Victorian Maiden (8 page)

“Your grandfather being Mr Alfred Roberts, the deceased,” Hainsworth interrupted.

“Yes, Detective Sergeant. My aunt left the house when she was still just a girl and we decided that it would…”

“‘We decided'? Dr Roberts… whom do you mean by ‘we'?” Douglas demanded.

“I beg your pardon, Inspector Douglas, I meant ‘I'. I decided that it would be for the best if she were to return here to Sessrum House to live out her dotage with me.”

Douglas regarded him thoughtfully.

“And precisely why did ‘you' decide that would that be for the best, Doctor?”

“It was because my aunt suffers from senile dementia.”

Roberts' voice seemed suddenly stronger, more confident. He was on his home ground.

“She's quite elderly and her condition is deteriorating rapidly. I decided as a psychiatric doctor that it would be better if she lived here, under my direct care. I also brought in a nurse to attend to her daily needs.”

“Very noble of you, I'm sure. And this happened only yesterday, as Mr Fox has so kindly told us already. But then tell me, why would you need, let me see, commissioned investigators, of Mr and Mrs Fox' esteemed reputation, just to fetch your elderly aunt to come and live with you? Surely any common cabriolet driver could have fetched her for a couple of shillings?”

Roberts hesitated and threw a second pleading glance at Atticus.

“Miss Wilson spent many years at addresses in Starbeck and Knaresborough, Inspector,” Atticus replied for him. “Dr Roberts was not yet born at the time that she left this house, and the family had long since lost all contact. We needed to trace her whereabouts before we could bring her back.”

Douglas' gaze shifted between Atticus and Roberts, and then fell on Lucie.

He said: “I have been a serving policeman for well over five-and-twenty years now, Mrs Fox. During that time, I have not been idle. No ma'am. I have developed many, very useful skills. One of those skills is the uncanny ability to know when someone is not being entirely straightforward with me, and I am getting that distinct impression now, with your husband and with your client.”

Lucie smiled disarmingly.

“Very well, Inspector: What my husband and our principal have not yet had chance to tell you is that Miss Wilson has been living in workhouses since she left Sessrum House. Those were the addresses in Starbeck and Knaresborough my husband was referring to. She didn't care at all for her uncle who by all accounts was very unkind to her, and she fled to the poor-law when she was just fifteen years old.”

“Ah, at last… Finally we make progress. Thank you, Mrs Fox. That wasn't too difficult now, was it? Don't be shy of telling us the family secrets. We're quite used to them. I always say, don't I, Hainsworth, that there's many a dark secret to be found lurking behind the prettily-painted doors of the well-to-do.”

He leaned back into the chaise longue and rested his hands comfortably behind his head.

“Do go on with your tale, Doctor. It's becoming quite intriguing.”

Roberts licked his lips.

“Very well, Inspector: Sister Lovell, the nurse who came with Aunt Elizabeth from… well, from the Union Workhouse at Knaresborough, put her to her bed last night and then retired to her own room, which is just adjacent to it. I sat in here for a while and had a glass or two of brandy before going to my own room in the main house.”

“Your own room in the main house?”

Douglas' raised eyebrows and accusing tone turned the statement into a stinging question.

“Yes, Detective Inspector. My aunt's, and Sister Lovell's, and indeed my grandfather's rooms, are all in this newer part of the house: It was built by my grandfather many years ago, and he called it the Annexe. Aunt Elizabeth was accommodated here after her mama died and she came to live with him. She occupies the very same room now.”

“Why, wasn't the house big enough to accommodate her already?”

“It was quite big enough to house one little girl, Inspector, yes. But my grandfather was well known for taking in other children off the street. He also liked to entertain certain friends of his here, and he had the Annexe especially built to accommodate it all.”

“Indeed, and it's a fascinating tale to be sure, but are you going to tell me what happened last night or not?”

Roberts' exhaled sharply, as if in grateful relief.

“Of course, Inspector, I'm sorry. This morning, I was awoken just after dawn by Petty, my butler. He had been doing his usual early morning inspection round of the house when he discovered my grandfather's body lying on the floor of my Aunt Elizabeth's bedroom, covered in blood. He had been stabbed to death.”

Douglas was no longer looking comfortable or relaxed; now he was sitting bolt upright, watching Roberts as a terrier might watch a rat.

“And where was your aunt then?” he asked.

“She was sitting on her bed, still covered in my grandfather's blood, singing a lullaby. And she was smiling, Inspector. For the first time that anyone can recall, she was actually smiling.”

“Smiling and lullabies be damned,” growled Douglas, “Where is this Elizabeth Wilson now?”

“She is being washed and changed by her nurse. She will be back presently.”

“But you would swear to the fact that she was heavily bloodstained when your butler found her?”

Roberts nodded.

“I would of course, Detective Inspector. You may have her night-dress as proof of it if you wish, and the knife she used to do it too. She still had it in her hand when we found her.”

“And we can vouch for the fact that Dr Roberts' account is true and accurate, Detective Inspector,” Atticus added. “The knife had evidently been taken from the Union Workhouse, from where Mrs Fox and I fetched her. There are also a number of bloody fingertip prints left on the handle, which my wife could easily link to the murderer.”

“Fingerprint evidence, Mrs Fox? Very impressive; you shame humble policemen like us with your science.”

“The technique is simple and open to all to use, and I know that several constabularies are already looking into it,” Lucie replied patiently.

“So it seems clear that we can charge this Elizabeth Wilson with the murder of your grandfather,” said Douglas, turning back to Roberts and ignoring Lucie's remark. “But I do have one vexing question remaining in my mind, however.”

“Indeed, Inspector?”

The colour drained instantly and completely from Roberts' face.

“Indeed, Dr Roberts. What I am wondering is whether or not we should charge you too.”

The doctor slumped forward, his eyes pressed tightly shut.

“Charge me, Detective Inspector? But why should you need to charge me, or anyone else for that matter?” he whispered.

Douglas hesitated before he answered, watching with relish the effect that his words were having.

Then he said: “You have already said that it was your decision, and your decision alone, to bring your aunt to live with you here.”

Roberts nodded.

“So I assume it again was you who chose to move her into this… Annexe, near to your grandfather's room?”

“That is correct, Detective Inspector.”

“Then surely it was your own blatant disregard for the fact that she had hated him since she was a child that contributed to his murder. It seems to me that you are as much involved in your grandfather's death as Wilson herself.”

He waited again for the impact of his words to roll deliciously over Roberts before he added: “What do you reckon, Detective Sergeant Hainsworth; should we charge the doctor with Alfred Roberts' murder too?”

“I think we should, sir,” Hainsworth said, taking up the game once more, “Although I suppose we might have a tricky task in proving malice aforethought.”

“We might, Sergeant, that's very true, but it doesn't mean that he didn't possess it though. Dr Roberts, tell me: Did you have malice aforethought in bringing Elizabeth Wilson here?”

A vicious half smile curled his lip.

“Detective Inspector, with God as my judge, I thought only of making things right for my aunt.”

Roberts' reply was husky, and as he spoke the colour rushed back into his face.

“Very well then, Wilson shall bear the weight of the charge alone. If what you say turns out to be correct, she should be hanged and rendering an account of herself before God by the time the month is out.”

“Surely not, Inspector Douglas,” Lucie cried, “Are you mad? She can't be hanged for it!”

The detective inspector regarded her coldly.

“No, Mrs Fox, I am far from being mad. If Elizabeth Wilson is a murderess, then the law is very clear: she will be tried and she will hang for it. May God, as they say, have mercy.”

“But her mind is gone.”

Lucie's expression was of pure outrage now.

“She had no idea what she was doing when she killed Alfred Roberts. How can she defend herself in a court of law? She has senile dementia, Detective Inspector, do you not understand? She has battle fatigue and she has senile dementia.”

“Battle fatigue, Mrs Fox, battle fatigue; what nonsense is this?” Douglas stood now and he towered over Lucie.

She stood to meet him.

“I say that in my professional opinion, as a nurse who has worked in several military hospitals including Netley, Elizabeth Wilson has a form of battle fatigue. She is mentally incapable of standing trial for murder, or for anything else for that matter.”

“And in my professional opinion as a psychiatrist, I endorse Mrs Fox' view entirely.”

Roberts was as adamant as he was defiant.

Douglas stared from one to the other, for a moment, speechless.

“Don't you want justice for your grandfather, Doctor? Don't you want his killer to be tried and hanged for it, beloved old aunt or not?”

“That's just the thing, Inspector. It wouldn't be justice – natural justice – for my Aunt Elizabeth to hang.”

“Then what would you have me do with her?”

Roberts gnawed on his bottom lip.

“Give me an Order of Guardianship. Have her discharged into my care and keeping. This Annexe is perfectly secure. There are locks on all of the doors and there are bars on the windows. Sister Lovell can both guard her and tend to her needs. She will pose no further threat to anyone. Let her live out her few remaining years, imprisoned if you like to call it that, here. It's the perfect solution.”

In the hush that followed his words, Atticus glanced more closely at the windows. Roberts was perfectly correct. In front of each of the thick, wooden glazing bars there was another set of bars, much thinner for sure, but wrought in iron and painted white so as not to be immediately apparent.

“It is not my place to make that decision,” Douglas said at last, his tone more reasonable now. “There are proper rules – the McNaughton Rules – to determine whether criminals are really insane or not, and it would only be the magistrate who could agree to her being kept here. Until then, Wilson will have to make do with a prison cell at the police station, and a sergeant for a nurse. There should be a police wagon at your front door by now, and as soon as Wilson is washed and dressed, that's where she'll be bound.”

Just as the inspector had predicted, a police wagon was already waiting by the steps of the grand portico of the house. It looked expectant, with its large rear door gaping as wide as the gates of Purgatory, ready to receive its next victim. The heavy horse between the shafts was dozing, head drooping, one great hind foot resting on an iron-shod toe.

Sister Lovell touched the side of Elizabeth's bewildered, panic-stricken face as she was guided up a set of awkwardly tiny steps by Hainsworth.

“You can come back, Lizzie,” she said softly, urgently, “You can come back. I promise. It'll be for the best. It'll be as if nothing has happened, and Dr Roberts and I will look after you always.”

“I wouldn't wager on it,” Hainsworth chuckled.

He twisted Elizabeth's fingers from the frame of the waiting door and pushed her through it. A constable's arm reached out from the depths and slammed the door shut and Hainsworth rattled home a bolt.

 

“You can come back, Lizzie. It'll be for the best. You can have the baby and then, when you're strong again, you can come back here. It'll be as if nothing has happened. No-one need ever know. I won't tell, upon my honour I won't. The orphanage can bring the baby up and teach it its letters and you shall be married and have another one that isn't a bastard.”

Mary's face swam in front of her own, somehow different but somehow the same, her lips strangely out of synch with the words.

She felt strong fingers prising her grip from the frame of the carriage door, felt strong arms pulling her inside. 

A voice hissed in her ear. “Stop struggling, you little whore. It's you that's having the little bastard, so it's you that has to go to Brimston.”

She was pushed down hard onto the seat and Mrs Eire's hard, pinched features replaced Mary's kindly ones. The woman's face broke into a sneer.

“Will it die do you think, Lizzie, when it's born? Or will it grow big enough to take your place in your uncle's club each Friday? Will it be enjoying the gentlemen's attentions when you're all wizened and old and not worth a tramps farthing, never mind two hundred pounds?”

 

Dr Roberts put his hand on Mary Lovell's craggy shoulders and they watched the wagon roll out sedately between the big gateposts. Then he felt them begin to shake as finally, she succumbed to her grief.

“She won't understand a bit what's happening to her, Doctor. That's the unbearable part of it all. I wish you'd let me sedate her before they took her away. She'll be so frightened in there.”

“I'm so sorry,” Roberts said softly, his own eyes shining bright, “But it's the only way. We need them to be sure that it's because of her mental condition that she can't answer any of their questions, and not because of anything we might have given her. She needs to pass those McNaughton rules, Mary – or she'll hang.”

Mary nodded.

“I know. But she hasn't been able to stand the sight or sound of carriages since she went to Mrs Eire's old place at Brimston. Will she think the police wagon is Eire's carriage, do you suppose?”

A moment of agony flitted across Roberts' face.

“I can't bring myself to say that woman's name, Mary, but pray God, she does not.”

 

The worst – the very worst – memory of all began to fulminate and stir in the black, secret places of her mind. She knew it would come. As hard as she tried to stop it, as hard as she begged the Lord Jesus to make it stay away, to leave her in peace, the more she knew it would come. It would surely come to hurt her again. 

‘Please let me have a knife to make it go away. Please, Mama, please come. I beg you. Please come now to take me to be an angel in Heaven, before it comes to hurt me again. Please let me be with you and Papa, and please let me be with Baby Albert.'

The worst memory of all came to hurt her.

“They go in a bloody sight easier than they come out, don't they, my
little hussy?” 

Mrs Eire's face smirked across at her from between her white, naked knees. 

“Still, that's what you get if you play them kind of games with gentlemen.” 

She held up a little vial of liquid next to her face and shook it gently. The clear liquid filled with a froth of bubbles. 

“Your governess, Mary Lovell, sent this for you all those weeks ago when you first came to Brimston. It's called chloral hydrate and it's not long been discovered. Even the Harrogate hospitals don't know of it yet but it's wonderful for taking away pain. 

Mary Lovell said it might make it easier for you with it being your first and all. Of course I don't agree with giving it to you, not quite yet anyways. I believe that a mother should always experience every last particle of the blessing of childbirth; it's how God intended it. So I'll keep this for now if you please, and watch you count your blessings while you push the little bastard out. Then we'll see if it's a boy or a girl. Then we'll see if it's worth two hundred pounds or just an old newspaper. Then, maybe, we'll see if you can keep it.”

And then, just an instant later, she could see it. It was a baby, a tiny, precious baby, streaked and smeared in blood, but beautiful and perfect in every way. She sobbed with joy and relief and reached out with her hands to take it, to give it a mother's love. 

“It's a boy.” 

Mrs Eire jerked it out of her reach. 

“You've had a boy, you stupid little witch. If it had been a girl, I'd have got nearly three shillings a week to raise it until it was old enough for the Friday Club, or until we could have sold it on. As it is, your uncle will just have the expense of paying for a baby farmer to take it away with nothing in return. That's a pretty way for you to repay his kindnesses to you, I must say.”

“No, Missus, please no. Please let me keep him. I'll bring him up myself. I'll call him Albert after my dear papa. Uncle Alfie won't mind a bit; truly he won't. Or I can live here, at Brimston, with the other fallen women and bring him up here. The fallen women will help me. They won't mind either; I'm sure they won't mind at all.”

The shadow of a terrible, terrible smile flitted across Mrs Eire's face. 

“A boy is neither of use nor ornament to anyone here. Mr James is the only one interested in boys, and your uncle lets him use your cousin or gets him other boys, already grown for him. Anyways, there are always plenty of boys going a-begging in the workhouses. No, little Miss Two Hundred Pounds, Mr Alfred wants you back in the Annexe and entertaining his friends. Little Albert here is going to the baby farmers. It's all settled.”

She stepped forward and her bony fingers closed over Elizabeth's face, pressing it down, pushing her head back hard into the thin flock mattress. They forced their way between her lips, between her teeth, filling her mouth, choking her. She could feel liquid trickling into her mouth, down her tongue, into her throat, and she tasted the bitter, oily tang of her medicine. The room started to blur and spin and she watched, helpless, as Mrs Eire drifted through the door and away with her tiny, perfect baby. Her baby, Baby Albert, was being taken away from her, and her leaden limbs refused to heed the shrieking, shrieking screams of her brain.

And the worst memory of all refused to hear her brain as it shrieked and screamed and writhed again. The worst memory of all refused to be merciful to a little girl whose mama had gone away. It refused to go back to its hiding place to fester again, deep in that farthest, most remote part of her mind she kept especially for it and for its foul and stinking kin. The worst memory of all stayed until it had hurt her the most.

“Lizzie, dear Lizzie, I have some awful, awful news for you.” 

Mary's face was stricken, as white as the marble cherubs as she knelt before her. 

“I don't know how to tell you this, Lizzie, but little Baby Albert… little Baby Albert has died. He lived only a few weeks with Mrs Eire's friend, and now Jesus has taken him to be with your mama and papa in Heaven. He's an angel now; a little cherub for Jesus.”

Time stopped, as time always seemed to stop at this moment in her Purgatory. 

“Died – little Albert has died? No – he can't have, Mary; he can't be dead. He's perfect. He's my perfect little baby; he's my precious.”

“Oh, dear Lizzie, he is truly dead, but I'm sure that he never suffered. Think how he's safe now. He doesn't have to be hurt and punished; he doesn't have to have his mama die, or his papa. He's safe now and he's happy; he's with Jesus and his grandmama, resting on a fluffy white cloud in Heaven.”

“But Mary, he never even got to know his mama. How can he be happy? I never got to hug him and kiss him and sing lullabies to him. I never got to love him. And now I never will.”

 

“There's no use in crying now, Wilson.”

The constable's expression was stern, but not unkind, as he sat next to her, swaying slightly with the movement of the wagon.

“What's done is done; it can't be undone, and now you've got to face the beak for it. I'll speak plain: I expect you to be hanged, but they say it doesn't hurt at all; just one drop and it's all over. Here, let me wipe your tears away with your sleeve.”

He reached over and pulled at the loose fabric hanging from the bones of her wrist.

“Come now, Wilson, stop resisting me, I'm not going to hurt you. And stop staring so, it's very off putting. Oh, and that's just fine; now you've gone and pissed yourself. You silly old witch! You can bloody well clean that up yourself before we get to the station.”

As she cowered in terror, Lizzie's huge, round eyes darted over his police uniform as if she was noticing it for the very first time and there was another sudden, loud spattering on the wooden planks of the wagon floor.

 

“Miss Lizzie, you must go and stay in your room. Mr Roberts only wants me to fetch Master John.” 

Mr Petty, the handsome young footman smiled fondly down at them both as they played on the floor rug of John's bedroom.

“Is it to go with Mr James?” John asked. 

His sudden look of terror was an almost comical contrast to the grin on the face of the jack-in-the-box clown that he held on his lap.

“Mr James? Upon my word no… Why would Mr James want to see you? I hope you haven't been a-stealing from his cherry trees? No, it's a policeman – the paid policeman – who's come, and he wishes to speak with you directly, in the library. Your father says you must take care to remember everything he told you.”

And then, after they had exchanged shocked and frightened glances, and once an ashen-faced John had disappeared through the door to the main house with Mr Petty, she jumped up and ran through the Annexe's smoking room to the stairwell beyond. Round and round, down and down the spiral stairs she ran, as fast as her legs and the hurt deep in her belly would let her. She heaved open the heavy door at the bottom and ran out into the sunshine. 

Holding her breath, shielding her face, she skirted past the statue, the terrifying statue of Freya, whose blank eyes seemed to be following her even in her dreams, and ran, stooping, to the big hydrangea bushes under the library window. There, she crouched down and picked her way slowly and carefully under their branches, careful not to disturb the large pink blooms at their ends that would sway and tell tales and signal her presence through the library window.

Lifting her head tentatively above the mossy stone of the sill, she peeped through the little glass panes into the room beyond. The sound of her heart thumping in her ears almost drowned out the muffled voices within as they carried faintly through the glass. There was Uncle Alfie, and there was John, sitting stiffly by him on a settee, his face red and flushed. Seated directly across from them was a policeman, a real policeman, in uniform and everything, cradling his tall top hat on his knees.

Lizzie stilled her breath and listened. A deep, gruff voice she didn't recognise was speaking. It was the constable.

“So you can vouch for the fact that young Peter Lovegood never arrived that day and that he never accompanied your father and his acquaintances to Northumberland?” 

There was a few seconds of silence and then John, his voice sounding high-pitched and strange even through the glass said, “Yes, sir.”

“It's just that the Matron of the workhouse told us that she packed him off early that morning in the belief that he was coming directly here, to this house, in order to meet you, Mr Roberts. She understood you were to catch the early morning train north to Newcastle, and that Peter was to become an apprentice gamekeeper at your hunting lodge. Very excited about it all too he was by all accounts.”

“Then all of those accounts are quite incorrect, Constable.” Alfred Roberts' voice was a low growl, bristling with menace. “You have heard my testimony and now you have heard my son's. They agree on every point. The boy never arrived here and we went without him. It is quite as simple as that.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr Roberts; I mean you no offence of course. It's just that a young boy in the care and keeping of the parish overseers has gone missing and his dead body was found floating off the Northumberland coast by a herring fisherman. He pulled it out of the water just south of the Holy Island and I'm being hard pushed to find out exactly what happened to him.”

“How do you know that it was the same boy? There must be tens of thousands of young boys between here and the Holy Island.”