The Poisoned House

by Michael Ford

  Lizzy was crying, as was I. Cook looked away to stop us seeing her tears. We all knew, I think, what was happening in that room, but the image of it was too terrible to contemplate: a saw’s blade working its way through flesh and bone.

  Mr Lock came down to the scullery, his face grey and tinged with yellow. The front of his shirt was flecked with blood, his cuffs soaked red.

  ‘Water,’ he said. ‘Hot water.’

  We rushed to fill a pail. ‘Shall I carry it?’ I asked.

  He took it from me without a word and retreated upstairs. As he opened the door again, all we could hear was Sammy’s frail voice moaning ‘Oh! Oh!’ to no one but himself.

  Rob showed the surgeon out at about five o’clock. His tread was as steady as when he had arrived, though when I came to think of it later, I realised that he was carrying an extra burden in that bag of brutal kit – everything below Samuel Greave’s right knee.

  We all understood it was touch and go for Sammy after the operation and we trod carefully outside the library door so as not to disturb him. It was hard to ignore his pain though. Often he would cry out when his bandages were changed, and we had the daily reminders of his suffering in the gauze and linens we had to wash. Lord Greave didn’t leave his room.

  To be honest, I was now dreading seeing Sammy again. Would he really have time for a little girl who knew nothing of war and wounds and had never even travelled over the Thames, let alone the Black Sea?

  As it was, the choice wasn’t mine.

  ‘Miss Tamper,’ said Mrs Cotton two days after the surgeon had visited, ‘come at once to the library and bring cold water and a towel.’

  I filled a large bowl, draped a towel over my arm and followed Mrs Cotton up the stairs. My heart thudded at the thought of what I might see on entering the room, but I promised myself that I would do my duty without flinching.

  Young Dr Ingle stood outside the library door. The bowl was beginning to weigh heavy in my arms.

  ‘This is the girl?’ he said.

  ‘It is,’ said Mrs Cotton. ‘Miss Tamper has been with us for many years and knows Master Greave well.’

  ‘Very good,’ he said. The doctor stooped to face me. ‘Miss Tamper, His Lordship’s son is very sick indeed. The exertion of his voyage back to England, then the operation – he has a dire fever.’

  I forgot about the heavy bowl. What was he telling me – that Samuel was going to die? It seemed so unjust after the pain he had fought through already.

  ‘Will he be all right?’ I said.

  Mrs Cotton sniffed as if I should have kept my mouth shut, but the doctor pursed his lips in a sympathetic smile. ‘It is in God’s hands now, whether or not he lives.’

  ‘You are to be excused your normal duties for the rest of the day,’ said Mrs Cotton sharply. ‘Stay with Master Samuel and do not leave his side.’

  ‘He will require frequent fluids, either water or ale,’ said the doctor. ‘Make sure he is comfortable – that is the main thing. And if his condition deteriorates further, send young Willmett for me immediately. Do you understand?’

  ‘I do, sir,’ I said.

  He nodded firmly. ‘Good.’

  Mrs Cotton opened the door, and in I went.

  Dr Ingle Senior sat beside the bed. He was leaning over Samuel and replacing a small glass bottle in his satchel, which he then closed before straightening up. Lord Greave stood facing the window, looking out on to the lawns. The room smelled stale and lived-in, a little like Lancelot’s stables. Samuel lay back with the sheets pulled up to his throat. The lines of his lower body were visible beneath the bedclothes, the left leg extending beyond the right. His head was rolled to one side on the pillows and his eyes half open, still as a millpond. My first horrible thought was that he had died, but I saw the quilt rising and falling slowly with his weak breath.

  I placed the bowl of water on the table near the head of the bed and gave a curtsy. Dr Ingle’s eyes lingered on me for a second, and I saw the fleeting remembrance of the night of my attempted escape. ‘I’ll leave you now, sir,’ he said.

  Lord Greave turned and nodded. His face was drawn, painted with weariness and grief. ‘Thank you, Donald,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you out.’

  They left me in there, alone with Samuel. I dabbed the towel in the water and leant over the pillows. His dark hair was slick across his temples. From a foot away, I could feel the heat that came off his body like a furnace. I brushed the hair away and dabbed at his forehead with the cloth. His eyelids flickered and opened a fraction more. His dark pupils rolled back to focus on me. Even in his weakness, his look seemed to hold so many emotions in conflict with one another. Confusion. Recognition. Maybe even fear. His lips moved and he breathed my name.

  ‘Abi?’

  ‘I’m here,’ I said. ‘Sammy.’

  ‘So hot,’ he said.

  I leant across him to fold back the bedclothes a little. His chest was bare, the muscles taut and hairless. His breastbone protruded beneath his pale skin.

  ‘You’re home now, Sammy,’ I said, laying the cool cloth over his head.

  ‘Home,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  His eyes closed, as though the word itself had acted as a salve to his pain.

  .

  Chapter 17

  Through that weekend, Samuel drifted in and out of fevered consciousness and I barely left his side other than to fetch more water, or coal to keep the fire blazing. I felt sorry for Lizzy, for she had to carry out the tasks that would have otherwise fallen to me.

  It was not hard work, but it was tiring nonetheless. I found myself attuned to Samuel’s suffering, almost as if it were my own. Each groan or sigh, each shift beneath the sheets, each time his face contorted with pain or an awful dream I would lean forward, whispering words of encouragement or offering a sip of water. At night I slept fitfully in a chair pulled up beside the bed, waking stiffly before dawn.

  Those two days blurred together into one specific incident that I can never forget, even though I might want to. Samuel had been sleeping at peace for most of the morning and I was in danger of dropping off myself. The room was warmed through, and the air seemed to press down on me. I stood to get the blood flowing once again to my legs. I passed the shelves and my eye caught the spine of my favourite book – Ivanhoe. It had been four years at least since I had last read it.

  The books were locked behind a glass door, but the key was in the lock. The covering was more to protect the volumes from dust and decay than for security. I doubted that Lord Greave or Sammy would care if I took it out to pass the hours. It could hardly be counted a dereliction of duty, as long as I stayed at Samuel’s side.

  Mrs Cotton was another matter. The only thing I’d ever seen her read was a Bible, and if she came into the room, I might not have time to hide the book. But she hadn’t bothered me at all for the past few days. I had passed her two or three times below stairs, and she had offered no comment other than the disapproval in her pursed lips.

  Nor had she enquired as to the welfare of her nephew. I think she was pleased to be rid of the responsibility. It struck me then that it was perhaps she who had instigated this arrangement. I had wondered why I, perhaps the least suitable candidate, had been chosen to nurse Samuel. Was it because the housekeeper thought I was most likely to fail, that His Lordship’s son would perish in my care? It seemed the most likely explanation. What would happen to me then? Might it even be deemed that I was to blame?

  Such thoughts gave me renewed determination. I had not been able to save my mother, but Samuel would be different.

  I turned the key in the lock and took out the leather-bound copy, then resumed my position beside the invalid silently. It wasn’t long before I was engrossed in the pages. I read avidly for upwards of two hours, drinking in the words like a person parched with thirst. When the clock struck two it was a surprise how quickly time had passed. At that time Samuel was managing only two meals a day, if a few sips of soup can be called a meal, and it was clear tha
t he was losing weight. The bones of his face, especially around his eye sockets, seemed to protrude more by the hour.

  I closed the book and placed it beneath the head of his bed, then left the room. Cook warmed through some of the weak broth of beef and vegetables, which I carried back upstairs.

  Outside the library door, something made me pause. I cannot say quite why. Perhaps it was fear. I felt sure that someone was inside – someone besides Samuel.

  The feeling passed and I told myself to get a grip on my emotions. Balancing the tray on one hand, I pushed open the door.

  The room was the same, the fire blazing and Samuel lying there with the sheets pulled up to his neck. The windows had steamed up so that it was impossible to see very much outside. The single lamp burned beside the bed.

  But there was a different smell – a smell of burning, and more than just the sooty aroma of combusting coal. I wondered for a moment if a spark had jumped the fireguard. I scanned the carpet in front of the fire. There was nothing.

  I placed the tray of broth and bread on the small bedside table. Samuel’s eyelids flickered open, and he turned his head weakly towards me.

  ‘You must eat something,’ I said.

  He seemed too weak even to smile, but gave a tiny nod.

  I laid a napkin across the sheet by his chin, then ran a hand beneath his pillow and tried to lift his head a fraction. He responded, the cords in his neck straining, and opened his lips for the spoon. I tipped the broth in and saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. We managed half a dozen more mouthfuls before he sank back again. The effort had pushed a fresh sheen of sweat on his pale skin. Within seconds he was asleep once more.

  I put the bowl aside, deciding that I wouldn’t remove it just yet, in case he recovered the strength to eat more.

  I reached down to get my book.

  I reached further beneath the bed.

  I got down on my hands and knees and peered along the floor.

  The book had gone.

  The room suddenly felt hotter still, the only sound the crackling in the hearth. Before I even looked, I knew what I would see. I stood slowly and walked to the fire. In the grate, on top of the coals, were the charred remains of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.

  A faint threatened to overcome me and I had to steady myself against the mantelpiece. I looked again into the hearth. Surely my mind was playing tricks on me? But no. It was there, and there could be no denying the evidence before my eyes. The pages of the book had all but gone, and the leather binding glowed red. Flakes of ash were drifting up the chimney.

  I looked at Samuel, lying asleep. A dozen thoughts were fighting for ascendance in my brain. He couldn’t possibly reach beneath the bed in his condition – a man who could barely take a mouthful of soup from a spoon. And even if he could, how would he walk across the room with only a single leg to stand on?

  With my back to the door, and fear gripping me, a word came to my lips before I could stop it.

  ‘Mother?’ I whispered.

  There was no answer. Samuel’s low breathing was regular. The fire crackled softly.

  .

  Chapter 18

  Under the pretext of filling the lamp with fresh oil, I went back to the scullery. For safety, we kept the oil outside in a storeroom adjacent to the stable block. Rob was out there mixing something in a bucket, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

  ‘You all right, m’lady?’ he said. ‘White as a freshly laundered sheet.’

  ‘Just a little chill,’ I said. ‘It’s devilish cold out here.’

  ‘That it is,’ he said. ‘Old Lancelot’s got a rheumy chest too.’ He nodded towards the stable, where the horse normally poked out his long nose.

  ‘Will he be better soon?’ I asked.

  ‘Soon as he gets some of this inside, he will,’ said Rob. ‘He’s not so used to all this exercise no more.’

  As I filled the lamp in the storeroom, Rob carried the bucket into the stall. He handed me a bottle.

  ‘Put this back on the shelf in there, would you?’

  The label on the bottle showed a horse in a field, and above it the words Newnham’s Finest Equine Tonic. Beneath, it said: Danger, not for human consumption.

  I put the bottle on the shelf, feeling an odd sense of unease. Another poision.

  Rob was latching the stable door as I came out with the full lamp. I had thought him the only person quick enough to place fingerprints on the window or agile enough to snatch at my hand three storeys up. But there wasn’t a spiteful bone in his body!

  As I passed him, my eyes welled up with frustration. I was the lowliest person in the house. How could I hope to find a murderer in our midst? And what could I do without evidence, without proof? If my mother’s spirit, or ghost, wanted to speak to me, why not find some means other than the frightening encounters so far? It was as though she was angry.

  And then it struck me: she was angry. What had Dr Reinhardt said? That it wasn’t safe for me here. That I should leave. But I had not listened. I had stayed and tried to find out more, but perhaps that wasn’t what my mother wanted at all. She wanted to thrust me out of Greave Hall and away from danger.

  I walked back up the stairs to the library, and my fear evaporated.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere,’ I said to myself and to whoever else might be listening.

  Like a storm that rages overnight, leaving a clear bright morning, by the following day Samuel’s fever seemed to have lifted. The dark hours had passed undisturbed.

  I had shuffled the books on the shelves so that Ivanhoe would not be found missing unless anyone took particular care to check.

  Samuel’s eyes were bright when I awoke, and they were focused on me.

  ‘Good morning, Abigail,’ he said. His voice was dry as old leaves.

  ‘Sammy!’ I said.

  ‘I’m too old for that now,’ he replied. ‘Call me Master Greave.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ I said quickly.

  A slow smile crept over his cracked lips. ‘I’m joking, Abi.’

  I laughed, and he did too, until it turned into a coughing fit. I offered him water and he managed to push himself up in the bed and take the cup himself. He drank deeply for the first time in days.

  ‘I had an awful nightmare,’ he said. ‘A man was holding me down while another was taking off my leg . . .’

  I couldn’t look at him as he spoke, and lowered my eyes. ‘Samuel . . .’

  ‘. . . but now I see that it was no dream,’ he continued, with a heavy sigh. ‘I suppose it’s better to be here four-fifths a man than no man at all.’

  I found the courage to look at him again.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said, then felt stupid. What do I know?

  ‘Nelson only had one arm, and it did him no harm.’

  He took another drink, draining the cup once more, then he spoke of the long journey home by cart, steamer and train. He remembered only fragments through the pain – they had given him morphine whenever they could. One of his clearest recollections, he said, was the ship’s doctor declaring it a certainty that he would keep his leg. He went silent then.

  ‘They told us you were very brave,’ I said, ‘when it happened.’

  He blushed. He’d always done so as a child, and I was glad to see that hadn’t changed.

  ‘No braver than every other man,’ he replied. ‘It was dawn. We were in a charge, towards a fortified position of Russian guns along a low pass. The Captain thought we’d be on ’em before they had time to find their range, but they’re quick buggers – pardon my language – those artillery boys. We were barely into a gallop when the shrapnel started flying.’ He passed a hand over his face, as though trying to wipe away the memory.

  ‘You don’t have to tell me,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s fine, really. No harm can come of it now.’ He swept a lock of hair from his forehead. ‘My horse must have taken a hit, because he went down underneath me, and I was on the ground. The rest of
the cavalry were charging past, sabres out and howling, when I saw another mount. He was riderless, so I scrambled towards him. Next thing I know, there’s a great thud, and that’s that. I woke up later when they were stretchering me off. One of the others said a cannonball thundered straight past me. Must have caught me on the way.’

  ‘How awful!’ I said. ‘You must have been in great pain.’

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Not till later. The whole thing was a bloody disaster. I say, don’t cry, Abi.’

  I hadn’t realised that I was until he wiped my cheek with his thumb. It’s hard to understand, but for a few moments at least I’d forgotten about my mother completely and I was in a battlefield in the Crimea, hearing the screams of men and dying horses, the pounding of the Russian cannon. It was a long way from Ivanhoe.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘You’re the one who’s suffering.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said brightly. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, there’s something I must do.’ He pointed to the chamber pot on the other side of the bed.

  Now it was my turn to blush. ‘Of course,’ I said, moving towards the door. ‘I’ll let His Lordship know you are feeling a little better. Mrs Cotton too.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘She’s still lodging with us, is she?’

  I nodded, trying not to give my own emotions away.

  ‘I’m so glad you’re back, Sammy.’

  Everyone in the house was delighted that Samuel had come through the worst of it. Everyone, that is, apart from Mrs Cotton.

  ‘You’ll be able to pull your weight again then, Miss Tamper,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid Elizabeth has hardly been able to pick up the slack in your absence.’