*
It was a girl, not the bastard son she had wanted. The midwife put the baby to her breast and beckoned me into the kitchen.
‘Is there nothing that the family of the house can do for her?’ she sighed as she pulled the door quietly behind us.
I said that there was not. It was true after all, we did not have two pennies to rub together and the house, although grand, I explained, was barely habitable and owned by the bank. Of course Hugh, as the head of the household, had not been there to answer this question, so I gave the answer that I felt would most benefit him, although I knew that it was not the one that he himself would have given.
The midwife pursed her lips and looked distrusting but then pressed a sheet of paper into my hand. ‘It is a list of all the poor houses and homes for fallen women,’ she said. ‘It includes five counties, so at least one should have a vacancy, although few would turn her away, the state she is in.’ Then she lowered her voice, ‘She will need to understand that she will end up in one of these places if she is not to starve.’
I nodded.
‘And she must know that they will only care for her if she agrees to give up the child.’ Then she pulled the door open a little so we could look into the laundry room.
The baby was nursing well, contented little sucking noises accompanying the swell of its cheeks. Rosalie was curled around the infant, her head lolling to the side as she gazed at the tiny head.
‘Best give her some time until she is ready to talk about it.’ The midwife gave a short little nod as if to signal her disapproval and gathered up her cape and bag. ‘Do what you can for her. I can let myself out.’
When the midwife had gone, I looked at the leaflet in my hand. There were lists of addresses – charitable establishments as she had said; poor houses, mother and baby homes and homes for impoverished fallen women. On the front was a sketch of a destitute woman reaching up to a large crucifix, a skinny baby tumbling from her naked breast. Then a picture of a plump infant, playing happily in the arms of a nurse, the crucifix was present again, this time on the breast of the nurse’s apron. I folded the leaflet into my pocket.
Rosalie did not even notice when I collected the bloodied towels from the bedside. I closed the door on the laundry room and put the towels in a bath of bleach, then I got out the mop and bucket and mopped up her waters from the flagstones in the kitchen. I did not rest until I was sure that everywhere outside the laundry room was in order and that there was no indication of what had happened. Only then did I return to look upon the mother and child.
Rosalie had drifted off to sleep, her head resting on a folded blanket. Her face was ghostly white but peaceful and she snored gently.
I pushed her arm under the infant to prevent it from falling and moved the blankets away from its face, making plenty of room around the head. It was then that I saw the baby properly for the first time, and she was perfect. She was so tiny that she can have been no bigger than a rabbit and I fancied her as some sort of whimsical creature. She had the look of Hugh about her. I did not know how, she was only a baby, but I thought so, and suddenly I realised that she had come to me. I thought that I had lost her, but somehow she had come back. Could this baby be Kate, the baby I had so long planned, the one that I deserved and the one that I had lost?
I don’t know how long I sat in the cold kitchen lost in my thoughts but by the time that the dawn glowed behind the curtains, everything had become clear and I knew what I had to do. I had to provide for Rosalie and the baby, I had to give them what they needed and I could not do that here. Arthur would not be returning until midday, so I had time to prepare if I got to work now. I pulled on my boots and coat and left for Missensham.
By ten o’clock I had returned to the Grange and had two cotton bags prepared, one for Rosalie and another for the baby. The baby’s bag contained cream, honey and nursing bottles and a recipe for infant formula copied from the pages of Mrs Beeton. It also contained nappies and soft blankets, all wrapped as gifts from Partridge’s. It was as much as I could afford and I admired the gifts proudly.
The bag also contained the bonnet I made for the baby I had lost over a year ago: 1915 had been a year of savage losses, but that year was gone and 1916 was a year of new beginnings. January had been a month when wars still raged and men still died, a month of frozen pipes when everything that was usually soft and comforting was damp with cold. I found that I could not face another year of loss, so when my thoughts had started to drift away into darkness, I had picked up the bonnet and re-knotted the wool and pulled the threads taut until it had taken shape again and become worthy of the innocent that would wear it.
The bag for Rosalie was somewhat plainer, but with gifts I considered would give her a good start for her new life: the leaflet that the midwife had given me; a train ticket; a bundle of reference letters that I had handwritten to notable houses; and two ten bob notes – an amount that would have taken her a month to earn while she had been in my employment.
The gifts were generous indeed, but each came with a condition – the train ticket was a single to Brighton station; the reference letters were addressed only to notable houses in the Brighton area, all of them a good eighty miles from Missensham; and the ten bob notes were wrapped in a letter explaining that a similar amount could be collected from a poste restante address at Brighton post office by a Miss Rosalie Harris a month hence. I had circled one of the establishments in the midwife’s leaflet with a thick line of ink. It was the address of a place called St. Bridget’s House and I had chosen it solely for its location, far away from Missensham. St Bridget’s House was not listed in the section for mother and baby homes, but the section for impoverished single women. Rosalie would be starting her new life away from Missensham, and she would be starting it alone.
I put the leaflet that the midwife had given me on top of the gifts and folded it open to the page with the pictures of the impoverished infant falling from its mother’s breast and the one who had found salvation in the arms of the nurse. I wanted it to be one of the first things that Rosalie saw when she woke. She had to know it was for the best. She had to understand.
The baby was starting to stir, the first tiny gratings of a cry in its throat. I picked it up gently. ‘No need to worry, little Kate,’ I said. ‘You’re not going anywhere. You’re with Mummy now.’
Chapter 44
January 1916
She left just before noon. She left with the address of St. Bridget’s House in Brighton, the reference letters, the ten bob notes, and the one-way train ticket all secured in the little cotton bag. She left in the back seat of a taxicab, huddled in my winter coat, her breasts bound and wadding between her legs. She left without the baby.
I watched the cab drive off from the window of the old nursery, clutching little Kate to my bosom until the lane fell silent. Rosalie had left her mauve shawl behind; it was stained with dark seepages from the birth yet was infused with the maternal odours I needed to calm the baby. I gently nudged Kate’s head from my chest and carefully swaddled her in the shawl then I lowered her down into the old Livingstone family cot and made a nest of blankets around her. I lit a small fire in the grate, all the time singing softly, but she was still sedated from her last feed and did not stir. In fact she had not even woken when she had been taken from Rosalie’s breast and had not heard her mother’s wails and sobs nor felt the removal of her warmth.
When her breathing had settled to a gentle pace, I left the room quietly and rushed down to the kitchen. I warmed the milk, cream and honey in a pan and filled the bottles. Then I returned to the nursery. I took the bonnet from my apron pocket and put it on the baby, her head rolling slightly as I knotted the strings under her chin. It looked as good as new and fitted perfectly as if it had been meant for her all along.
When Arthur got home, I waited until I heard his footstep on the stair then I called softly. When he came in, I had the bottle held to my bosom and the baby was sucking contentedly.
‘Millicent?’ his voice sounded lost as if he could not see me, but then came a shout of surprise: ‘Oh Millicent! What have you done?’
‘She has come to me at last,’ I said. ‘My baby came to me.’
He crouched down next to us and pulled back the shawl to see the baby. He saw she was newborn, her hair still matted and her face still red and swollen from the birth.
‘But how?’ he said slowly. ‘How did she come to you Millicent?’ he said, wringing his hands.
‘She is a gift to us, Arthur,’ I said.
‘A gift?’ he repeated.
‘Yes – the mother could not care for her,’ I said. ‘But I can.’
Arthur sat with me for several minutes, not speaking, but then he finally stood and peered across the hallway into the study.
I do not know how much he understood of what was in the room, but I know what he must have seen: the bureau was open, with my headed stationary strewn across the desk and the ink drying in the pot; there were volumes of the Baedeker guide to the South Coast and Burke’s Peerage open on the desk; the bag from Partridge’s lay on its side, feeding bottles, blankets and nappies tumbling on to the floor; and the strongbox was unlocked, open and empty.
Then he looked back into the nursery and he saw me with Rosalie’s bloodstained shawl over my breast and a baby that was not mine.
He shook his head and sank down in the doorway and put his head in his hands and said nothing more. He had seen the study where the business had been done, but he was now back in the nursery. It was a room where the grate had stood idle for years but was now warmed with a fire. A mobile tinkled in the draught from the window and the room was calmed by the gentle sucking noises of the contented infant and the scent of warm milk and honey. When he took his hands away from his eyes, he saw me – a mother, and he saw Kate.
He reached up and put a hand on the infant’s head. ‘We have seen some bad times,’ he said, ‘and we are weary.’ He was silent for a long time, just held his hand on the baby’s head, feeling the warmth and listening to her breathing. ‘Our lives should start from this moment,’ he said at last. ‘What happened here has been done, but let us never speak of it.’
Kate
Chapter 45
May 1941
It was not what I had expected. I do not know what I had expected but this was not it.
I looked at the letter again, at the crest at the top of the paper and the London address, and then I read it once more, going over every word. I was sure of one thing, and one thing only, that there was something very wrong about this situation and the considered opinions of the learned gentlemen of the parole board would only lead to suffering.
I folded the letter back into the envelope and looked out across the walled garden, but I saw none of the earthy vegetable beds, the misted panes of the glasshouse and the neat brick pathways, for there was only one thing that I could think of.
I knew that somehow I had to change this outcome. I thought about writing to the prison but the letter would not arrive in time or might take days for them to process. Then it started to dawn on me that, even if I left for the telephone box on the Green and tried to call someone on the parole board, it would make no difference. The board had already disbanded, their decision was final, it said. The decision had been made a whole month ago when the letter was sent and the paperwork would already be completed, stamped and filed. As Mr Crozier had said, ‘one cannot undo bureaucracy or challenge a long-debated decision made by learned men’.
I decided not to tell Dad about the letter, even knowing that it had arrived would be more than he could cope with. I concealed it in my pocket when I returned to the house that evening and locked it away in the old suitcase on top of the wardrobe, along with the old pocket timetable, legal documents and trial notes.
There was nothing I could do but try to forget the letter, hide it away, as I had done with everything else for so long, and try to bury it in my mind with the memories I had tried so hard to suppress over the last ten years, but deep down I knew that the day would come – a day when I would have to deal with the consequences.
Chapter 46
May 1941
I chose the blue room, the one that had been Aunt Audrey’s. It had the best light for the time of year and kept the warmth from the windows. I spent the morning dusting and cleaning and then I got fresh sheets from the laundry and made the bed, taking care to tuck in the corners and fold a spare blanket neatly at the foot.
I put fresh flowers in a vase – white tulips the finest thing in bloom, for that season – it was early May again. I realised that I had been living my life to the same pattern for the last ten years – the winter and spring months building up to the grim anniversary of my mother’s crime and only once the date had passed would I feel that life could begin again. I looked across the room and was happy with my efforts. Then I shut the door so Dad would not stumble over a room so refreshed and expectant.
I checked the clock, then hurried downstairs, hoping that I had time to see Dad and think of an excuse for my afternoon’s absence.
I found Dad in the armchair in the kitchen, his eyes closed and his ribs trembling with every slow breath. I kissed him on the head, feeling guilt about what I was about to do. Then I sat down next to him, making sure that I had a good view of the clock and I decided that I could spare a few minutes before I left for town.
He opened his eyes slowly and folded the newspaper that had fallen to his lamp. ‘I was just thinking that it is funny we have not heard from the review board yet,’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t know about that,’ I said. ‘Mr Crozier seemed to think that such decisions can take weeks. I don’t think it affects what the outcome will be either way.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said, ‘but I still think that we should telephone the prison, will you walk to the telephone box and do that for me tomorrow? And call Mr Crozier too, just to see if he has heard anything.’
‘I will,’ I said, then added eagerly: ‘In fact I can call at Mr Crozier’s offices this afternoon.’
‘You are not going into town today, are you?’ said Dad quickly.
‘Why ever not?’ I said.
‘Well, it might rain.’
‘There is not a cloud in the sky!’ I laughed.
‘But you won’t go will you?’ Then he added: ‘Please, for my sake.’
We both knew what we were really trying to say to one another. It was a conversation that we played out in our heads but when it came to our lips our thoughts were replaced by a string of questions and excuses. I had my plans for that afternoon and Dad knew exactly where I was intending to go.
‘You can go to town tomorrow,’ he said firmly, but we both knew that I could not.
I drew a deep breath. ‘Look, Dad, I want to go into town today. Why must the fact that today is the 5th of May change anything?’
‘Then you will be happy going out later,’ he said. ‘Three o’ clock will give you plenty of time to run your errands and be back before dark.’
He stared at me, his eyes large behind the thick glass of his spectacles.
‘Don’t make this harder for me,’ I said at last.
‘Well, do you blame me?’ he said, shakily. ‘Audrey told me what you had been saying before she left, that you wanted to see your father. I saw you carrying the bedsheets upstairs, and the flowers. I have been your father for all your life and, I told you, you real father is a bad man.’
I reached over and took his hand in mine. ‘It’s nothing like that Dad. You must know that I love you. You are the only one who has always been there for me. I am not looking to replace you, I just want to revive the place, breathe some more life into the Grange.’ But I would not tell him anything more.
We stared at each other for a few seconds, our eyes trying to convey what could not be said. I wanted to tell him that I knew he was only trying to protect me. It was what he had always done - from the first day that he accepted me as his own kin, to the times that he
gave me refuge from my mother’s neuroses. Even the envelope that I had seen him pass to my real father in the walled garden had been his own misguided way of keeping his family together, I understood that now.
I squeezed his hand. ‘Dad, I…’ But then the clock chimed the hour. ‘I had better go,’ I said.
He made no reply, just took his spectacles off and wiped a limp handkerchief over his eyes.
I let myself out the back door. The garden was bathed in warm sunshine. Forget-me-nots had taken hold in all the flower beds but they were a delicate, shimmering blue, and as beautiful a flower as any that we might have planted, so nobody had removed them. On the Long Lawn, Peter was pushing a giggling Violet across the grass in a wheelbarrow. Emma sat by the cottage on an upturned bucket and watched them, gently rocking the baby in her arms.
Missensham Grange was where Emma’s new baby had been born and where her family was growing, but she had lived here for barely a year and had no family connections to the house and no childhood memories of its former glory. It was not her family home, but it was mine and I was determined that it would be again. Today, at least, I would try to make amends. I set off for the station.
Millicent
Chapter 47
April 1931
‘Mercy!’
It was not until he spoke my name that I knew the intruder in the walled garden was Hugh. The body of the man who stood before me was frail and hunched, nothing like that of the tall broad-shouldered man I had married. His moustache was gone, one eye was misted and his face was so burnt that the skin still looked raw and his nose and lips appeared shrunken. But, as our eyes connected, I saw Hugh inside that battered shell.
At last I knew that he was not dead. He had returned to Missensham and to the house where he had lived for so many years but, from the way he sneered, I knew that he had not returned to me. Somehow, he had heard about Kate and he had come to claim his daughter. He was a man and he was my husband, he needed only a letter from the doctor to say that I was barren and a declaration from Rosalie to claim Kate for himself, and I who had rescued her, raised her and loved her for the past fifteen years, would be left childless again - it was something that I could not let happen.
The Murderess Page 24