Death of a Schoolgirl: The Jane Eyre Chronicles

by Joanna Campbell Slan

  “But now you say Adèle did not write it? She did not pen a threat to herself expressly to force you to visit?” It was Waverly’s turn to be confused.

  “No, sir, she didn’t. Miss Jones did.”

  “But why?” Edward said. “Adèle was no threat to Miss Jones. Whatever could have aroused the woman’s ire?”

  “I believe Miss Jones was determined to make Adèle suffer for the sins of her mother.” Mr. Douglas stepped forward. “You see, Mrs. Rochester gave me the names of all the staff members right after she arrived. I instructed my associates to go and see what they could learn. This afternoon one told me that only last year, Parthena Jones’s older brother, Adonis, traveled to France, with the goal of improving his ability to speak their language. However, once he was there, he became enchanted with an opera dancer.”

  “Céline Varens?” Edward asked, speaking of Adèle’s mother. “When last I heard she was in Italy.”

  “No, not Madame Varens, but a young woman who often appeared in the same venues with Adèle’s mother. It seems that this opera dancer already had a lover—and that man suffered a fit of jealousy and stabbed Adonis to death. The murder caused quite a scandal in Paris.”

  “But why would Miss Jones want to threaten Adèle?” Lucy asked.

  “Miss Jones believed in retribution. She wanted to make Adèle suffer. When you left for India, Miss Jones realized the girl had no champion, and thus she stepped up her campaign.”

  “Oh no,” Lucy shook her head. “What a shame!”

  “Do let me help Mrs. Rochester,” the surgeon said, urging my friends to step back. “She is obviously in pain.”

  “Please do,” I said. “Afterward we must go confront Selina’s murderer.”

  I allowed the doctor to perform his services, and once he was finished binding my ribs, I continued. “I suggest that Mr. Waverly and I go together. I believe that she will come along with little fuss.” The wrapping around my ribs eased the sharp stab that accompanied each breath. If I could make it down the stairs, I was certain I could convince Selina Biltmore’s murderer to give up.

  “But will you be safe?” Edward asked.

  “I am certain of it. She has no reason to hurt me. None. In fact, I doubt this person would ever kill again. The circumstances were extraordinary.”

  “I will go with you and stand guard,” Mr. Douglas offered.

  “Mrs. Rochester, you say there is nothing to fear,” Mr. Waverly said. “I beg to differ. This was a cold-blooded act, not an impulsive decision. How can you brim over with sympathy for a murderess? A woman who suffocated a child sleeping innocently in her bed.”

  I shook my finger at him. “Sir, Selina was no child. Nor was she an innocent. Come, I shall show you your dastardly murderer. When you hear her story, you will change your mind about the crime, I promise you.”

  Mr. Waverly led the way, while Mr. Douglas helped me down the stairs. Through all the commotion, the girls remained asleep, as did Mrs. Thurston. Caje stepped forward to meet us when we entered the kitchen, his face bleak with understanding. “There’s only one reason you’d come down here. To get her.”

  Emma stood behind him, hanging on his sleeve, her eyes brimming over with tears. “She’s a good woman, miss. Really she is.”

  “I know,” I said.

  The cat Mephisto’s bed was empty. That further confirmed what I’d suspected. What I knew. I knocked on the door and waited. A voice called, “Is that you, Miss Eyre? I was expecting ye. I was only pretending to sleep earlier. Let yourself in. It ain’t locked.”

  “I’ve brought Mr. Waverly with me.”

  “I’m decent.” Cook sat facing us, her back against the wall. Mephisto nestled in the well of her lap and she stroked him rhythmically. Opening his coolly indifferent yellow eyes, he stared at me, before closing them again. On a wooden box, pressed into use as a table, sat a lit candle stub. Its flame danced and dipped, sending ghostly shadows across the ceiling and wall.

  With one work-roughened hand, Cook held closed a faded and torn blue wrapper. Her hair was neatly twisted into a bun. She’d been crying. A tired and threadbare patchwork quilt stretched tightly across one end of the pallet, perhaps once colorful, but now the shades were pale versions of themselves. Beside her rested an open Bible. A ladder-back chair with a leather sling for a seat completed the furnishings. Cook’s entire wardrobe hung on four hooks along a wall.

  “You the Bow Street Runner? Aye, I thought as much. Take a seat, sir. Miss Eyre? You can sit on me bed, if you wish.”

  Moving gingerly, I did so.

  “I knew you was coming. Just a matter of time. Ye’re a smart one. Like my own darlin’ Larissa, ye are. Mind if I stay here while we chat? Me feet ache somethin’ terrible at the end of a day. Of course, that’ll soon be over, eh?”

  “Mr. Waverly needs to know what happened.” My voice shook only a little.

  With a sigh, she said, “I reckoned as much.”

  “Cook, your given name is Belinda Connelly?” Mr. Waverly said, looking over the list of staff members that Mrs. Thurston had given him. “You need to come with me. There’ll be a hearing before the magistrate.”

  “And a trial, and then you’ll hang me by the neck, right? I ain’t going to lie to you. I killed that evil girl. Dosed her and the others to put them to sleep. Made me way up the back stairs. Pressed that pillow over her. But she fought me. She was a big one, and I guess she didn’t get enough to make her sleep.”

  I nodded. The first day that I arrived, Cook had attributed the scratches on her arms to Mephisto. But later, the girls told me that he never scratched her. Ever. There was only one reason she would have lied about the marks.

  “I held that pillow down until she was good and gone.” Cook sounded weary. “Couldn’t leave her to live all high and mighty like a princess, now could I?”

  “Right.” Waverly stood. “So we’d best be going.”

  “So’s you can take me to Tyburn, put me in the cart, and let me dance from the short drop?”

  “You would have let Miss Miller hang for your sins?” I tried to sound fierce, but the pain in my ribs made speaking difficult.

  “No, it would never have come to that.”

  “But it almost did!” I put a little more force behind my words.

  “I was only waiting until the Biltmores came to see that girl in her coffin. I had to know they suffered…like I did. They deserved it!”

  Mephisto had begun to purr, a sound rich and throaty and totally at odds with our purpose.

  Mr. Waverly stared at Cook coldly. “Justice is for the judge and jury to decide at the Old Bailey.”

  “I done the world a service, I did. Ye should be thanking me.” She smiled at Mr. Waverly, offering a grin half mischievous and half ugly. “As for punishing me, I plan to die in me own bed!” With that, she relaxed her grip and a brown bottle rolled from her hand onto the coverlet, coming to rest at her side.

  The label on the bottle: LAUDANUM. I handed it to Mr. Waverly, who read it and cursed under his breath. Tucking the bottle in his pocket, he stepped forward and grabbed Cook roughly under her arm. “Come on with you!”

  “Sir, I ain’t got long! Won’t ye at least hear my tale? Miss Eyre, they said Larissa fell down the well. She didn’t. See, I asked Selina. Confronted her one day. She was a great one for sneaking down here and stealing biscuits from the pantry,” said Cook, ignoring the fact that Mr. Waverly held her arm.

  Mr. Waverly’s eyes moved from the woman to me and back to her again. In her faded blue shift and her slumping frame, she didn’t present a threat. He let go of her arm but remained standing nearby.

  “I told you about my Larissa, didn’t I, miss? I ain’t got a picture of her, but she were a lot like you. A great one for learning, that girl. Had a lot of gumption. She weren’t afraid of much. No, sir. Just anything that slithered. So’s after Selina and her brothers threw her down that dry well, they tossed in a snake. Just for sport.”

  Cook wiped her eyes.
Her pupils were nearly the size of pinpricks. She shivered. I pulled the quilt up and helped her arrange it over her shoulders. “Larissa’s arm broke in the fall. She lay there two days, screaming at first. Terrified, she was, of that snake and no way out. Imagine what when dark came. She cried and whimpered all the time. That’s how the gardener found her. She were only moaning. Couldn’t talk none.”

  Cook reached into a pocket of the wrapper and showed us a long, auburn curl. “See? She had the prettiest hair, but she pulled most of it out. One of the gardeners saved this and sent it to me.”

  I nodded. “That is all you have of her, is it not? That and the teapot?”

  “The Biltmores planned to toss the teapot in the dustbin because of that one chip. So my girl asked if she could buy it. ‘The forget-me-nots will remind you of me, Ma,’ was what she said. When Selina saw it on my shelf, she snatched it and ran off. That demon broke off the nob on the lid. She told me she planned to break it to dust, one piece at a time! I offered her sweets and all my money to get it back. But she didn’t care. That one enjoyed being cruel—and she knew she was tearing my heart right out of my chest. It was all I had of my girl! That and the curl. That’s when I decided to do something. See, I couldn’t stomach it no more, miss.”

  “She told you what they did to Larissa, right?” I wanted to be clear about this.

  “No, miss. Worse. She bragged to me. Said as how they stood there and spit on Larissa while my baby screamed and cried and begged them to get her out. Of course, once she was hauled out of that well, no one would believe what happened. They wouldn’t take my daughter’s word against theirs. Not that she made much sense, see? I heard as how she jabbered and jabbered, but couldn’t talk sensible like. Selina told me about how Larissa had bare patches on her scalp from pulling out her hair. And her arm? Well, the bone stuck clean through the skin.”

  “And then what?” Mr. Waverly asked. “How did she die?”

  “They said it was suicide.” Cook’s eyes fluttered. They were closed when she asked, “You suppose a girl who used her right hand for everything could tie a hangman’s knot when her right arm was bad broke? I don’t. No, sir. I suspect she had help.”

  That thought shook me to the core. “Oh, Lord.”

  “But I found that ribbon by the bed where the girl died. Why did you leave it there?” Mr. Waverly’s face was tense with confusion.

  “I dropped the ribbon by accident. I planned to give it back to that little French girl, because she’s a luv. Poor child. She set great store by that piece of finery. As for Miss Miller, I wouldn’t have let her take the blame for long. I wrote this out, so you’d know what’s what.” Cook pulled a piece of wrapping paper from between the pages of her Bible. On it, in a shaky hand, were the words, “I killt Selina Biltmore,” and her signature.

  A shiver ripped through the woman as if she’d been taken over by a chilling wind. “Selina said she watched Larissa die. Told me that she and her brothers were there in the barn. Said my daughter kicked and squirmed. That’s what makes me saddest. My child died without comfort, see? She wouldn’t come home to me ’cause she didn’t want to be a burden. I would have taken her! Oh, God above! Why didn’t she run home to me?”

  Cook closed her eyes and sighed. Mephisto looked up at her and meowed. With one last shudder, Cook slumped to one side. Mephisto leaped neatly from her lap to mine. Cook would have fallen onto the floor if Mr. Waverly had not caught her. He pressed his fingers to her throat. After a bit, he shook his head. “She’s gone.”

  Chapter 47

  Despite my belief that Parthena Jones never meant to kill me, Mr. Waverly instructed the constable to take her to jail for the time being. “You can speak on her behalf before the magistrate,” he told me.

  Caje secured a hearse for Belinda Connelly’s mortal remains. I comforted Emma as she and Caje and I watched quietly while they carried Cook from her tiny room. “She’s with her daughter now. I believe that with all my heart, even if she did kill herself,” I said.

  Williams went and fetched Miss Miller, who had been staying at Lucy’s house while we carried out my plan. “How can I thank you enough, Miss Eyre—I mean, Mrs. Rochester?” she asked me. “You have saved me and the girls. However did you guess it was Cook?”

  “There were so many signs,” I said. “Although most of them were inconspicuous. Cook lied about the scratches on her arms. She had access to laudanum and could easily dose the girls. When I found a piece of the teapot in Selina’s drawer, I realized the girl had taken Cook’s prize possession. Signora Delgatto told me that Selina had pushed a governess down the well—and I started to wonder how Cook’s governess daughter died. Finally, there was powder sprinkled around Selina’s bed. At first, I assumed it to be the bath powder that she favored. But it never smelled of camellias. Cook was always baking. It would make sense that flour might have fallen from her person onto the floor in the Senior dormitory while she and Selina struggled.”

  Lucy and Mr. Douglas volunteered to stay at the school until Mrs. Thurston awakened. “Someone needs to tell the superintendent what she missed and that Miss Miller has been exonerated,” Lucy said. “Bruce can do that while I help Miss Miller with the children. You go back to my house with your husband. I imagine you could use a good night’s sleep. Adèle will be so thrilled to hear she is going home with you!”

  Lying in each other’s arms, Edward and I talked until the sun peeped around the gold velvet curtains in Lucy Brayton’s guest bedroom. My ribs still ached, but thanks to the wrapping, the pain was bearable.

  “So you destroyed the letters you found, the ones that were from the King?”

  “Yes. All but one,” I said and explained how I had been interrupted while burning them. “There was no good reason to keep the letters. Selina is dead. Her family has nothing to gain. Surely we can both spare some pity for a man forced to wed a woman under duress.”

  “Indeed. I hated my father for his devotion to Thornfield above all else,” Edward said. “I mocked how he took his responsibilities as a country squire so seriously. But along the way here, I was forced to see my tenants in their own homes, struggling to go about their lives. They deserve better from me.”

  “Mr. Carter also encouraged me to visit our local families. I did not realize the ways in which a squire’s wife could help. We’ve been so happy, just the two of us, and I pray we always shall be…but it is wrong of us to enjoy the benefits of your position without earning them. I can learn to ride. I can take baskets around. Mr. Carter can teach me simple remedies. I can report back to you when a family needs help.”

  “We can make the rounds together.” As he spoke, a new excitement tinged his words. How odd that we would come to this new place in our lives, that a threatening note would change so much for the better.

  “Rebuilding Thornfield takes on a new meaning to me,” my husband said. “As the manor house for the countryside, it was the hub for all activities. I had forgotten how many found employment brewing beer for our parties, making washing balls for our laundry, weaving fabric for our linens, raising doves for our dovecote, and helping harvest and preserve the bounty from the fields and orchards. When I was young, my parents opened the place up for Christmas, gave parties after foxhunting, raised a cup at Michaelmas, and in lean times opened the house for merriment that fed the locals for weeks. I thought of those events as entertainment for my parents and older brother, Rowland. Now I understand a deeper purpose. They brought opportunities to our tenants. Individually, each merriment was a small thing, but taken together, they created a mechanism for keeping my father informed about how his tenants were doing and providing the locals with extra provisions and coinage. I believe it is my duty to reach out. I hope you will not find it too tedious.”

  I squirmed a bit, thinking of how much I’d enjoyed our solitude. But how could I return to our old ways knowing that all around us our tenants suffered? This was a road I’d not intended to travel, but my feet were well along the path. I could not tu
rn back. Instead, I would accept certain discomforts as rent paid for all the blessings come my way.

  “I shall be proud to take on the role of lady of the manor. Adèle will enjoy welcoming visitors and having an audience. Eventually, we’ll find a new school for her. Perhaps one in Millcote. But one that is close by so she can come home whenever she wants. I especially want her around for the holidays.”

  “Adèle talks about Ned as if he were old enough to converse with her or offer an opinion on her choice of hair ribbons.” Edward chuckled. “Wait until she sees how dependent he is!”

  I smiled, thinking of her lavish affection. She had thrown herself at me, clutched me tightly, and declared I was “très courageuse” for facing Selina’s killer. But when she learned I had climbed a tree, she stared at me in frank astonishment.

  “Wasn’t that amusing, Edward? Did you hear what Adèle said? ‘Mademoiselle, you know how to climb trees? C’est vraiment incroyable!’”

  “She is quite correct. I also find you incredible. Let me show you…”

  Edward, Adèle, and I enjoyed Lucy’s hospitality for several more days. Most importantly, our hostess took the three of us to Hatchards, where we spent an entire morning selecting all sorts of wonderful books. At Edward’s insistence, Lucy took Adèle and me to her mantua-maker. “I know you like your wardrobe to be simple,” my friend said. “But simple and elegant are often one and the same. Let me show you.”

  We also visited her milliner and ordered several new bonnets.

  On our last day, Polly packed my things and Edward took off with John on errands concerning our solicitor. I sought out my “sister” Lucy. After dinner last evening, Lucy had presented Adèle with a lovely set of full-color paper dolls. My little French friend seated herself in the middle of the parlor and presided over an entire family of attractive flat people with elaborate wardrobes.