The Poison Thread

by Laura Purcell

  He opens the creaking little gate that leads into the graveyard, holding it for me to pass through. I do so with acute embarrassment. If I had returned a different answer, he might have met me here with an embrace. We might have been married in this very church. He must be conscious of this too.

  He clears his throat. ‘It is very good of you to come, Miss Truelove. I am immensely grateful.’

  I wait until I have reached a gravestone, pocked with black lichen, and can lean upon it for support before I answer him. ‘Your letter expressed urgency, sir.’

  ‘Yes.’ He bites his lip. At this moment, it is difficult to imagine him fervent about any topic. His eyes are customarily tired and phlegmatic. He walks at a stately pace. ‘There are some words that . . . I could not forgive myself, if I failed to speak them.’ He must see my expression, for he adds, ‘Do not be alarmed. I am not here to press my suit or make violent love to you.’ He gives a wry smile. ‘I almost wish that I were.’

  ‘I know you are a straightforward man, Sir Thomas. There is no prevarication about you. Please be so good as to say these words quickly, so neither of us may find the interview more distressing than necessary.’

  He heaves a sigh. For the first time, his visage grows troubled, and I find myself obliged to study the tombstone; the worn letters and its patches of white and gold. I did not believe he truly cared for me. But that sigh . . .

  ‘It will distress you, Miss Truelove. There is no helping that. The matter has distressed me a great deal, and you know I am not the sort of fellow to make a fuss over nothing. But I believe you have a strong constitution and you can take the blow. Should you wish never to see me again after I have spoken . . . Well, I daresay I shall survive that.’

  His voice rings clear, even through the wind. I regard him quizzically, caught off my guard. These are not the sentiments of a lover. Yet is there not something kind in his words? Something like that gleam in Tilda’s eye: a tenderness born of secret knowledge.

  Sir Thomas passes his cane into the other hand. ‘I do not wish to mortify your maidenly pride, but you are aware – I think you must be aware, after that dinner party, Miss Truelove – that I have been under some pressure from my sister to enter the state of matrimony.’

  He is right: it does wound my pride, even though I have long suspected it. ‘You proposed to me at your sister’s bidding?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says slowly. ‘I came to this part of the country and ingratiated myself with your father, all at her request. But you are not to consider me a weak fool under petticoat government. I would not have complied if I did not possess a certain fondness for you and . . . if my sister did not have a compelling reason for her actions.’

  I had prepared for dudgeon from him, yet I am the one who is upon my dignity; it is me who speaks with a waspish sting. ‘Her reason was the money, I expect? Heatherfield Manor is in need of some repair, perhaps?’

  He looks not at me, but at the church; he appears to be asking it for strength. ‘You are mistaken, Miss Truelove. If you will be so kind as to recollect, you yourself informed me of your father’s plans to remarry long before the engagement was announced. Indeed, it was Mr Truelove’s preference of Mrs Pearce that first alerted my sister’s attention to your unmarried state.’

  He has me there. All the same, my feeling of discomfort lingers. Greed may at least be understood. ‘Forgive me for my naivety, sir, but if you do not love me and you do not seek my dowry, I am at a loss for your motive in proposing marriage.’

  ‘My sister and I acted under the same motivation,’ he addresses the church, softly. ‘We meant to take you under our protection.’

  The graveyard has moved and subsided over time; that is why it feels as if the ground is unsteady beneath my feet. The strange, drowning singing in my ears – that must be from the wind. ‘Your protection? I do not require guarding. You seem to imply I am in some kind of danger, Sir Thomas.’

  ‘It is my sister’s firm belief that you are in danger, Miss Truelove. Grave danger.’

  ‘Nonsense. As you can see, I am perfectly well.’ I strive for a jovial tone, but my voice sounds peculiar, as if it is originating from somewhere outside of my body.

  ‘Pardon me, you are not well. You look as if you would faint. Sit here upon this stone wall.’

  I allow Sir Thomas to prop me against the wall, feeling thoroughly foolish. ‘I did not break my fast this morning,’ I explain. ‘I am in need of some refreshment. But as to danger—’

  He grips my arm. ‘What I have to say, I must say now, and quickly. Be so good as to refrain from interrupting me.’ The tone is decided, but not devoid of kindness. ‘These things are best completed fast, like the pulling of a tooth.’

  I nod, wary.

  ‘You know, perhaps, that my sister and your mother were once intimate friends. You may also be aware that your mother caused a storm of gossip by converting to Roman Catholicism. I am pleased to say the friendship survived the trial. My sister did not desert Mrs Truelove. She would have continued to accompany her to the theatre and invite her for supper parties, if your father had not . . . taken his wife out of circulation.’ A breath. ‘Before she could re-enter society, Mrs Truelove . . . Well, as you know, she passed away.’

  He has bid me not to interrupt him, but the words pop from me like a cork. ‘Papa says it was the onset of her illness: the conversion. He says that she behaved most erratically afterwards, it may have been a fever on the brain . . .’ I stop, conscious that I am parroting Papa’s words, words I have previously scorned.

  ‘You do not subscribe to that diagnosis. You certainly do not believe that Roman Catholicism is a sign of madness.’ He presses my hand, squeezes tears from me. ‘And neither does my sister.’

  I recall that bone face, the way it glared at my papa, and I am thankful for the solid stone wall beneath my thighs. Without it, I feel I might drift out to sea. ‘Lady Morton appears to be a woman of very strong opinion. Pray, what exactly does she believe?’

  ‘I must be blunt. She believes that your father was ashamed, and made a social pariah by his wife’s actions. She is witness to the fact that he argued with her and tried his utmost to control her. But he could not contain the damage and . . .’ His voice has grown so soft, I must lean in to hear him. ‘And he poisoned her.’

  ‘How dare you?’ I explode.

  He jerks away from me, hands raised. I regret it immediately; without him by my side, the wind is fierce and ready to topple me over. I force myself unsteadily to my feet. The graveyard undulates around me.

  ‘He poisoned her,’ Sir Thomas reasserts with a dreadful gravity. ‘His friend Dr Armstrong concealed the crime.’

  ‘What nerve—’

  ‘You must hear me! My sister did not report her suspicions . . .’ He frowns, as if he disagrees with her actions. ‘She feared your father’s disgrace would blight your future prospects. And she did not truly believe any man would harm his only child. But . . . she regrets that now. The circumstances begin to look painfully familiar. Your father cannot control you. He cannot marry you off. You stand in the way of his own matrimonial designs. You are causing him embarrassment. Do you fathom my meaning?’

  This is lunatic invention – worse than Ruth’s fevered tale. My outrage is so strong that I can scarcely draw breath. I estimated Sir Thomas as a good man, a gentleman. He has deceived me.

  ‘Is this my punishment, Sir Thomas?’ I spit. ‘This gross insult in return for refusing your hand and denting your pride? I could not love you, but I had thought better of you.’

  He shakes his head sadly. ‘I have said my piece. My conscience can demand no more.’

  Can he really speak of conscience? When he has invented such falsehoods! And yet . . .

  There are those bumps, on Papa’s head. Signs of cunning and evasion. Tilda has more than once said she would not like to cross him. But that is not the same. It is o
ne thing to be a stern master, quite another to murder one’s own wife!

  ‘Truly, you do look unwell. Might I . . .’ Sir Thomas shifts uncomfortably. ‘Would you permit me to walk you to your carriage?’

  ‘No, you may not. You may not write to me, you may not speak to me. You have offended me more than words can express.’ I possess some dignity yet. Tossing up my chin, I stalk past him, over the uneven graves, through the gate. My fumbling fingers cannot fasten the latch behind me; I hear the gate banging in the wind as I march down the road. It is all I hear, above the roaring in my ears.

  I cannot think. I cannot allow myself to think. All I can do is focus on the distance between me and the carriage, willing strength into my tottering feet. I must make it without fainting. I must not let Sir Thomas believe, even for a moment, that I credit his words.

  For I do not.

  I resolutely do not.

  49

  Ruth

  It was a nice shawl, considering. I tucked it around Kate’s scrawny shoulders, where it clung to the sweat on her skin. Even after her bath, she was heavy with that same garlicky scent I’d detected on her breath.

  Candles burnt in the sconces. Mrs Rooker sat in Kate’s easy chair, giving directions to Nell. Only I hovered close to the bed, where Kate’s misty eyes attempted to focus on me. There was no lustre in them now.

  Male voices murmured behind the closed bedroom door. The doctor had felt her pulse, looked in her mouth and frowned. I imagined him consulting with Billy and Mr Rooker, at a loss to explain my power.

  Maybe the doctor would examine me, subject me to tests. I didn’t care. I thought I’d never care about anything again, so long as the shawl worked.

  ‘I do forgive you,’ I whispered, close to Kate’s ear on the pillow. ‘Sometimes, we all do things that we don’t mean.’

  Kate gave no sign that she’d heard.

  ‘Why have you stopped bathing her forehead? Can’t you see the sweat running into the poor girl’s eyes?’

  Mrs Rooker’s voice sent me scuttling from the bedside to fetch another cloth. Nell had torn up some old sheets and they lay in strips, waiting to absorb Kate’s essence. I folded one in my hand, wondering how many materials had touched my skin that day. The bedsheets, my maid’s uniform, a facecloth, the curtains . . . Fabric swam everywhere about me. And wasn’t the human body just fabric too? If I could cut it, why couldn’t I stitch it up again?

  Bang. We all jumped as one of Kate’s arms slammed into the bedpost. She gave a low, tortured moan and then her body went rigid.

  Mrs Rooker stood up and crossed herself.

  ‘Help us!’ Nell shouted.

  As the doctor hurried in, Kate’s back arched. An invisible power pulled her stomach up from the bed. It was a hideous sight, unholy, yet I couldn’t rip my gaze away. Her hands gnarled by her side, twitching. Skeins of vomit ran from her mouth.

  ‘She’s having a convulsion,’ the doctor said. ‘Make way, there!’

  ‘The shawl,’ I whimpered, ‘make sure the shawl stays around her shoulders.’ But no one paid any heed to me. All eyes were on Kate, thrashing beneath the sheets, writhing in pain.

  As if she hadn’t suffered enough.

  My legs folded, useless beneath me. It hardly seemed to matter now whether I stood or laid down, never to move again.

  As a girl, I’d dreamt of embroidering fine gloves, making beautiful things. What had happened? How was it that all I’d managed to create was this: this crucifixion of agony enacted upon the bed?

  ‘Hold her head, she’ll bite her tongue!’

  She’d sent Billy to find us, that day. Her mother was going to hang, and still she thought about me. Wanted to give me work. She’d saved my corset from the road, because she knew what it meant to me. I couldn’t like her, but she wasn’t a bad person. She didn’t deserve to die like this.

  ‘Ruth! Ruth, come and help!’

  I had no strength to rise. The stenches wove about me like snares: garlic, body odour, sour vomit.

  ‘Billy! Someone fetch our Billy.’

  All at once, Kate fell slack. I could hear something rattling in her chest, like a pebble in a jar. Mrs Rooker screamed.

  They made an eerie strange tableau around the bed: the physician, with his fingers at Kate’s neck; Mrs Rooker, her hands raised to her cheeks. Nell stood back slightly, stunned, a soiled cloth clutched at her chest.

  There was a moment with no movement, no sound.

  ‘She’s gone.’ The doctor bowed his head.

  Who was it keening, like an animal in the jaws of a trap? Someone hysterical, far away. They were beating the floor, crying out, ‘I killed her, oh God, I killed her!’ in a voice that couldn’t be consoled.

  Boots pounded into the room. Too late. Billy and his father ran over to the bed, recoiling from the mess splayed there.

  ‘I am truly sorry, Mr Rooker. I did everything within my power,’ the doctor said.

  I, too, had done everything I could. My influence was the stronger, it seemed.

  I thought Billy would bend to kiss Kate’s forehead, touch her hand. But he was speaking – or at least, his lips were moving. I heard nothing. I was underwater, caught, at last, in my own vicious riptide.

  One by one, the faces around the bed turned in my direction. They seemed to ripple and break. Noses, brows, gaping mouths. In each one I saw Kate, staring back.

  There was a bubble, my ears popped.

  ‘I’m going to fetch the police,’ old Mr Rooker said.

  50

  Dorothea

  Ruth once told me that she had lost the capacity to shed tears, but she is crying now. Fat drops slide down her cheeks as fast as rain. If I did not know better, I would take her for a lost child.

  Yet no child can invent a tale like this. These are not the hands of a child that slumber, clasped in the lap of her serge prison gown. Do not crocodiles weep, to lure in their prey?

  Papa’s engagement and Sir Thomas’s accusations have made me short of temper. Ruth’s sniffles, which would usually arouse my sympathy, serve only to irritate my nerves. I rise from the creaking, uneven chair and begin to pace her compact cell, as if I myself am the prisoner.

  ‘Your sins are heavy enough, Ruth. Why do you insist upon adding dishonesty to their number?’

  She covers the wreck of her face with her hands. Is this repentance, at long last? Or perhaps it is a screen. Perhaps she is laughing at me, behind her fingers.

  ‘The time for your fairy tales is over. You stand trial tomorrow. Tomorrow!’ How small this room is. Walking does no good at all, it only makes me feel more hemmed in. ‘Why will you not save yourself? You cannot lie to God! Admit, now, what you have done, before it is too late.’

  ‘I have, I have!’ she wails.

  An unpleasant noise escapes my throat, a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. ‘Oh yes! Murder with a magical corset. Will you truly stand in the dock, tomorrow, and swear to this deranged fantasy?’

  ‘I can’t testify at my own trial, miss.’

  Her words annoy me all the more, because I should know this. ‘It is just as well. You would perjure yourself, alongside all your other transgressions.’

  A sob bends her forwards. I am confronted with the mass of her black curls, cloaking all marks of the crania beneath. For a moment, I quite forget myself. My hands grip her hair, roam over her skull without seeking her permission.

  Bone. Inflexible, immovable beneath my fingertips, as if the matter of the brain could not shape it at all. ‘You do not have the skull of a madwoman! Or a liar, or even a murderer! What are you?’

  My own voice echoes back at me from the limewashed walls. I have been shouting. Ashamed and short of breath, I retake my chair. Ruth remains in the same position, tucked in on herself.

  I cannot endure this. Not any longer. I have sorrows of my own.
r />   ‘Why don’t you believe me?’ Ruth gasps. ‘Billy believed me. He saw what I’d done and . . .’ Her breath hitches. ‘He hates me for it. I wish he didn’t hate me.’

  ‘You have killed his wife!’ My tone is harsher than I intend it. ‘And what is more, you are making a mockery of the fact! Pretending you are so powerful, beyond medicine, killing without a trace. Well there were traces, Ruth. I expect you have never heard of the Marsh test. And for all you pretend to know about the inside of the human body, you are ignorant of its workings. Your mistress was not pregnant! The autopsy showed no signs of a child. She had only lost so much weight that her body ceased to menstruate!’

  Her hands drop from her face, fast as a curtain. Red blotches linger on her cheeks, but the expression in her eyes has changed. It is so eager, so genuine, that it knocks the breath from me.

  Hope.

  ‘I didn’t kill Billy’s baby?’

  ‘No. He did not have a baby.’

  More tears fall, but they drip past a watery smile. ‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ She is almost laughing. But then she collects herself. ‘Poor Kate. If only she’d known. Her last days might have been easier for her, in the mind. She thought the same as me. And so did Nell. We didn’t realise . . .’

  And as she trails off, it comes to me like an epiphany: bright light, shining into the hidden corners, revealing the deeds of darkness. The scales fall from my eyes.

  She does not know.

  I think I may choke. There is no joy, as in biblical revelations; this knowledge is painful, too searing to hold. All these visits, and I never suspected. I worked on the assumption that she knew how Kate had died.

  Footsteps outside, the slide of the bolt, a key grinding in a lock. Too soon.

  ‘Ruth . . .’ I begin. With her background and education, of course she would not have arranged the pieces into their proper shape. But me! What is my excuse?

  ‘Miss Truelove, I am afraid I must ask you to leave.’ Matron looms in the doorway, keys glinting at her waist. ‘Butterham has her trial tomorrow. Her lawyer is here.’