The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  I had been the last baby born at Missensham Grange; had the bonnet been made for me? Had my own mother held me and nursed me while I had worn it? Had she sat and looked at me in such an adoring way, the way that Emma did with her infant?

  Suddenly I became aware of the heat from the fire and the heaviness of the air, and the smell of milk left a stale bitterness in my throat. The little grunts from the baby as it fed seemed unbearably loud and I battled a wave of dizziness. I could not look upon the mother and baby without thinking of my own mother and how she must have nursed me and pondered over our future together. Our time together was one that had begun just as happily, but for us it had ended in twisted loss.

  The baby’s head rolled back, its eyes shut and the bud of its lips no longer grasping the nipple that it had sucked long and purple. A trickle of cloudy sputum drained from the corner of its mouth.

  Emma felt along the arm of the chair, but her fingers grasped only the air. ‘Sadie, the muslins are on the airer in the kitchen, would you mind—’

  ‘I’ll fetch it!’ I said quickly. ‘It’s no trouble.’ I turned and left the room as quickly as I could.

  The air in the kitchen had the fresh smell of rain and I shut the door behind me so that I could have a moment alone to bathe in its coolness. I opened the window behind the basin and took some deep breaths and watched the raindrops jumping over the Long Lawn. The main house looked all the more pitiful in the rain. There was a light on in the drawing room window and I fancied that Audrey must have lit a lamp so that she could read her magazines in the dimness of the storm. It felt strange looking at the Grange in this way and I wondered if Emma ever looked out of her window across the Long Lawn, just as I did when I was stood at the sink.

  I took a muslin from the airer, realising that I could not be missed anymore and turned to go, but then a shadow moved behind me. Violet was sitting in the corner, her book of nursery rhymes open on her lap but her eyes watching me intently. I blushed, the words inside my head had been so clear that I wondered if I had said them out loud and that my internal conflicts had somehow been witnessed.

  ‘I just don’t like babies,’ I said, by way of justification. ‘I never have.’

  She ignored the comment. ‘You are still young,’ she said, setting her book down next to her. ‘Where is your mother?’

  I was taken aback at the question but then I remembered that she was still a child and that children’s questions are not governed by timings or manners.

  ‘She went away,’ I said quickly, then added, ‘she left when I was your age.’

  ‘Will she come back?’ she said.

  ‘Come back?’ I echoed. It was something I had not considered, but I thought about the letter from the review board and the excitement in Dad’s face on the day he received it. Suddenly I realised that my mother returning might one day be a possibility. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose she might.’

  Violet nodded and turned back to her book and I noticed that she licked her finger before turning the page, something that my own mother often scolded me for. She was the age that I had been when my mother was imprisoned and I had found our short conversation strange, as if I had been talking to a younger version of myself. Suddenly I needed to connect with the girl that had been me all that time ago, and Violet was the closest thing I had to it.

  ‘How would you feel if your mother did something that would mean that you would never see her again?’ I said. ‘Something that was her fault.’

  She looked up from her book. ‘Never again?’

  ‘Yes,’ but then I realised that I had to accept the slim chance of release that Dad hoped for. ‘Well, for at least ten years,’ I added.

  Her brow furrowed and she was silent for just a moment, then she said simply: ‘I would not forget that she is still my mother.’

  *

  The midwife and I did not leave the cottage until after three o’clock. Emma had not been able to move from the armchair but Violet had pressed her reddened cheek to the window and waved enthusiastically. The grass on the Long Lawn dampened my socks but the rain had lessened, although I still needed to walk shoulder to shoulder with the midwife under the cover of the umbrella.

  At the kitchen door, I scraped my boots on the iron mat and I shook out the umbrella. ‘You should come with me through the house again,’ I said, propping the door open. ‘The puddles round the side probably won’t have drained yet.’

  She nodded and followed me inside. ‘Just remind me of the way to the front door, then I can let myself out…’ she said but then she paused and gazed round the kitchen as if she had no intention of leaving. Then she checked herself. ‘Pardon me, but this place looks different in the daylight.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said glumly, thinking of all the patches of damp and cracked paintwork that now revealed themselves.

  But she continued as if she had not noticed a single crack. ‘You know, coming here again brought back memories of your birth, and I’ve been remembering more since.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, marvelling at how someone who was a complete stranger could remember something so personal to me, of which I had no recollection.

  Then she walked over to the corridor and put her head through the doorway as if she was peering across at my bedroom and I suddenly felt uneasy and hoped that I had remembered to shut the door. She shook her head and tutted quietly to herself.

  ‘Is something wrong?’ I said.

  But she was too lost in thought to hear me. Then she righted herself and looked up. ‘I was glad to hear you say that your mother is well,’ she said stiffy, her lips puckering as if she had tasted something bad.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘She is… well.’

  She nodded to herself. ‘I’m so glad that you could stay with her and did not end up in an institution.’

  ‘An orphanage?’ I laughed. ‘The estate might have been going through more hard times back then but my parents had enough to get by. Maybe you are confusing me with another…’ but I stopped when I realised that her comment had been as much for herself as for me and she had started to peer into the corridor again.

  I thought that I should mention her behaviour to Emma. Peter’s mother clearly seemed confused, but so much must have happened in her lifetime, she had probably been a nurse in the Great War and would have seen terrible things, then there was the scandal of her son’s affair with a married woman. It would be no surprise if she had become muddled.

  But then she turned to me again. ‘There used to be a row of service bells there,’ she said, pointing to the wall above the dresser, ‘and that circle of faded paint on the wall is where they hung a preserving pan, a shiny copper one.’

  ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘But I am sorry, you have to remember that I was just a newborn, I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘And there was a dog,’

  ‘A dog?’ I said. ‘Well, I suppose that Missensham was surrounded by countryside back then, I think a lot of the houses must have had working dogs.’

  ‘An Irish wolfhound. She called him Igor.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, ‘I believe there was.’

  ‘You thought me confused,’ she said, ‘but, you see, I do remember.’ Then she looked into the corridor again and this time I was sure that she was looking into my bedroom. ‘I remember everything,’ she said slowly. ‘I have cause to, they were not circumstances that I will forget quickly.’

  This time I said nothing, I am not sure why, maybe it was because I did not want to hear more of a story that would not be clear or reliable but maybe because I feared that it would be.

  The midwife too said nothing more. She drew herself up and then puckered her lips again as if reminded of what she had found so distasteful. ‘Like I said, I can let myself out.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said absent-mindedly, ‘I will show you to the front door.’

  We took the servants’ stairs up to the hallway and I let her out through the front door. Then, remembering how she had struggled to walk across the lawn, I h
eld out my hand to help her down the large stone steps. She took my hand in hers but did not continue walking. Instead she drew me in close to her and I saw that her eyes were glazed and watery.

  ‘Farewell, Kate,’ she said. She hobbled down the steps and turned back to me. Then she said the most curious thing. I kept thinking that I had misheard, that it was my own mind mixing up words, or that something had been misplaced in my memory, but she looked up at me and her voice was quite steady. ‘Give my love to your mother,’ she said. ‘Sweet Rosalie.’

  I watched, shaken, as she hobbled down the driveway.

  Millicent

  Chapter 30

  October 1915

  As soon as I saw the woman in the garden, I knew it was her. She stood at the far end of the Long Lawn with her back to me as she gazed at the new wall that surrounded the vegetable plots. She was tiny, not much bigger than a child, and she wore the same work dress that I had made for her and the same mauve shawl draped over her shoulders. Her hair was pinned about her neckline as if only a suggestion of a bun. She did not seem to care that she was trespassing on my property, for she did not keep to the borders or hide in the shade and she acted as she always had done, as if she were returning to work on just another day, and I began to wonder if I was in fact watching a phantom – my mind trying to fill the hole that she had left behind.

  Almost two months had passed since I had last seen her – Hugh had left, and then Jimmy, and the warmth and colour of late summer had faded, leaving the land damp and barren. But it was her, there was no doubt – it was Rosalie.

  I watched her from the kitchen window, my hands in a basin of cooling soap suds. She walked towards the gardener’s cottage and stooped to peer into the windows, then she caught a reflection of herself in the glass and raised a hand to fix her hair in a movement that seemed so familiar that part of me wondered if she had ever left at all and the last two months had all been some kind of strange dream.

  She rapped on a windowpane and called out, but I had sent Arthur out to the bakers for me that morning and I was relieved that she would not be able to take advantage of his good nature or win his allegiance. Then she turned towards the stables and put her hand to her mouth as if calling, but I did not need to hear the words to know who she was after – she was calling for Jimmy, and I took some pleasure in the fact that he had gone and that she would get no help from him either.

  But neither Arthur nor Jimmy were the man that she really sought and she could not disguise that fact for long. She took a few anxious steps this way and that and then stood still for a moment as if summoning the courage to find him. Eventually she turned towards me and looked to the big house, one hand to her face to shield it from the sun, the other to the small of her back.

  That was when I saw it. I thought it shadow at first, an ill-fitting girdle or basket carried under her shawl. But as she turned a little more and the shawl fell from her shoulders, I knew that the hard bulge that I saw under her dress could only mean one thing. The fabric was stretched tight over the round bump and she placed a hand on it, rubbing it gently as if to connect with the life inside.

  She walked across the lawn towards the kitchen, stooping as she grew near, and raised her hand to her face as if to peer through the window.

  I ran to the door and flung it open.

  ‘Mrs Paxton!’ she said, her hand moving protectively to her belly. ‘It is Monday, I thought you would be out at the bakers in—’

  ‘What do you think you are doing here?’ I yelled.

  Her face seemed sad but she had a weariness about her, as if she had expected my rage. ‘Where is everyone?’ she said. ‘I cannot find Arthur in the garden nor the cottage and Hilda’s stall is bare and Jimmy is not there either.’ She looked about her as if I did not matter, as if she would rather anyone but me. ‘I cannot find Hugh,’ she said, ‘and there is no sign of his boots on the porch. Even the peony plants have been pulled up from the beds.’ She had a crack in her voice as if sobs were swelling in her throat, but I had no pity for her. How dare she be sad? All of this had been her doing. The grief was all mine, she had no right to it.

  ‘Get out of here,’ I screamed. ‘Right now!’

  But she did not. Instead her whole body seemed to shudder as if all her strength was being summoned and she stood upright and looked me in the eye. ‘I have nowhere else to go,’ she said shakily. ‘Mr Walker got me a job and lodgings at one of his factories but the other women saw that my belly was growing and told the foreman and I was thrown out. I could not afford the lodgings any more. I spent all that I had left on the bus to get back here, all the way from Oxworth. I had been working so hard. I could have saved some money if it hadn’t been for those women and their gossip.’

  ‘Well, you caused the gossip,’ I spat.

  But she did not seem to hear me. ‘Will you tell me where Hugh is?’ she said. ‘Will he be gone long? I can wait for him. I don’t mind—’

  ‘He’s joined up,’ I said. ‘He…’ I had more to say, more words to hurt her with, but when I saw her lip tremble, I realised that I need not say them. The news of Hugh’s departure had caused all the hurt I had hoped for.

  ‘He’s gone so soon?’ she whispered.

  ‘He left as soon as he could,’ I said. ‘He had served before so they accepted him without further training and he went straight to the Front.’

  She gasped and her face seemed to turn quite white.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said, no longer able to hold back my venom. ‘He couldn’t take the shame of what he had done to his wife with his sorry little affair. He saw the error of his ways very quickly and decided that he could not live with it.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘How could he—’

  ‘Well that’s the man you fell for,’ I said. ‘One that would abandon all his problems; his demanding mother, his bankrupt estates, his wife and her unborn child, even his squalid little mistress.’

  She waited for me to finish, then said calmly, ‘He loves me, Mrs Paxton, but he always said that he loved you too. It was the loss you suffered last year that changed you. He said that he tried to comfort you but sometimes it was like you had become a different person, someone hard and cruel. You could not see that he was suffering too. He had nowhere else to turn.’

  Her words were like a blow to my chest. More shocking than catching them together at the stables and more hurtful than seeing the little round bump under her dress. For they meant that it was more than sex that they had shared together. It had been time and companionship. They had been together, and they had talked about me as an outsider.

  She did not seem to realise the full meaning of her words, for she continued boldly: ‘May I know Hugh’s regiment, where he has been posted?’

  ‘He would not want you to know!’ I cried. ‘I do not believe that he told you he loved you, nor that he said any of those things. Didn’t you hear me? You are just a sorry mistake to him.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’ she stammered. ‘You know that I am unable to write myself, but if I could just get someone to write to him for me… Let me send a message to him, Mrs Paxton, so that he can make up his own mind.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I am the lady of this house, now more so than ever, and I don’t want any more scandal attached to the Grange. You have to go, and go now before you are seen and don’t ever come back.’

  She opened her mouth as if what I said had not been enough for her, as if she had more to say, but then her eyes fell to my neckline and she let out a little cry. ‘Oh, Millicent you have my—’

  ‘Your what?’ I spat, laying my hand protectively over my throat.

  ‘My necklace! I had wondered where it had gone.’

  ‘These stones were intended for me all along,’ I said. ‘Hugh brought them back from Tibet. He always said that they were the same colour as my eyes. Can’t you see that they are the same colour?’

  ‘But Hugh said that—’

  ‘Are you claiming my possessions, Rosa
lie?’ I said. ‘Shall I summon the constable? How would that look for you – a disgraced servant on my property? You would look no better than a beggar with your messy hair, your dress so tight around your middle and your finger with no ring on it.’

  ‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘Please don’t do that.’ But now that she had seen the necklace again, she did not want to give it up. ‘Oh, Mrs Paxton,’ she cried. ‘Hugh gave it to me. It is all that I had from him but it would buy milk and blankets for my child. You have this house, the farm and you will be getting your share of his army wages, but I have nothing.’

  ‘It is mine,’ I said slowly.

  ‘You must understand how I feel, Mrs Paxton,’ she persisted. ‘We are in the same situation, are we not? We are both in the family way and we would do anything for our unborn children, anything to bring them into the world with a good start in life. We—’ Then her eyes fell to my middle.

  I put my hand to my apron pocket defensively but I realised that the strings were wound tightly around my waist and my ribs were still showing and that despite five missed bleeds and weeks of morning sickness, there was nothing to show for my suffering, not even a thickening round my middle.

  ‘Where is your baby, Mrs Paxton?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Women in my family never show,’ I said quickly. ‘I…’ But then I stopped and remembered what Hugh had said that night in the kitchen, that I could not hold on to the babies and that my hopes always came to nothing.

  Rosalie said nothing for a while, but I wondered at the thoughts that must have been running through her head. Did she think me a liar? Deluded maybe? Or even physically sick? And even if she did think these things, it would make her no different from the others – the doctor weary of my visits, my disappointed mother-in-law, and the neighbours who whispered and shook their heads.

  But even if Rosalie was thinking such thoughts, she did not say so. ‘I only care about one thing,’ she said, ‘and that is my baby. I believe I am carrying a son, Mrs Paxton, and that he may turn out like Hugh. You have no reason to hate my baby, he is innocent in all this and you are the only one who can help him. You are the only one who can help me. I am begging for your help.’