Alias Grace (44 page)

“I know it, Sir.”

“He said you were standing by the pump. He said you told him that Mr. Kinnear was not back yet, and that Nancy was gone over to the Wrights’.”

“I cannot account for it, Sir.”

“He said you were well, and in good spirits. He said you were better dressed than usual, and were wearing white stockings. He implied they were Nancy’s.”

“I was there in the courtroom, Sir. I heard him say it; although the stockings were my own. But by then he had forgot all of his former loving sentiments towards me, and only wished to damage me, and to hang me if possible. But there is nothing I can do about what other people say.”

Her tone is so dejected that Simon feels a tender pity for her. He has an impulse to take her in his arms, to soothe her, to stroke her hair.

“Well, Grace,” he says briskly, “I can see you are tired. We will continue with your story tomorrow.”

“Yes, Sir. I hope I will have the strength.”

“Sooner or later we will get to the bottom of it.”

“I hope so, Sir,” she says wanly. “It would be a great relief to me, to know the whole truth at last.”

T
he leaves of the trees are already taking on an August look – lustreless, dusty, and limp – although it isn’t yet August. Simon walks back slowly through the wilting afternoon heat. He carries with him the silver candlestick; he didn’t think to use it. It’s dragging on his arm; in fact, both of his arms hold a curious tension, as if he’s been pulling hard on a heavy rope. What was he expecting? The missing memory, of course: those few crucial hours. Well, he hadn’t got it.

He finds himself remembering an evening long ago, when he was still an undergraduate at Harvard. He’d gone to New York on an excursion with his father, who was still rich then and also still alive; they’d seen the opera. It was Bellini’s
Sonnambula:
a simple and chaste village girl, Amina, is found asleep in the count’s bedroom, having walked there unconsciously; her fiancé and the villagers denounce her as a whore, despite the Count’s protests, which are based on his superior scientific knowledge; but when Amina is seen walking in her sleep across a perilous bridge, which collapses behind her into the rushing stream, her innocence is proven beyond a doubt and she awakes to restored happiness.

A parable of the soul, as his Latin teacher had pointed out so sententiously,
Amina
being a crude anagram for
anima
. But why, Simon has asked himself, was the soul depicted as unconscious? And, even more intriguingly: while Amina slept, who was doing the walking? It’s a question which now holds implications for him which are far more pressing.

Was Grace unconscious at the time she claimed, or was she fully awake, as Jamie Walsh testified? How much of her story can he allow himself to believe? Does he need a grain of salt, or two, or three? Is it a real case of amnesia, of the somnambulistic type, or is he the victim of a cunning imposture? He cautions himself against absolutism: why should she be expected to produce nothing but the pure, entire, and unblemished truth? Anyone in her position would select and rearrange, to give a positive impression. In her favour, much of what she’s told him accords with her printed Confession; but is that really in her favour? Possibly it accords too well. He wonders if she’s been studying from the same text he himself has been using, the better to convince him.

The difficulty is that he wants to be convinced. He wants her to be Amina. He wants her to be vindicated.

He must be careful, he tells himself. He must draw back. Looked at objectively, what’s been going on between them, despite her evident anxiety over the murders and her surface compliance, has been a contest of wills. She hasn’t refused to talk – far from it. She’s told him a great deal; but she’s told him only what she’s chosen to tell. What he wants is what she refuses to tell; what she chooses perhaps not even to know. Knowledge of guilt, or else of innocence: either could be concealed. But he’ll pry it out of her yet. He’s got the hook in her mouth, but can he pull her out? Up, out of the abyss, up to the light. Out of the deep blue sea.

He wonders why he’s thinking in such drastic terms. He means her well, he tells himself. He thinks of it as a rescue, surely he does.

But does she? If she has anything to hide, she may want to stay in the water, in the dark, in her element. She may be afraid she won’t be able to breathe, otherwise.

Simon tells himself to stop being so extreme and histrionic. It may well be that Grace is a true amnesiac. Or simply contrary. Or simply guilty.

She could of course be insane, with the astonishingly devious plausibility of the experienced maniac. Some of her memories, especially those of the day of the murders, would suggest a fanaticism of the religious variety. However, those same recollections could as easily be interpreted as the naive superstitions and fears of a simple soul. What he wants is certainty, one way or the other; and that is precisely what she’s withholding from him.

Perhaps it’s his methods that have been at fault. Certainly his technique of suggestion has not been productive: the vegetables have been a dismal failure. Perhaps he’s been too tentative, too accommodating; perhaps something more drastic may be in order. Perhaps he should encourage Jerome DuPont in his neuro-hypnotic experiment, and arrange to witness it himself, and even choose the questions. He distrusts the method. Still, something new might emerge; something might be discovered which he’s so far been unable to discover by himself. It would at least be worth trying.

He reaches the house, and fumbles in his pocket for the key, but Dora opens the door for him. He regards her with disgust: a woman so porcine, and, in this weather, so distinctly sweaty, should not be permitted out in public. She’s a libel on the entire sex. He himself has been instrumental in bringing her back to work here – he’s practically bribed her to do it – but this doesn’t mean he likes her any better than he ever did. Nor she him, judging from the venomous look she gives him, out of her small red eyes.

“Herself wants to see you,” she says, jerking her head towards the back of the house. Her manners are as democratic as ever.

Mrs. Humphrey was strongly opposed to Dora’s return, and can hardly bear to be in the same room with her, which is not surprising. However, Simon had pointed out that he cannot be expected to function without tidiness and order, and someone must do the work of the house, and as no one else was to be had at the moment, Dora would have to do. As long as Dora was paid, he’d said, she would be tractable enough, although politeness would be too much to expect; all of which has proven to be the case.

“Where is she?” says Simon. He shouldn’t have said
she;
it sounds too intimate.
Mrs. Humphrey
would have been better.

“Lying on the sofa, I guess,” says Dora with contempt. “Same as always.”

But when Simon enters the parlour – still eerily bare of furniture, although some of the original pieces have mysteriously reappeared – Mrs. Humphrey is standing by the fireplace, with one arm and hand draped gracefully over the white mantelpiece. The hand with the lace handkerchief. He smells violets.

“Dr. Jordan,” she says, breaking her pose, “I thought you might care to dine with me tonight, as a poor recompense for all the efforts you have made on my behalf. I do not like to seem deficient in gratitude. Dora has prepared a little cold chicken.” She enunciates each word carefully, as if it’s a speech she has memorized.

Simon declines, with as much politeness as he can summon. He thanks her very much, but this evening he is engaged. This verges on the truth: he has half accepted an invitation of Miss Lydia’s, to join a party of young people in a rowing excursion on the inner harbour.

Mrs. Humphrey accepts his refusal with a gracious smile, and says that they will do it another time. Something in the way she’s holding her body – that, and the slow deliberation of her speech – strikes
him as odd. Has the woman been drinking? Her eyes have a fixed stare, and her hands are trembling slightly.

Once upstairs, he opens his leather satchel. Everything seems in order. His three bottles of laudanum are there: none is emptier than it should be. He uncorks them, tastes the contents: one is almost pure water. She’s been raiding his supplies, God only knows for how long. The afternoon headaches take on a different significance. He should have known: with a husband like that she was bound to seek out a crutch of some kind. When in funds she no doubt buys it, he thinks; but cash has been scarce, and he has been careless. He ought to have locked his room, but now is too late to begin.

There is, of course, no way he can mention it to her. She is a fastidious woman. To accuse her of theft would be not only brutal, but vulgar. Still, he’s been taken.

Simon goes on the rowing trip. The night is warm and calm, and there’s moonlight. He drinks a little champagne – there only is a little – and sits in the same rowboat as Lydia, and flirts with her in a half-hearted way. She at least is normal and healthy, and pretty too. Possibly he should propose to her. He thinks she might accept. Cart her home to propitiate his mother, hand her over, let the two of them work on his well-being.

It would be one way of deciding his own fate, or settling his own hash; or getting himself out of harm’s way. But he won’t do it; he’s not that lazy, or weary; not yet.

W
hat McDermott told me later was that after he’d fired the gun at me, and I’d fallen down in a dead faint, he pumped a bucket of cold water and threw it over me, and gave me some water with peppermint to drink, and I revived immediately, and was as good as new and quite cheerful, and stirred up the fire and cooked supper for him, which was ham and eggs, with tea after, and a shot of whisky to steady us; and we ate it together with a good will, and clinked our glasses, and drank to the success of our venture. But I can’t remember any of that at all. I could not have acted so heartlessly, with Mr. Kinnear lying dead in the cellar, not to mention Nancy, who must have been dead too, though I didn’t know for certain what had become of her. But McDermott was a great liar.

I must have lain unconscious for a long time, for when I woke up the light was already fading. I was lying on my back, on the bed in my own bedchamber; and my cap was off and my hair was all disarranged and down about my shoulders, and also it was damp, and the upper part of my dress as well, and that must have been from the
water that James had thrown over me; so that part at least of what he said was true. I lay there on the bed, trying to remember what had happened, as I couldn’t recollect how I’d got into the room. James must have carried me in, for the door was standing open, and if I’d walked in by myself I would have locked it.

I meant to get up and latch the door, but my head was aching and the room was very hot and airless; and I fell asleep again, and must have tossed restlessly, for when I woke the bedclothes were all rumpled and the coverlet had fallen off onto the floor. This time I woke suddenly and sat bolt upright, and despite the heat I was in a cold sweat. The reason for it was that there was a man standing in the room looking down at me. It was James McDermott, and I thought he had come in to strangle me in my sleep, having killed the others. My voice was all dried up in my throat with terror, and I couldn’t speak a word.

But he said, quite kindly, did I feel better now after my rest; and I found my voice again and said I did. I knew it would be a mistake to show too much fear, and to lose control of myself; for then he’d think he couldn’t trust me or depend on me to keep my nerve, and would be afraid I would break down and begin crying or screaming when there were others present, and tell everything; which was why he had shot at me; and if he thought that, he would do away with me as quick as winking, rather than have any witness.