Keeper of Pleas

by A. Wendeberg

  Will I be breaking the law? she wondered.

  She could hardly send a telegram to Sévère asking if, under certain circumstances, it was legal to burgle a room in order to secure evidence. Didn’t policemen do this all the time?

  Deciding the law was on her side and, hence, she wouldn’t be breaking the contract she’d made with her employer, she flipped the blanket aside, pushed her feet once more into her felt slippers, and silently left her room.

  Charlotte Hunt, however, was wide awake when Olivia entered.

  —Cocoon—

  Olivia jerked awake. Her heart kicked her ribs, her mind stuttered. It took her a moment to realise that she was back in Sévère’s house. Her home. What was it that had awoken her? Something she’d dreamt. Something important about the case. The asylum.

  Yes! There it was again. The butterflies!

  She jammed her feet into her slippers, drew closed the lapels of her night robe, and left her room. Hastily, she covered the short distance to Sévère’s door and knocked.

  ‘Sévère?’

  No answer.

  She knocked again. ‘Gavriel, I need to talk to you. I know it’s very late and I’m sorry, but… I think I was all wrong. I didn’t come back empty-handed from Sevenoaks at all. I think I know who killed Charlotte’s children. I just didn’t see it until now.’ She thumped her head against the door in frustration. ‘Damn. Why was I so blind? Gavriel, are you awake?’

  Still no answer.

  She pressed her ear against the wood but heard nothing. He’d retreated to his private rooms at half past eleven, saying he was tired. Was he such a heavy sleeper?

  She tried the door. It was unlocked. ‘Gavriel?’

  She took a few steps into his room. The meagre light from the corridor hinted at the furniture.

  The bed was made.

  And empty.

  ❧

  ‘Good morning. Did you have a restful night?’ Olivia enquired, as she entered the dining room.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’ Sévère didn’t look up from his newspaper. She noticed that the tension she’d sensed in him upon her return the previous day had vanished. Whatever woman he had had, she must have served him well.

  Olivia sat and poured herself tea, picked a muffin, and began to eat. ‘Can a verdict be overturned or amended if new evidence is found that was not available at the original inquest?’

  He folded the paper and placed it aside. ‘One cannot appeal against a coroner’s ruling. Not even the coroner himself. One can, however, seek judicial review in the High Court. Why are you asking?’

  ‘I have a hunch. Well, perhaps more than a hunch. Though I’m not sure if…’

  ‘Put it to me, let’s discuss it and see what comes of it.’

  She placed her half-eaten muffin on the plate and drank a sip of tea. ‘I did some thinking last night. And I stumbled over a queer thing. Charlotte’s journals are filled with drawings of plants, how to graft, how to prune, how to… Well, everything related to plant craft. She’s been given responsibility for the asylum gardens. She learnt the craft from MacDoughall the elder when she and MacDoughall where children. She loves it.’ Olivia tapped her index finger against the table top. ‘This is important here. She loves gardening. She loves plants.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘When I entered her room the second night, she was awake. I couldn’t just run away, so I blurted out that she hadn’t heard my knocks. And next to come to mind were apical buds. Mr Pouch had said something about apical buds being snipped off when an expert does the grafting, remember? I told Charlotte that I kept thinking about grafting techniques, and that I couldn’t sleep because of the apical buds. I needed to know what was so important about them and if she could explain it to me. She showed me sections in her journals. Sections dedicated to grafting techniques and various trees. Apples, peaches…

  ‘I kept asking stupid questions, pretending I didn’t quite understand her mute explanations, so she would show me more. I hoped she would slowly open up and perhaps tell me something personal. Something about her children, or her father. She didn’t, of course. But then…

  ‘I didn’t pay much attention to it when I saw it. Drawings of small insects on the page borders, illustrating the lifecycle of a moth: from egg to worm to pupa to adult insect. She had drawn them in all her journals, except the newest. I believe she began drawing in that one a year or two ago. Then there are four older journals, the oldest is from 1869. She’s thirty-three now, so she used this journal when she was twenty-one. If I remember correctly, this journal begins not with an egg, but with a pupa. As though she’d noticed it too late, because it was her first.’

  She groaned, and rubbed her brow. ‘Damn I wish I could look at all of them right now to make sure I’m not mistaken!’

  Sévère sat silently and waited.

  ‘If I remember correctly…no, I’m quite certain that I do remember correctly.’ She shut her eyes and slowly nodded.

  ‘Yes. Seven life cycles through the years. Two had been corrected. She added a second egg, a second worm and pupa later. She used a different pencil, a sharper one. Nine, in total, became moths.’

  She looked up at Sévère.

  ‘And?’ he said.

  ‘The moths that hatched were small, dark things. Unpretty. Their frontal wings were darker, striped. The back wings were much lighter and plain. I believe they were all depictions of a codling moth.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A codling moth. An apple tree pest.’

  Sévère blinked, said, ‘Hum,’ pushed himself up from his chair, and left the room.

  ❧

  Olivia found him in his office, cloaked in cigar smoke.

  ‘The Burns case. I can work on that instead. It’s not as complicated,’ she said, and sat down heavily at the other side of his desk.

  ‘I gave that case to Stripling.’

  ‘Oh. Well… I don’t know what to say. I got carried away, it appears.’

  ‘It appears?’

  She sighed and leant back, her gaze following the ribbon of cigar smoke curling up toward the ceiling. ‘I didn’t want her to be the murderer. I wanted him to have done it. It’s stupid to feel this way, I know. It’s just that…she seems so innocent. I cannot imagine her kneeling in her bedroom, putting a knife to her own child’s throat.’

  ‘Nine times,’ he said softly. ‘What does a murderer look like in your opinion?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Gavriel?’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘Our partnership? No. Why would I?’

  She looked at him now. ‘Because I wasted your time.’

  ‘Did you now?’

  ‘I was fantasising instead of investigating.’

  ‘Were you now?’ A flash of amusement.

  ‘Are you mocking me?’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare.’ He stubbed out the cigar, folded his hands and said, ‘Now. While I must admit your observational skills are excellent, I must also point out the weaknesses of your theory. If Charlotte Hunt saw her unborn children as pests, how does that fit to the careful arrangement of their remains in the flowerpots? Johnston’s opinion is that these children had been cherished.’

  ‘How does their violent death fit with them having been cherished?’ Olivia retorted.

  ‘Precisely. Who has ever said that the person who killed these infants is also the person who buried them in flowerpots or the person who drew moths into journals?’

  Embarrassed, Olivia dropped her head. ‘I’m not good at this, Sévère. It was a stupid idea to make me your assistant.’

  ‘You’ve trained yourself to prejudge. A client steps into your room, and you gauge him and his likely actions based on what you see in his face. It’s time you learnt to distinguish fact from opinion.’

  She looked up, a dangerous flicker in her eyes.

  ‘Very well, then. Hunt’s trial is in ten days. We haven’t
identified the father of the children, nor have we got a word out of Charlotte Hunt, who’s now our main suspect. She’s also our main problem. Should your theory be correct, Miss Hunt has fooled a lot of people for a very long time. Perhaps she’s also fooled the father of the victims, but we should not forget that he might be her accomplice… What is it?’

  Olivia, sitting bolt upright and big-eyed in her chair, shook her head. ‘Nothing. Go on, please.’

  ‘Hunt is protecting his daughter. We can’t expect him to cooperate. He doesn’t want her sent to gaol or the colonies. She might even be hanged if there weren’t the possibility that she’s insane. He, as well, might be her accomplice. But whatever the case, he will not testify against his own daughter. Dammit! How do we get a most uncooperative, emotionally unstable, and deaf woman to give evidence against herself?’

  ‘I will speak to her,’ Olivia said with a hoarse voice.

  ‘Excellent. Talk to MacDoughall first.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘There’s a farm—’

  ‘Yes, I’ll ask there, too. Anyone who might know about a man who entertained a relationship with Charlotte Hunt. I’ll knock on many doors. Do I need a new warrant from you?’

  ‘Only if you require the help of the local police,’ he answered.

  ‘Do they usually share gossip?’

  ‘They might.’

  ‘Well then, I’ll need that warrant.’ She looked at him expectantly.

  ‘You are aware that these drawings in no way prove that Charlotte Hunt killed her children?’

  She leant back in her seat and nodded.

  ‘Let’s go for a walk to invigorate our mental faculties.’ He rose and opened the door for her, stopped himself, and shut it again. ‘Olivia, I need to say one more thing.’

  ‘If it’s about the prostitute you visited last night, there’s no need to talk about it. I couldn’t care less about your choice of bedmate,’ spilt from her mouth.

  Puzzled, he squinted at her. ‘That was not what I wished to say. But if you do feel a need to talk about other women, I believe I prefer the discussion to take place in the evening after we both have had a brandy or two.’

  She blushed violently. ‘I do not wish to discuss it. As I already said.’

  ‘Very well then.’ He looked at the hand that still held the doorknob. ‘Olivia, this case is difficult. You’ll have to get used to the idea that we might not be able to apprehend the murderer. You need to accept the possibility that an innocent man might be hanged.’

  She nodded and said softly, ‘I know. I will begin with digging around the apple trees on Hunt’s premises. The codling moth, the newborns buried under apple tree saplings. She probably buried them right there.’

  ‘Stripling and I will accompany you. He can do the digging.’

  ❧

  Stripling wasn’t lucky this time, either. It was raining buckets as he dug holes along the line of apple trees.

  Mr and Mrs Sévère had walked away, both protected by their large umbrellas. He wondered what she was doing here. She couldn’t possibly be planning to interrogate witnesses?

  His gaze travelled up and down the line of apple trees. Must be thirty, forty yards, he thought. Was he supposed to dig all that up in one day?

  ❧

  ‘May I speak to your husband?’ Olivia asked Celia MacDoughall.

  The woman wiped her hands on her apron. ‘He’s picking up manure at Miller’s. The farm down yonder.’ She jerked her head in a noncommittal direction.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘If you want to talk to my husband, you’d better go down to the Millers.’

  ‘It can wait. It’s raining cats and dogs, and my toes are freezing. You wouldn’t have a nice fire and a hot tea for me?’

  Reluctantly, Celia MacDoughall stepped back. Olivia shook the rain from her umbrella and coat, and thanked her for her hospitality.

  ‘How are your children?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ Celia offered Olivia a towel and placed a teapot onto the table.

  ‘Your boy’s cold is gone, I assume?’

  Celia threw a sharp glance at her. ‘What’s that man doing over there?’ She tipped her chin toward the window that provided a glimpse of Hunt’s orchard.

  ‘Officer Stripling is excavating evidence.’

  ‘But Mr Hunt confessed!’

  Olivia nodded slowly and stared into her mug. ‘Do you believe he did it? Killed nine newborns?’

  Celia shrugged. ‘I don’t know. If he said he did it, he must have done it, mustn’t he?’

  ‘The coroner has his doubts.’ Olivia made it sound as though she believed Sévère had no clue about anything.

  Celia caught the bait. ‘Have you ever met him?’

  ‘Rupert Hunt?’

  ‘Yes. He might look all friendly and kind. But… Anyway. I’m sure he did it.’

  A wail sounded from the bedroom, and Celia left to pick up her infant. When she sat back down at the table, the soft sheen of a nursing mother in her eyes, Olivia said, ‘I’m sure you are correct. It sickens me to think of it. Nine infants. Just like yours.’

  The jab had instant effect. Celia looked up, horrified. ‘I don’t want to think about it, let alone talk about it. How can a man do such a thing? And dig them down in the middle of the night, and no one knows anything. Thank the Lord the Hunts are all gone!’

  ‘I wish I had met Charlotte. Poor woman…’ Olivia said softly.

  Celia blew air through her lips. ‘Pshaw!’ And with a blush, she fell silent.

  ‘She threw an ink bottle at the coroner,’ Olivia provided.

  No answer.

  ‘And a book. It just missed his head. He briefly considered apprehending her.’

  ‘He should have. That woman did quite a bit of front door work all over Redhill.’

  ‘With your husband, too?’

  ‘Not since after we got married. I made sure of it.’

  ❧

  Sévère’s new umbrella withstood the first gale for precisely half a second. Then a rib broke. He made it to Redhill’s general practitioner with his left shoulder soaked.

  ‘May I speak with Dr Thorpe?’ he said when a maid answered his knocks.

  ‘He’s presently attending to a patient. You may sit in the hall. May I take your coat and umbrella?’

  Sévère didn’t have to wait long. A thickset man in his seventies wheezed through the hall and left. Then Dr Thorpe called, ‘Next, please!’ through the open door of his office.

  Sévère introduced himself, and Thorpe answered, ‘I was wondering when you’d pay me a visit. Nine concealed births — the practitioner must know something. He’s probably romantically involved, if not an accomplice. Isn’t that how detective stories go these days?’ He held out a hand and shook Sévère’s. His moustache twitched with a smile.

  ‘I came here for the gossip,’ Sévère replied.

  ‘Ah! You wish to know who the father is. Well, it wasn’t me. May I offer you a cup of tea? You look like you need it. Perhaps a towel, too?’

  ‘Very kind of you, thank you.’

  Dr Thorpe called for the maid, who delivered the requested objects swiftly.

  Sévère, now significantly warmer, stretched his left leg. ‘Rupert Hunt fathered his daughter’s children.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Thorpe showed genuine surprise.

  ‘You didn’t read the papers?’

  ‘I rarely do. It’s a waste of time, if you ask me. These days, reporters don’t report anything. They write what sells best. What’s the use of reading that?’

  ‘You prefer detective novels?’

  Thorpe laughed, wiped his moustache, and said, ‘Did you come to borrow a book from my library, or to question me?’

  ‘I was hoping for hot tea, to be honest.’

  ‘Ah! I see. Your tactic is to calmly lean back and let the culprit talk himself into a corner. Well then. I am not the father of Charlotte Hunt’s children, as I’ve already said. I’m greatly surp
rised Rupert Hunt is the one. I’d have thought a pig farmer had done the deed. I’m even more surprised the gossip of Hunt being so deeply involved in this tragedy didn’t reach my ears. It usually does.’

  Sévère raised an inviting eyebrow.

  ‘Miller. Unbecoming wife, four unbecoming children. He had an eye on Charlotte. Everyone knows it. Even his wife.’

  ‘Did anyone else have an eye on Charlotte Hunt?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Hum,’ said Sévère, drank his tea and scratched his neck. His eyes scanned the office for several long moments, and, when he thought Dr Thorpe had fidgeted in his chair long enough, he said, ‘Rupert Hunt stated that you’ve diagnosed his daughter with insanity.’

  Thorpe looked aghast. ‘Before making such a judgement I would have had to examine the patient in question.’

  ‘You’ve never seen her?’

  ‘No, not as her doctor. I’ve met her in passing several times. But as you know, she doesn’t speak.’

  ‘Mr MacDoughall stated that Mrs Hunt was sickly. Surely you must have seen her on occasion?’

  ‘I did not. The Hunts weren’t fond of learnt medical men. They preferred the services of Miss Dunham. She’s the local witch. Although she prefers the term wise woman.’

  Sévère pulled out his notebook. ‘Her full name and address, please.’

  ‘Aliya is her first name, I believe. Aliya Dunham. She lives in the Brook. I can arrange for a cab, if you wish.’

  ❧

  Stripling’s spade met resistance. He cursed. Not another body! He dug around it and extracted a bundle of what looked like a cut-up and bunched-up rug to him. The hole was filling up with rain quickly. A thin strip of light-coloured clay bled into the dark muck. Stripling pulled the heavy package onto the lawn and peeled layer upon layer of the thick, dirty-brown fabric aside.