“You have to promise me you’ll do what you can to protect me.”
“I promise,” he said.
She sighed. And began to talk.
The journalist sent a telegram to the editor of the Freeman’s Journal.
Scoop. Have picture. She is talking. Waiting on family to agree to interview too.
After the post office he walked to a pleasant-looking bar in the centre of the town, where he ordered a pint of stout and began to write up the copy in his notebook. He always got a feeling, in his gut, when he was about to uncover something big.
He chuckled as he thought of the Irish Times coverage, their articles describing the inside of the house, interviewing the man who had found the bodies, the eerie chill of the room where James Martin had slept, where his babies had been born, where he had likely perished, his body contorted, suffocating, poisoned.
Their coverage had added a certain appeal to the case and a flurry of letters to not only the Times, but to the Journal too.
What sort of Ireland were they living in at all?
Had no one care of the immortal divinity of these precious souls?
It was Eliza’s letter that had set his editor’s heart racing.
There was a Maggie who worked here at the house where I am a maidservant. She was a suspicious person and on more than one occasion we caught her interfering with the children’s food.
One of our babies perished. I always thought she might have had something to do with it. She left in a hurry last year, and she mentioned to me that she had a job lined up with another family. I wonder if they could be the same person?
A star witness, found and interviewed by them. By him.
He thought of all his front-page articles, which he’d cut out and stuck to the walls in his bare flat. They were yellow now, curling at the edges, the only decoration in the damp room. This one would need to be framed.
The girl, once she got talking, fed him all the details he needed. He’d posed the questions so that the right emotion poured from her.
“What if she does it again?”
“She must be stopped.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
“Because she’s a cold-blooded killer. An evil, poisonous woman.”
Evil, poisonous woman.
A gorgeous phrase, a description that would stick, now that they had a witness, someone who actually knew her, who could vouch for her true wickedness.
He wrote out the headlines in his notebook.
Hunt for Silent Killer Continues
Wicklow Baby May Also Have Perished at Hands of Cruel Killer
A tingle ran up his back, a mixture of the gulps of stout and the deliciousness of the story.
As the interview proceeded and he gained her confidence, Eliza had lost her fearfulness.
Yes, she would do all she could to help bring the woman to justice.
If a photograph of herself would help, outside the house where they both worked, she would do it.
And yes, if he really wanted her to bring these shocking revelations to her master and mistress, she would.
She told him to come back the next morning, by which time she would have spoken to them direct. It was the least she could do to have that woman stopped.
His colleagues at the Times and Independent would be sick with envy. How fortunate that the girl had written to the Journal and not them.
Exclusive. He wrote the word across the top of his notes and underlined it.
God bless Eliza.
When he left the pub, wobbling a little, he stopped and clutched at a house wall to steady his gait. He looked up the street, his eyes searching for a sign that read Guest House.
A large brown dog barked and crossed the road, trotting along beside him as he walked.
He reached down and ruffled the mastiff’s ears.
It was the dog from the house, still loose, less fearsome-looking now that they were acquainted.
A dog would be a lovely companion. After this case was over, he’d get a pup.
It’d be less hassle than a wife anyway.
Chapter 36
The Nanny
James Martin was a country man, soft and stupid. Christy had got that tip-off from someone inside, someone who told him about his cousin, a man with twins whose wife had just died, living in a lovely big country house in the Strawberry Beds.
Maggie had turned up at the right time, telling him she was in the area looking for work and she’d heard about his tragic loss and if he liked she could give him a hand, for bed and board, no payment or anything.
He thought she’d fallen out of heaven. When she touched his crotch one night after filling him full of port, he knew she had.
James was a different man to William D. Thomas though. William was a much more refined man, educated, learned. She’d had to move slower in Drogheda, taking her time, allowing their friendship to grow naturally.
There’d be no groping under the kitchen table after a rake of drink at Number 43, Laurence Street.
She thought about the twins, buried, rotting, undiscovered in that garden, beloved of James. She thought of that man who had bought the house and his family running around, no idea what lay under the earth, hidden in the soil. The thought made her smirk.
That man had surprised her that day, turning up on the doorstep looking to view the house and the twins still upstairs in their cradles. She’d put the sign up only the day before. She hadn’t expected any viewers so soon.
She knew by him that he’d buy. She knew by his itching and hovering and clearing his throat as he spoke that he’d never lived in a house like that before and with the sale price she was going to give him, there was no way he could refuse.
Five kids he said he had.
So up she went to the twins, lying there asleep, the medicine she’d been adding to their bottles keeping them asleep most of the time anyway.
She’d been building it up, letting it work its way through them, poisoning them and sedating them at the same time so she wouldn’t have to listen to their squalling.
Jesus, she was tired of those babies. They never stopped. Bawling, roaring. In unison. Apart. It had taken all her will to pretend to James that she cared for them.
Twins were always greeted as a miracle. But she saw it as a curse, a double punishment for some sort of sin the parents must have committed in the past. No sooner had you one changed and fed and settled, then the other one would start the other off again. You constantly had one under your arm, bouncing them up and down, shushing.
She didn’t bother with the poison, there wasn’t time when that man called. Instead she put a bundled blanket over their mouths, holding it there until their tiny struggles stopped and when she took the blanket away there was no breath left at all.
Snuffed out, just like that.
Already there’d been too many nosy neighbours stopping by and asking questions about James and wasn’t it strange how he’d gone so quick in the end, and them not getting to see him or know much about it?
That man knocking on the door, looking to buy the house was the signal to get it all done and quickly.
The suitcase was a nice touch, she thought, taking them from the house, completely unseen.
It had taken her a while to dig that big hole. The earth was hard and frosty. She poured a kettle of boiling water over the muckiest patch she could see in Jame’s vegetable corner and used the trowel to hack at the soil.
The sweat had run down her temples and wet her nose, stinging her face. But it had worked out well. Once she got under the surface, the clay was softer, James late winter digging a blessing.
And when they were in there, when she’d finally tossed them in and shovelled the clay back down on top and smoothed the whole thing over, she felt satisfied.
James was gone, the twins were gone and if this man was going to buy the house like he probably would, then she would have a good big lump of the money they needed.
The money for her and
Christy’s future. For their new life.
It was meant to work out like that, that man turning up all ready to buy the house, not even asking any questions or minding about bank accounts. He just couldn’t wait to get his hands on the deed. All he saw was him and his kids moving in between those walls, running around the garden, looking out at the countryside.
Christy was happy she was done. He’d been getting impatient with her, saying there was too long of a gap between the death of James and her staying on at the house. She needed to be getting out of there.
But she wasn’t sure where she was to go. It wouldn’t be long until Christy’s release and she was thinking, if she could just sit tight, stay at the Strawberry Beds for a bit longer, then when he got out they could escape together.
Until Christy wrote about another stroke of luck.
The house where his ‘whore of a sister’ worked was looking for a nanny.
The mother died. She’s up the walls, says Susan. Notice going in Drogheda Conservative next week. Get yourself to Drogheda, good woman!
Good woman.
Another man without a wife. Another child without a mother.
A chance to secure justice against the woman who had ruined Christy’s life.
And she would visit Kitty again and give her back what was rightfully hers.
It was time to go home.
ab
“Is it inappropriate? I can wear something else,” she blustered, touching the diamond earrings. “It’s just, they’re exquisite. It’s such a shame to see them lying up. I thought by giving them an outing again it would be a tribute.”
Margaret was dressed in a formal dinner dress, her hair pinned up, Anna’s drop diamond earrings glinting in her lobes.
His face had fallen when he’d seen her, dressed for dinner, in the nursery.
He took her hand and kissed it.
“I couldn’t think of a more fitting model,” he said. “But it’s not that, Margaret.”
He paused and looked her in the eyes, the smile he’d given her fading.
“I’m afraid you won’t be able to come to dinner tonight. Mrs. Winchester has invited guests and I’m pretty sure, from the sound of it, a potential bride for me. I just can’t broach the subject of our relationship tonight. I thought I could, but …”
Her expression dropped.
“William ...”
“I know,” he said. “I know. But tonight is not the right time. It’s the first time I’ve been back here in so long. And Anna Genevieve’s first proper visit too. I think it was a bit premature of us. I think it wouldn’t be fair to Anna’s memory.”
Margaret bowed her head.
“Keep the earrings. I’ve been wondering what to do with all her things. I think Anna would be glad that they were being made use of. But please, don’t wear them here. Not yet.”
“You’re ashamed of me.”
“I’m not ashamed of you, Margaret!” said William. “But things are a bit delicate. The Winchesters are grieving for their only daughter. We need to take things slowly.”
“This isn’t what we discussed,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “But I don’t want to go through it with the Winchesters tonight. In the coming weeks, we will arrange something else. Something away from Swinford perhaps.”
She was quiet. Sullen.
“I don’t wish to do anything to dishonour your wife in any way.”
He wrapped his arms around her, his fingers falling to the bustle of her dress. They kissed, until she pulled away, leaving him wanting more.
She could see it in his eyes, feel it against her, in his embrace.
Her soft approach had worked. She had, in so many small ways, become everything that his wife had been: a companion, a confidante and lately, even her image.
She had gone through Anna’s things and started to wear them now. Jewellery, blouses, her powders, brooch pins. She studied a picture of Anna, framed on the dressing table in William’s room, a picture she knew William stared at every day.
She copied her hair in the photo, curling and pinning her fringe in the exact same fashion.
She bought a watercolour and had it framed, presenting it as another gift to William, mentioning how the painting made her think of a summer’s day, that summer’s day when they took the river cruise.
That was the day he had fallen in love with her.
In the end, his proposal had been swift, by the fire, after a full bottle of wine.
“If you are agreeable, I would like to propose marriage,” he said. “It would all be out in the open then and we could deal with any fallout from any of our peers ... from the Winchesters.”
“That would make me most happy, William.”
“You would be agreeable?”
“I would.”
“Well, then that’s settled then. We will organise a quiet wedding, as soon as possible.”
He went upstairs and came back with an emerald ring, mounted with two amber stones and surrounded by diamonds. It glinted in the candlelight in a blue velvet box.
“This was Anna’s,” he said. “You will be able to tell Anna Genevieve as she grows that her mother wore it before you, and now you wear it as a sign of the great love her father felt for her mother. And now, you.”
“It’s beautiful,” she said, drawing in a breath and touching her chest in admiration.
She slipped it on her finger, where it hung, heavy.
It was she who suggested they break the news when they visited Swinford Hall with Anna Genevieve. She said they should tell the Winchesters together. That way, they couldn’t talk him out of it.
“You can bring me to dinner, present me. There will be nothing they can say then.”
He had agreed, but she’d sensed his nervousness. All the way over in the carriage, she could feel it.
He was too soft.
And now he had gone back on his word. Being here, in their company, listening to their endless questions and statements about their ‘darling Anna’ and ‘bonny Anna Genevieve’. It had affected him. He wasn’t brave enough to go through with their plan. He wasn’t even brave enough to stop Mrs. Winchester speaking down to her, like a lowly servant.
With William’s arms wrapped around her back, she buried her head into his collarbone and sighed. She couldn’t wait to be with Christy again. To feel his touch.
She looked forward to her life ahead with him. Whatever it would be, wherever it would be. Maybe not even in this country, maybe America called them.
She’d put that in her next letter ... Christy I’ve been thinking of America, what say you?
She hoped he’d say yes. She was tiring of Ireland with its grey streets and its gossipmongers and interwoven families all bearing down. In America she’d arrive as a lady. There’d be no workhouse past, no whore of a mother, no lowly nanny status for her.
Lady Margaret.
She felt Christy was near. She could feel it, low, in her stomach.
He was coming.
She took the solution and measured out the drops. One, two, three. She watched it curl into the milk on the spoon and disappear. No trace. She tipped the spoon into the Anna Genevieve’s bottle and put the teat back on and shook it.
Then she looked at the baby in the cot, the same cot her mother had once lain in.
From a pocket, secretly sewn into her case, she removed the green box of rat poison.
The packaging sent her pulse raising. Goose bumps prickled her skin.
She’d show them.
They didn’t deserve to have a lovely evening, fa-faaing around the table. A bride for William? Who did they think they were, matching him up like that? And why didn’t he stand up for her?
All those sweet nothings and still he couldn’t present her, like they had agreed.
He was a coward.
She took the teat off the milk bottle again and tipped a tiny amount of the poison power into the milk.
Their dinner would be ruined. They’d proba
bly call the doctor.
She took the baby from her cot and nursed her, humming an old Irish air, watching as the baby suckled on the teat, the milk bubbling, flowing into her mouth.
Soon she would be arching her back, her stomach a knot, her bowels caught up.
She thought of how small the organs were, inside, how they’d fight the poison, doing their best to rid themselves of it, her towellings an explosion, the horrible stink a sign of the duress her little body was under.
William would be devastated.
But that was how it worked. If he had treated her better, taken her to dinner as they’d planned, let her dress up and present herself like the lady she was – if he had taken on the Winchesters, told them of their engagement, faced up to the situation like a man – well, then, she wouldn’t have had to punish his baby.
She’d been good to William, keeping the child quiet for months now, giving her just the right amount of medicine every day to keep her sedated, to let her sleep most of the time.
Tonight, that would change.
Tonight, he would be taught a lesson.
Chapter 37
The Finding of the Clue
“How would you describe her cheekbones? Were they set high or was there more fat to her face?”
The man was feeling quite fed up now. The fatigue of the past few weeks had finally caught up on him. He was tired from work, from the long journey in and out of the city, from the barrage of questions and conversations about the whole blasted thing. Still they kept coming.
The artist opened a large sketchpad and flicked rapidly through a range of faces, already drawn on the pages.
“Were they like this, or more like this?”
It was hard to remember the woman if truth be told. He hadn’t spent that much time in her presence. He had a picture of her in his mind, one that he had gone over, that had formed and settled into a witch-like, hard-faced woman. Fed by press reports. Confirmed by nightmarish dreams.
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