Pounding footsteps on the floor above me. It would come at any time now: the fear. Wouldn’t it? I heard Mrs Metyard draw nearer and nearer, heard her bawling my name. Still I felt nothing. I was somewhere safe, outside of my body, looking on.
‘Get out of bed this instant! Don’t make me come down there and—’
‘Mother, Mother!’ Kate’s voice pleaded. ‘There isn’t time!’
‘Does she think she can disobey me? I ought to—’
A rap on the showroom door cut her off. Just in time. Her tones had been sliding south, deeper, into the captain’s territory.
‘The Rookers are here,’ Nell called.
A pause. They must’ve been at the cellar door, staring down the stairs at me, mother and daughter together. I didn’t turn to look at them.
Instead, my imagination painted Billy on the steps outside the shop. Waiting for his bride. I’d thought he was my friend, but he hadn’t been here when I needed him most. He’d chosen his side. He was part of Kate now. And no one would ever rescue Mim from the trapdoor and the piles of coal.
‘Make haste, Mother. Leave her.’
‘What if she runs off? Or,’ in a whisper, ‘what if she goes for the police?’
Under the covers, my leg twitched.
‘Every window is bolted. She won’t get out. Hurry! It’s my wedding, Mother!’
Mrs Metyard grumbled.
The door slammed.
And I knew, at last, what I must do.
* * *
Mrs Metyard hadn’t locked the cellar. I would be able to get all the way into the showroom. To the front door.
Could I pick the lock? I’d managed with a needle on the cellar door, but that was a small, rickety sort of thing. I’d need a bigger tool, like a stiletto or a thin knife. Like my corset-making tools.
Once I was out, I could tell the bluebottles everything. Direct them to Mim’s body, ensure it was buried properly. They’d clap Mrs Metyard in irons before she even had the chance to whistle at my mother.
Dare I?
Shakily, I pulled myself out of bed and began to dress. My old corset, the child of my creation, was too small for a girl of fifteen, but I couldn’t leave it behind. I used it to wrap up a crust of bread and the remains of Mim’s bone fish and carried it in a bundle.
Madness. Surely it was madness to take such a risk, and yet I saw myself do it: saw myself walk, trembling, to the curtained alcove and retrieve my grimy tools. Mim’s blood still crusted the occasional blade; Mim’s blood would help me. If this worked, both of us would escape.
I trembled back into the showroom, my pulse beating so fast that it made my head ache.
And then I saw it.
Kate had taken the corset from its box. Somewhere deep inside, my black heart crowed.
I’d never been allowed to enter the house through the showroom door, but I intended to leave by it. Selecting a long, thin knife, I inserted the tip into the lock. This was a superior mechanism, made to secure an outer door from housebreakers, not the rusty old lock on the cellar. The metal made a grinding sound. I couldn’t tell if I was making progress.
My hands were slick. The handle twisted, twisted . . .
I dropped the knife.
Only luck made it miss my foot. Stuck upright by the tip, the blade trembled, flashing against the carpet.
I selected a stiletto this time, the tool I used to punch the eyelets in my corsets, and tried again. Sweat was pouring off me. Too far to turn back. If Mrs Metyard came home and found the lock scraped like this, she’d know what I’d been about . . .
Clunk.
The door opened a crack. Cold air rushed in and touched my cheek. There was the street, windblown and empty, waiting for me. So much bigger than I remembered it.
My breath came ragged and raw. Even after all that had passed, I was afraid to leave.
But I had to. Ma was out there.
The doorbell jangled, celebrating my liberty as I stepped over the threshold. The rain fell, fine and diagonal, hazing the streets. Carts rumbled along, passing a few brave pedestrians. God grant that Mr Brown the milkman didn’t stop by and catch me.
I began to walk, shivering, unsure of where to go. It was hard to move like a regular person, an innocent girl about her business. Every closing door in the street, every whinny from a horse, made me jump.
I was heading in the opposite direction from church, on streets I’d never traversed before. Away from the river and my old home in Ford Street, away from school. In all my years living in Oakgate, I’d never known where the police station was. I’d just have to keep searching, keep going until my feet bled.
After roughly a mile, the pavement ended abruptly at a crossroads. The sweeper boys hadn’t been out. If I wanted to pass to the other side, I would need to wade through mud and dung. So be it.
I stepped down and let my shoes sink into the sludge. I was lost, cold and beginning to grow numb. All the same it was glorious. These were free steps I took towards the other side; this was free moisture blessing my upturned face. Even the sound of horseshoes, ringing against the cobbles, was a kind of music.
A discordant music, out of key.
Growing wilder.
A whinny.
Snapping my head back, I looked down the street and saw a hansom barrelling towards me.
Sweat foamed on the horses. Clods of mud flew as they approached. I jumped out of the road, blessing my lucky stars that I’d seen the cab coming before it flattened me.
I was still blessing them when the whip cracked.
Pain. Red hot, across my face. I stumbled, fell. Dropped the corset.
Dimly, I heard the wheels skid to a halt. Hooves flailed, doors opened. A voice.
‘That’s her! That’s the girl, damn her!’
Rough hands pulled me to my feet. Through the mist of my own blood, a face floated to the surface.
‘We were just in time,’ gloated Mrs Metyard. ‘The ungrateful wretch was trying to run.’
39
Dorothea
I must conquer these superstitious whims! But even now that I am returned home, with my papers spread over my desk and Wilkie climbing the bars of his cage, my sense of dread remains.
With many inkblots, I scratch out my answer to Sir Thomas’s letter. Time and time again, I must cast a draft aside and start afresh. Few tasks can be as distressing as this. It is an offer that, were I not engaged in my heart to David, I might well have accepted. There can be no doubt that Mama would have rejoiced to see me allied to her friend’s brother.
I do not know that Mama ever met Sir Thomas herself. His living in Gloucestershire makes it unlikely. And yet, as I write, the facts seem ever more curious to me. Why, after all these years, has he suddenly become acquainted with my father? Why has Lady Morton summoned her brother to Heatherfield, if she did not deem it necessary while my mother lived?
Doubt nibbles at me, whispers that Lady Morton is behind this proposal. Perhaps she is low on funds, and wishes her brother to marry into money? Yet I did confide in him about Mrs Pearce and the change to my fortune, should progeny spring from the union. Unless Sir Thomas thinks, as Papa’s son-in-law, he would have the power to stop the marriage?
I cannot satisfy myself with this rejection. Language is clumsy and gauche. I cannot command it as I must. Putting aside the current attempt, I turn my thoughts to Ruth instead.
From the archives, I have successfully obtained many articles relevant to the next period of her story. Bursting with scandal, the tale travelled beyond local journals to some of the national papers. I must say, it appears a very fortunate circumstance that the police did finally arrive at Metyard’s, prompted by a civilian tip. I cannot imagine what would have become of Ruth otherwise.
Whether she really did try to escape, I cannot prove, but she was certainly found locked in a room on the first floo
r of the property, in a death-like state. Her condition does not make for pleasant reading. There was a fear of gangrene and acute dehydration.
It is little wonder that Ruth has grown into such an unnatural child, passing as she did from a drunken father’s care into the Metyards’ torturous clutches for the duration of her formative years. A child cannot abide with a murderer and remain untouched. Evil thoughts float about the house like smuts from a fire. They speckle, they smear, they find a way in.
One murder has brought on another.
But could it have been avoided? That is the question I must ask myself: whether it is the innate nature of a person to kill, or if moral turpitude arises from insufficient nurture. Had Ruth enjoyed her youth in my house, with my faith, would she still have committed this outrage?
I open the bottom drawer to my desk and cradle the human skull. It is a comfort to me no longer. Beneath my fingertips, the bone feels immovable. Constant in its purpose. Today, for the first time, I consider the possibility that each head is predestined, just as Judas was predestined to betray Our Lord. We are trapped within them, flies caught in a jar. Some skulls have an unwavering, malignant will, and they must see it through.
Like Mrs Metyard.
She did not linger, awaiting her fate in the manner Ruth has done. Her capture coincided neatly with the assizes and she was tried almost immediately. So little time for her to be reclaimed – if indeed such a thing were achievable. Unchristian as it sounds, I am doubtful salvation could reach this woman. She appears more goblin than flesh and blood. But perhaps I have been influenced by Ruth’s recital. There is no alienist report amongst my papers, nothing to inform me whether she ever truly took on the guise of ‘the captain’ – I rather suspect this to be the embellishment of Ruth’s youthful fancy. All evidence suggests the original man was a distasteful fellow, not the kind of husband and father you would wish to resurrect. Yet something drove her to kill, to mistreat those girls . . .
Was it two bumps, above the ears?
I wonder where she sat in the old Oakgate Prison, which cell contained her wicked skull.
Would I have visited her? Would I have placed my fingers upon her head, given the chance?
40
Ruth
I don’t remember much. I wish I’d been awake to see the policemen pile into the house and hear their rattles clacking our freedom, but I was in a pitiful state.
No one ever told me, but I presumed it was someone from church who raised the alarm. When Mim didn’t show up to services any longer, and then I disappeared too, it would have begun to look suspicious.
Luckily for me, the case attracted widespread attention. My plight became known to the charitable types and I was voted into a voluntary hospital at once. Not that I knew anything about it then.
My first clear memory after the capture is lying in a stark, white room, pressed up close against two other iron bedsteads. I thought perhaps I’d died and gone to heaven. But then I remembered all the people I’d killed, and I noticed the bedsheets were scratchy and marked with stains – surely the laundry was better in Paradise.
There was pain, too, rising to greet me. My left foot throbbed. Straining my neck, I tried to look down and see it, but I was too weak.
Over in the corner, someone retched.
The nurse who stumbled up to me reeked of port; I detected it, mingled with the other sickly scents. ‘Need to change the dressings,’ she blared.
Her hands were rough.
Forty lashes to the back and a missing little toe. It could’ve been much worse. And though the hospital wasn’t a nice place by any stretch of the imagination, it was better than sleeping in the cellar at Metyard’s. There was light and food and the bed was more comfortable. Best of all, they gave me laudanum for the pain.
When you’re in pain like that, it takes up all the space. Gnawing at you, stripping the skin from your bones. My mind didn’t comprehend that I was finally free, or dwell upon how I’d got out of the captain’s room. I didn’t begin to think coherently about my future and the world around me until Nell came to visit.
She was dressed in an umber gown, a straw bonnet and a tatty grey shawl. Soot flecked her copper hair. She wore gloves on the hands that clutched at her visitor’s ticket, but they were coming loose at the seams.
‘Nell!’ She looked out of place here, decked in second-hand clothes rather than her work dress. Much more alive. The sight of her familiar features made me want to weep.
‘How are you?’ She fussed over me, tucking in the blankets.
‘I’m . . . alive.’
‘No thanks to Mrs Metyard for that.’ Concern was etched on her face. ‘But you’ll be revenged, Ruth. That’s what I’m here to tell you. They’re going to hang her.’
A stab, deep in my stomach. Something like satisfaction. But they weren’t hanging Mrs Metyard for what she’d done to me. I needed to know if they’d found Mim, set her free at last.
‘On what charge?’ I demanded.
Nell watched me anxiously, searching for a hint that I knew. ‘She’s charged with . . . murder. The murder of Miriam.’ Somehow, hearing the words on her lips intensified my grief, made Mim’s death real in a way even the sight of her body had not.
‘Good.’ My voice scratched. ‘They should both rot in hell for what they did to her. That’s where Kate took me, that day she came to the attic with my tools. Up to the captain’s room and Mim’s body. They made me . . .’ I shook my head, could not continue.
‘You should’ve told us,’ Nell said softly. ‘You shouldn’t have dealt with the burden of that alone.’
As if Ivy or Daisy would have given a halfpenny piece! And as for Nell, she’d done nothing to help, had she? If they didn’t care for Mim in life, I felt they didn’t deserve to know about her death. But I couldn’t explain that to Nell. Especially when she’d come to visit me with such welcome news.
Imagine Mrs Metyard, swinging from a rope! Like an opiate, it alleviated my pain – but not enough. Something was missing.
‘What about Kate?’ I asked.
Nell sniffed. ‘What about her?’
‘Aren’t they going to hang her too?’
‘No. They haven’t any evidence.’
‘Couldn’t you say something?’ I cried. ‘If you don’t, I bloody well will!’
‘Who’d believe you?’ she shot back. ‘She’s a respectable married woman as far as the jury are concerned. She even testified against her mother. You should hear the way she paints it. Innocent as pie, she was, apparently. You’d think she never took a stick to us in her life.’
I gritted my teeth. I’d been in hospital for too long. Missed Mim’s body leaving the coal hole, missed the trial. I’d be damned if I missed anything else.
‘I want to watch,’ I told Nell. ‘I want to see that bitch hang.’
‘Me too. We’ll go together. I’m sure you’ll be ready to leave soon. These charity subscriptions never last for long. They lose interest, move on to something else.’
‘I have to leave. I have to find my ma.’
Silence fell as we both absorbed the enormity of that. Life, real life, waiting outside these walls.
The patient opposite me coughed.
‘Is it really true, Nell? Are we really to be free of her?’
‘Yes.’ She gripped my hand. ‘No one will employ me. I’ve been living in dossing houses ever since. But I tell you, this is the best life I ever had. I’ve never been so happy, Ruth. I’m free. We can be free together.’
I smiled. ‘Let’s talk to the nurses. I’m sure the sight of Mrs Metyard strung up will cure me at once.’
* * *
As it happened, the hospital staff were only too happy to hand me over to Nell. The six weeks my admission ticket entitled me to stay had passed, and none of the subscribers who voted me in were willing to take responsibility for
me. It was as Nell said: they’d moved on. A mill catastrophe in this case. Dozens injured and stained with black grease, cotton fibres meshed into their wounds. My missing toe wasn’t so interesting, compared to that.
I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, miss. Charitable people like yourself saved my life. But I wish they’d thought a bit more about what I was to do with it, once it was safe. My old home was a crime scene and my employment had gone. I’d no clothes besides the torn and bloodied dress I wore when I tried to run away; the dress I’d continued to wear, and sweat fear into, during those long days in the captain’s room.
Nell wasn’t much better off. On the morning she came to collect me, a few days later, she was sporting the same gown and unravelling gloves. Red dots peppered the skin on her neck. Flea bites.
Still, her face was cheerful as she took me by the arm and said, ‘Ready?’ like we were off for a day of pleasure.
‘I’m not sure. I think so. It all feels so . . . strange.’
She patted my hand. ‘No, Ruth. Your life up until now: that’s what’s been strange.’
Together, we made our way through the doors and on to the streets outside. I felt like I’d been hit by a cannon ball. Never had the day seemed so bright, the air so cold. About twenty people were lined up by the entrance of the building in various states of distress; a man bleeding from the mouth, a young mother with two black eyes shushing her baby, an elderly woman coughing so fierce she could hardly stand. All of them praying for the chance to be let inside.
Watching them, I missed my footing and staggered.
Nell caught me. ‘Take care! It’s all a bit much, I expect,’ she empathised, ‘compared to in there.’
That was an understatement. The exhilaration that had taken hold of me when I picked the lock and escaped from Metyard’s had long evaporated. Now I didn’t feel free, but vulnerable. Walking was an effort I hadn’t expected. My feet didn’t balance the same way without my little toe.
The Poison Thread Page 25
