The Murderess

by Jennifer Wells

  It did not occur to me how he knew about her or how much he knew about what had happened, but the fact that he was here and the intention in his eyes and the way he looked at Kate was enough to show that he knew about that cold night in 1916, when I had forced Rosalie to give birth in a dog’s bed and claimed the infant for myself. At that point nothing else mattered. Not the big house behind the garden wall nor the people in it, nor the spade clenched in my fists nor the necklace, ripped from my throat, that now lay in the dust.

  I could feel her fear; the small innocent creature trembling behind me and I had to protect her. He was shrunken in size, with a limp and who knows what other wounds he bore, but it was not his strength but his words I feared and I knew that anything that he said in front of her could not be explained away by drunkenness.

  He had said enough already; threatened that he would have my Kate, so I raised the spade to silence him. I did not know what I would do. I was not strong enough to injure him, maybe not even strong enough to land a blow, but it would be enough. We both knew that the next word from his mouth would cause me to use it.

  And then he turned and was gone.

  I took up the jade necklace from the dust and only then did the fear drain from me and it was hurt and pity that remained. His time at war had not made him miss me or love me. My new life did not matter, my place in society and my big house did not matter, the love of Arthur did not matter. He had come for what was his and what was hers. And he had not come for me. I was rejected, humiliated all over again.

  ‘Come on, Kate,’ I snapped, bundling up my skirts and swallowing my tears.

  But Kate was already running for the house and I realised that this had meant nothing to her but fear and confusion. I could have stopped her, I could have called her back to me right then, I could have told her the truth about her birth, but to do so would be to deny Arthur the years he had spent rearing her and admit how I had treated her birth mother, to take away the only parents she had ever known with a couple of sentences. I could not do this to any of us.

  No, when she reached the house she would tell Arthur that I had been accosted by a stranger and he would call the constable but between them they would not be able to say any more than this, for they did not know what had just happened and I had to make sure that they never would.

  As I walked across the lawn, already I was thinking of ways to keep her safe from him. But I grew sadder and sadder and in the end I realised that there was only one option. I could not let him win. If he could not have her, then neither could I.

  Chapter 48

  May 1931

  The reply from Tower Vale arrived by return of post. The letter was on headed paper with the school emblem of a tower topped with crenellations next to the Oxfordshire address – a fortress, just as I had remembered. The headmistress had made the arrangements and signed the letter personally; it was not usual practice for the school to accept a new pupil partway through term but she was willing to bend the rules for the families of ‘old girls’ and an outbreak of polio meant that there would be space for Kate in the dormitories. I would have to purchase a long black skirt and white blouse, blazer and straw boater before Kate’s start date, which had been scheduled for two weeks’ time. As Kate would arrive unaccompanied, they would send a carriage to pick her up from the station nearest to the school.

  I spent the following fortnight preparing for Kate’s departure; consulting train timetables and dusting down the old travel trunks. I guarded Kate like the crown jewels, made sure she was in the house from dusk till dawn and did not venture into the garden. I sent the maid to Partridge’s to purchase the school uniform, exercise books, pencils and new black stockings. I had the constable check all the locks in the house and I had a lock fitted to the door of the walled garden – a strong one. Finally, I planned to accompany Kate to the station and see her on to the train – that way I would know for certain that she would not be followed.

  Arthur looked on sadly as I made the preparations. He even helped to entertain Kate during her confinement and sat with us while we read our last chapters of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland together. He did not agree with what I was doing, but he did not understand either. But he did know that Kate was mine and always had been, and that he did not get a say in the matter.

  When the day finally came, I woke Kate early and, as we sat at the breakfast table, I told her what was most important – that, despite what was happening, she would always be mine. Then I gave the jade necklace to her – as Hugh’s only child, it was rightfully hers and I wanted her to remember the time that I had defended her in the walled garden – that I would do anything to keep her safe.

  We arrived at the station early. On the opposite platform, the train from Evesbridge had just pulled away and people were filtering towards the exit. The northbound platform was empty but for a woman on a bench studying a pocket timetable, and there was plenty of room to set down Kate’s luggage without having to drag it too far from the ticket office.

  Kate had not taken kindly to a fortnight of confinement and had become unusually surly, so I left her perched on her trunk, swinging her legs and scuffing her boots on the concrete. I wandered to the far end of the platform and found a timetable and some information about the connections to Oxfordshire. I checked my wristwatch against the platform clock – it would be a good ten minutes until the next northbound train stopped at Missensham. There was an earlier train scheduled, but the timetable showed only dashes where the arrival time should be, and I guessed that this was one of the fast trains from London and would not stop at the smaller stations such as Missensham.

  It was when I started to walk back to Kate that I realised the woman on the bench had raised her head from the pocket timetable and her face was now angled at mine. I nodded politely but she got up and approached me, her eyes narrowing as if studying my face.

  ‘Millicent,’ she said, but it was neither a question nor a greeting.

  It was her. She had aged of course; her face had lost the plumpness of its youth and her waist had thickened, but she was more respectable now, her hair neat and fashionable, spectacles suggesting a trade or profession and an expensive leather bag. It was only her suit that confirmed she was the same woman, it was smart and new yet still the same garish shade of mauve that she had favoured all those years ago.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I hissed.

  ‘I’m meeting him,’ she said. ‘I’m meeting my darling Hugh.’

  ‘He’s not yours,’ I said quickly. ‘He is married to me.’ But then I realised how ridiculous it sounded after everything that had happened. I no longer wanted Hugh; I had a new life with Arthur, a man that I loved.

  She held her timetable out to me but I did not take it so she pointed to some scribbles in the margin and two numbers circled in red ink – the arrival times of trains at Missensham station that afternoon; one from London and the other Evesbridge.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ I said. ‘It means nothing.’

  ‘It means that he will meet me here,’ she said. ‘I have travelled all the way from Brighton this morning. He has come from Evesbridge, from Chaverly, and we are meeting here before we go on to Missensham Grange, we had hoped to find you and Arthur at home there today, but you are here instead, so that will do just as well.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ I snapped. ‘What could you possibly want with Arthur and I?’ But then, fearing that Kate was watching, I feigned a smile and pointed to a spot on her timetable.

  ‘Some weeks ago I wrote to the mistress at Chaverly House,’ she said. ‘You see, my circumstances are much improved since I last saw you. I am able to read and write quite well now, I have employment in an office and a small apartment on the seafront. I thought that it was a good time to put right what happened fifteen years ago.’

  ‘What do you mean “put right”?’ I hissed, quickly glancing at the still oblivious Kate.

  ‘I asked Hugh’s mother for her support,’ she continued
. ‘I hoped that she would help me to get my child back from you.’

  ‘No,’ I said, trying to smile but my finger trembling as it pointed at the timetable. ‘I will not allow it!’

  ‘Your mother-in-law did not know of the child, of course,’ she continued, ‘you had made quite sure of that, but she had other news – news that her son was alive and I realised that you must have lied to me that day when I was pregnant and I came back to the Grange looking for help – that day when you told me to my face that Hugh had died in the war.’

  ‘You will not get her back,’ I said firmly. ‘You stole my husband from me, and now you have the nerve to say that I have wronged you! I did you a favour back then, you were unmarried, you would have lost your child anyway, all I did was see that she got a good home, her rightful home, the one that Hugh had planned for her.’

  Then I saw a movement on the other side of the tracks, a man stepped out of the shadows, shielding his eyes from the sun as he walked to the edge of the platform. It was Hugh – although not the strong upright moustached man I had known so many years ago – it was the Hugh that I had met only once before; the vagrant, the maniac who had attacked me in the walled garden. He had made an effort to neaten his appearance – his shoes were still holed and his trousers threadbare but now he wore the smart red dress jacket from his service in Tibet and carried a neat bouquet of flowers. He was trying to obscure his face with an upturned collar and the peak of his cap, but when I caught a glimpse of his wrinkled skin and the milky eye, I knew it was him instantly and I glanced down the platform to where Kate sat with her trunk, fearing that she would recognise him as my attacker and take fright but she was still lost in self-pity and showed neither interest nor recognition.

  I fancied that there was some truth in what Rosalie had said; Hugh had indeed returned to Chaverly, as the bouquet he held to his chest was of the red peonies that grew only in the Grange and the gardens that his mother tended. His attempts to neaten his appearance and the small bouquet spoke of his intentions to her, but their sentiments can have only been expressed in letters because both Hugh and Rosalie had glanced across the track several times but neither had recognised the other – despite Rosalie’s term of endearment for her ‘darling Hugh’, this was to be their first meeting in fifteen years.

  I watched him carefully while she spoke of courts and legal documents; the claim of a gentleman versus a woman; the court’s preference for a father’s word over that of a mother; of solicitors’ fees and legal precedencies, of custody, guardianship and blood ties. But all of the time she had no idea how close she was to what she wanted – the man she had once craved and the girl she sought to claim as her own were both within feet of her.

  ‘No court would believe your story,’ I cut in, glad that she had not noticed my distraction nor the cause of it. ‘I was legally married to Hugh Paxton at the time the baby was born, you were not. Even now there is no ring on your finger; you are still not wed.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said. ‘But the decision might not be down to a court, for there would surely be another who would want to know the truth. You see, I would just need to meet my daughter and…’ But now she was looking past me, to where Kate sat swinging her legs on the trunk, and I felt that she finally realised what she was seeing – the infant that she had held for those few precious moments, her daughter now grown.

  ‘Oh!’ She took a step towards her. ‘That is her! She is my daughter, she wears my jade necklace, the one that Hugh gave to me.’ A smile flashed across her face. ‘But I would know her anywhere, for she has my eyes!’

  ‘Her eyes are like mine,’ I said automatically. It was something that I had become so used to saying over the years but now my voice sounded weak, the words swallowed up by the crackle of the tannoy and the hiss of rails as they started to electrify for the oncoming train.

  ‘I must see her,’ she said loudly. ‘I must talk to my baby.’

  ‘No!’ I grabbed her arm and, on the other platform, I saw Hugh raise his hand to shield his eyes and lean forward. Then his head turned as he followed Rosalie’s gaze. He took a few paces along the platform, mirroring her steps as she pulled away from me towards where Kate sat. He must have noticed that she was transfixed by a girl sitting on a trunk, the same girl he had seen barely a fortnight ago in the walled garden at Missensham Grange and I thought that only then did he realise that the woman I was talking to was not a lost stranger. She was older than the woman he remembered, she was smarter with shorter hair, but her face was familiar and she wore the same shade of mauve that she always had, and at that moment he must have guessed that she was the woman who he had come to meet – his lost love, his darling Rosalie.

  But Rosalie did not notice him, for now all she saw was Kate. She took another step towards her and raised a hand but I stepped in front of her, blocking her way.

  ‘Millicent, please!’ she said, taking a sidestep towards the track as if to step round me ‘You have to let me pass, there is nothing more you can do.’ But I could barely hear her now as the rails were starting to clank with the force of the approaching train and I moved with her, blocking her path and her view of Kate. She took another step to the side and then another but I matched her steps until we were at the edge of the platform and could go no further. Somewhere above us the tannoy crackled.

  ‘Let me pass, Millicent,’ she yelled over the clatter of the approaching carriages. ‘You have covered up your lies for fifteen years, but you cannot do it forever. She is my daughter, she was mine once and will be again and I shall tell her so!’ Then she stopped, looked at Kate and cupped her hand to her mouth as if to call her.

  I looked to Kate sat on her trunk and, at that moment, she looked up to me as if waking from her daydream, her eyes darting to the stranger in mauve, a slight crease on her brow. I wanted to tell her everything: that despite all that she might hear, I was her mother, the one who had rescued her from a life of shame and poverty and raised her as my own; that I would always keep her safe no matter what the cost; that I loved her and always would. But it was too late to tell her any of these things, so I just smiled at her for that was all I could do.

  Then I looked back to Rosalie, her hand was still cupped to her open mouth but no sound came and I realised that it was because the breath had been knocked from her. I watched my hands press into her chest, my fingers splayed and my arms slowly extending. I felt the frailty of her body, the softness of her chest that offered no resistance to my arms. Then I saw her fall away from me, and heard the blaring of a horn and screams entwined with the screech of the rails. Then the wall of metal as the train rushed past and she was gone.

  Somewhere, on the other side of the track, a bouquet of red peonies lay on the ground.

  Kate

  Chapter 49

  May 1941

  If it had not been for the flowers that he carried, I might never have noticed the man that stood on the opposite platform. Yet, on the 5th May 1940 I had noticed him and now, one year later to the day, I had returned to the place that I had seen him, and this time I was expecting him.

  He looked just as I had remembered him, like so many other Great War veterans, an old army coat, with the cuffs frayed and a cap on his head. But now I knew that the coat he wore was from the Missensham 3rds and that he had wounded his eye in Ypres. I knew that the flowers that he carried had come from his mother’s crumbling estate and I knew that, long ago, he had lived in my house, with my mother, as man and wife. I knew his name was Hugh Paxton and that he was my father.

  He had not noticed me the previous year, he had no reason to. To him I would have just been a young woman lost in thought as she waited to collect relatives from the train, a woman who, as she waited, had watched him as he lay flowers in the spot that a murder had been committed. I wondered how much Dad had really told him: that this young woman had been watching him; that she had returned home with news of what I had seen that day and that she had taken the flowers with her. But it had been the flowers th
emselves that Dad had seen and recognised – red peonies that had identified the man at the station as Hugh Paxton, a man who was still alive and still mourning.

  I wondered if Dad had told him that the woman who had seen him that day was Kate, his daughter. I hoped that, if he had not heard it from Dad, then he might have worked it out for himself, after all he must have realised that only one other person would have known the significance of his tribute – why he had chosen that day, that time and that spot to leave red peonies for a murdered woman. He must have realised that someone who understood all those things must have been close to what had happened and the people involved, and that she must be the murderess’s daughter.

  I was sure that Hugh Paxton knew that his daughter had stood on the northbound platform on the 5th of May 1940 and that one year later I would be standing there again. And as these thoughts raced through my mind, the uncertainties, the unknowns, I felt I had my answer because then the man that I had known so long as the tramp raised his head and looked at me, then he took some steps forward to the edge of the platform and stared long and hard and I did not know whether to smile or look away. Although I had anticipated this moment, it was not something that I had planned for. And I wondered if Dad had been right – the man might not be in his right mind, or dangerous even.

  Then Hugh Paxton took off his cap and nodded in my direction and I no longer saw a tramp or a madman but a person.

  I went to raise my hand but the fingers no more than twitched as there was a sudden snap of electricity on the track in front of me.