by Jane Jakeman
There was a sound from Marie, who seemed to be crouching down on the bed, whimpering.
“I’m so tired now,” she was murmuring. “Please, my lord, let me get some rest. I don’t understand at all how you could have thought that I had killed them — that I was a murderess! Why, I have never harmed another creature in my life — except just now, to save you!”
I hastened over to her. “And very courageous you were too, Mistress Crawshay, and I thank you with all my heart. I did think that the murderer must be a woman, I confess, for a particular reason: I found some buttons from a woman’s gown in poor Tom Granby’s shirt — and there were shreds of a dress such as you yourself wear in the stove downstairs, as if someone had tried to burn a stained garment. I leapt to a totally unwarranted conclusion: that a woman with a sprigged cotton gown had got the blood of the murdered men upon it, and had tried to burn it for fear of discovery.” Marie’s face seemed very pale now, her voice faint. She had plainly suffered a frightful shock, and I knew that I should not keep her any longer from her rest, yet she spoke again, murmuring softly:
“Oh, Lord Ambrose, but I fear you were partly right! You see, I had taken my husband, my dear Edmund, in my arms when I found him lying there, and afterwards I realised that there was indeed blood on my gown, and I … well, I feared that people might think me … ”
“Might think you guilty, as I was fool enough to do!” I cried.
“Yes, might think me guilty,” she repeated. “And also I did not want my child to see the blood and perhaps be terrified at the sight … So I quickly pulled it off and put on a fresh one — it was the work of minutes. And then later, after everyone had gone, I just cut up the old gown and burned it. That is all there is to confess, sir, that is the end of the story.”
“Forgive me, dear Mistress Crawshay,” I said. “Now get some rest, I beg you. There is nothing more to fear.”
Marie turned her face into the great pillow of her bed, and Elisabeth pulled the coverlet over her.
“I fancy she’s taken some more laudanum,” she said, as we slipped out of the room, leaving Marie to sleep. “But she must get some rest. And let me bind up your hand.”
We built up a great fire in Elisabeth’s room, for both of us suddenly felt chilled to the bone in spite of the heat of the summer’s night. Elisabeth was suffering from shock, and I from loss of blood. She tore some linen into strips for bandages and bound my wounded hand. The pain eased away.
We sat beside the fire, until I grew impatient of talk.
My mouth was suddenly on hers and we began to caress each other slowly in the firelight, her gown slipping off and the lace-fronted petticoat beneath it, till we lay before the warm flickering flames, both utterly naked, our bodies moving, first she on top of me and then I lying over her, till at last we had shuddered and gasped together.
CHAPTER 21
A little later, we heard a disturbance from Marie’s room, and I pulled on some clothing and went to her.
She was awake: the slumberful effects of the drug had not lasted long, and she was thirsty and restless, reaching for a flask of water that stood beside the bed, the noise of which, as it overturned under her uncertain hand, had alerted us.
Elisabeth brought a jug of water from her room and Marie drank thirstily. She sat up on her bed, propped on pillows, great dark circles under her eyes in spite of the rest she had enjoyed.
Feeling that she was in need of a restorative, I offered to fetch her some wine from the decanter downstairs, and she gratefully murmured her thanks.
There was something else I must do when I got to the bottom of the staircase, something which I did not mention to the women. The body of Richard De Carme lay at the foot of the stairs, where he had fallen. I went down the stairs, dragged the dead man into the parlour and pulled off the shawl that lay over the piano on the other side of the room.
It was getting lighter. That was why I saw it there, just as I was about to fling the shawl over the white face. A flash of red and yellow pinned to his jacket, the cheap, swaggering colours somehow pathetically bright. Someone, I supposed, some woman, probably, with a laugh and a joke as he passed through the fairground, for this was such a favour as they give away at fairs, to entice the men to part with their money, trying their luck at shooting stalls or at fisticuffs with some travelling pugilist …
I stopped dead.
Fragments of conversation whirled round in my head.
Elisabeth, saying of her dead husband: “Richard could never resist a horse-fair.”
The gypsy-woman I had taken to safety at Callerton, telling me why the Lees had camped near there: “To sell their ponies at the Callerton fair.”
And that had been on the day after the murders.
What day had the fair taken place?
I tore up the stairs, and without ceremony burst into Marie’s room.
Marie lay with her eyes closed and Elisabeth was holding a wet cloth to her temples. The curtains were drawn, but the currents of the storm were whirling through the gaps in the old casement windows, and candles flickered wildly in the draught as I entered, their light glancing round the room, illuminating dark corners, gleaming on polished wood and the small silver and glass toilette adornments around the room. Marie was propped up on a mound of white pillows, and the pale faces of the women leapt out of the gloom in the fitful light.
Marie opened her eyes with a start and both women were astounded by my frantic entrance. I seized Elisabeth by the shoulders and said to her, passionately:
“When was the fair? The horse fair at Callerton? Which day was it?”
She gazed at me in amazement, but answered my question quite calmly, as if she were humouring a lunatic.
“Why, it was the day Edmund and old Crawshay were killed. I remember it so clearly, because the fair was all along the streets, so it was difficult to make ones way through the town. But I was not interested in it — I just carried out my purchase and came back here to the farm — I came back in the cart, as I told you. I forgot all about the fair — I did not think to mention it.”
He must have seen her there. He had followed her from the fair. Followed after her, on foot, and arrived on the outskirts of the village, where I had seen him creeping along like a guilty creature, moving low down behind the hedgerows. I had believed that he must have tracked Elisabeth down by enquiring after her, but it all fell into place now. He had simply seen her by chance in Callerton, had probably followed her through the streets, and seen the direction the pony and cart had taken when she drove out of the town and turned into the road for home.
Aloud, I said:
“He could not have killed them. Richard De Carme could not have killed the Crawshays, because he was at the fair that day — and he has a fairing — a rosette — in his buttonhole. He could not have got here on foot the same day, and arrived before you did, because he could not have overtaken you on the road. But the Crawshays were dead by the time you got home — when Richard was still following you! So someone else killed them. Someone at the farm. I do not believe it was the gypsy. And I cannot, will not, believe that it was you!” Marie sat looking up at us as we embraced before her eyes, and it must have dawned on her that I would not believe any attempt to throw the guilt upon my Elisabeth.
There was a long silence as she realised that the myth of her innocence had been utterly destroyed.
Then she started to cry out denials, to protest that she knew nothing at all of the matter, that she was innocent of any shadow of wrong-doing. “Please, I beg you, my lord, be so good as to fetch me the little bottle in the cabinet there. I must … I feel so dreadfully unwell … I beg you, sir, I plead with you … ”
I knew what she wanted. The latest dose of laudanum was ceasing its effect. I could see shivers running over her skin and a sweat dabbling her throat and forehead. Her hair seemed damp and clung to her head in thick tresses.
“Tell me everything that happened here on the day of the murders. Then you can have some
of your … medicine.”
It was cruel, but I had to go through with it. Let her get to that little blue phial of laudanum and she would be once again calm, tranquil, a smooth and accomplished liar. This was the only way to make her speak, the only way in which she could be forced to tell us the real story at last. I knew now what had happened, but it was all conjecture: we must have it from her own lips. A confession.
And the only way she could be made to confess was to keep that tantalising opiate, that blessed peace and oblivion that the drug would bring, away from her lips.
There was a long silence, broken by sobs from Marie as she realised I would not yield. She looked pleadingly at Elisabeth, who exchanged a glance with me, and then silently shook her head.
And then Marie started talking, twisting her hands, talking as if she could not stop, as if it were some strange life blood pouring out for the last time and she could hold nothing back. She was, by this time, quite mad. She told her tale as if she could see it, as if it were happening right there in front of her eyes, like a story in a play.
CHAPTER 22
Old Crawshay is laughing, with his head thrown back, his mouth fully open, showing his strong teeth. He is laughing especially at Marie tonight.
He has just told Edmund and Marie that he is to marry their governess. He is enjoying himself, watching his family react.
Edmund is stunned at first, then begins to ask silly questions, such as when will the ceremony happen and what bedroom will the newly married pair occupy. Edmund doesn’t count.
But Marie counts. Marie knows what it means straight away. She sees that the governess is strong and healthy, that old Crawshay has plenty of sap left in him. There will be children.
And then what will happen to big Edmund and little Edmund, her husband and her child, and at present the heirs apparent?
Why, they will be displaced by the heirs of the governess. By the children of the woman Crawshay brought home from a fair, and Marie’s own child will be made to share his inheritance, might even lose it altogether. Crawshay will not favour little Edmund over the children the governess will bear him. Marie knows that in her bones.
What does she say now when the old man announces his news? Marie is a dangerous person. She congratulates him on his engagement.
That night, she pictures the future to Edmund as they lie sleepless in the feather bed. Their son will be dispossessed, themselves passed over. At best, they will be reduced to the status of second-class citizens in the kingdom they expected to inherit. They could even be turned out of doors by those shadowy ghosts of the future, the children of Crawshay by his second marriage.
At last, even Edmund understands what is happening. It penetrates slowly, but the danger finally sinks into his brain. And Marie works on that. Night after night, as the huge harvest moon rises over the fields and the heat of the day spirals away in draughts of hot air escaping up to the sky from the parched ground. When Edmund reaches for her in the feather bed, Marie turns from him.
Marie believes the governess will be mistress here soon. Between themselves, they still refer to her as the governess, though Crawshay has said that she is no longer to instruct little Edmund — after all, it would not be right for the future lady of the house to perform such a menial role.
Crawshay enjoys telling Marie that. Edmund sees his wife taut and full of bitterness.
Prompted by Marie, Edmund begins to think of his own mother. Did that gentle creature not suffer intolerably at his father’s hands? How many times did Edmund tell Marie the story? How he, as a child, just like Edmund, came running indoors one day to find his mother, her beautiful hair pulled loose and spreading over the floor where she lay, her mouth dabbled with blood. And Crawshay standing over her.
Oh yes, the old man had destroyed Edmunds mother. And now he was to remarry as if she had never existed. As if she had never been, never suffered, never borne a son to inherit. Was that tolerable?
Night after night, in a whisper, Marie talks to her husband. Night after hot summer night. The heat now is extreme, the greasy meat washed in vinegar to sweeten it, the milk tainting quickly in the pan, flies gathering wherever the men in the field stop and gather to eat their rough bread. The flies drink their sweat.
Only the very early morning is cool. Every morning, Marie goes into the byre where Mattie is doing the milking. One cow is allowed to keep her milk: she is suckling little Edmund’s pet, a gold-furred calf. The boy goes with his mother every morning, to watch the quiet beasts shuffling in their straw.
Crawshay in the old days would never have permitted such a thing as a favourite calf, petted and spoiled. He would have put a stop to it straight away.
But Crawshay is absorbed wholly by his governess. He forgets about his family, so that he scarcely bothers even to victimise them. He certainly does not keep an eye on what they are doing.
Edmund realises that it will really happen now. The marriage that may annihilate his chance of inheriting the farm and its land. His wife will be overruled, will have to obey the governess as mistress of the house, and his child will be displaced by the governess’s children.
From time to time, old Crawshay stokes the fires.
“Won’t be long now! She’ll have me soon enough. Wish me joy, son!”
Edmund backs away from his father.
“Wish the bridegroom all happiness, Edmund, my lily-white boy!”
There is a pair of pistols in the outhouse. Once they were fine weapons, but now their duelling days are over and they have gone down in the world, like the Crawshays themselves.
The silver inlay on the butts is tarnished. They are too fancy for old Crawshay’s taste. He would mock them as the mere adornments of a fop.
Marie brings them to Edmund. They need cleaning, she says.
Husband and wife look at each other, a long, silent exchange.
Edmund rams oily rags in the barrels. Marie polishes the silver butts. She breathes mist on them. Rub, breathe, rub, till silky, watery gleams of silver come to the surface of the metal.
Edmund finds ammunition. Bullets, powder.
It is the hottest day of the year so far. The governess has gone to Callerton in the pony-cart. The Crawshay family is alone at the farm.
The light is blinding outside the house, and inside the air is thick with motes of dust. When Crawshay comes in from the fields at noon, a cloud of insects follows him.
Crawshay does not wish to spend the hottest afternoon of the year out in the fields. He intends to do the farm accounts — after all, he will soon have to afford the expense of a wedding, as he tells his son and daughter-in-law with great relish.
Edmund is blinking as he follows his father to the hall. Crawshay goes ahead of him as he sits down at the dining table. As Edmund turns his head to the light in order to look at his father, he sees flashes of red as the sun beats on the thin skin and the veins of the eyelids.
Old Crawshay is laughing at some secret pleasure of his own as he sits at the head of his own table, in his own house.
Marie has followed the men into the room.
And puts a cool and lovely pistol into Edmund’s hand.
The last expression on Crawshay’s face is amazement. The princess in the fairy story, whose pet toad turned into a man under her very nose, could not have been more astonished than Crawshay, when he sees the pistol in the hand of Edmund, that feeble, soft, pretty boy.
In a way, you could say that Crawshay is spared all fear at the end, since he dies disbelieving.
His blood begins to dry almost as soon as it runs out, dotting dark and velvety over his breast: steam rises from it.
Marie moves before Edmund does. She comes towards him and he thrusts the pistol at her, holding it out desperately as if begging her to relieve him of this burden, as if he scarcely knows what he is doing.
She takes the pistol from his hand. A smell of burning, coming from the barrel with wisps of smoke, makes her wrinkle her nose. She lays the pistol on the table.
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Then there comes a long pause, while Edmund clings to her, asks her, “What shall we do?,” whines in terror at his own actions, shakes and shudders in her arms, till she pulls away.
She has put the pistol down.
And from the dresser beside her she takes up its twin.
She takes it up because of those hours, again and again, alone in the middle of the night, walking the house, contemplating the nature of the man she has married, finding relief only in the little phial of laudanum. She does not intend to kill Edmund, does not scheme for it nor long for it, does not spend hours day-dreaming of it, as she did of the old man’s death.
She takes up the pistol because Edmund is babbling, terrified, because she knows he will not keep silent, that he is the weakest of creatures. She despises him, as utterly as his father did. She hates their life together now, wants only to be left alone with her child, and with the laudanum bottle when she cannot hold back from it, as happens more and more now.
But now the opportunity is here in front of her. She can be entirely free, unburdened by that stupid, demanding, babbling husband; she and her small son can live at Craw-shay’s with no one else to gainsay her wishes. Chance has put this in her hand and she will take it.
She takes up the second pistol, still unfired, and turns towards her husband.
Her arm jerks upwards as she fires, and Edmund jerks backwards, and then the puppet Edmund folds up over the table.
A little later, the gypsy calls at the farmhouse asking for a drink. Although he heard two shots from the direction of the farm, he sees nothing amiss. The house is neat, the doors all shut, the curtains drawn against the flies and heat.
“Did I hear gun-firing, mistress, as I walked through the field yonder?”
“Aye, my husband is out after coneys.”
Marie has laid some old shirts, bundled up, on the kitchen table. The gypsy may have them — they are cast-offs.
