The Poisoned House

by Michael Ford

  I screamed and dropped the bucket in the yard. Water spilled out towards the drain in the centre and the three little cats fell damply on to the cobbles.

  Mrs Cotton stood at the back door. Her face was cast in shadow, but I could feel her smiling.

  .

  Chapter 25

  Back in my room, lit only by the dim glow from a candle, I cried. I felt completely powerless and the injustice boiled within me, making me light-headed. There was nothing I could do to stop her, no one I could speak to. She was cruel but she was clever too. I doubted that Sammy would bat an eyelid at the drowning of the kittens. What use were they, after all? He wouldn’t see that the only reason Mrs Cotton had killed them was to hurt me. And for what reason except that she could?

  I ground my fists into my pillow to control my anger. I could almost feel my mother watching me. If only I could see her again! If only I could smell her skin or touch her soft cheek! I would have given everything I had for just a minute alone with her, face to face, to be able to slip my hands around her and breathe her in. Something – anything – would be enough.

  I lay on my bed and watched the candle flame burn.

  ‘If you’re here,’ I whispered, ‘blow out the flame.’

  I watched, but it didn’t even flicker.

  ‘Please,’ I begged. ‘Show me.’

  I focused all my mind on the candle, as though willpower alone could extinguish the fire.

  My eyes began to sting and I blinked away the tears that had appeared once more.

  Why couldn’t she do this one little thing for me? She could throw plates and glasses, she could leave handprints on the windows and toy with me in countless ways.

  I blew out the candle with an angry puff.

  It must have been the creak of the floor that woke me. My eyes seemed blinded by light, and I threw up my arms to shield them. It came from a lantern. A figure stood over my bed.

  ‘Where is it?’ hissed the voice.

  ‘What?’ I mumbled, my voice thick with sleep.

  It was Mrs Cotton. Her eyes blazed. She bared her teeth and hissed. ‘You know what, you little horror. Where’s the key?’

  I tried to roll away, but she seized my arm and pulled me off the bed. I cried out as my knees grazed the floor, but she kept hold of me and tugged me up.

  ‘You will tell me now where it is, or I swear I will beat you until your skin is nothing but ribbons,’ she said.

  My head swam with dizziness. The light, the sudden jolt from sleep, the pain in my wrist and knees – all threatened to overcome me. ‘Please!’ I gasped. ‘I don’t know.’

  She released me and I fell back against the bed. My thoughts were confused. ‘The key to what?’ I said.

  ‘Tell me!’ she shouted. The lantern threw thick shadows trembling across the little room. ‘The library key!’

  My mind found some focus. The library key? The key for the French windows leading to the garden? I said the first thing I could think of. ‘Maybe Samuel –’

  Her hand came down in the darkness like a swooping bird, and cracked across my cheek. ‘You will not lie to me, child!’ She reached down and pulled the keys from her pocket. I couldn’t speak. My face felt like it was on fire. She jangled the keys in front of my eyes. ‘Taken from this very ring. You dare to blame my nephew for this?’

  ‘I – I– ’

  She lifted her hand again, but then a voice spoke from behind her.

  ‘What’s the matter, ma’am?’

  Lizzy stood in the doorway, smoothing her nightdress.

  Mrs Cotton lowered her arm. ‘It’s nothing that concerns you,’ she said. ‘Go back to bed.’

  Lizzy didn’t move.

  Mrs Cotton turned on her. ‘I will not repeat myself.’

  Lizzy retreated, looking down at me with concern. She went into her own room across the hall, but didn’t close the door.

  Mrs Cotton seemed to think better of continuing her assault, and pointed a bony finger at me.

  ‘You got away once, Abigail Tamper, but you will not do so again. I will die before I see you escape this house.’

  ‘I swear it wasn’t me,’ I said.

  She reached over me and pulled the mattress off my bed. With both hands she searched desperately among the sheets. Then she went to the chest and flung open the lid. She rooted through it, but I knew she would find nothing. I watched her back as she ferreted. Anger surged through me, and words gathered behind my teeth like a great flood behind a dam. I could say it now. I could say that I knew what she’d done. That she was a murderer.

  The words were ready, but I couldn’t utter them.

  My tongue twisted around the phrases, and what finally escaped was quite different.

  ‘Why did you hate her?’ I asked.

  Breathless, she stood and retrieved her lamp. She didn’t look at me as her chest rose and fell. ‘I will find it,’ she said, ‘and when I do . . .’

  She left the room, pulling the door closed as she went. I listened to her heavy tread descend the stairs.

  I remade the bed and lay on it. My tongue played inside my mouth. The blow had loosened a tooth slightly.

  The key had nothing to do with me. Someone else had taken it, but I didn’t really care who.

  I remembered the bolt drawn across the coal store on New Year’s Day, seemingly by an invisible hand. But there was a big difference between moving a bolt and taking a key off a ring, wasn’t there?

  My door opened and Lizzy came in.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, sitting on my bed and resting a hand on my foot.

  There was a time when I would have cried, as I had cried on her shoulder countless times over the past year.

  ‘I didn’t take her blasted key,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t tear your scarf either.’

  ‘I know you didn’t,’ she said kindly.

  I sat up and hugged her.

  ‘It’ll be all right though, you’ll see,’ she said sadly. ‘As long as we stick together.’

  She was the best friend I ever had, was Lizzy. I decided it was time to tell her what I knew. About my mother. About the happenings. About what I suspected Mrs Cotton had done.

  But I realised my shoulder was wet. She was crying. How selfish I was, thinking about myself when she had her own problems!

  ‘Is it Henry?’ I asked.

  She sniffed loudly and nodded. I searched for something to say.

  ‘There’ll be someone else. Someone who deserves you.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ she said, wiping her eyes.

  ‘What is it then?’

  She smiled. Such a mournful smile.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  She dissolved into tears after that. I waited until she had finished, and it gave me time to think. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked.

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I missed my time. Most mornings I’ve felt dreadful. My sister went through it just the same.’

  I remembered her being sick but I hadn’t realised it happened so regularly.

  ‘And it’s Henry’s?’ I said.

  Her eyes widened. ‘Who else?’

  They’d done much more than kiss, then.

  ‘What will you do?’

  That made her cry again. Good work, Abigail! I was about to ask if Henry knew himself, but then I understood.

  ‘That’s why he broke it off, isn’t it?’ I said.

  She blew her nose on a handkerchief. ‘He said he can’t afford a family.’

  And neither can you, I thought grimly. We’d all heard stories of staff who were found to be with child. It was back to their folks, normally. But Lizzy only had her sister.

  There was little more for either of us to say, and she went back to bed. At the door I told her, truthfully, that I couldn’t tell her condition by looking at her. She was only a few weeks gone and it would be several months before she showed enough for Mrs Cotton, or any of the others, to be sure.

  As it was, she had much less time than we thought.

&n
bsp; .

  Chapter 26

  For the first time since I could remember, I overslept the next morning. When I woke, my hand reached automatically for the watch before I remembered that it wasn’t there. I dressed and rushed downstairs, knowing that I was late, but not by how much.

  Cook was already up and the fires were lit under the range.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself,’ she said. ‘She’s not down yet, and she shan’t hear from me.’

  Cook looked even more ragged than usual that morning. Her face was puffy and covered in red blotches and her eyes ringed with yellowish skin. As she brushed past me carrying a dustpan, a wave of stale air followed her. I wondered if she had been drinking since she awoke.

  ‘Miss McMahon,’ I asked, ‘have you seen anything odd of late? About the house.’

  ‘And what would you be meaning by odd?’ she asked. She came up to me, and her careworn face was alive with anxiety.

  ‘It’s only that . . .’ I began. Should I really be confiding in her? She’d think me mad. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  She gripped my arm, not hard like Mrs Cotton the night before, but firmly enough.

  ‘Odd, you say?’

  Something in her look frightened me, so I pulled my arm away. ‘No. I’m being silly.’

  I walked over the trapdoor on my way to light the fires in the main rooms. Down there was the key to this oddness. I wouldn’t oversleep tomorrow.

  Weariness dogged me all morning. I did my best to avoid Mrs Cotton, and when I couldn’t, I tried to be in the company of others when we met.

  Cook had seen something, I was sure. She’d latched on to me as though we were two people lost in a storm. Lizzy’s expression was wretched, and Lord Greave didn’t come down at all. Mr Lock went about the house like a man in a daze. It was as if the ghost was haunting all of us.

  Adam arrived at the backyard after lunch as I was drying the plates. He was drawing the coal wagon that day, and I unbolted the hatch from the inside, then went out to sign for it.

  ‘Mornin’,’ he said. ‘Any post for me today?’

  I shot a look back at the house. ‘Shh!’ I said. ‘Keep your voice down, will you?’

  I’d snapped more than I meant to, and he looked hurt. ‘’Pologies,’ he said.

  ‘So you should be,’ I said. ‘I told you it was a secret, didn’t I?’

  I could hear my words and hated myself for it, but the frustrations of the previous days – of being stuck in that house, powerless and forever at the whim of Mrs Cotton – bubbled over like a boiling pan, sizzling and hissing.

  He grumbled something under his breath, then said, ‘I’ll be on my way then.’

  ‘Yes, go,’ I said, staring at a point between him and the house.

  He jumped back up on to the cart and flicked the reins. As he trundled towards the gate, I went after him to close it. ‘Adam,’ I called, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . .’

  I’m not sure if he heard me above the clop of the horse’s hoofs, but he didn’t look back.

  The day did not improve. It was the time of week when we cleaned the unused nurses’s rooms. Mrs Cotton wouldn’t go in at all, so it was Lizzy and I who went up with the brushes and polishes. We did the bedroom together, then Lizzy went to tackle the adjoining nursery.

  As soon as she walked in, she backed out of the door again, with her hand clasped over her mouth.

  She looked at me then back into the room. I dropped the brush I was holding.

  ‘What’s the matter, Lizzy?’

  She was speechless. I crossed to her side and looked in. It was my turn to suck in a shocked breath.

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ she asked.

  The cot-bed was upturned and the blankets were in disarray. Samuel’s toy soldiers had been flung across the floor and a spinning top lay on its side in the middle of the floor. The few storybooks had been pulled from the little shelf and hurled to the ground. It looked as if a whirlwind had passed through the room.

  ‘Who?’ said Lizzy again.

  I had a good idea, but shook my head. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We have to tell Mrs Cotton,’ said Lizzy. She turned to the hallway, but I managed to get a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘No!’ I said. ‘Wait a moment.’

  ‘But she must know,’ said Lizzy. ‘Someone in the house has done this.’ Her expression hardened.

  ‘I know who, and you can’t say.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Sit down.’

  She looked uncertain, but did as I asked. I closed the door to the bedroom so no one could hear. I’d kept the secret until now, but I needed to tell her. I could trust her.

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I asked her.

  She gave a worried grin, and nodded briskly. ‘You know I can, Abi. We’re friends.’

  So I took a deep breath and told her everything, from the hand at the window that night to my visit to Dr Reinhardt south of the river. It felt good to be getting it off my chest, and as the events spilled out, a great weight was lifted. I should have told her long before, and wondered what had stopped me.

  Lizzy listened patiently, nodding occasionally, and her eyes stared into mine with a look of growing astonishment. It was only as I concluded my story that I found out it wasn’t the story that horrified her, it was me.

  She stood up from the bed where we were sitting. She looked into the room again and then at me. She was biting her lip and shaking her head.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ I asked.

  ‘Believe you?’ she cried, tears gathering in her eyes. ‘Abi, what a horrid trick!’

  ‘What? No. It’s no trick!’

  I tried to reach for her, but she pulled away.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said. ‘How could you make up such things about something so serious?’

  Her look was one of sympathy mingled with confusion. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She had to believe me!

  ‘It’s her,’ I said. ‘You must see that.’

  ‘It’s you!’ she said, pointing at me. Then she laughed despairingly, wiping the tears from her eyes. ‘I forgave you for tearing my scarf like that. You were jealous, that’s all. I know now that Henry wasn’t the man I thought, but at least he had the honesty to admit his faults. At least . . .’ She trailed off.

  ‘Please, Lizzy, I said. ‘I know it’s hard to understand, but why would I lie? My mother is here. Now.’

  Lizzy’s brow was creased and she backed away to the door.

  ‘You really believe what you’re saying, don’t you?’

  My throat was dry. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘I won’t tell, Abi,’ she said, nodding towards the nursery. ‘I promise.’

  ‘And you’ll help me?’ I asked. ‘To find who killed my mother?’

  Lizzy shook her head sadly. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘And you must stop this, Abi. It’s all in your mind.’

  She rushed from the room, leaving me more alone than ever.

  .

  Chapter 27

  Why had I told her? And what did I expect would be the result? That she would say, ‘Yes, Abi, your mother was murdered and her ghost can’t find its rest until the culprit is punished’?

  She thought I was insane! And who wouldn’t?

  I sank down on the floor. I’d been such a fool.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid!

  Laughter trickled from the lower floors – Samuel’s rich baritone and Alexander’s snorts. At least someone in Greave Hall was happy.

  For a long while I sat there alone. I felt like giving up completely. As the minutes ticked by, I asked myself how I ever could have dreamt of finding, let alone proving, foul play. Mrs Cotton’s plan was foolproof, her secret buried with my mother more than a year ago. The time for alibis was long past. Even confronted with her deed, I could imagine her stony face and lips curled with contempt. There would be no choice other than to cast me out. Or worse, throw me in s
ome lunatic asylum with the other poor souls tormented by fantasies.

  I stood up weakly.

  ‘Enough,’ I said under my breath. ‘I tried.’

  If I expected a draught to blow across the room, signalling some displeasure from beyond the grave, then I was disappointed. The only sounds were crockery rattling in the rooms below and more guffaws from Sammy and his guest.

  There was still the nursery to clean. I straightened my apron. Time to take stock, Abigail, I told myself.

  Mrs Cotton had always despised me and always would. I thought I might be able to repair my friendship with Lizzy, shortlived though it would be if she was turfed out. She’d told me to try and forget about it, but we both knew that was impossible. I felt ashamed even to face her again, but working below stairs that would be inevitable. At least I still had Sammy. He’d be there for me, just as I had been there for him.

  I walked back into the nursery. When I entered, my legs almost gave way beneath me. ‘What?’ I gasped.

  The room was pristine. I walked into the centre, turning a full circle to take it all in.

  The rocking horse was righted, the toy soldiers stood in neat ranks. The sheets on the cot were folded back and the books were aligned on their shelves.

  I looked back to the main room. Had someone come in while I was musing? Perhaps Lizzy had returned and restored the room without me noticing.

  But of course it wasn’t that! The nursery hadn’t merely been put to rights again: it was as though it had never been touched!

  I still checked under the cot, as if someone might be hiding there. There was nobody. I went to the window. It was closed. Finally – and I don’t know what it was that drew my eyes upwards – I looked at the ceiling hatch and suddenly felt all the breath leave my body.

  There, quite clear in an otherwise spotless room, was a handprint, splayed out just like the mark on the library window many nights before. There weren’t any acrobats in the house as far as I knew, which left only one other option. But why leave a handprint at all unless it was some sort of clue?

  No, this was meant as a message just for me, from Mama. It said, more clearly than ever, I’m here. I’m watching over you.