‘The dogs were definitely killed? There was no chance that they attacked each other?’
‘Well, they might’ve. But I don’t believe that. The bitch killed ’em, didn’t she?’
‘The bitch?’
‘Cook. The one ’oo was sacked. She done it all. Stands to reason, don’t it? She wrote those nasty bloody words on my cupboard, ’n’ all. Bitch. Devil’s bitch.’
Horton is taken aback by the spite in Mrs Chesterton’s words. She looks like she might happily snap the neck of Elizabeth Hook, if she were in the same room as them.
‘Why is it so obvious to you that Elizabeth Hook did these things?’
‘Well, it all stopped after she left, didn’t it?’
‘Not quite. Miss Tempest Graham fell ill a good few days afterwards. And the looking-glasses …’
‘Oh, don’t remind me of that, sir.’
There is no reasoning with Mrs Chesterton. For her, the sacked cook is at the root of every evil which has befallen the house. The narrative is fixed in her mind. Though Horton notes that neither she, nor Crowley, nor Mrs Graham seem able to understand why Elizabeth Hook should indulge in such matters. Crowley seems to be able to hold two opposing ideas at the same time: that Hook is causing mischief to happen, and that there is no such thing as bewitchment.
The lady’s maid is a thin, ugly Yorkshire girl who gives her name, incongruously, as Béatrice. She pronounces the word with deliberate emphasis and care, as if she has been schooled in it.
‘It’s a French name, thou know’st,’ she says in her strong northern accent, and Horton acknowledges that this is so before asking her about the house’s mishaps. She lists the events already given by the butler and the housekeeper, leaving out the mirrors. When Horton raises this, she looks horrified.
‘I am shocked that Mr Crowley would reveal such a thing,’ she says, her small eyes opened wide. ‘It is a private matter for Mrs Graham, surely?’
‘But it happened, did it not?’
‘Why, yes, but I assumed …’ And she stops at that.
‘Assumed what, Béatrice?’
‘Well, that the mistress had done it herself.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘I cannot imagine. But she is not a happy woman, sir.’
‘She is not?’
‘No, sir. She weeps a great deal. And she is terribly afraid for her daughter.’
‘Afraid of what?’
‘I cannot say. For me, I think Miss Ellen is a strong girl, and she will overcome whatever ails her.’
‘You mean the illness?’
‘Yes, sir. You must know what I mean.’
‘I’m not sure I do. Is there something more than illness?’
She crosses her arms and draws her mouth into a thin little line and refuses to say anything else at all. Horton does not pursue it; he has no authority to (after all, no felony has yet been committed), and he believes he will be able to talk further to her.
The footman, a lad called Peter Gowing, comes in with the scullery maid, Daisy Webster, and although they sit apart Horton can see that the girl, in particular, is desperate to reach out and hold the boy’s hand. Gowing stares fiercely at her whenever she speaks, and even more fiercely at Horton whenever he asks a question, as if he might stand and strike out at anything he perceives as a threat.
The girl acknowledges that all the events described by the other servants – the cows, the dogs, the lawn, the shed, the mirrors – had taken place as described. She becomes particularly agitated when talking about the dead rat in the dining room.
‘It was enormous, sir. Such a terrible, awful thing. I see it in my dreams, every night. ‘
‘You must have had rats before.’
‘Oh, but not like this. We get the occasional one that shows its face, and we have to make sure the cupboards are closed tight at night. Mice, too. But you don’t often see these creatures; they’re shy, and I don’t imagine there’s that many of them. So it were proper horrible to see such a monster. And how malicious to leave it like that, where she knew I’d see it? I didn’t sleep for days, did I?’
This to Peter Gowing, who frowns at her inadvertent revelation, and turns his now-bright-red face to Horton’s, daring him to ask. Horton, though, can see all he needs to know.
‘And what about Mrs Graham’s mirrors? Did you see them?’
‘No, sir,’ the girl begins, but the boy interrupts.
‘They was in her chambers, wasn’t they? We’re not allowed in there. Only Jane gets in there.’
‘Jane?’
‘The lady’s maid.’
‘You mean Béatrice.’
The boy smirks.
‘Oh, she calls herself that because the mistress tells her to call herself that. Quite the fashion, French maids, ain’t they? But in short supply these days, what with us having been fighting their fellas in Spain and France. Doubtless they’ll be flooding over here now it’s all over.’
The boy’s implication – that Mrs Graham is a somewhat desperate follower of fashion – is clear.
‘So her name is Jane?’
‘Of course her name is Jane. She’s about as French as I am.’
‘And she’s the only one allowed in Mrs Graham’s chambers?’
‘Well, apart from Sir Henry.’
‘Peter!’ This from the maid, who is amazed at her beau’s indiscretion. Peter for his part grins and blushes at the same time. The grin is wiped away by Horton’s asking about the witch-bottle.
‘Witch-bottle?’ he says. Daisy looks at her hands, and sniffs defiantly.
Horton says nothing. He doesn’t have to wait long, but it is Daisy, not Peter, who breaks the silence first.
‘Something needed to be done,’ she says, and glares at Horton as if he himself were a consort of the Dark One. ‘No one was doing anything at all, and I knew how to deal with such matters. We had a witch of our own, see, back home. You take some of their piss, their witch’s piss, and you put it in a bottle with some hair from her head and you bury it in the woods. So we did. It was my idea. Not Peter’s. So if I’m in trouble, it’s on my head, not his. Understand?’
During this little speech, Peter leans over to her and tries to place a placating hand on her arm, but she constantly slaps it away, glaring at him as if he were an annoying child.
‘And it bloody worked, didn’t it? It bloody did. She got ill, she did. Stomach pains, just like the cunning-man back home said there’d be. Shooting, stinging pains in her stinking witch’s belly. And that’s when people started seeing her, for the first time, for what she was. But I knew. I knew all the time.’
Horton sees there is little point continuing. She is rampant in her determined belief that a witch has been defeated. She is almost exultant. He dismisses them.
The gardener, O’Reilly, limps in next, wincing as he walks, supported by a wooden crutch under his arm. He smells of dung and has a thick rural accent which might be Somerset or Suffolk, but Horton understands enough to confirm the main points about the shed and the dogs. It is he who has dug up the lawn.
‘Hag track,’ he said. ‘Witches on bloody lawn.’
‘You’ve seen such things before?’
‘Oh, aye. They dance, don’t they? Dance on my bloody lawn. Ruined, it was. Bloody ruined.’
‘So, there’s more than one witch?’
‘Oh, aye. Always more ’n one, in’t there? That Hook was a bad ’un, she was. Took me in. Liked her, I did. But didn’t know her true nature, did I? Bitch.’
Finally, the cook, who to Horton’s surprise is a man, quite a young man, named Stephen Moore. There is something rather clerical about him. He is precise and quiet.
‘Where did you work before here?’
‘I worked for Sir Francis Vincent, constable.’
‘Is that far from here?’
‘It is in Surrey. Stoke d’Abernon.’
‘And how did you come to this role so soon after the departure of the previous cook?’
‘I understood there had been some dissatisfaction with the woman’s performance for some time. One hears these things, even from far away. I wrote to Mrs Graham to offer my services.’
‘Is that the normal way of these matters?’
‘I couldn’t say, constable. It is my way. I have always approached my employers directly.’
‘Is it not unusual for a cook in a house such as this to be a man?’
‘Perhaps. Though not unprecedented.’
‘Sir Francis was happy for you to leave?’
‘I doubt he even noticed. He is not yet ten years old. The estate is run by his mother, Dame Mary.’
Horton, no student of the peerage, nonetheless feels Moore’s smooth condescension, and it irritates him. And yet this young man is the most intriguing person he has met so far. He is soft-spoken but articulate and, it would seem, well educated. He dresses like a City clerk rather than a provincial cook, and carries with him a ledger – ‘I was working on the accounts when summoned to see you, and I don’t like to leave them lying around.’
Moore confirms the stories already told, and speaks with unusual warmth – unusual among the other servants – about Mrs Graham.
‘It is a pleasure to work for such an intelligent woman,’ he says. ‘It is not always the case that a woman in her position is so clear and so understanding.’
‘What do you mean, “in her position”?’
‘Well, I think perhaps it is obvious. She is a wife living under the roof of a man other than her husband. In those circumstances she runs a formidably well-disciplined household.’
‘And yet in recent weeks things have become shakier.’
‘Well, perhaps. Though as I have said to her, sorrows such as these do always seem to accompany each other.’
‘You speak to Mrs Graham often?’
‘Moderately often, yes. She likes to come down to the kitchen and discuss matters with me on occasion.’
‘And what of Sir Henry? Is he as approachable an employer?’
‘Oh, Sir Henry is cut from unique cloth. I am told he is fierce and quick to anger, but he is also full of life. But I have not met the gentleman yet. He has not been here since my arrival. I am sure his company will be a pleasure.’
He speaks like a politician. Which, for Charles Horton, is just another word for liar.
A Treatise on Moral Projection
I had experienced nothing like that awful night in my then-short career as a physician. The great asylum of Bethlem, where I had begun my training, was constantly full of the moans and cries of the mad. It echoed with their misery and their complaints, but such was its common state. If it had become suddenly silent the effect might have been as shocking as those awful screams at Brooke House. But I cannot recall such an event ever taking place.
We could find no explanation for the disturbances. On my rounds the following morning, a strange mystery presented itself. I asked each and every male inmate of the hospital what had caused them to shriek so the previous eve, but not a single one of them could remember having made such noises. And there was no guile in their denials; each and every one of them was sorely perplexed by my question. It was as if they had been dreaming, and had (as I have noted often) forgotten the detail of what they had dreamed.
I recall an air of mystery settling itself upon the place. I remember Dr Monro visited us that day, as was his wont once or twice a week, and I told him of what had occurred. He could provide no explanation.
It was while all this was taking place that Mrs Horton came to see me. Her presence was by no means unwelcome. She had, as I have said, been one of the more interesting inmates of Brooke House, what with her obvious natural intelligence and her more traditional womanly charms. Her dreams plagued her sorely, despite the separation from her husband and her diurnal life, but she did not come to see me for that reason. She told me she had become interested in Maria Cranfield.
I had some suspicion of her motives, of course; had she not already claimed that she’d heard another woman’s voice from Maria’s cell? She admitted that this must have been only another manifestation of her unquiet mind, and accepted my diagnosis of it as such. But she felt that spending time with Maria would help both her and that poor girl, who was still secured in a strait waistcoat.
With my permission, a chair was placed in Maria’s cell, and she sat with her that whole day following the disturbances. She read to her, especially from that volume of Wollstonecraft she had secured from the Brooke House library. I was astonished that such a volume was made available to residents, and while I applauded Mrs Horton’s intent in reading to Maria I was somewhat dismayed at her choice of material. After our meeting I quietly made arrangements for the removal of that particular volume from the house’s library, at such a time when Mrs Horton was finished with it.
I confess, as I write these words, that my blessing for this new arrangement may be seen as a mistake. The events to come may have been very different – indeed, may not have occurred at all – if I had not permitted these two women to spend time together. Yet I trusted and admired Mrs Horton – and she used this trust against me. I will say only this. As the storm gathered and the terrible events unfolded, I learned a hard lesson: one must never trust a patient. Particularly if the patient is a woman.
WESTMINSTER
It is dangerous, Aaron Graham sees, this feeling of being pulled into a mystery. He has seen it happen to other men, notably John Harriott, his great friend and the magistrate in Wapping, who when he is well is unable to let go of a mystery lest it escape and turn into something else, something that hides itself and festers. That is the feeling he has now: of something awful and half-seen that must be identified.
But then, this is why he joined Bow Street. Old Sir John Fielding, the progenitor of much of what Bow Street now undertakes, had been as bulldog-determined as John Harriott, his blindness by no means disrupting his ability to perceive. But Fielding’s métier had been the felony of the highwayman and the footpad. He had taken Property as his ward, and had protected her against all villains, be they pickpockets or coiners.
Murder, though, is something else entirely. It is not common for London gentlemen to be murdered in their beds. It is not common for London gentlemen to be eviscerated with no apparent motivation. It is not common for dead bodies to be left in their beds wearing masks. It is not common for all this to have been done with no noise being made, or in any case not enough noise to wake a single household servant.
Those four things are what constitute this mystery, and it is of a very different flavour to that with which Sir John Fielding would have involved himself. Graham throws himself into the heart of it with the full knowledge that this will lead to questions being asked, both by his fellow Bow Street magistrates and perhaps even by the Home Secretary. He is an old man now, semi-retired and only an occasional presence at Bow Street. He no longer sits in the court to hear of the previous night’s arrests and charges from the constables and watchmen of the surrounding parishes, and to question those accused. It is by no means unusual for an individual justice of a certain vintage to interest himself in a case, and indeed Graham has been asked more than once by previous Home Secretaries to involve himself in particularly sticky cases, most notably the Ratcliffe Highway killings of 1811. But this case is different. Wodehouse was a gentleman, and the newspapers will no doubt interest themselves in his death, not least because of its melodramatic nature. The Home Secretary may feel that a younger man is needed.
But what indeed would Sir John Fielding have done, in this case? A gentleman has been viciously killed. There is no suspect. There has been, as far as can be ascertained, no theft of property. Wodehouse’s chattels will remain within Wodehouse’s family. Only his soul has been taken, and what price is a man’s soul? If the friends and family do not take it upon themselves to prosecute the case, it is left to the magistrates and their officers. Thus, is he not doing his duty?
And is it not damnably interesting?
Thus, he takes residence for most of the day at White’s, talking to as many of the men there as he can politely manage. The news of Wodehouse’s death has circulated within the place like blood around the body, and its source is Graham himself. He plants little ingots of fact with various gentlemen, and these are passed around the building like letters between ambassadors. Despite the discombobulating horror of the morning, by the afternoon he finds himself to have learned a good deal more than he might have expected. Unsurprisingly, given the nature of that disgusting painting in the drawing room of Wodehouse’s lodging, there is a good whiff of Scandal in the air.
Brummell himself sums it up, waving airily from his table in the bow-window of the club, reserved for years for the most influential and well-connected members. ‘Wodehouse? Terrible fellow, terrible friends. But of course, you know, Graham.’
This with an elegant wink and the suggestion of a leer. He does know. Of course he knows. For it becomes clear very early in the day that one of Wodehouse’s closest friends was Sir Henry Tempest. This one relationship infects every simpering conversation Graham has for the rest of the day, curdling any enjoyment he might have taken in the afternoon. Everyone knows of Sir Henry Tempest’s domestic arrangements and how they have impinged on Aaron Graham’s. He of course knows how general this knowledge is, and is inured to it. It has been almost three years now, after all. But for this lamentable history to now overlap with the blood-drenched sheets of Edmund Wodehouse is both intolerable and, he must admit, enticing.
Savage Magic Page 7
