She struck swiftly and from behind, slapping Samuel across the side of his head. The boy stumbled, and before he could find his feet, Ruth had him pinned against the wardrobe, her hand pushing hard against his chest. “What right have you to go through my things? Have you no shame?” Spit flew from her mouth, hitting Samuel in the eye. “After all I’ve done for you, how dare you violate my quarters like a common thief.”
Samuel pushed on her but it was as if she were made of stone.
“You killed my mother!” he shouted. “You killed her and then you wrote those cards so I would think she was in America. I was right...” He tried not to cry but the grief rose up and claimed him. “I didn’t want to be right but I was and now I know what you’ve done. I know—”
“What do you know? That I’ve looked after you the best way I know how, while your mother was nowhere to be found? Even when she was here, she wasn’t.”
“Shut up!”
“That’s what’s true, Samuel. Yes, I’ve been writing those cards, someone had to. Your own mother could surely never be bothered. When I saw how much they meant to you, how your eyes lit up when you got one, well, I kept on writing them. You missed her so fiercely. Those cards were about the only thing that seemed to make it bearable. For you and for me.”
Samuel brought his knee up as hard as he could. Ruth groaned and her grip slackened, which was chance enough for Samuel to ram her with his shoulder, knocking her sideways. He ran to the desk and picked up the letter.
“You are a poisonous monster,” he shouted. “That’s why you wrote that stupid letter—you wanted me to think that Mother didn’t love me, that she was a beast like you. Like you, Ruth! Who hates the ones she’s supposed to love and wants them to take a gun down to the henhouse and kill themselves.”
Ruth used the wall to get to her feet. “Your mind is a malignant thing, Samuel, and it’s eaten what little sense you had. I used that letter to learn her handwriting and nothing more.”
“Liar!”
“Do you want honesty, Samuel?” She wiped her mouth and moved toward him. “Your mother never took to you. You wanted so much of her, following her around, clinging to her like a monkey on a vine, and it suffocated her. Neither of you could win, you see? The more she tried to keep you at arm’s length, the more desperately you wanted to be near her.”
“You murdered her to keep her away from me,” Samuel whispered.
“She didn’t know how to be a mother. Not every woman does.” Ruth shrugged. “Mine didn’t. It’s not their fault and it’s not ours, either, it’s just what is.”
Samuel swallowed but his throat was bone-dry. “I saw you with Mother’s dress, dancing around like a lunatic. You killed her and now you’re trying to take her place.”
For the briefest moment something bright flashed across Ruth’s face. She half smiled. “Your mother knew I had my sister’s wedding in the autumn and she told me I was welcome to that dress. She said the color was garish and she’d never wear it again.”
Samuel saw the lies easily enough; they practically leached from her skin like poisonous gas. She twisted everything, turning the truth in on itself until it looked like something else. And she would have to be punished—not just hung, which she surely would be, but something that might hurt even more. That’s why he pulled the clover pin from his pocket.
Ruth lifted her hand when she saw it. “Give that to me.”
She made a move to grab it and Samuel stepped back, holding it between his fingers. “Olive said it wasn’t real and I can feel that it would snap easily enough in my hands.”
“Don’t.” The panic was alive in her dark eyes. “My father gave me that and—”
“You wanted him dead,” said Samuel. “That’s what you said, wasn’t it? You were happy he died because you have a black heart. You killed Robin Hood. You kill everything.”
“I didn’t kill your mother, Samuel.” Ruth took a step toward him. “I would never hurt her.”
The boy felt the fear slipping away from him, replaced by an utter stillness. “You hurt me easily enough. Beat me.”
He pressed his fingers together and the cheap pin began to bend.
“Please!” She had her hands out in front of her like she was trying to feel her way in the dark. “I know I haven’t always treated you as I should have. I don’t have that way about me with children, I never have. When I left home, I didn’t become a governess or a schoolteacher. I became a housekeeper so that I would be at arm’s length from all of that. But then I came here and I found myself in a house run on credit and bad promises. Your mother needed me to keep you busy and I did. Before I knew it, I was doing just about everything for you. I didn’t seek the duty but it was there and who else was going to do it if I didn’t? Your father? He spent most of his time in Lincolnshire trying to hold things together. There was little money to pay my wages, let alone a nanny to take proper care of you.”
It was all so wrong, so awful and untrue and wicked. I do so want to love him but it doesn’t come easily. They were Ruth’s horrid words. His mother did love him, she did want to be with him, she hadn’t left him in the dead of night and gone abroad. It was all Ruth, every bit of it.
So he said, “Murderer.”
The pin snapped easily enough, bending quickly, the thin metal buckling, then splitting down the middle.
She flew at him, her face a mask of such fury it hardly looked like her. Samuel took off, running for the door. But Ruth was too quick. She grabbed the back of his head, catching his hair. She pulled with such force he reeled back, slamming into the side table, his ribs flushed with pain, the skin splitting on his arm.
“You’re right!” Ruth turned and nodded her head, panting loudly. “I killed her. What use was she to you? Margot Clay wasn’t a real mother, not like I was.”
Samuel was still on the ground and something about hearing the truth, the heartbreaking truth, numbed the pain and fixed him to the spot.
“Didn’t I do all the taking care of, all the cleaning up after, all the tending to?” Ruth sniffed, her top lip curling. “I did everything while your mother did her best to pretend you didn’t exist. Then she tells me I’m to be let go. Can you imagine? After all my years of faithful service? So I let her go.” Ruth waved her hand in the air. “All gone.”
The boy began to cry. “No.”
“Oh, yes. Poisoned her tea, I did. Then I had William help me drag her down to the river by Braddon Hall. Stuffed her in a laundry bag, loaded her up with stones and pushed her in.” Ruth smirked. “She was made of stone and she sank like one.”
“I hate you!”
He got to his feet and charged toward her, his arms flailing about. Ruth tried to push him away but he was a wild thing, kicking and punching. When Ruth grabbed his neck, he sunk his teeth into her arm. She cried out and brought her fist down on his face. Samuel stumbled, tripping over the bed, and Ruth swooped down and pulled him up by the hair and he saw in that moment that she planned to kill him just as she had his mother.
Ruth’s hand found his throat again and Samuel struck quickly, grabbing the wine bottle and swinging it at her head. The bottle didn’t break but Ruth cried out and that’s when Samuel charged at her, pushing her back. He ran past the desk, bound for the door, but her hand snared the back of his pajama top.
“You devil,” she spat.
She meant to finish him. He knew that. It wasn’t planned, what he did next. Samuel felt her reeling him in and he glimpsed the scissors in the open drawer—just lying there. He reached for them just as Ruth was yanking him back. She spun him around and, as she did, he lifted the blades. Just like that, they found a place in her chest. Ruth took one sharp breath, like someone had just splashed cold water on her face.
Samuel pulled the scissors out and blood seeped across the gray nightgown like a stain. Ruth’s eyes were wide and pierced but no sound came out.
The boy looked down at the scissors, then up at Ruth, not sure if he could believe what he was seeing. Ruth’s legs gave out and she dropped all at once to the floor, her hand pressed to the bleeding wound on her chest.
“Samuel.” Her voice had lost its violence. “Please, Samuel...help me.”
The boy stepped back. “You killed Mother.”
She was shaking her head and a cry came up and out of her. “I was angry at you...that’s all. I didn’t harm your mother...” She gulped, her eyes shutting with the pain. “I was angry and I said the one thing I knew would hurt you the most.”
Now it was Samuel who was shaking his head. “Mother loves me. You took her away.”
“I didn’t, child.” Blood oozed around her fingers. “I didn’t kill her. Help me, please.”
“I won’t.”
With a great shudder, Ruth used her free arm to push herself up. She got to her knees, her pale face a knot of pain. “Your mother is alive, Samuel. She’s alive.”
“Lies,” said the boy.
Using the bed, Ruth found a way to her feet, but her head seemed to whirl and she stumbled, falling over the desk. Samuel ran from the room then, still holding the scissors. He feared that Ruth would grab them and murder him just as she had his mother and he also feared that if he stayed she would spin her story and twist his thoughts. Ruth had murdered his mother. She wrote the postcards and that beastly letter.
If you only knew how wretched I feel when he is clinging to me and calling for me over and over.
They were Ruth’s words. She wanted him to believe that his mother hated having him close. That his love for her was a great burden she hadn’t the strength to carry.
I feel as if I cannot breathe.
His mother loved him best of all.
I feel as if I am being pulled under the waves.
It was all a pack of lies.
You wanted so much of her, following her around, clinging to her like a monkey on a vine, and it suffocated her.
It was all Ruth, the whole wicked thing.
As Samuel ran, he heard Ruth call out from behind him. He guessed she had made it out into the corridor. He didn’t look back but he understood she was coming after him. Hunting him. Not ever stopping. Because that’s what killers do.
“Samuel, come back!”
Her soul was black. Black as night. So black that she was glad that her father had killed himself and so black that she had killed Samuel’s mother. Taken her away from him and then tried to make him believe that it was his mother who wanted to be far from him. That she went all the way to America and hadn’t written to him once. That she couldn’t bear to be near him.
I do so want to love him but it doesn’t come easily.
There wasn’t a mother in the world that didn’t want to be near her child. He knew that. Mothers love you and take care of you and fret awfully when you were far from them or even in the next room. Mothers love their children; they don’t have a choice about it.
I feel as if I cannot breathe...
Ruth thought he would be stupid enough to think his mother never took to him. That she was always unthreading his hands from around her waist, always pushing him away, always running from him.
I feel as if I am being pulled under the waves.
Death was the thing keeping her from Samuel. Death was the only thing that could have.
“Samuel.” Ruth was gasping. “Samuel, stop!”
The boy looked back. Ruth was halfway down the corridor, the front of her nightdress soaked in blood, her body slumped against the wall. And he saw in her agony, the blood and the feebleness, that it was Ruth’s violence that had felled her. He had done what he had to do to stop her. His mother deserved nothing less.
The boy ran across the landing and took to the stairs. He didn’t know where he was going, he just knew that he was getting away from the butcher who had taken everything good from him. Who had tried to turn his mother into something she wasn’t. A mother who didn’t want him to visit her in Bath. A mother who wished to be anywhere but with him. A mother who would sail to America for one hundred and twenty-one days and never once care enough to write. Such a woman could never be his mother. She would be a monster.
As Samuel charged down the stairs, he saw that the front door was open. He saw the bags upon the floor and the fluttering of her yellow dress, like the wings of a bird, and heard the unmistakable music of her voice.
“It’s such a glorious morning, I decided to walk from the station.”
The sunlight spilled in and pushed all around her and she glowed and shimmered as if she and the sunrise were one and the same. Like a ghost or something.
I do so want to love him but it doesn’t come easily.
The boy didn’t know if she was real or make-believe. He only knew that if she were there, really there, then she must have been away. Away for all that time and in her absence, her silence, this great emptiness had grown up inside of him.
I do so want to love him...
And this emptiness had made his thoughts sickly and his heart ache.
I do so want to love him but it doesn’t come easily.
He heard Ruth calling his name from the top of the stairs. She had been right about everything? The lies weren’t lies at all. His mother looked at him and then at Ruth, the smile slipping from her face. He could feel the scissors in his hand, his fingers curled tightly around them. The boy’s mind, a malignant thing, grew quiet and still then. Perhaps he didn’t understand what it all meant. He only knew he was running at her and that it was too late to stop.
34
The room was bare, just a table and a few chairs. Two cups sat on the table, both tea, one white and one black. Ruth was on one side and Detective Rowe on the other. She had a handbag perched on her lap and was wearing a gray dress and a small black hat.
“Thank you for taking the time to come down, Miss Tupper,” said the detective.
“I don’t recall being given a choice.”
“It’s what happens in an investigation. I’m sure you understand we still have questions.”
“I don’t doubt that, Detective, but this is the third time I’ve been interrogated, and I can assure you, my answers will be the same as they were the last time and the time before that.”
The boy sat on a chair outside. He had his favorite red fighter plane in his hand and if you looked at him you might think he was admiring it. But he wasn’t. The door was closed—it always was—but as the room was little more than an empty box, the voices carried right to him.
Detective Rowe lit another cigarette and took a long drag. He was neatly dressed in a dark suit and his face was almost handsome, but his teeth were starting to yellow, which did him no favors. “Let’s go back to Sunday, September the twenty-fourth. What can you tell me about that morning?”
“It was like any other as I’ve said over and again. I got up, got dressed and then saw to breakfast.”
“And the boy?”
“Samuel woke at the usual time, right with the sun. We spoke upstairs, briefly. I reminded him to finish his homework and to clean up his bedroom and then I went downstairs to the kitchen. Samuel came down not long after and we ate breakfast together.”
“No one came to the door?”
“Not a soul.”
“Did you venture outside at all?”
“Not until lunchtime.” Ruth was wearing gloves and her fingers were locked together. “I had to go into the village and make a delivery to Mrs. Pryce, the reverend’s wife.”
The detective looked down at the notes in front of him. “Mrs. Pryce said you had hurt your shoulder.”
“Yes.” Ruth straightened her back. “I slipped in the bath the night before, nothing serious.”
“Mrs. Pryce said you seemed to be in a lot of pain.”
“Not really. As
I’ve told you before, it was just a cut and luckily Samuel helped me bandage it and the wound healed quickly. Though why my injured shoulder would be of any interest to you, I can’t imagine.”
The detective looked at Ruth for a long moment. Then he said, “Samuel didn’t go with you?”
“Where?”
“To make the delivery to Mrs. Pryce.”
“No, I told him to stay at the house and finish his schoolwork—he had a psalm to write. I was gone less than an hour.”
“While you were out, you didn’t see any sign of Mrs. Clay?”
“No, I did not. Detective Rowe, with great respect, what is it you think I’m keeping from you?”
The detective stubbed out his cigarette. “We know that Mrs. Clay boarded the overnight train from London on Saturday, September the twenty-third, and we know she got off at Penzance around six on Sunday morning and then boarded another train to the village. She told a porter to send her trunks up to the house and she left the station with two small bags and an umbrella.”
“Yes, I know the story, Detective.”
“That was three and a half months ago, Miss Tupper, and there’s been no sign of Mrs. Clay since. The last sighting we have of her is a witness who saw her entering the woods across from the station.”
“Then look for her there.”
“We have.” Detective Rowe picked at his front tooth. “Your mistress seems to have vanished into a puff of smoke. But people don’t just disappear, Miss Tupper.”
“Yes, I realize that, Detective Rowe, but if you think I’m hiding her away, then you are sorely mistaken.” She was scowling. “Though you should know that better than anyone. You’ve searched the house high and low.”
“All right, then, Miss Tupper, what do you think happened to her?”
Ruth cleared her throat. “I wouldn’t know about that. What I do know is that Mrs. Clay had a world of trouble and a gift for running away from it.”
“Seems to me she was in America to try and fix her troubles.”
“From what you tell me, Mrs. Clay’s trip wasn’t a great success. Isn’t it a fact that she couldn’t raise the money she was after?”
The Boy at the Keyhole Page 18