Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles (37 page)

“And I love him, with all my heart.” The maid took her place beside him and slipped her arm through his.

I sat on the edge of her bed and studied them.

They exchanged longing looks, their eyes saying more than their lips ever could.

“But if Mrs. Thurston sacks us now, we cannot afford to
marry,” Emma said. “Just a few more months, miss. That is all we’re asking.”

I sighed. I knew exactly how she felt, the hope, the love, and the strain of waiting.

Caje mistook my sigh for condemnation. “I never touched Emma. I mean, not in that way. I have been a gentleman—and she is a good girl. Good, through and through, miss. Ain’t our fault we fell in love.”

“In eight weeks, I’ll be sixteen. Caje will get a job on the docks. A man promised him one. That’s all we need, a few months. Then we can go to Gretna Green and get married, proper, over in Scotland.”

The desperation saddened me. Why should it be dangerous for them to fall in love? I waved away their concerns with my hand. “I am not here to question you about that. In fact, I wish you both the best. But I do have questions about Selina. Caje, I heard Mr. Biltmore say you were to look after her. What did he mean?”

Caje stared down at his feet, his calloused hands clenching and unclenching at his side.

“Go on,” said Emma, urging him forward. “You can trust her. He don’t like to talk much, miss.”

Haltingly, he said, “I worked for Mr. Biltmore back in Brighton. He got me this position. Told me to watch after his daughter because she were special. Paid me extra for it.”

“Did Mrs. Thurston know what you were supposed to do?”

“No, not at first. She hired me because I said I’d work cheap.”

“The Biltmores tricked Mrs. Thurston, they did,” Emma said. “It was only later that she learned what was what—and oh, but she was fit to be tied, miss. Then the King sent that man around to talk to her, and she, well, she softened right up. Imagine! That girl being part of the royal family! No wonder Selina acted like she did.”

“But my mum still works for the Biltmores, and I did not
want to make them angry with me, because of Ma,” Caje said. “So I kept my mouth shut and my eyes closed.”

“Did you tell Mr. Waverly this?”

His eyes darted frantically toward Emma and back to me. “No. He were supposed to talk to me, but so far I’ve managed to dodge him.”

“I told Caje, I said, ‘There is nothing they can do to you!’ On account of, he was just doing what he was ordered to do, you see? He was working for Mr. Biltmore and the King both, after a manner.” Emma tightened her protective clasp on Caje’s arm.

“So Selina was visiting the King? And only him?”

He and Emma exchanged pained expressions. She nudged him and pulled up an empty crate for him to sit on. “Tell her.”

“As far as I know,” Caje said, taking the seat. “See, in the beginning, I don’t think he believed she was his kin. It took some convincing, I guess. When she first came here, I had to help her get a carriage, and then make sure the front door was unlocked so she could get back in. Then, one day, a man I knew from Brighton came ’round. He gave me a pack of letters for her. From her mother. I think she must have shown them to the King, because soon after that, the King started sending his own carriage for her. I could tell because of the colors, you see. Yellow with maroon blinds. After that, she could come and go as she pleased.” Caje scrubbed at his eyes with his fist and yawned loudly. Poor lad, he must have been bone-tired. Emma, too.

I patted the bed beside me, and she tentatively took a seat. Their regular duties required them both to be up before dawn and stay awake after the house was asleep. Meeting in the middle of the night clearly had taken a toll on both of them.

“No,” Caje continued. “She weren’t no angel. But it weren’t all her fault. Her brothers. They were a bad lot. They taught her tricks. See, she learned from them how to get her way with people.”

“What sort of tricks?”

“Mean ones. She switched out the sugar and the salt, and poor Cook nearly lost her job because the meat was ruined and the tea was spoiled, too. When the girls weren’t paying attention, she’d blotch their work. Because Selina hated it here,” Emma said.

“She thought she should be living in a fine house with lots of servants and be her own mistress.” Caje’s tone grew more urgent. “Her father thought she could do no wrong. Not in his eyes, leastwise. When she was born, she was a late baby—or so my ma said. Everyone adored her. Especially after all those brothers. Then she got awful sick and nearly died. After that, Mr. Biltmore spoiled her something fierce. Because he came so close to losing her. But her brothers were rough with her, and she always wanted to keep up with them. I think that’s how she became so mean, being teased by them.”

“But the King wouldn’t have hurt her, would he?” I was thinking out loud.

“Can’t see why or how. He must have liked her if he kept sending his carriage, right?”

I nodded. “Could a killer have climbed that tree and gotten into the dormitory?”

Emma shook her head. “We had rain all night before Selina died. I didn’t see no water to mop up on the floor by the bed when I went in to clean. If a killer climbed in, wouldn’t he have left a puddle?”

Emma was right: The rain had been heavy. Any intruder from the outside would have left water on the floor, given the heavy rains. There was no way a person could sneak in and out of Alderton House without getting wet. Or without leaving a trail along the way.

So I was back to imagining that the killer had to be someone within these walls. Someone with access to laudanum. Someone strong.

I said good night to the young couple and returned to my
uncomfortable bed. Lying there, trying to get comfortable, and staring up at the ceiling, I went over and over what I knew, what I had learned.

Far too early, the sunlight peeped around the curtains and lighted the heavy bunting from behind. The girls awakened slowly and splashed water on their faces.

Emma came in and avoided looking at me.

“Good morning,” I told her. The lilt in my voice signaled that I harbored no ill will toward her.

She lifted shy eyes to me. “You won’t tell, will you, miss?”

“No.”

Venturing a little smile, she handed me an impressive leather portmanteau.

“Mrs. Thurston wants you to gather Selina’s things from her dresser and put them in her valise.”

I tried to sit up. Instead I could only groan because my back hurt so much from trying to sleep on my uncomfortable mattress. Although I did not reckon on many more nights here, this could not continue. “Emma? Could you help me? I want to switch out this pallet for that one, the one on Selina’s bed.”

She helped me lift the old mattress off my cot and lean it against the wall. I turned and looked down to see a cane resting on the mattress ropes.

“That’s your problem, miss.” Emma nodded toward the object that had caused most of my misery at night. A cane. Two feet long. Three-eighths of an inch in diameter. I picked it up, set it aside, and gestured to Emma that we could return the mattress to its original position.

“Thank you so much,” I said to her. Then I asked in a whisper, “Do you have any idea how that got here?”

“No,” she said, her gaze steady and honest. With that, she left the room.

The girls had turned to watch our housekeeping efforts, and now they stared at the rod.

“Is this the one that was used on you? Nettie? Rose?” I plucked it from the floor and displayed it in my hands. “On your backs? Were all of you struck with this cane?”

None of them spoke. All examined their feet and the floor with great interest.

“
Je ne sais pas
.” Adèle shrugged. “I have never seen that before.”

“Ladies? I asked you a question. Is this the instrument responsible for the marks on your backs?” When no one met my eyes, I said, “Rufina? You are the head girl. Tell me. Was this used to punish you and your friends?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Did Fräulein Hertzog strike you, Nettie? Or you, Rose?”

The two girls exchanged guilty glances at each other, but neither spoke. Nettie bothered a ruffle on her pinafore, a habit she employed as a prelude to evasion. “It is a secret,” she said in a low tone.

“Girls, this is not a secret you should keep. Either you tell me what happened here or we shall all go down and talk to Mrs. Thurston about this.” I did not intend to do any such thing, but leverage was sorely lacking, and any minute Emma might reappear and ask why we weren’t on our way to breakfast. I knew that my best chance to get the girls to talk was right now.

Still, no one spoke.

“Rufina? I am counting on you. Talk to me. I do not intend to punish any of you or share your secret, if I can keep it quiet in good conscience. Rufina, did you strike your mates?”

“Oh no, miss! I would never! Not ever! It was Selina! See, she let us join her club, but only after she punished us with the stick.” Rufina twisted a corner of her pinafore into a tight, angry knot.

“Getting hit was how you joined.” Nettie lifted her chin. “But Fräulein Hertzog caught us and she took the cane away.”

“But Fräulein Hertzog didn’t tell Mrs. Thurston?” I found this confusing.

“No, Miss Eyre. It was right after Mrs. Thurston told her to leave Selina alone. So, see, she couldn’t do much, except make it disappear. That’s why she put it under her mattress.”

“Did Selina’s father beat her?”

“No, it was her brothers who showed her how they got the cane at school,” said Rufina with wide eyes. “That’s how they joined their clubs! And we wanted to be in a club, too.”

“But none of you cried out?”

“Selina tied stockings together—clean ones—and we put them in our mouth to bite down on. See? Her brothers showed her how. Like when the headmaster would strike them. They bite on something. Hard.”

A sick feeling coursed through me and I had to sit down. Edward had told me of such behavior—and its ugly consequences. As young men in boarding school, he and Augie had been hit many times. “Some scars heal,” he had said. “Others never do.”

“Selina never punished me.” Adèle pouted. “I would hate to be hit.”

“That’s because Selina decided you were too young to belong to our club,” Rufina said loftily, but with an air of exaggerated patience.

“But Adela, men like women who submit to them. My mother says so.” Rose gave a knowing nod of her head. “My mother explained that we must do as our husbands command, no matter how disgusting. Each of us has a responsibility to do her duty as an Englishwoman.”

“And Selina must have known what she was on about because the King fancied her mother.” Nettie offered this as incontrovertible truth. “So there you have it.”

I shuddered. This was both unexpected and revolting.

Confounded by these revelations, and amazed by the mixture of confusion, bad information, and general twaddle shared under the guise of wisdom, I said, “We shan’t speak
more of this right now. Rufina, take the others down to breakfast. I shall join all of you later.”

They didn’t move. The girls watched me expectantly.

“Do not worry about the cane. I shall keep your secret. We can talk more about your ideas on marriage and men later. For right now, you must trust me: Selina was wrong. Run along to breakfast, girls.”

With sidewise glances they signaled each other that the worst was over. A collective sigh escaped from my students.
One by one, they walked past me and the dreaded instrument of “duty.” When Nettie closed the door behind her, I sank down onto the frame of my bed and rubbed my temples with my fingertips. My bones ached, I was tired, my heart hurt, and I could not think clearly.

Best to keep busy. I stood up, took a deep breath, and opened Selina’s dresser. Since I had been ordered to pack the girl’s belongings, no one could fault me for inspecting her things. I also planned to take the opportunity to return to the other girls those items that had
not
belonged to Selina.

What a strange and malicious girl she had been!

When I opened the drawer, I found quite a collection of trophies from her misdeeds: the missing German text, several silver forks bearing a royal crest, two lengths of ribbon, a loose stack of papers, a broken nob of china with gold trim and a touch of blue, a paper box with chocolate biscuits inside, and a handful of yellow feathers, which must have come from poor Fräulein’s beloved bird. Under all this was a small packet of letters, tied with a royal blue ribbon. One quick glance told me that they were from His Majesty.

With shaking hands, I read the first one, skipping quickly over the endearments and moving straight to the heart of the message.

I quickly realized there was no reason to keep these. Glancing through the other letters, the sentiments were all the same. One by one I fed them into the flames. But the last one caught my attention: