he cannot return to his home and family.’

  ‘Do you really believe that, Kate?’ Aunt Audrey’s face was expressionless but for a single eyebrow raised like a dagger. Nothing of what I had said had been news to her - she knew everything about what had happened during the war and, even when I spoke of Hugh as a soldier who had not only returned alive but as one who was still living, it seemed to come as no surprise to her. She knew everything and always had.

  I’d had enough of all the lies and secrets. ‘I think I should speak to him,’ I said firmly.

  Aunt Audrey’s jaw twitched, then slowly she leant towards me until her face was level with mine and she clutched my collar with both hands. ‘Don’t do that!’ she hissed dramatically. ‘Arthur was a good man for doing what he did and your father was a bad man. It is as simple as that, and that is all you need to know and I won’t hear any more about it.’ Then she sat back on her velvet settee and opened her magazine and glared at the pictures as if that was the end of the matter.

  I tried to look out on the garden but felt tears in my eyes, so I stood up shakily, leaving the room as quickly as I could and shutting the door behind me.

  Out on the lawn I could still hear the grate of the lawnmower.

  Chapter 28

  October 1940

  Your father was a bad man.

  Aunt Audrey’s words echoed inside my head and, when I closed my eyes, I could still see her face right up against mine and feel her hands upon my collar
. I hurried into the kitchen wondering what had just happened in the room above and marvelling at the transformation I had witnessed in my aunt – the sudden change from the shallow social climber to the menacing woman who had looked into my eyes and told me things more meaningful than any that I had heard from Dad, but then offered no explanation.

  The sink was stacked with a pile of pans and dust gusted over the flagstones by the door, but I was not in the mood for starting a major chore so I took my post from the sideboard and sat in the old armchair by the unlit stove.

  There was one letter addressed to “Mrs Bewsey” – a standard brown envelope with an Oxworth postmark and, when I opened it, I was surprised to see the address of Walker’s Fine Garments at the top of the page. The letter went on to explain how that, after my visit, the clerk had been able to find some more records relating to their former employee, Rosalie Paxton. There was a brief note about good attendance and then some dates of employment – 8th of September to the 19th of October 1915. At the end of the letter was the reason for dismissal – it had been noticed that Miss Paxton had been in the family way. ‘Miss’ had been underlined to emphasise the scandal of the sentence.

  It was what I had known already but the carbon paper and typewritten text made it seem more formal than it had when it had been read aloud to me by the gangly office boy.

  The envelope contained another sheet of paper with some further notes, handwritten this time, as if this document was an original:

  It was noticed by the foreman that Miss Paxton was in the family way and her condition had been the focus of gossip among colleagues for some time. She had taken measures to hide it but upon examination by the foreman was found to be in what he assessed as the later stages.

  Again, it was nothing new, but something about the note made me hesitate. I read it once more, my eyes resting on the last phrase: ‘later stages’. It was a phrase that I had heard before and I remembered that it had come from the lips of Miss Potter, the school teacher at Jemima’s leaving party, when she had seen the pregnant Emma on the lawn. I remembered the party and how we had sat at the window and watched Emma through the glass. She had shuffled slowly across the lawn, lowering herself gently on to the grass, one hand on her back, her round belly tight against the fabric of her dress.

  Just like Rosalie, Emma had been in the ‘later stages’, as Miss Potter had called it, but for Emma there had been no hiding it. The next time I had seen her was just two weeks later when she had collapsed in the kitchen screaming with labour pains.

  The notes said that Rosalie had taken measures to hide her pregnancy, but what were these measures? The room in the factory where Rosalie had worked had been dark; she could have worn a large overcoat as she entered and only removed it once behind her machine. She could have worn a tight girdle or corset under her loose work coat, but whatever measures she had taken had been in vain because, in the end, her bump had been noticed.

  I read out the dates of employment again, over and over, this time out loud – ‘The 8th of September to the 19th of October’ – less than two months. Even if Rosalie had only been six months pregnant when she was dismissed from Walker’s, it would still mean that she would have been at least three months into her pregnancy when she started her employment there, and, from the description of ‘later stages’, she could have been further along than that.

  I thought of my visit to the garment factory again and the women who worked there; their bodies hidden by piles of cloth, loose work coats and dim lights. Then I thought of Emma and the scandal that the sight of her bloated body had caused among the guests in the drawing room. I remembered watching her through the window as she had sat down on the lawn and I remembered what I had heard in the drawing room – Miss Potter speaking the words that were now written in front of me: ‘later stages’.

  There could be other explanations, of course: careless dating of the factory records, a baby that was large or excess fluid in the womb, but there was doubt in these explanations too and, as I thought more about it, I became certain what the notes from the factory were telling me – Rosalie had become pregnant during her time here, at Missensham Grange.

  Chapter 29

  November 1940

  It began with a rumble of thunder loud enough to drown out the agony of Aunt Audrey’s gramophone music, and I knew that it would not be a gentle autumn shower. Then the light faded as if the dark clouds had been drawn like curtains and wave upon wave of raindrops pelted the windows. I hurried upstairs to the bedrooms, closing windows and frantically checking every ceiling and eave for leaks.

  I was on my way back down to the kitchen when I heard the jangle of the bell for the front door and a pounding on the wood. I ran down to the hallway and opened the door.

  It was an old woman, short and dumpy, and when she raised her head and squinted into the rain, I saw it was the midwife, Peter’s mother.

  ‘Come in,’ I said quickly. ‘Is there a problem at the cottage?’

  She stepped inside the hallway but did not speak until she had wiped her boots and shaken the raindrops from her shawl.

  ‘No problem,’ she said shortly, ‘but please might I ask passage through your house – I cannot reach the cottage due to the puddles round the side and to go the other way would take me all the way around the stables.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said meekly, suddenly embarrassed as another failing of the estate was pointed out to me. ‘Follow me, you may cross the Long Lawn from the kitchen door.’

  We took the servants’ stairs down to the kitchen and I grabbed an old umbrella from Dad’s room as we passed. I thought of handing it to her but, as soon as I opened it, a gust of wind grabbed it at the door and I felt obliged to hold it steady for her, in a vain attempt to show the hospitality that the house had failed at.

  ‘I will walk you over there myself,’ I said.

  We walked across the Long Lawn. The ground was still firm but the wet grass licked our ankles and rain thrummed on every path. I had to stoop as I walked and hold the umbrella low over her head, the journey slowed by her tiny stride.

  At the cottage door, I folded the umbrella. ‘Here we are,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I do hope you find them well and—’

  But Emma called, ‘Kate, is that you? Do come in!’

  The room felt stiflingly hot after leaving the cold November rain. All the windows were shut and the smell of sour milk was thick in the air. Emma was reclined in an old armchair, her legs stretched out on a footstool and her arms encircling the baby. Her chest was completely naked from her collarbone all the way down to the pale swell of her breast, where the infant suckled contentedly, the dome of its head in the white crochet bonnet.

  Emma’s face was ghostly white, with dark circles under her eyes, but her smile was serene. The midwife seemed to have forgotten the reason for the visit, and she neglected her professional duties and instead fussed about the baby as a proud grandmother, adjusting the blankets around the tiny hump of its body.

  ‘You were such a help at the birth, Kate,’ said Emma, ignoring the old woman’s fussing.

  I smiled uneasily and wondered if Emma meant what she said or if the pain of her labour had made her unaware that I had been no help at all.

  ‘Won’t you stay for some tea?’

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘I should be getting—’

  ‘But we could not have coped without you,’ she said, then added, ‘please – we don’t have much else to offer and there are few other ways we can thank you.’ For the first time I noticed how different her voice was from Violet’s. It was a voice more like those I was used to; an accent from the towns on the very end of the tube line, the right side of Oxworth and, despite her situation, this voice still carried the charm of her class and I was reminded of a world that I had also once known, one which revolved around manners and social niceties.

  ‘Well I suppose that I could then,’ I said. ‘The ironing can wait after all.’

  ‘Do sit.’ She waved her hand to a l
ittle footstool as if it was a grand sofa.

  I sat and forced a smile. ‘Congratulations, by the way,’ I said. But the word sounded strange, after all I had been around after the birth and had plenty of opportunity to say it and it was only now that I realised that I had not.

  A smile twitched on Emma’s lips, not the beaming motherly one she had worn as I entered but one borne of amusement, and I realised that I would have to try harder. I tried to show an interest in the infant but felt it rude to stare at Emma’s naked breast, so I craned my neck a little and forced my eyes vaguely in the area of the baby.

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said.

  Emma laughed. ‘She is a girl, Kate!’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, embarrassed. ‘She’s lovely.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand,’ Emma laughed again. ‘Peter and I had always liked Catherine as a name but, since it was you at the birth, we have decided to call our baby Kate. Little Kate, while she is at the Grange at least.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I repeated weakly.

  There was an awkward silence while everybody smiled at me and I smiled back and then looked quickly back to the baby as it was the only one who would not return my gaze. I wished that I had been one of those women who felt comfortable around other people’s families, but I found that I could not even pretend to share Emma’s joy. I desperately tried to think of what Audrey would have said, but I was not one for shrieks of excitement and gushing sentiment, so I reached out to the baby and patted the blankets around it just as the midwife had done.

  ‘Look,’ said Emma suddenly, oblivious to my discomfort, ‘she has tiny little ears, thin as tracing paper.’ She pulled the bonnet back to show the tiny curl of an ear, and it was then that I really started to look at the baby – the pump of its cheeks as it fed, the fan of its eyelashes and its twig-like fingers and the soft dark hair that escaped the knots of wool. But then my eyes fell on the bonnet itself. It was the one that Violet had found under the stove in the laundry room, the one I had bleached and fixed.