The Poisoned House

by Michael Ford

  At the hinge of the trapdoor was a pale crack of light, a narrow gap where the daylight could seep through. My eyes began to adjust to the gloom. There were weapons down here too – wine bottles in the stacks. I could strike her before she even made it to the bottom of the awkward steps.

  The more I thought about it, the more I realised this was the safest place to be. All I had to do was sit tight and wait for someone else to arrive home. My shouts would alert them and then I would tell them everything. And that would be the end of Mrs Cotton.

  I tried to make myself comfortable against a pile of boxes, and had to shift one which was teetering. It was full of candles! I took one out and reached into my apron to find my matchbox, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it beside His Lordship’s fire. All I had was the wretched wooden fruit from the drawing room. I couldn’t light a candle with that!

  I was about to hurl the candle aside when a tiny glow appeared at the base of the wick. I thought my eyes were playing tricks, but the red ember grew, and suddenly the candle sparked into life, burning with a bright flame. I almost dropped it in shock.

  The flame flickered – whether with my breath or something else, I didn’t know.

  ‘You’re here,’ I whispered.

  This time the flame didn’t move, but melted wax began to drip over the side of the candle. I wedged it between two crates, staring at it in amazement. The cold cellar already felt warmer. Any lingering doubts were burnt away by that tiny flame.

  But with the joy it brought came an immense frustration. She was here, beside me, around me, with me, but I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t hold her or speak to her . . .

  Oh! But I could.

  I had the Ouija. I had the ball.

  My heart beat more quickly as I laid out the cloth on the floor. It was hard-packed earth and uneven, but that couldn’t be helped. I placed the ball in the centre and laid my fingers loosely on top.

  ‘Mama?’ I said. ‘Are you here?’

  This time there was no pause. The ball rolled quickly to ‘Aye’.

  ‘Mama, don’t worry,’ I said. ‘As soon as Sammy’s back, I’ll tell him everything.’

  The ball rolled to ‘No’. I hadn’t even asked a question.

  I brought it back to the centre. I didn’t understand.

  ‘Why, Mama? They have to know. She killed His Lordship too. She killed my father – my real father.’

  The ball went again to ‘No’. This couldn’t be the uneven floor. It had happened in my room just the same.

  I felt like shouting, but there was no one to shout at.

  I forced my voice to remain calm.

  ‘Why not tell me?’ I said. ‘Is there something else? Someone else?’

  The ball suddenly felt very warm. It travelled quickly to six different letters. By the time it reached the third, I knew the name it would spell.

  When it stopped over the last letter, I picked it up and threw it across the room. It clattered between the wine bottles, then rolled slowly back towards my feet.

  I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to.

  The candle flickered and died.

  The spirit was gone.

  The name it had spelt was Samuel.

  .

  Chapter 38

  ‘Not Sammy!’ I whispered in the dark.

  I felt for the ball. Picked it up. I told myself that the spirit was confused.

  Sammy loved his father, and my mother had shown him nothing but kindness. He was as gentle a creature as God made.

  I asked the question again. ‘Was it Samuel, Mama?’

  Now the ball didn’t move.

  ‘Mama, please!’

  Nothing.

  Footsteps creaked overhead, and I heard the bolt being drawn across. Mrs Cotton was back.

  I kicked the Ouija cloth into the recesses of the cellar as the trapdoor was lifted open. Light flooded in around a tall figure. It was Rob.

  ‘Abi!’ he said. His face was painted with concern. ‘I thought I heard something. What are you doing down there?’

  He held out an arm to me. I took his hand, and he heaved me up. ‘She locked me down here,’ I said.

  ‘That woman!’ he said. ‘What was it this time?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I lied. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Gone out to church, I think. I’ve just got back with Mr Lock and the master.’

  ‘Samuel?’

  ‘There’s only one master now, isn’t there?’ said Rob.

  Yes, I thought. I suppose there is.

  I went about cleaning the family rooms in a daze. I wanted to be alone, but I was scared to be. Rob said that Samuel was resting upstairs, and I was glad of it. I’d been ready to lay my accusations in front of him, to brand Mrs Cotton a murderer. What would I tell him now? The more I thought about it, the more I felt trapped.

  I was polishing the mirror in the drawing room and asking questions of my own reflection, as if the answer lay within me. I had said to Mrs Cotton’s face what I thought, and I had feared she would take the ultimate revenge, but she hadn’t. Instead she’d left me and gone off to church. What did that mean? Was that really the behaviour of a killer?

  More crucially, the Ouija had told me more than once that she was not the one. Such evidence – testimony from beyond the grave – would mean nothing before a judge, but I knew I couldn’t deny it.

  But Samuel? Dear Sammy. Why?

  He claimed to have suspected that my mama and his father were in love, and he had always said he had next to no memory of his own mother, Eleanor Greave. In all but name, my mother had been his.

  In the mirror, something caught my eye. When you’ve looked at a room as many times as I had, anything out of place tends to jump out. I recognised it as the photo Alexander had taken of Samuel and me, still hanging up to dry.

  I left my polishing and walked over to it.

  Upstairs, I heard Samuel’s crutch and footstep creak across the room.

  Carefully I unpinned the portrait. It was poorly exposed, and most of the room was cast in deep shadow. The candles and lamps we had brought into the library were reproduced as diffuse glowing blobs, like the street lamps struggling to shine through the London smog.

  I sat in the centre of the picture, a faint smile on my face and hands crossed in my lap. Behind me stood Samuel, his hand on my shoulder and his chin lifted. In contrast to the rest of the room, our faces were quite clear and bright. It was the first time I’d ever seen my own likeness captured and I admit I was entranced.

  Then I saw something else in the picture. A figure at the window.

  I took a step backwards, colliding with the sofa and setting a vase rattling. Terror climbed across my chest. I wanted to look away, but my fingers still clutched the picture. My eyes were pulled to the left of the photograph.

  It was little more than a shadow in the shape of a woman’s torso, with a paler patch where her face might have been. It was just behind my right shoulder, and was turned not towards me, but Samuel. She had been there all along, watching.

  ‘Something the matter?’ said a voice.

  I spun round to face Samuel and dropped the portrait.

  ‘Sammy!’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. I was just cleaning. I was cleaning the mirror, and –’

  ‘Slow down,’ he said, limping into the room on his crutch. ‘I know it’s been a hard day. For all of us.’

  I couldn’t let him see the photo. It would tell him what I now felt sure of. But he saw it. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘is that Alex’s picture?’ He sighed. ‘Let’s take a look at it then.’

  I hesitated, but there was no way out of this. I stooped slowly and picked up the heavy paper. He took it with a smile. He made a show of holding it out at arm’s length, and seemed to look for a good several seconds.

  ‘Very handsome, eh?’ He put it to one side on the cabinet, then began to hobble back towards the door. He spoke over his shoulder. ‘What’s for dinner later, do you know?’

  ‘Cook’s out f
or the moment,’ I said, thinking, Your father died this morning, yet you’re worried about your supper.

  When he was at the door, I looked back at the picture.

  She stood there still, like an inky blot outside the window, with her pale face like the moon seen through mist.

  Somehow, Samuel hadn’t seen. I supposed that he never expected his accuser to rise again.

  .

  Chapter 39

  Mrs Cotton ate early, on her own in the sitting room. She made no mention of our fight, even when we passed each other at the top of the stairs. Normally she was so immaculately turned out, with not a stain or a speck of dust on her clothes, but now I noticed a smudge on her lace collar and strands of hair were escaping from her bun.

  For the first time since I’d known her, she looked vulnerable. I felt no guilt about what I’d said to her. It was too soon for that. But as the day wore on, thoughts tumbled over each other. Despite everything, I still couldn’t fathom it: why – how – could he have done it?

  Proof was the thing. I needed to be sure. Not ninety-nine parts in a hundred, but fully, without even the flicker of a doubt.

  As Cook prepared dinner for Samuel and his ever-present guest Alexander Ambrose, I went back to the letter in my room and read it again. There was little about Sammy in the fragments that remained apart from that single line, ‘You would be surprised how perceptive youngsters can be.’

  Was it possible, I wondered, that he had known of it since he was a boy? He told me he’d suspected something, but hadn’t said how he felt about it. But surely a boy would be happy that his father had found love again, and especially if it was with the woman who had mothered him like her own?

  And if he had been driven to murder, why wait until then, on the eve of his departure to war? Unless something had happened – something that tipped him over the edge.

  I read the fragments again, trying to decipher in those words anything that could explain it – to imagine my mother not as dear Mama, but as Susan Tamper, a woman in love. I didn’t have any letters from Lord Greave – I didn’t know if he’d ever even written any – but from the few words I could feel their different personalities.

  .

  Well, I am not, and I expressly forbid it. For a man of your— You scoff at appearances, but they are everything.

  The heavy underlining showed a tough woman – tougher than I remembered. Desperate, too, to make her point. He, on the other hand, seemed almost rash. He had wanted to tell people, that was clear. He had been ready to break with convention, and hang the consequences. It was my mother who had objected.

  And then it hit me. Why hadn’t I seen it before? If Lord Greave was to acknowledge my mother, he would have done so in only one way.

  He had wanted to marry her!

  Suddenly it made more sense. To admit to a mistress would have brought scorn, but to plan a marriage openly would at least be deemed acceptable, if irregular. A dent to propriety, but not to honour.

  He’d planned to do so when she had first fallen pregnant, but she had refused to agree, worried how people would react, not least the inhabitants of Greave Hall. For her, it was only their child that had mattered – only me. So he had taken her in to live as a servant below stairs. How hard it must have been for them, together under the same roof yet so far apart!

  The long deception – the years of living a lie – must have taken its toll. Had she finally come round to his way of thinking? Had she at last agreed to be the second Lady Greave? It made sense. Eleanor had been dead some twenty years.

  But someone had prevented the couple fulfilling their dreams. Someone who stood to be disinherited by his father’s mistress.

  ‘Sammy,’ I whispered to myself.

  I felt anger fizz along my veins. If only I had the other letters, I could be sure. Somehow he had found out his father’s intentions and taken drastic steps. He’d poisoned her drink. I knew I couldn’t prove it. There was no way I could bring Samuel before a judge and expect justice.

  But I wouldn’t let him get away with it. Not again.

  After dinner, when Mrs Cotton had retired and Samuel had gone to the drawing room, he rang the bell. Knowing that Mr Lock was relieving himself in the downstairs toilet, I went up.

  I was surprised to find Sammy alone, sitting by the fire. There were two full glasses and a decanter of port beside him.

  ‘Where’s Alexander?’ I said.

  ‘I asked him to leave,’ he said sadly. ‘I wanted to be alone.’

  He sounded so convincing, and I watched him closely. What would Dr Reinhardt, an expert on the signs of lying, have made of Samuel Greave?

  ‘Do you miss him – your father, I mean?’ I asked.

  Sammy nodded. ‘It may be for the best, though, don’t you think?’

  For him, maybe.

  He suddenly brightened, and gestured towards the decanter. ‘I thought you might like to join me for a drink, Abi.’

  A glass. Already poured. The room felt suddenly warmer, the fire banked in the hearth.

  ‘I shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘You’re family now.’

  While he reached for the glasses, I saw that his hand was bandaged around the palm.

  A horrible image jumped into my head: his father clawing desperately as he struggled for life, trying to push his attacker off.

  He selected the glass nearest to him, and handed it across. I looked at the ruby liquid. It seemed normal, but he would have mixed it carefully before I came into the room.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, raising his port.

  I brought the glass to my lips, then lowered it again.

  He sipped his slowly, watching me intently over the rim.

  ‘Something wrong?’ he asked.

  I was glad of the dim lighting, as I could feel my face flushing. I imagined it was as red as the drink he had offered me.

  ‘Erm . . . no,’ I managed, sniffing the liquid and smiling. ‘I’m just not sure I’ll like the taste.’

  ‘Only one way to find out though,’ he said. ‘Mr Lock told me this was one of the best in the cellar.’

  I didn’t know what to do. The hairs stood up on the back of my neck.

  ‘What happened to your hand?’ I said.

  He looked at it quickly. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘It was that blasted cat.’

  ‘Rowena?’ I said.

  ‘Is that her name? Yes. Vicious little thing, isn’t she?’

  No, I thought. She isn’t. Rowena had never scratched anybody as long as I knew her. Samuel’s father had fought back, but didn’t have the strength. My mother hadn’t even had the chance.

  Was it rat poison, I wondered, or something more deadly? Would it act slowly, burning through my insides while I slept? Or did Samuel plan for me to die now, right in front of him, slumping over in my chair after half a glass?

  I put the glass down. ‘I’m not thirsty.’

  He breathed a long sigh through his nose and leant forward, gripping the armrest of his chair.

  ‘You know,’ he said coldly, ‘it’s rude to refuse someone’s hospitality.’

  The door was only a few paces away. I knew I could reach it long before him, but something made me stay seated. I had to be sure. Not ninety-nine parts in a hundred, but fully.

  ‘Sammy?’ I said.

  Half his face was in shadow, and one eye gleamed like an ember in the reflected light of the fire. He had always been a man of two sides. I saw that now. ‘Yes, Abi?’

  I thought through my words carefully and spoke slowly, looking him in that one blazing eye.

  ‘What would you do, Sammy, if you knew someone had done a terrible thing, but that they wouldn’t be punished for it?’

  He cocked his head. ‘What a strange thing to say.’

  I smiled. ‘I suppose it is. But what would you do?’

  His eyes looked behind me to the door. I felt a tiny prickle of fear.

  ‘My aunt would say that God sees ever
ything,’ he said, more quietly now. ‘Is this about her?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This isn’t about her.’ He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Do you think that though, Sammy? Do you think God sees everything we do wrong?’

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘this is a damned strange conversation.’ He took a longer gulp from his glass.

  ‘I don’t think that God sees everything,’ I said. ‘I think sometimes it’s up to us. You know – to make people pay for what they do wrong.’

  ‘Then I would advise you,’ he said, placing his glass down beside the untouched one, ‘to be very careful.’

  In that moment, I was sure.

  ‘Goodnight, Samuel,’ I said, quickly standing up and slipping away to the door. I couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.

  ‘Sleep well, sister,’ he said to my departing back.

  I hardly slept at all that night. Every time I drifted off, I thought I heard a noise on the stairs, and sat up in bed panting until I was sure it was just my imagination. Samuel had managed to get up His Lordship’s stairs. Why not mine?

  Eventually I took my blankets and pillows and went down the short corridor into Lizzy’s old room. There, at least, I managed an hour’s sleep before morning.

  The cards of condolence began to arrive with the first post. Soon there were upwards of a dozen piled on the stand beside the front door.

  Samuel made a show of reading them, but I caught his look at odd moments and saw that he was smiling. Actually smiling.

  ‘Father had a lot of friends,’ he said.

  I felt sick. How had I never seen what a monster he was? Now he had the power. And he knew it.

  I was polishing the dining room table, when I heard the sound of hoofs outside, and the coachman calling his horses to a stop. A hackney carriage pulled up in front of the window. Mr Carter climbed out with another man of similar age. The solicitor and his companion were both dressed in black, as suited the family in mourning. Mr Carter carried a leather satchel.