Property of a Lady

by Sarah Rayne

  Lee was telling the child how the tree would be replanted. ‘Today we will trim it, and tomorrow the gardener will put fresh soil and compost in so the roots can be nourished. Then we shall have juicy apples.’

  Elvira appeared to consider this. She stared down at the tree and at the newly-dug patch of earth.

  Lee said, in a very casual voice, ‘How much do you remember about the night your mamma died?’

  ‘I remember bits, but I don’t understand them,’ said Elvira, frowning.

  ‘What bits?’

  ‘You were there,’ she said. ‘If I keep looking at you, I remember you shouting and standing by the stairs.’

  ‘Do you?’ he said, very softly. ‘That’s a pity, Elvira.’

  ‘I want to remember properly,’ she said. ‘Because you did something that night – what did you do?’ She broke off, and even from where I stood I saw a horrified realization come into her face. She was staring at Lee, and I saw she was starting to remember.

  Lee saw it as well, and that was when the change came over him, as it had done in the bedroom that night. He had been idly holding a big spade, presumably left by the gardener, and I saw his knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on it. A tremor of fear went through me, and I came out from the shelter of the trees.

  He saw me at once and half-turned. I saw with horror that the madness still glared from his eyes. In a dreadful, slurry voice – a voice that was somehow no longer that of William Lee – he said, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Have you come to stare at me like she does? Those great accusing eyes . . .’

  ‘Mr Lee – it’s Brooke Crutchley. You know me. You let me into your house an hour ago.’

  He was staring at me with more attention. ‘You were there,’ he said, suddenly. ‘You were the man in Elizabeth’s room.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘You were,’ he said, and the child gave a cry of sudden fear, staring at me. Lee ignored her. ‘So that open-legged whore added the clockmaker to her conquests, did she?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said again, more firmly this time. ‘Never.’

  ‘No matter,’ he said. ‘One more is neither here nor there. But you saw, didn’t you? You know what happened.’ The dreadful maniacal glare was fading, but he said, ‘You do realize I can’t allow you to speak out?’ He took a step towards me, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. But he did not, and after a moment I felt safe to look away from him and at Elvira. She was huddled on the ground, staring at me with panic, and pity sliced through me.

  Lee glanced down at her. ‘She’s remembering it all,’ he said. ‘A little at a time, but soon she will remember it all. I can’t allow that.’

  ‘If you make any attempt to hurt the child, be very sure I shall see you brought to justice.’

  ‘What could you do?’ he said, dismissively. ‘Who would listen to you?’

  ‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘Elvira is not to be harmed.’

  I have spent the rest of the day and most of the night in a ferment of anxiety. I cannot believe William Lee will really harm his daughter—

  But writing that, I’m reminded that she isn’t his daughter – or so Elizabeth said. Has that engendered in him a hatred towards her? And added to that is the fact that she knows he killed her mother. And that I saw it happen.

  I have no idea what to do. I think he might try to silence me, although I don’t know how. But I believe I can protect myself against him.

  What worries me is how I can protect Elvira.

  27th November

  Marston Lacy is buzzing with shock. No one knows the exact truth, but the word is that Elvira Lee has been admitted as a patient in Brank Asylum. Gossip and speculation is running everywhere like wildfire. Everyone insists it’s too incredible for belief, but then agrees that the poor scrap’s reason might have been overturned by the death of her mother. From there it’s been a short hop to people remembering that the Marston family – Elizabeth’s people – were not noted for their restraint or self-control. Old Roland Marston, say the older members of the community, was much given to boisterous behaviour and even fits of ungovernable rage.

  It’s generally agreed that if Elvira’s mind has given way under the shock, it’s tragic that there’s no family to whom she could be sent. But William Lee’s parents are both dead, and so are Elizabeth’s – in fact, Roly Marston fell down of an apoplexy while rogering the barmaid from the Black Boar, and her mother expired from the shame.

  For myself, I believe Elvira has started to remember more and more of what she saw the night her mother was killed, and that this is William’s way of ensuring she never talks of it. Then I remember that flare of vicious anger in his eyes and the way his grip tightened on the spade, and I’m dreadfully afraid for her.

  Is it possible his action might be more altruistic, though? Is he afraid he might harm her, and is he therefore putting her beyond his reach? I don’t know. What I do know is that I would do anything to keep her safe from that terrible fury I glimpsed. He hates her – not only because he thinks she could speak the words that would hang him, but also because she’s a bastard from some unthinking liaison of Elizabeth’s.

  I believe I shall now close these diaries, and this time it really will be for good. The lamps down here have burned very low, and shadows are creeping forward from the corners.

  A few minutes ago I fancied I heard sounds above me. Could someone have broken into the workshop? But it’s unlikely. And I see that it’s past midnight, and that’s an hour inclined to make a man feel a little nervous.

  The sounds have come again. Someone is up there. There are footsteps . . .

  The trapdoor is being lifted – someone is coming down the stone steps towards me . . .

  A sense of tidiness prompts me to take up Brooke Crutchley’s pen and make a closing entry in what is clearly a journal of many years’ standing. As I write that, I hear my wife jeering at me. ‘Tidiness, William?’ she would have said. ‘You never had an iota of tidiness in your entire body – you strew your belongings everywhere in the house with no consideration for anyone else.’

  Perhaps she was right – occasionally she could be, the whoring bitch. But I believe I have a tidiness of mind – a scholar’s mind – and that’s what has compelled me to take the virgin pages from Crutchley’s desk and record what I have just done.

  I have killed him. I stole out to his house in the village earlier on and hid in his workshop. I saw him open the trapdoor at the side of the old stove and descend the steps. And I thought – haha! my fine sly gentleman, so you have a bolt-hole, do you? But now I have you cornered.

  He could not be allowed to live, you see. I’d like anyone who might ever read this to understand that. And once a man has committed one murder, the second does not seem so very bad. You can only be hanged once. You can only suffer hell for one eternity.

  Brooke Crutchley knew I killed Elizabeth. And I believe him to be an honourable man – a man who would think the law should extort its due punishment. Two days ago, in the gardens of Mallow House, I knew I should have to silence him to prevent him talking. And tonight I have done precisely that.

  It was remarkably easy. Murder is easy – the books never tell you that. Killing Elizabeth was easy – that blow to the head in the bedroom, then the push down the stairs. Several years of fury and jealousy were behind those two acts, of course. The taunting, the humiliations, the sheer bitter hatred . . . It is not given to all men to have rampant appetites or capabilities, and I was brought up to believe it was not within a lady’s nature to possess those appetites. (Street women are different – they are coarser-fibred, their sensitivities are less delicate. Or so I am led to believe.)

  Killing Brooke Crutchley was easy as well. He had been diligently writing away in this room – and who would have thought an ordinary, rather stout clockmaker would have created this remarkable underground room? I have not inspected the books on the shelves in any detail, although I shall do so before I leave. But even a
cursory glance by the flickering lamplight suggests he has some rare and curious treasures in his collection.

  He was seated behind the desk when I came down the steps, and he stared at me, his mouth in a round O of surprise. I didn’t hesitate. I had brought with me what I believe is called, among street ruffians, a sandbag – a receptacle filled with ordinary garden soil. I had taken a silk bag from my wife’s sewing table (she did have one or two ladylike pursuits) and filled it with the soil from around the old apple tree. There is a drawstring at the top – I pulled this tight and fashioned a loop.

  Crutchley started out of his chair when I entered, demanding to know what I was doing there, but I gave him no opportunity to say any more. I swung the bag high above my shoulder and let its own weight carry it straight towards his head. It struck him squarely on the temple, and he went down like a poleaxed bull.

  I believe I stood staring down at him for quite a long time and – this is a curious thing – it was as if something stood with me. Something that approved of what I had done, something that nodded a scaly head and patted me with a fleshless hand, and huffed foetid breath into my face as it leaned forward to whisper, ‘Well done . . . Oh, well done . . .’

  The devil, they say, likes murder very much – not that I’m imagining the devil has condescended to stroll into this very ordinary workshop and insinuate himself down the stairs to this room. But there’s something here, for all that . . .

  I’ve managed to drag Crutchley’s body back to the chair behind the desk and prop it upright. He has no heartbeat – I’m quite sure he’s dead. I shall have to read the journal, of course – it’s almost certain he will have recorded seeing me kill Elizabeth.

  Dare I take the journal back to Mallow to read? No, it’s too much of a risk. It could be seen – there are callers to the house. The vicar from St Paul’s has been twice already, and there will be people from Brank Asylum, to talk about Elvira.

  Elvira . . . She went so obediently into that place. I could wish she had resisted and cried, but she did not. She sat in a corner of the room as I talked to the doctors, her big dark eyes fixed on me. Delusional, I said. Given to fits of hysterical rage. At such times I can’t control her – she bites and screams and sees nightmare figures while awake.

  ‘Nightmare figures?’ said the doctor.

  ‘Men wrapped in black cloaks she believes mean her harm – although she can’t describe what that harm could be.’ I had thought very carefully about this beforehand – it seemed to me that this was more believable, more sinister, than the traditional child’s terrors of giants and witches.

  They agreed to keep her with them for a few days to see if some form of calming treatment could be given. For the moment that will have to suffice, although I will have to think of some better solution. The memories were starting to come back to Elvira, and I can’t risk her telling people she saw me kill her mother, I cannot . . .

  It’s two o’clock, and for now I shall return home. But tomorrow night I shall come back here, very late, and sit in this room and read Crutchley’s outpourings. If there is anything damning in them, I shall burn them in the stove above this room.

  29th November

  So. So Crutchley knew it all. More, he caused it. For if he had not crept out to Mallow that night with his stupid superstitions and the repulsive lump of graveyard flesh . . . Well, perhaps Elizabeth would still be alive and I should not be a haunted man, going in fear of discovery. The irony is that he could have had her, just as any man could have had her. She was not discriminating, the harlot.

  He still sits where I left him last night, stiffening in death’s grotesque pose, his eyes wide open and staring at nothing. Or are they? Aren’t they staring at me? Just as Elvira’s eyes do . . .

  Elvira. Spawn of God-knows what pot boy or stable lad.

  I can’t bear Crutchley’s dead eyes watching me. I have walked round this room and swung quickly round to take them by surprise, and each time they are fixed on me. Something still lives behind those dead eyes . . .

  In Crutchley’s workshop upstairs are a number of tools for the fashioning of intricate clock mechanisms – I saw them while I hid there, waiting for him. Tiny, sharp-ended implements they are – miniature chisels and screwdrivers. Among them are several long needles . . .

  It was easier than I expected.

  When I return tomorrow to finish reading the journals and destroy them, the man will no longer stare at me with that condemnation and knowledge. He will no longer be able to stare at anyone or anything, for he no longer has any eyes. He will have to feel his way through eternity.

  Tomorrow afternoon I must go out to Brank Asylum. They will allow me to see Elvira – they will leave me alone with her. She will stare at me with those accusing eyes – silent and condemning, just as Crutchley’s did. I don’t think I can bear that.

  But I still have the long needle in my pocket . . .

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Nell and Michael came up out of the last years of the nineteenth century with difficulty. The journal ended with William Lee’s avowal to visit Elvira.

  ‘But afterwards he never went back to the underground room,’ said Michael, eventually. The room had been silent for so long that the sound of his voice was slightly startling.

  ‘He couldn’t,’ said Nell. ‘Look at the date on the last entry. The twenty-ninth of November. And according to that newspaper article he was arrested on the thirtieth. He had no chance to go back.’

  ‘And Brooke’s body was never found,’ said Michael thoughtfully. ‘William blinded him, didn’t he? Put out his eyes. Even though Brooke was dead, William believed he was watching him – knowing him to be Elizabeth’s killer.’

  ‘I hope Brooke was dead when he did it,’ said Nell, uneasily. ‘I hope that blow to the head didn’t send him into some sort of coma. But Michael, you realize it’s been Brooke we’ve been seeing or hearing – or the residue of him, or something. I don’t pretend to understand that side of it. But whatever he is, or whatever’s been wandering around, it hasn’t been threatening us. It’s been frightening because it’s – well, spectral. But he never intended any harm to anyone.’

  ‘The reverse, in fact,’ said Michael. ‘He was looking for Elvira. Trying to keep her away from William because he believed William wanted to silence her – maybe to kill her.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And Beth said that day that whoever took her didn’t mean any harm – that she wasn’t the one he was looking for. Ellie said something like that as well, didn’t she? And Brooke took Beth to the church, remember – his own church where he was a sidesman and on that prison reform committee.’

  ‘He took those other girls there, as well,’ said Michael, remembering. ‘That one in the nineteen sixties. And there was a mention of one in the thirties, too.’

  ‘He thought he was putting them in a safe place – somewhere William couldn’t hurt them.’

  ‘Yes. And d’you remember Harriet’s account of someone tracing her features that day at Charect? It’s what a blind person would do – trying to identify someone by touch. But,’ said Michael, ‘he was already too late to save Elvira. William got to her in Brank Asylum. Don’t cry, Nell, darling.’

  ‘That poor child, Elvira,’ said Nell, shakily. ‘I keep seeing her with Beth’s face. She must have thought William was the one person in the world she could trust – the one person she had left to cling to after her mother died.’

  ‘I know.’ He held her to him for a moment.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Nell, presently. She sat up and reached for the remains of the wine. ‘Elvira thought it was Brooke she had to be frightened of,’ she said. ‘She saw him that day in the garden – when the apple tree was being replanted. She had seen him in the house the night her mother died, as well.’

  ‘And so she allotted it all to Brooke,’ said Michael, thoughtfully.

  ‘Yes. D’you know,’ said Nell thoughtfully, ‘at the start I didn’t much like the sound of Brooke Crutchley – I stil
l don’t like that clock he made, and I definitely don’t like all that brooding over books on magic, or that grisly night in the burial yard at Shrewsbury Gaol. But I’ve got to say, I feel rather sorry for him. I do think he was a bit unbalanced by Elizabeth.’

  ‘I wish I could have seen Elizabeth for myself,’ said Michael speculatively, and he grinned at her. ‘I’ll bet she was quite a girl.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have liked her one bit,’ said Nell firmly, and he laughed.

  ‘I like what I’ve found here,’ he said and pulled her to him.

  ‘Michael,’ said Nell, an appreciable time later, ‘do you realize it’s well after midnight? Will you be locked out of the Black Boar?’

  ‘Probably not, but I think I should go,’ he said. ‘I won’t assume that I can stay the night here, Nell, in case you were wondering about that.’

  ‘Well—’

  He took her hands. ‘There are going to be some nights though, aren’t there?’ he said. ‘When I don’t have to leave?’

  ‘Oh, I hope so,’ said Nell eagerly. As he got up to go, she said, ‘Michael – Brooke’s body. What will happen?’

  ‘I should think the police will carry out some forensic tests,’ said Michael, ‘but they’ll probably start with the assumption that it’s Brooke. There was that presumption of death notice, wasn’t there?’

  ‘There’d be a proper funeral?’ said Nell.

  ‘I imagine so. Were you thinking that might lay the old boy’s spirit to rest or something?’

  ‘I suppose I was. Don’t laugh at me, I know I’m being romantic and clinging to the old traditions of all good ghost stories.’

  ‘I wasn’t laughing,’ said Michael, coming back to kiss her. ‘I’ll see you in the morning, my love. I’ve said it again, haven’t I? “My love”. It does sound good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Better each time you say it.’

  ‘I think so as well.’ As they went down the stairs and through the shop to the street door, he said suddenly, ‘There’s another thing I think should be explored before we can regard all this as over. And I think it should be done before Jack and Liz get here.’