Without Sin

by Margaret Dickinson

  Jake watched, his heart hardened against her. He could not bring himself to go to her and put his arms around her, could not comfort her, could not even touch her. At her next words, his disgust deepened.

  ‘How could she? Oh, how could she do that?’ Meg gasped. ‘The shame!’

  It was, of course, a criminal act to commit suicide and even though the criminal was beyond reach, society still exacted a cruel penalty. Sarah would be buried in unconsecrated ground with no stone to mark her grave.

  ‘The shame is that her own daughter judged her and found her guilty and then deserted her. Even now you’re not thinking of her, of how she must have felt, are you, Meg? Just yourself. It’s always you, isn’t it?’

  Slowly, like an old woman, she pulled herself up to face him. ‘Why? Why did she do it?’

  He lifted his shoulders, a jerky, angry movement. ‘Waters reckoned the master had his eye on a younger piece. If I’d thought for one moment that it wasn’t the sort of thing yer mam’d do, then I might even think—’

  ‘But she wouldn’t do that. My mam wouldn’t kill herself,’ Meg blurted out.

  Jake stared at her. ‘Are you sure? I mean, she must have been so unhappy.’

  ‘Was she? The last time I saw her – with him –’ still, Meg was bitter – ‘she looked much better. The only thing that was upsetting her was . . . was . . .’ She dropped her gaze.

  ‘Yes, go on, say it. Face it, Meg. The only thing upsetting her was – you!’

  They glared at each other, breathing heavily, their eyes hostile.

  ‘To think I once thought I loved you,’ Jake whispered. ‘And now you sicken me. You really do. And this caps it all. Even now you haven’t got a kind word to say for her. Your own mother.’

  ‘What about me? Did she think about me when she took up with him? She was just the latest in a long line of his – his – whores. You want to think yourself lucky, Jake Bosley. You want to be thankful you haven’t got a mother to do that to you.’

  It was the cruellest thing she could have said to him and it broke his heart. The instant the words were out of her mouth, Meg regretted them. But it was too late.

  Thirty-Eight

  ‘Dr Collins – can you spare me a moment?’

  Seated in his pony and trap, Philip looked around to see who had called his name. ‘Jake! How are you?’ he said, stepping down and holding out his hand towards the young man hurrying towards him.

  As they shook hands, Jake said, ‘I’m fine.’ His look belied his words, for there was a worried frown creasing his face and his eyes were dark with anxiety. ‘But I need to talk to you. When could you spare me a few moments?’

  Philip took the watch out of his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. ‘Not now, I’m afraid. I’m due up at the workhouse for a medical inspection.’

  Jake’s lips pressed together grimly. The mention of the workhouse only increased his worries. ‘Later on today, then,’ he persisted. ‘I can meet you anywhere you say. Only not there. Not at the workhouse.’

  Philip smiled, thinking that the young man’s reluctance stemmed from his years within its walls. He wouldn’t blame Jake for a moment if he never wanted to set foot in the place again. ‘Is it a medical matter? Can you come to the surgery?’

  ‘No, it’s not. Not really.’

  ‘Then come to the house after evening surgery. Say, eight o’clock. All right?’

  ‘Fine. We’ll have finished the evening milking by then, an’ all. Thanks, Doctor.’

  Louisa opened the door to Jake’s knock.

  ‘How nice to see you, Jake. Are you well? Are you happy at the farm? And how’s little Betsy doing? Oh, dear me, what a lot of questions I’m throwing at you before you’ve hardly got through the door!’ She laughed. ‘Come in. I’m just about to serve coffee in the drawing room. Go on through. Philip’s in there and I’ll join you in a minute.’

  The doctor and his wife now lived in a double-fronted detached house in an elegant area of South Monkford. Philip had one of the bay-windowed front rooms as his surgery, with the room behind it as his dispensary. Patients waited in the vast hall for their turn to see him. On the opposite side of the house was the Collinses’ private sitting room and behind that the dining room, with a kitchen to the rear of the house.

  Louisa now opened the door on the right-hand side of the hallway and ushered Jake into the sitting room. From a deep chair beside the fire, Philip rose and gestured towards a sofa. ‘Come in, Jake, come in. Sit down, do. It’s good to see you – and looking so well. The outdoor life certainly agrees with you.’

  Jake smiled. For a moment some of the worry lining his face was chased away. He’d always liked the doctor and Louisa, too, and had it not been for the sombre reason for his visit, he would have been delighted to spend an evening in their company. But Jake was hardly aware of his surroundings: the oil paintings on the wall, the cabinet with its delicate china, the bulky sideboard, the heavy ruby velvet curtains . . . He was too anxious about the reason for his visit to notice any of it.

  They had only just exchanged polite pleasantries by the time Louisa came back into the room, bearing a tray with coffee and a selection of fancy cakes and biscuits. Setting it down on a low table in front of the crackling log fire, she asked, ‘How do you like your coffee, Jake?’

  His rueful smile flickered briefly. ‘I’ve never had any, Miss – Mrs Collins. They’re tea drinkers at the farm and before . . .’ He needed to say no more. Coffee was never served in the workhouse, at least not to the inmates.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Louisa said at once. ‘I didn’t think. I’ll put milk in for you, but try it without sugar first. I can always put some in if you find it bitter.’

  When they were all settled, Philip leant back in his chair and said, ‘Now, what is it you wanted to see me about?’

  Jake glanced briefly at Louisa and then looked away again. Quick to understand, Louisa said, ‘If you want to talk to Philip privately, then I’ll go.’

  ‘As long as it’s not a medical matter, Jake, I have no secrets from my wife,’ Philip said, glancing fondly across the hearth at her. ‘You can speak freely.’

  ‘It’s – it’s about Mrs Kirkland. Meg’s mother.’

  Again the doctor and his wife exchanged a glance – a concerned look now – before Philip prompted gently, ‘Yes? What’s troubling you? If it’s about where she has to be buried, then I’m afraid there’s nothing anyone can do. As a suicide, she had to be—’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Jake burst out, relieved at last to be able to share his darkest fears. ‘That’s it exactly. I don’t think she committed suicide.’

  Philip sat up straight in his chair so suddenly that his coffee slopped into the saucer. ‘What? What did you say?’

  Louisa gave a startled gasp and her eyes widened. She said nothing, but her horrified glance went from one to the other.

  ‘I just don’t think she’s the type to have committed suicide. That’s all.’

  ‘Why not? What makes you think that?’

  Jake took a deep breath. He was gratified that the doctor was taking him seriously and not dismissing his thoughts out of hand as wild imaginings. ‘She wasn’t the sort. Oh, I know she’d had an awful lot of tragedy in her life. Enough to make anyone give up hope, but – but – look, maybe I’m being stupid. Will you just tell me, where was she found? How was she found?’

  Philip relaxed back into his chair. With a deep sigh, almost as if he shared some of the responsibility himself, he said, ‘She was in bed. In the master’s room, of course. He was late coming back home. She’d cut her wrists.’ His eyes were dark with the memory of it. ‘They called me, but there was nothing I could do. There was blood everywhere. I called the police. I had to, Jake. I couldn’t cover up something like that even if I’d wanted to. It’d’ve jeopardized my career.’ He paused and then muttered. ‘But I did want to, if truth be known. Poor woman.’

  Jake licked his lips. He didn’t want his next words to sound as if he was a
ccusing the doctor of not doing his job properly. ‘And were you quite, quite sure that she had – had done it herself?’

  Philip stared at him. ‘Well . . .’ he began and then stopped. He was staring at Jake and yet he was not seeing the young man in front of him. He was visualizing again the distressing scene in the bedroom as he’d found her. ‘She’d cut her wrists.’

  ‘But could someone else have done it? Done it to her?’

  ‘Not without her fighting them off. And there was no indication of a struggle.’

  ‘Could someone have done it to her while she was asleep?’

  ‘No, no, she’d have woken up.’ Philip shook his head and then, suddenly, he was very still as he added slowly, ‘Unless she’d taken a sleeping draught.’

  Jake leant forward now. ‘Did she take sleeping draughts? Did you prescribe them for her?’

  ‘Not since she lost the baby. No – no, I tell a lie. The last time I gave her some was when her son died. Little Bobbie.’

  ‘Might she have had some left?’

  ‘I don’t think so. Matron has charge of all the drugs on the premises. She keeps them locked in a cupboard in the infirmary. She is very strict about that.’

  ‘Who had keys to that cupboard?’

  ‘The matron, the master, of course, and myself. As far as I know, no one else.’ He looked keenly at Jake. ‘Surely you’re not suggesting one of them did it, are you?’

  Jake stared at the doctor, but did not reply.

  ‘My God!’ Philip was shocked. ‘You are!’ He paused briefly and then asked bluntly. ‘Who?’

  ‘The master.’

  ‘The master?’ Philip and Louisa both spoke at once, then the doctor shook his head firmly, ‘Oh no, Jake. I think you’re wrong.’

  ‘I just can’t think Mrs Kirkland would do it,’ Jake went on. ‘Even Meg . . .’ He faltered over her name and then his tone hardened as he added, ‘Even Meg, who hasn’t a good word to say for her poor mother, doesn’t think so. Waters said Mrs Kirkland had done it because she was afraid the master was going to cast her aside. Like he did all his women eventually,’ Jake went on bitterly. ‘But I just can’t believe it. Not Mrs Kirkland.’

  The doctor sat forward in his chair and placed his cup on the table. Resting his elbows on his knees, he linked his fingers together and leant towards Jake. ‘Let’s just suppose for a moment that you’re right. That there was foul play involving – as they say – a person or persons unknown. How do you think it could have been done?’

  ‘I’ve been going over it in my mind and apart from believing that she wouldn’t kill herself, I just thought it was an odd place for her to do it. I mean, if I wanted to kill myself by cutting my wrists, I’d’ve done it in the bath. I’d have gone to the bath room and done it there.’

  ‘But you’d have risked being found.’ Philip was playing devil’s advocate.

  ‘She risked being found in the master’s bedroom. She didn’t know what time he’d be coming home.’

  ‘Maybe she did it hoping he’d find her in time,’ Philip suggested. ‘Maybe it was a cry for help.’ He paused, and guilt swept through him that he had not noticed whether the poor woman was so depressed that she had been driven to suicide. ‘Perhaps he was later than she thought in getting home and he was too late.’

  They were bandying ideas between them, testing out Jake’s terrible theory. Philip looked across at Louisa. ‘Come on, love, help us out here. What would you – God forbid that you ever should – have done? How would you have done it?’

  Louisa thought for a moment. ‘Of course, you can’t tell how terrible she must have been feeling,’ she said slowly, still not quite able to discount it as a suicide and unwittingly adding to her husband’s sense of guilt. ‘She’d lost her husband, her baby, Bobbie.’ As she remembered the little boy, Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. ‘And then, when she opted to take what security she could as – as the master’s –’ she ran her tongue around her lips – ‘the master’s friend, her own daughter condemns her and deserts her.’

  Philip sighed. ‘Yes, when you put it like that, the poor soul had reason enough, didn’t she?’

  ‘And yet,’ Louisa went on slowly, ‘I have to agree that over the last weeks I was working there, she did seem happier. Oh, there was a sadness deep in her eyes, a sadness, I suspect, that would never have gone, but she looked better – she’d put on a little weight.’ She glanced at Jake and explained, ‘She’d gone so terribly thin after little Bobbie died, I feared for her then. But after the master took her in, well, she seemed better. If only Meg . . .’ She stopped and glanced up at the two men. ‘I’m sorry – I shouldn’t be blaming poor Meg. She must be feeling dreadful.’

  ‘Huh! Only for herself. She says her mother has humiliated and shamed her. Again!’

  ‘That’s just bravado. She’s covering up her true feelings, I’m sure,’ Louisa said gently. ‘She must be feeling torn apart.’

  Jake cast a disbelieving look at her. ‘You’re being too kind. Maybe you don’t know Meg now like I do. She’s changed. Become ruthless. She’s just out for herself. Out for what she can get. Look how she duped poor old Percy Rodwell into marrying her.’

  ‘Oh now, Jake, I think you are being unfair,’ the doctor put in. ‘Percy is devoted to her. You only have to see him with her to know that.’

  ‘I don’t deny that, but is she as devoted to him?’

  Philip stared at him.

  Jake nodded and smiled grimly. ‘No, you can’t say she is, can you?’

  Now there was silence between the three of them until Philip said slowly, ‘So you really think there might be cause to doubt the apparent suicide?’

  ‘Well, it’s been bothering me. I just needed someone to talk it over with and I thought you’d be the best person. You’d seen her and you’d know if something hadn’t seemed quite right.’

  Philip frowned. ‘It’s strange you should say that because there was something at the very back of my mind niggling me and yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Look, do something for me, will you, both of you?’

  Jake and Louisa looked at him, eager to help in any way they could. Philip grimaced. ‘It’s a bit of a gruesome thing to ask you, but can you make the action of cutting your wrists? I want to see how you would do it.’

  They stared at him, then at each other and shrugged. But they each picked up one of the small cake knives, which Louisa had brought in on the tray.

  ‘You first,’ Jake nodded towards Louisa.

  She held her hands in front of her, the knife in her right hand. Then she pretended to cut into her left wrist with a downward stroke so that, in reality, a cut would have appeared diagonally from the base of her thumb to just below her wrist bone. She switched the knife to her left hand and repeated the stroke, against with a diagonal, downwards gash.

  ‘Mm, good,’ Philip nodded. ‘Now you, Jake. You’re left-handed so it will be interesting to see if there’s any difference.’

  There wasn’t. Jake made the stroke in the same direction and in the same place on each wrist as Louisa had done. When he had done, he looked up expectantly. Again, Philip nodded and picked up a knife himself. The result was still the same; a diagonal, downward stroke on the inside of his wrists. Jake and Louisa were watching him. Carefully, he laid the knife back on the table and linked his fingers once more before looking up at them to say quietly, ‘That’s what was niggling at me. The cuts on her wrists didn’t seem right. They were diagonal, all right, but the other way. And the natural way to do it is the way we’ve demonstrated.’

  ‘So – so you think someone else could have done it?’ Jake said. ‘If she’d taken a sleeping draught—’

  ‘Or worse still, if she’d been given a sleeping draught.’

  Louisa covered her mouth with trembling fingers. ‘Oh, Philip, how dreadful. You really think someone might have killed her?’

  Solemnly, Philip said, ‘I don’t like even to think it, but Jake has raised doubts in my mind too now and
I’ll have to take it further. I shall have to share my suspicions with the police. Now, Jake, I shall need your help. You, more than anyone, know the internal workings of that place. Who does what and who has access to different places? For instance, could anyone else at all have got hold of a sleeping draught from the infirmary?’

  ‘I suppose anyone could if they’d had the chance to get hold of a set of keys. They could have got into the cupboard when matron wasn’t looking, though Miss Pendleton,’ he added swiftly, anxious that the woman who had always been so kind to him should not be blamed in any way, ‘was always very particular about it being kept locked. And she always kept the keys with her. Had ’em on a chain around her waist.’ Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Jake smiled. ‘We always used to reckon she slept with it still on her.’

  ‘What about the master? Was he so particular – so careful?’

  Everything led back to Isaac Pendleton.

  Jake shook his head. ‘I – I don’t know.’ He was trying desperately to be impartial, to put aside the memory of the beatings he had suffered at the hands of the master.

  Thirty-Nine

  It was Percy who persuaded Meg that she should at least attend her mother’s funeral.

  ‘So you’d have me humiliated all over again, would you? You’re as bad as Jake.’ She pouted truculently.

  He sighed. ‘You won’t be humiliated. It’s not your fault she – she did what she did.’

  ‘She committed suicide. Why don’t you say it outright?’

  Percy winced. ‘Like I say, it’s not your fault.’

  ‘Jake thinks it is. He’s blaming me because I didn’t go to see her.’

  Percy stared at her. ‘But you did go. I persuaded you to go. You did go, Meg, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ she waved him aside impatiently. ‘Of course I went, but Waters came and told me that my mother didn’t want to see me.’