Beloved Poison (45 page)

‘And then just when I thought she would overpower me, just as I thought she would kill me with her bare hands, she crumpled to the floor.

‘I thought it would happen slowly, I understood childbirth to be a great protracted affair, and yet it was not. Something was wrong. She was screaming and holding her belly, rolling her eyes at me, her mouth wide and red, her face bloodless, her hands cramped and twisted. She crouched down before me, her face twisted in pain. And then she gave a great cry and fell silent. She lay on the floor of the carriage where I had pushed her.

‘I fell to my knees beside her. There was blood – on my face, my clothes, my hands – everywhere.’ Mrs Magorian’s eyes were lost in shadow, her voice a whisper. She held her hands out, as if seeing them for the first time, her face fixed in an expression of such horror that I could hardly bear to look at her. ‘Who’d have thought she’d have had so much blood in her? So much blood for one as small and thin as that? Her skirts were soaked with the stuff – it coated my arms and my dress; I could feel it sticky beneath my shoes.’ She closed her eyes, passing her tongue across dry, cracked lips. ‘She looked up at me, and I could see the fear in her eyes. She gave birth right there, before me, and I took the child into my arms.’

Mrs Magorian sat back. ‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘I left the girl where she was on the floor of the carriage. And then my husband took her inside and did his work – we could not let her go to waste, and the womb directly after birth was something he was keen to examine. But the baby, she was mine – a gift from God. From my husband. I went immediately to the country. And when I returned, some months later, I returned with my baby daughter.’

I watched her, my mind going over all she had said . . . and yet something was not right. Something in her account did not quite fit with what I knew. I frowned. ‘But there were six coffins,’ I said. ‘The coffins marked the dead babies, the innocent. And yet the sixth, Eliza, survived.’

‘But her brother did not.’ Mrs Magorian smiled; but her smile was wild now, as lopsided as a torn pocket, the eyes above it a pale, empty blue. ‘Eliza was a twin. We didn’t know until my husband cut the girl open. The other child was dead, its skull crushed, perhaps by the girl’s fall beneath the hansom. But it’s all in the journal,’ she said. ‘Will you read it now?’

‘No,’ I said. I forced myself to concentrate. I could hardly believe what I had heard. Such pain and horror. And Eliza, like me, a twin . . .

‘Why not?’ She frowned. ‘I hand you my confession, and you ignore it?’

‘I will not read it because you have painted the leading edge of these pages with monkshood,’ I said. ‘And then loosely stuck the pages together with flour and water paste. You hope I will lick my finger to get a purchase on the paper, or at least worry at the pages and the stuff will be absorbed through the skin. You would poison me exactly as you did Dr Bain. Anyone who turns these pages must wear gloves, as you do, Mrs Magorian.’

She lunged forward to seize the book from me, but I was taller and faster. ‘You killed Dr Bain to prevent him from discovering what I have discovered,’ I said. ‘That you and your husband murdered seven women, including Eliza’s mother, and you buried the remains of six of them in St Saviour’s churchyard.’

‘I could not lose her,’ cried Mrs Magorian. ‘She is my daughter. No one will ever say that she is the daughter of a common prostitute.’

‘Far better that she might be the daughter of a murderer?’ I said. ‘And what about Mrs Catchpole? You replaced the salve with poison when my back was turned, didn’t you?’

‘You were easily distracted.’

‘Curare,’ I said. ‘It entered her body through the cut on her forehead.’

‘It was only a matter of time before she remembered what she had seen.’

‘I know what she saw. You killed her for nothing.’

Mrs Magorian shook her head. ‘She said nothing to you!’

‘But she told her attendant and her attendant told me. Mrs Catchpole saw your bonnet. You’d left it on Dr Bain’s table when you hid behind the screen while Dr Catchpole was there. Mrs Catchpole saw the bonnet and she assumed it was Eliza’s; she had seen Dr Bain with Eliza that night and, like you, she thought the worst. She jumped to the wrong conclusion. But it was
your
hat she saw.’

Mrs Magorian recoiled. ‘She told you? But
when
?’

I did not deign to answer. ‘And Joe Silks?’

‘That boy? He would not give up what Dr Bain had entrusted to him. Such misplaced loyalty. But he could not resist a lump of sugar.’ She smiled. ‘It was an accident that he fell.’

‘Was it?’ I said. But it hardly mattered now.

Again, at the doorway, I saw a movement. Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Magorian must have seen it too, for she leaped up and cried out, ‘Charles, thank God!’ Her expression dissolved into relief and she took a step towards the door. But she fell back again almost immediately, the cry dying on her lips as her hands flew to her mouth.

Eliza stood before us. She was soaked with rain; her hair plastered to her head, her dress leaking water onto the floor. She was shivering, but whether it was from cold or anger I could not say.

‘Dear girl.’ Mrs Magorian held out her hands.

‘Don’t.’ Eliza stepped back, ‘Don’t come near me.’

‘But I’m your mother—’

‘You’re not my mother.’ Eliza’s face bore that closed, pinched look. Her gaze crossed to the boot I had stolen from Mrs Magorian’s dressing room which now lay on the table beside my chair. And then she looked at me. ‘Did I help you to bring us to this?’ she said. ‘Was that why you asked for my help, so that you might come into our home and take our secret things?’

‘I would never do anything to hurt you.’ My words sounded hollow, even to my own ears. Had I not taken the boot in the full knowledge of where it might lead? Did I not know that by doing so I would bring forth the truth, and with that cause her the most terrible pain? ‘It’s the truth, Eliza,’ I said. ‘The truth at last.’

‘Well, I don’t want it.’ Her eyes were dry of tears, her face cold and hard. ‘I don’t want the truth – not any of it!’

‘Oh, Eliza,’ cried Mrs Magorian. She stepped closer.

Eliza backed away. ‘You murdered her. You murdered my . . . my mother. My brother.’

‘They died,’ said Mrs Magorian, ‘in childbirth. I took you and brought you up as my own. You would have died too without me.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘Would you have been happier in the poor house? Or living in some dirty corner of Prior’s Rents? Or on the streets?’ Her voice was sharp now. ‘You’d be a drunkard and a whore, just like your mother – if you’d lived that long. But instead you’re a lady. You’ve no cause to recoil from me.’

Eliza was silent for a moment. ‘And those other girls?’

‘Street girls.’

‘And their babies?’

‘We had to know. We had to understand
why
. Those girls were doomed. If the gin didn’t get them, then the pox would. Your father—’

‘He is
not
my father.’

‘He loves you as if you were his own daughter.’

‘He hates me.’ Eliza’s eyes were dark and furious. ‘He hates me because he wants me. He has always wanted me.’

Mrs Magorian frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t you?’ said Eliza. ‘Don’t you know what I mean? Perhaps I’m not so far from the gutter as you think, for it is he who’s dragged me into it; he who’s made a whore of me. He loves me like a husband, not as a father. He’s done so since I was a child. Do you understand me now?’

Mrs Magorian gaped at her. She could not comprehend it. I closed my eyes, trying to shut out the horror of the world. I had guessed as much, but my mind had revolted to accept it. She had denied it when I had asked, but there had been something hasty in her refutation, and her confidence, her knowledge of intimacy had given the lie to it.

‘Oh, he hated me for it – for tempting him – and I was duly punished with a beating. But I am a whore, and my true nature cannot be beaten out of me any more than it can be smothered with silks and fine manners.’ She stood there for a moment. ‘That’s what he used to say to me. I always wondered what he meant.’ She looked down at her hands, the neat nails, and clean, starched, white cuffs of her dress, and a tear ran down her cheek. Her small upright figure seemed to dwindle, to grow smaller. Her face darkened and her lips drew back over her teeth. ‘I owe you nothing,
Mother
,’ she said. ‘And I will tell the world what you have done.’

‘Eliza!’ Mrs Magorian sprang down the stairs after her, the poisoned book forgotten in my lap.

Outside, the rain was falling again. I emerged just in time to see Mrs Magorian vanish through the gate that led to the churchyard. I raced out after her. There was a glow in the sky to the west, but the place would soon be as black as a glove. Ahead of me, I saw Mrs Magorian’s pale blue bonnet, darkened with the rain, bobbing amongst the graves. I heard her voice, faint against the roaring darkness. ‘Eliza! Eliza!’ But I could not see Eliza at all. Beneath my feet, the ground was uneven, sagging and mounded with bodies that had yet to be exhumed. Up ahead the great flanks of the bone mound were silhouetted against the inky sky. The stink of it filled the air. The men had stopped work hours ago, and the place was deserted. The night was growing wilder; I saw the tarpaulin that covered the tools billow like a great flap of skin as the wind caught it. I had to find Eliza, to explain – what? That all would be well? That I would save her from the cruelty of the world and the judgement of men?

At that moment a dark shape detached itself from the surrounding blackness. I saw a white face, sunken eyes beneath a shadowy brow, the dark wings of a cloak caught in the wind. I took a step back to brace myself, to throw him aside . . . But he was too strong. In an instant I was on my back. Above me, his face was tight lipped, his eyes invisible in shadows. I thrashed beneath him, my legs kicking impotently, but he sat astride me now, pinning me to the ground. Was this what he had done to Eliza? Had he pinned her down and forced himself upon her, or had he wheedled and coaxed – I felt his hands about my throat, squeezing. The rain poured into my open mouth, my staring eyes. I squirmed beneath him, the ground churning to sludge and rising up about my face as he pushed me into the earth. There was a roaring in my ears and the darkness that closed in upon me was the colour of oxblood.

As if from far away, I heard shouting. Above me I felt Dr Magorian jerk. His hands slackened and my vision cleared, though I could not move. My breath rasped against my bruised and bloody throat.

There were two of them now: one in a black cloak, the other in a brown oilskin. They wrestled with one another, plunging this way and that, rearing up before me, locked together as they struggled to bring each other to the ground. I tried to stand, but I could not. And then the oil-skinned one fell sideways, flung against a tombstone. He lay there, unmoving, twisted upon the rain-soaked earth like a rag doll, while his adversary, dark and terrible in his great billowing cloak, vanished into the night.

I crawled forward, the rain drumming on my skull. My voice was raw, my neck torn and bruised, my throat swollen.

It was Will, dear, loyal Will. I cradled his head in my lap. At his temple, a bloody gash told where he had smacked his head against the stone.
Not Will
, I thought,
please, not Will.
I threw my head back and screamed my grief and despair against the wind. What hope, what chance of redemption could there be if he too was taken from me? I pressed my fingers to his throat with hasty imprecision. But the mud and rain, cold and slippery, defeated me, and I could feel no pulse. I bent over him and kissed his face. How lonely I had been before he came. And now? Now I had no one. No one at all.

‘Jem?’ his voice was a whisper, as close as a lover’s in my ear.

‘Oh!’ I held him tight then, tight against the rain and the darkness. ‘I’m here. You’re safe.’

‘And you? Are you safe?’

‘Yes.’

‘What about Eliza? Where is she? Where is Dr Magorian?’

I looked up. Ahead, against the shadow of the mountain of bones, I could see movement. I pointed.

‘Go,’ he whispered. ‘Gabriel is coming. I sent him for help.’ He squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t worry. He’ll find me.’

Faint and far away, snatched by the wind, I heard a voice. I made Will comfortable against a gravestone, and then, with a last glance back, I abandoned him, following the sound, heading north across the graveyard. I stopped and listened, peering into the rain, hoping to catch a glimpse of something. My head throbbed and my breath came in sharp, raw gasps; I felt sick and dizzy, and I staggered forward onto my knees, holding onto a crooked headstone for support as I vomited onto the ground. My throat blazed.

I heard the cry again and I wiped my lips and stumbled on. And then, there, in front of me, were the bones, and the pit from which they had come. I stared up, shielding my eyes with my hand as the rain stung my face like nettles. They gleamed white, skulls and ribs glistening with rainwater; amongst them, slimy strips of flesh and hair, fragmented coffins, tattered winding sheets and streaks of dark, sticky earth. And all about was the sound of gurgling, bubbling water, as though the ground itself was laughing. As I looked, the bones seemed to move. I dashed the water from my face and blinked. There it was again. I could not make it out . . . and then I realised. There was somebody there, on that great mound, climbing.