by Beth Powning
“We are good, Enid. We have always been good. And now we live with good people. Josephine, Ellen, Maud…” She spread her fingers, tipped her palm towards the house.
“Yes,” Enid said. “Yes, we are so lucky. Flora, let’s just sit here for awhile.”
Flora sat at her old place. Enid slid gingerly onto Mr. Tuck’s chair.
Flora wondered if Ellen, too, thought of herself as a bad person. If not bad, then less. She pushed down her rage against Mr. Tuck because she did not know what she would do with it when it came.
“We will have to be on our guard for the rest of our lives, Enid,” she murmured. “Not only for him but for the likes of him.”
Flora watched her sister, who slumped, chin in hand. Brown and green plaid dress, the body burgeoning beneath it, womanly—yet in Enid’s eyes, such sadness. As if she were still running, trying to leave something behind, knowing it would come again. A threat, in unknown form.
“I know, Enid,” she said. “I know what we should do.”
TWENTY-THREE
Reckonings
FLORA AND ENID SAT side by side on a small divan. Outside, men scaled ladders, installing storm windows. Enid’s hand was poised as if to pleat her skirt, but then clenched against the impulse; Flora noticed how the shapes of their knees were visible, knobs beneath their flowered skirts, whereas the MacVey sisters were like well-feathered hens, bones and flesh hidden within flouncing carapaces of ruffles and ribbons and trailing necklaces.
“Grace. You are avoiding the issue. I think the girls are right.”
“Oh, yes, yes. No, I quite agree. It’s just…hard to come to the actual truth of it. That our lovely…little house…”
“It is no longer a lovely little house. We have been mentioned in the papers. I cannot bear to look at it anymore.”
“Yes, oh, yes, Rosamund.”
Grace bent forward, widening her eyes, hands clutched as if containing a small creature frantic for release. Behind her, light glinted on a domed glass cage filled with stuffed birds.
“Well, then. Let’s do it now.”
Rosamund picked up a cane leaning against her chair. She stood and went onto the veranda.
“Please come,” she called to the men. Grace, Flora and Enid rose as the men climbed down and stomped into the hall. Rosamund spoke to them in a low voice, making lifting motions. They glanced at one another. Tanned, scarred hands dropped to their sides, and they followed Rosamund as they trooped through an archway rimmed with mahogany spindles. Grace and the young sisters followed.
In the grand parlour, October sunshine slanted onto Mr. Tuck’s creation, set on a pedestal. The men walked around the miniature house, muttering to one another, their boots silent on the Oriental carpet. Flora felt sudden anguish for the cedar shingles, the size of a baby’s fingernails, covering turrets, veranda roof and dormers; for the shiny red trim; for the flagpole with its cloth Red Ensign; for the shiny, raisin- sized brass doorknobs; for the windowpanes, which she herself had set into their frames.
In one hundred years, she thought, no one would remember that the house had been made by a murderer whose victim had borne the marks of teeth on her wrists and hands; whose blood had sprayed a pattern of stars on the surrounding walls. Yet to allow the house to stand on display in the sister’s parlour was to turn one’s back on the murdered woman herself: Mrs. Elsa Cavanaugh, from County Tyrone, fifty years of age. Whose savings Flora had seen. Whose cherished duck had ridden in a murderer’s pocket, had nestled beneath Enid’s pillow.
Grace put her hands over her mouth. “Oh. So sad.”
“Yes. It is very sad.” Rosamund put an arm around her sister’s waist as the men lifted the house. “It is all very sad. But imagine if one day that monster came back and sneaked around and peered into the window and saw that we still had the house he had made.”
“He would think that what he had done didn’t matter. Or that we believed him innocent.”
“That’s just it.”
They followed as the men carried the house through the door, down the hall and onto the veranda. Men, house and women paraded past the laundry yard where maids were hanging sheets; past the hen house and the donkey barn. They wove between the apple trees. At the paddock, Rosamund held the gate and the men angled the house through the opening. The donkeys lifted their heads and tipped their ears, grass trailing from black lips.
“Here,” Rosamund called, striding ahead, beckoning. “It is always very damp here.”
The men set down the house in a slight depression.
The miniature house was diminished by the wispy grasses, the shrivelled wasp-clung apples, the clumps of donkey manure.
“A facsimile is a thing that dies once the bloom has worn off,” Rosamund said, tapping a turret with her cane. “We would tire of this. It does not change, like a real house. There is no heart to it. I prefer to see it as a wicked man’s trick.”
Flora noticed a cracked window, although she had seen how gently the men had lowered the house to the ground. She knelt and ran her finger over the veranda floorboards. She remembered the sketch, then the detailed drawing, and the gradual accumulation of wood, glue, glass, nails. Clouds sailed over the orchard, disintegrating at their edges like ancient fabric, and she thought how everything, in various ways, vanished and then began again. She wondered what she should do with the money Mr. Tuck had given her, still hidden beneath the floorboards. She thought of her dream, carefully nurtured: a job in Mr. Tuck’s factory; the white house that she and Enid would own, with roses and a wooden fence.
The men returned, one with shovels over his shoulder, the other pushing a wheelbarrow filled with paper and shingles. They dug around the house, slicing away turf, leaving raw soil. They set down buckets of water. One man split shingles over his knee and the other made a skirt of crumpled newspaper around the veranda and the walls and the gables and towers. They criss-crossed broken shingles over the paper. Rosamund folded her arms and then flung them up, shooing away the donkeys, who strayed close, curious. The men leaned chunks of split birch wood against the sides of the house, careful not to break a single windowpane, nor nick the paint, nor snap a balustrade.
One drew a box of matches from his pocket. He glanced at Rosamund.
The roof of the house came to the man’s hip.
It is only a thing, Flora thought. It will gather dust. The shingles will come loose on their brads; the curtains will stiffen. The paint will peel.
Rosamund nodded.
The man struck the match, cupped the flame in his palm and touched it to the paper. The paper flared and blackened. The little flame vanished into the crumpled ball. Smoke came like silent black breath and then a ragged fringe of fire burst from beneath the miniature veranda; it licked up, catching the steps, the posts. The men circled the house, cracking matches, igniting paper beneath the kitchen window, beneath a turret, beneath the portico. The fire made a sharp, steady crackle. Heat radiated and the men tipped water onto the bared soil and onto the grasses at the soil’s edge, and the women backed away, hands to their faces, coughing. Beyond, the real house was so massive in contrast as to appear to lean back against a tapestry of blue sky and leafless lindens. The fire grew to a muted lion’s roar, momentarily enveloping the still intact house in rapacious light. The posts crumbled, first, tearing away the veranda. Spurts of flame shot from the turrets. The roof collapsed and then the fire began a louder snapping, as if it devoured dry spruce needles. Within minutes, the little house was a pile of sticks, melting glass, blackened fabric. A burning curtain detached and was borne away like a butterfly. The men shovelled the outer edges of debris into the fire’s lessening heart. Flora poked a burning table back into the flames. She saw a carpet, blackening. She saw the tiny iron stove that Mr. Tuck had bought in Hampton. The men dashed water, causing hissing puffs of steam.
“So quickly!” Enid murmured. She held Flora�
�s arm, limpeting herself, as she had ever since the abduction.
“Be glad it was not our real house,” Rosamund remarked. Her voice was harsh. She turned away and slid the back of her hand up a donkey’s furry face.
Flora was brushed by a sense of relief. She felt an urgent need to go home and clean the workshop with vinegar and hot water, to scrub its floor and shelves and windows, and then do the same to the room Mr. Tuck had slept in, putting clean sheets on the bed, airing the blanket that had touched his cheek.
“Her name was Elsa,” she said. “The woman he murdered. Elsa Cavanaugh.”
The smoky breeze stirred their skirts, their collars and ribbons. Shovelling soil onto the pyre, the men considered them in fleeting glances.
“Rest in peace, Elsa Cavanaugh,” Rosamund whispered.
Burn in hell, Jasper Tuck, Flora thought.
Pulling Enid close.
* * *
—
Gas from the lighting fixture left a familiar, sour redolence in Harland’s throat. At his desk, he was designing advertisements for the Christmas season. Fairweather’s Gentlemen’s Clothing, he wrote. Quality Attire for the Modern Man. Have on offer…
Permelia had criticized his advertisements. He scratched out Have on offer and substituted We Sell as Low as Any.
His employees were exclaiming over items, rustling paper, unpacking a shipment of goods. He read over the bills of lading. Fancy Lisle Socks. Black Taffeta Silk Umbrellas. Peccary Hogskin Gloves.
His mind was on Josephine, seeking an excuse to visit her. The hunt for Jasper Tuck was in the hands of the police. The courts were reconsidering the murder of Mrs. Elsa Cavanaugh. Enid was safe. Mr. Mallory had been brought to justice.
It occurred to him that a woman had multiple needs a man could solve. Someone to shovel her lane. Firewood. A broken door on her kitchen range.
He pulled out his pocket watch and saw that he would not be expected home for dinner for another half-hour.
* * *
—
Josephine untied her apron, leading him to the turret room.
“I’m going to my dinner,” he said. “I just had a moment and thought I would stop in.”
She folded the apron and set it on her lap. The cloth was soft and made a small, square package.
She reflected upon an opening remark. Three weeks had passed since the disappearance of Jasper Tuck. The news had faded in importance. No reporters came to the house. Enid was fragile, but recovering. Maud was in her final year at the Pleasant Valley Academy. His interest had always centred on Flora, as the link that attached him to Josephine. Flora was occupied with many things. Which one should she tell him about? Her arithmetic studies? Latin?
“Are you well, Harland?”
She had seen a jar of dyspepsia powder on his desk. She wondered about the ravages of his wife’s sharp tongue, how it sculpted him, shaving away the parts Permelia found unacceptable.
He held his hat on his knees.
“Nothing to complain about, Josephine, thank you. I was wondering about your spare room. Now that Mr. Tuck…I thought you might need help finding a new tenant.”
“Flora has taken care of that. She met someone at Humphreys and Teakles’ who knew someone who knew…you know how it is. I made sure, though, that the person was well regarded around town. It is a Miss Caroline Macpherson.”
“The Harold Macphersons?”
“Yes, those Macphersons.”
“That’s good, then.”
His lips worked as if he wished to speak but had nothing to say. He ran a finger over the hat, not looking at her.
“I wanted you to know that I am always at your service. If you need a man for doing any little…or perhaps large…thing. Carpentry, or gardening, or the like. I can always help you find someone. Or, of course, do it myself, if I can.”
Josephine listened to the words that he spoke; heard, as well, the ones that lay beneath.
“Thank you. I feel that between Flora, Ellen, Maud and myself, we are becoming a very capable team. But of course I shall ask you if…”
She broke off.
“We want to see one another, don’t we, Harland?”
“I didn’t—”
“I know you didn’t. You have never been the least bit improper. But now that the problems you have helped me with are solved, there is no reason for you to come here. And…and you know…people have begun to talk.”
Flesh thickened along his jaw, making a slight droop. Fine black hairs darkened his wrists. His shoulders were slumped; his clothing shielded him, like armour.
“Harland. My dear friend. I wonder if you are prepared to divorce Permelia.”
He considered his fingers, spread out on his knees. The fingertips tightened. “I have looked into it, Josephine. And I have concluded, regretfully, that I cannot.”
She realized that he would rather have postponed this question. Or left it unasked, unconsidered.
“It is as I expected.” She stroked the folded apron, not meeting his eyes. “No, you needn’t tell me. I can well imagine all the…oh, the disastrous consequences.”
The boarders were letting themselves in the front door, hanging coats and hats on the rack. A draft travelled across the floor and touched her ankles.
She did not care if Mr. Sprague or Miss Harvey or Mrs. Beaman or the new boarder should see. She leaned forward and put her hand on Harland’s. She lowered her voice.
“Harland, in these months since Simeon died, I have felt extreme affection for you. If things were otherwise, if…you, for example, were a widower…I might have considered…”
She could not say there is a difference between affection and love.
His eyes filled with tears. The boarders vanished into the dining room. He took her hand and lifted it to his cheek.
He pressed his lips to it.
He laid it back, gently.
“I suppose, then, that I should not visit.”
“Not without Permelia,” Josephine said.
He stood. She, too, rose to her feet, letting the apron cascade from its folds as she tied it around her waist. His polished shoes were silent on the carpet; he stepped across a slant of light like crossing a brook. He stopped with his hand on the doorknob. They could hear the clash of cutlery; Flora’s voice, less English, now.
He opened the front door, paused as if to speak, looked at his shoes. He walked down the drive, and she remembered when he had remarked upon his father, The Commodore, who exercised—rain or shine—with his little dog, and how she had thought, then, of the loneliness of old age.
* * *
—
Ellen pushed a kettle of beans to the back of the stove, added a stick of wood to the firebox. She sat in her rocking chair and did not pick up her knitting. Maud did not open her history book. Josephine gathered a white shawl around her neck. Flora and Enid sat in chairs at the kitchen table, their pencils dropped onto pages of arithmetic.
“What he must have thought of us,” Ellen said. “Serving him dinner. Would you like milk with your tea, Mr. Tuck?”
“I should have turned him from the door,” Flora said. “I should have said, We have no more rooms.”
“But how could you have known, Flora? He was a perfectly decent- looking man. No, if there is fault it is mine. I should have asked around before taking a stranger into my home. Our home,” Josephine added, glancing at Maud.
Flora wondered if George was still encouraging his sisters to sell the house, or if their determined resistance had made the idea fade away. Still, Josephine would never own the house; once the children achieved their majority, if they did not sell the house but allowed their mother to continue living in it, would she need to pay them rent? Would she be able to keep Ellen, Flora and Enid? Flora did not know, but imagined this as a worry that darkened Josephine’s relati
onship with her children. Nor did Josephine entirely own the furniture, or anything else in the house. She managed the property. Her best recourse would be to remarry. Flora had noted that Mr. Fairweather had ceased visiting and that Josephine seemed quieter, and yet, oddly, at peace.
Maud pressed a hot facecloth to her pimply forehead. “It makes me feel sick. To think how he would have been laughing at us. Being polite to a murderer. Thinking that he was an ordinary person. When he was—when he is—a monster.”
Josephine reached forward to pat Enid’s shoulder. “Never fear, Enid. He will not come around here again. Somewhere, someday, he will be hunted down and caught and brought to justice.”
“Maybe,” Ellen said. “Or not…”
Flora caught revelation in her tone. “Why do you say that, Ellen?”
It had come upon them, tonight, after the dishes had been washed and dried and put away: the reckoning. A gash had closed, and yet would not be healed until the manner of its affliction was discussed.
“I should tell you,” Ellen said. “I should tell you, and you’ll not see me in the same way ever again.”
Josephine glanced at her, surprised.
Ellen picked up a pair of stork scissors. Snipped threads from her apron with its beaky blades.
“Well, then. My father was a man something like Jasper Tuck. Fine looking, made the ladies take pity on him with stories of, oh, you know, being ill done by one thing or another. We had a cow and pigs and all…and I suppose he did the odd job, being a child I didn’t know, just that he reeled home from the pub after dark and when me Ma heard his steps on the road she hid me and my little brother away out of sight. I never knew what it was she’d done wrong, that he had to come home to punish her. I thought that it must be me he wanted, for badness I’d done. I thought she took my part, the slaps across the face, the punches, the kicks when she was knocked down on the floor moaning with her poor arms covering her head. Me under the bed or peeping through the wardrobe door. So the one night, he tripped and struck his head and then he didn’t move. I remember how quiet come over the house. How long she sat there, like a dog, panting. Then she put a mirror to his mouth, put her fingers to his neck. She tied his hands behind his back and she tied his ankles together and she took a pillow from the bed and she…”
