Winter of Despair

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Ahoy, the house. Wakey, wakey, Wilkie!’

  ‘Pigott!’ In my excitement and relief at the prospect of sharing my burden, the word burst out in a joyous shout. An immensely practical fellow, Pigott. And not just with boats, either. It suddenly rushed into my mind how I had seen him once resuscitate a half-drowned sailor on the Norfolk Broads. ‘In here, Pigott,’ I shouted. ‘In here.’

  He was unperturbed at the sight of the room. He came through the door, shut it quietly behind him, looked straight at Charley.

  ‘What did he take?’

  ‘Prussic acid, I think.’ I showed him the jewelled box. He took it from me and he raised his eyebrows.

  ‘M,’ he observed. And I saw his finger trace the pattern of the sparkling diamonds.

  I hardly listened. ‘I’ve made him vomit. He was very red-faced, but that’s faded now. It’s just his breathing. He sounds …’

  ‘Just build up that fire, Wilkie, like a good fellow.’ His voice was soothing, but his eyes were anxious. He placed a large brown hand on my brother’s chest and then pulled him into an upright position. I tried to build up the fire. My hands were trembling so much that the pieces of coal continuously escaped the tongs and clattered on to the tiles of the fireplace. In the end, I just picked them up with my fingers and dropped them on to the glowing embers and then dusted my fingers on my dressing gown.

  ‘Anyone else in the house?’ he asked. ‘Not women or children. Need a strong man. He’s a big fellow, this brother of yours.’

  ‘There’s Dickens,’ I said. I didn’t wait to ask him what he wanted a strong man for, but fled out of the room and down the stairs, glad that I just wore slippers. The last thing that we wanted now was my mother making a dramatic scene.

  Dickens was already up and dressed. I supposed that Dolly must have brought him hot water because he was neatly shaved and his brushed-back hair looked damp. He looked mildly surprised when I burst in and then his eyes sharpened.

  ‘Charley?’ he queried.

  I didn’t hesitate. ‘He’s tried to commit suicide. Pigott is here. He wants you. He wants you to help him with Charley.’

  ‘Edward Pigott. Good. Just the man we need.’

  Dickens, of course, knew Pigott very well, we had both been on a cruise on his yacht to the Scilly Isles. He asked no questions about Charley, but followed me silently up the stairs to the top floor and went into Charley’s bedroom with just a nod of acknowledgement to Pigott.

  ‘We need to keep him walking as fast as we can, Dickens,’ explained Pigott. ‘The faster he goes the more he has to breathe. Want to get plenty of air into his lungs. Open that window a bit wider, Wilkie.’

  I watched anxiously as they marched my poor brother up and down endlessly. Dickens tired eventually, though Pigott was still as energetic as ever. I took Dickens’ place and did my best to support my brother, but I was too small, too unfit and Dickens took over again.

  Was Charley any better for this treatment? He was still deadly pale, but perhaps that was good. I gazed anxiously into his face. We needed a doctor.

  And then I started. Footsteps again. Coming up the stairs. Two sets of them. One heavy, the other one light and almost soundless to anyone who was not straining an ear. I went to the door instantly.

  ‘Prussic acid, is that right?’ Frank Beard was already opening his bag as he came into the room. ‘Carry on, Mr Dickens,’ he said and gave a nod at Edward Pigott.

  ‘Smell it for yourself.’ I held the jewelled box with the ornate initial ‘M’ under his nose.

  ‘I’d guess anyway from what your girl here told me. Let’s see if we can get this stuff into him. Sit him on the bed here.’ Frank Beard took out a small bottle from his medical bag and removed the stopper.

  ‘Now then, Wilkie, see if you can get his mouth open, tilt his head back, yes, that’s the way. I think he is coming around. Now then, Charley, swallow this.’

  ‘What is it?’ I was watching anxiously as my brother obediently swallowed.

  ‘Strychnine.’ Frank Beard never liked explaining any medical mysteries so I said no more and hoped that the cure wouldn’t be worse than the poison. Charley had already begun to look better under Edward Pigott’s rough and ready treatment. He gulped violently and shuddered. His whole body was convulsed for a moment. Frank Beard watched him with satisfaction and Dickens with an air of quiet interest. Pigott and I exchanged alarmed glances but no one spoke. Charley convulsed again and then vomited. Sesina held the basin with a steady hand, but I felt myself tremble all over. Were we killing my brother? I dared not say anything. The case had to be left to the doctor. Sesina emptied the basin into the commode and shut the lid, though the room still smelled of vomit. She took a sponge and washed his face as tenderly as though he were a child. I saw Dickens look at her with interest and I wondered myself whether she was in love with my brother. It was, I thought, possible and I wondered how a story might go about a servant girl in love with a visitor in a house. At the back of my mind I had the germ of a story about a fabulous Indian precious stone called a moonstone and I wondered about introducing this servant girl with her doomed love into the thread of my narrative.

  ‘You should have left me to die.’ Amazingly, it was my brother’s voice, hoarse, but perfectly understandable. I felt tears come to my eyes. Frank Beard looked from one brother to the other and I could not control my voice enough to explain. Amazingly, though, Charley was cool and collected.

  ‘Better a death by prussic acid than by hanging from a noose,’ he said huskily.

  Frank Beard turned an enquiring eye upon me.

  ‘Edwin Milton-Hayes has been killed,’ I explained. ‘His throat was cut, probably with his own knife. He had painted some scurrilous pictures of nine or ten people that he knew and was demanding money for them. The police think that Charley might have been the one who killed him. He’s worried about it. That’s right, isn’t it, Charley?’

  My brother gave a weary sigh and bowed his head into his hands. Sesina brushed the hair from his forehead with a gentle hand and I felt tears come into my eyes. I took off my spectacles and wiped them carefully on my pocket handkerchief.

  ‘But you’re not guilty, are you, Charley? That’s what you need to keep in your mind. You must not despair, no matter how dark is the hour,’ said Dickens. His voice was cool, quiet and authoritative. I saw Sesina look at him with attention and I myself was conscious of a ray of hope.

  ‘And so, therefore,’ he continued after a few moments, ‘I think we’d better get you out of the way until the truth has been found out. Your brother and I are working on it, Charley, and no doubt with the combined power of two such great intellects we will soon have the matter solved.’ Dickens laughed lightly at his own joke. No one else smiled, though I was amused to see Sesina give him a scornful look.

  ‘But,’ he resumed, holding out an index finger, ‘but we must get you into safe keeping, while we are working on the case. I propose, now you are feeling better, that we pop you into a cab and Dr Beard will undertake the nursing of you in his own home. I can guarantee that you will be well looked after. At least,’ he continued, ‘that is what Sesina will tell Inspector Field, won’t you, Sesina?’

  Sesina looked at him with some surprise, but I wasn’t surprised when Dickens added, ‘but in reality, I think that Frank, here, would prescribe some sea air. That’s right, isn’t it, Frank? What about a little trip to the Norfolk Broads, or the Scilly Isles, what do you think, Pigott?’

  ‘You’ll need a crew,’ I said, taking some notes from out my pocket book. ‘Charley won’t be up to much for a while.’ Pigott pocketed the notes with a grateful nod. There were three muscular brothers who crewed for him from time to time and the money I had given him should be enough to secure their services. Pigott was sailing mad – never happier than when poring over maps and making adjustments to sails. Charley would be distracted from his woes by constant appeals to do the hundred and one little tasks with which sailors occupied themselves.
/>   ‘Let’s get you dressed, old man,’ I said with an eye on the clock. ‘Sesina, will you go and tell my mother that Charley has gone off with my friend Mr Pigott. But wait until we’re gone, Sesina, won’t you.’ I wondered whether Charley would make a fuss about this; he was very much a mother’s boy, but he was too weak, too exhausted from his treatment to say anything. With the help of Frank Beard I got him dressed. Very pale, very weak, but he was himself again.

  Dickens, I noticed, was holding a low-voiced conversation with Sesina and I saw his hand go to his pocket and then place a coin in hers. Then he turned to me.

  ‘Now Wilkie, I don’t think Sesina is the one to tell your mother about all of this. Let’s leave Charley to the care of his doctor and his friend; I think you must be the one to stay here and to reassure your mother. And …’ He hesitated a little and I could see that he was thinking of a way to put the matter. ‘Let everything appear natural,’ he said in the end, looking directly at me and then giving a sidelong glance at Sesina.

  Solemnly and ceremonially, he placed within the safekeeping of his waistcoat pocket the keys to Charley’s bedroom, the keys that he had promised Inspector Field to keep in safekeeping and which he now held in his hand. He cast a quick glance at the housekeeping keys that Sesina had left in the door and then said, authoritatively, ‘Now I will leave all in your hands.’

  I understood him well. He would like to help Charley, to back me up in my effort to save him, but something within him, something that was allied to his public persona, would not allow him to take any part, whatsoever, in the early-morning disappearance of my unfortunate younger brother. Dickens would have to be on the side of the law. I watched him go with understanding and felt a great sense of gratitude to him that, despite his misgivings and his strong principles, he would turn a blind eye towards the planned escape of my young brother. But it was only after he had left us that I suddenly thought of what Pigott had said, a few weeks earlier. I left my younger brother to Sesina’s ministrations and turned to Pigott.

  ‘My dear fellow, there is something I need to ask you, something that needs to be cleared up before you go. Do you remember saying something to me about Milton-Hayes? You said, didn’t you, that Milton-Hayes was an assumed name.’

  He was amused by that. A very easy-going fellow. Always saw the humorous side of everything.

  ‘Well, come on, Wilkie,’ he said with a smile on his lips. ‘Have you ever heard a more fake name in your life? “Milton” – well the country is full of Milton Manors. And then Hayes. Well, it was Norman aristocracy, wasn’t it? Such a good name for an artist, don’t you think?’

  ‘But what was his real name?’ I said impatiently. ‘Think hard, Pigott. You must remember. What was his real name?’

  He thought for a moment and then shook his head.

  ‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said. ‘Gone right out of my mind. Have a feeling that it was something to do with dogs, to do with terriers. That’s what is at the back of my head.’ He thought hard for a moment and then said pensively, ‘It couldn’t be anything to do with Jack Russell terriers, could it? That’s sticking in my memory. Jack Russell terriers. Jolly little fellows. Very tenacious, stick on to anything.’

  ‘Jack Russell,’ I said aloud. I couldn’t see too much wrong with it. Would a man really go to the trouble of changing his name just in order to get rid of a perfectly respectable, old English name like ‘Jack Russell’?

  TWELVE

  Sesina was puzzled; puzzled and worried. She had thought that today, after all the fuss yesterday, would be a quiet day. Mr Charles was off, supposedly in Dr Beard’s house, doing well, according to Mr Wilkie, though he had a twinkle in his eye. Inspector Field was keeping out of the way for the moment. Busy with another crime, she hoped. She seemed to remember Mr Dickens saying that there were only about ten detective policemen like Inspector Field so he must be busy, she thought. Anyway, it was good to be without him in the house.

  But things weren’t settled yet. There was another policeman in the house and he seemed to be watching her all the time. Not fooling. Not trying to mess about with her. Not trying to snatch a kiss or anything like that. No, he seemed to be just following her everywhere, peeping around corners, asking her questions about the artists that came to the house. And about the dead one. That Mr Milton-Hayes. Had he ever used her as a model? Did she go to his house? Every time he laid eyes on her the young man came up with a new question.

  Something was going on. It had started with Dolly. She had been a long time up in her mistress’s room, even longer than usual. Perhaps there was nothing too strange in that fact of itself. Everyone in the kitchen understood that this was a time when the two women had long chats. The cook often tossed her head and made spiteful remarks about it to Sesina and when Dolly came back, Sesina would tease her and try to needle her into revealing what the conversation had been all about. But Dolly never would say. Would give a little smile and look smug.

  But this morning it had been an extra-long time and when she had come back Dolly was looking quite different from her usual self-satisfied smugness. The woman had been looking very worried. And she had avoided Sesina’s eye, flushing up and looking away when the second housemaid had caught her eye. Almost as though she were afraid that a secret would leak out if she didn’t take care to keep her mouth shut.

  And then the bell had gone. All three women had looked up at the wall of bells. The main bedroom.

  ‘For you,’ said Dolly to Sesina. She had expected the summons: that was plain.

  ‘How do you know? She usually wants you. Anyway it was just one bell.’ Sesina knew that she was being stubborn. It was obvious that Dolly knew that Sesina was going to be summoned. Still, thought Sesina, let’s hear it. She was a fluent and imaginative liar, but it was always best to know in advance what the accusation was going to be. She ran through various scenarios in her mind. If it was anything about going out early in the morning, well, then, she would just tell Mrs Collins that she had been sent by Mr Wilkie. It had to be that. And yet, Sesina could have sworn that there had not been a curtain moved or a soul around when she had stolen out through the back door before six o’clock this morning. As for the day before, well she hardly liked to think about that. And after all the distress about Mr Charles, she would have thought that there would not be any fuss about that. Something was up, though. Dolly had a very uneasy look on her face.

  ‘Well, you can expect trouble, Dolly, if you’ve been telling lies about me,’ she hissed and was glad to see how Dolly flinched.

  ‘That’s the line to take,’ she muttered to herself as she bounced up the stairs. No slinking in through the door in a shamefaced fashion for her. She gave a sharp rap and then turned the knob and was inside the room before Mrs Collins could say a word.

  ‘You want me, ma’am. Dolly says that it’s me that you want.’ She made her voice sound tough and aggressive. Always attack before they attack you: Isabella used to say that when they were both together in Urania Cottage, Mr Dickens’ home for homeless girls.

  It worked, too. Mrs Collins was looking at bit taken aback, caught on the wrong foot, Sesina told herself. She moved uneasily, looked down at her desk as though looking for inspiration and then looked up again. Sesina stood up very straight and looked her mistress in the eye.

  ‘Well, Sesina, I’ve just had a most distressing letter.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am.’ Sesina twitched her morning apron into place and folded her hands in front of her. What was a letter to do with her?

  ‘It just came about twenty minutes ago. Dolly met the delivery boy when she was doing the doorstep. It was sent around by hand.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ Come on, spit it out.

  ‘It was enclosing a letter about you. A letter that came from a highly respected person, Sesina.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘And I’m sure that this person is not the kind to make a mistake, or to take away a girl’s character lightly. In fact, Sesina,
I would trust this person to judge a situation.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ What was all this leading to?

  ‘I’m sure that you want to know what is said in the letter.’ Mrs Collins reached over and took an envelope from her small lamp table.

  Sesina waited. Save your fire until the old woman comes to the point, she told herself.

  ‘It says …’ A pause while Mrs Collins hunted for her spectacles. By the mirror, you silly old fool! Sesina waited, her hands folded across her apron and her eyes looking at the toe of her boot.

  ‘Well,’ said Mrs Collins, at last. She left a pause, but Sesina did not move nor even look at her. ‘Well,’ continued Mrs Collins, holding the letter very close to her face, ‘this is what the letter says:

  Dear Mrs Collins, I am sorry to send such disagreeable news so early in the morning, but I thought that you should know as soon as possible. A friend was returning late in the night before last and saw a young maidservant from your household steal out, surreptitiously, from your house. My friend is sure that it was number 17 Hanover Terrace and the gas lamp gave a clear sight of the young person, very small, almost child-like in size. In view of the recent murder and the connection to that household, I do wonder whether the housemaid might have some connection with housebreakers. It’s impossible, I’m sure, for us all to know whether any money was stolen before the murder of Mr Edwin Milton-Hayes was committed. Heaven forbid that this young girl could have had anything to do with the murder! However, I feel bound to mention that I have notified Inspector Field that she was seen out there on a road …

  Mrs Collins stopped and looked across at Sesina and Sesina looked steadily back. Mrs Collins, she was glad to see, looked a bit disconcerted by her firm gaze.

  ‘And what have you to say, Sesina?’ she enquired. Giving up hope of tricking me into saying anything, Sesina thought to herself as she frowned. She was a bit bewildered by this sudden accusation, but resolved to say nothing until she thought about the matter for a few more minutes and so she remained silent. It was a puzzle. Why was someone trying to get her into trouble? And who was this person. Writing to the police inspector. Making the suggestion that she was part of a housebreaking gang. Why should he or she do that? Only one reason, thought Sesina, her mind working rapidly. Whoever wrote that letter is the one who murdered Mr Milton-Hayes. That made sense. Getting worried. Wanted to move the police suspicions on to someone else. A housemaid was a good idea. So that was why the policeman was asking her if she had ever acted as a model for the artist.