Property of a Lady (36 page)

Wm. Lee

I have decided to accompany the clock when it is taken to Mallow. It’s risky, but it is my custom to do so with all new clocks. On this occasion it will resolve in my mind whether or not Elvira recognizes me. I cannot continue in this dreadful state of unknowing.

I believe I shall destroy those books that set out spells and enchantments. They seem to me to represent a period of my life when I was not sane. Do I believe in them any longer, I wonder? I don’t want to. And yet I cannot forget how the locks clicked open before the Hand of Glory that night, and how both Elizabeth and William seemed to sleep so deeply and only woke when I snuffed the light . . .

TWENTY-SEVEN

26th November

I
have spent the night in tumult. I have no idea what to do, but I have finally been able to come down here, and I hope that setting down the events of the last twenty-four hours may serve to calm my mind.

Yesterday the carter arrived at the workshop as arranged, to load the clock on to the dray. We swathed it in dust sheets, and I protected the mechanism with plenty of cotton waste.

Blackberrry Lane was shrouded in autumn mist – wisps clung to the bare branches of the trees, and everywhere was touched with hoar frost. Mallow House, when we reached it, seemed lonely.

William Lee himself admitted us to the house. He looked pale and haggard, but he was courteous and asked that the clock be taken to his library. It was to stand against a wall near the windows.

The carter helped me to carry the clock inside, then took himself off – he had another delivery to make, but offered to call in an hour’s time to take me up and so back to Marston Lacy.

‘I will leave you to your work,’ said Lee. ‘I have a task in the orchard – a tree whose roots have spread to unfruitful soil. My gardener uprooted it yesterday, and it is to be replanted in more wholesome earth.’

One somehow doesn’t associate murderers with homely tasks like replanting trees. From the windows I watched him walk through the gardens. After a few moments the child joined him. She was wearing a scarlet scarf and a little scarlet hat. The colours were too bright for her – she’s a rather sallow child – but they were vivid and warm against the grey morning.

I gave the shining mahogany of the clock’s casing a final polishing – it had picked up a few fragments of straw in the cart. Then I opened the door to set the mechanism going. It started at once, sweetly and smoothly, the measured tick making a pleasant, slightly soporific sound in the quiet room. I waited to make sure the hands moved round correctly. Once I would have imagined how
she
would have looked at the clock many times during the day, seeing the minutes and hours pass, seeing how the secondary face showed the months.

I put the cloths and beeswax away and left out a small phial of thin oil for occasional use within the mechanism. I always do that with a new clock. Then I went to the window.

There they were, at the bottom of the gardens – I could just make out the scarlet of Elvira’s scarf and cap through the trees. My heart began to bump, for this was to be the test. I was resolved to walk down to the orchard and tell William Lee his clock was in place and working satisfactorily. I would smile at the child and see what happened.

It was not easy to go along the gravel paths, between the smooth lawns and the herb garden in its enclosure of box. Even on a day like this there was a faint drift of rosemary and thyme and mint, and the acrid tang of the box.

The orchard was only just about worthy of the name. There were four or five trees – mainly pear and plum, but I could see the apple tree to which Lee had referred. It lay on the ground, its branches like burned bones.

They had not heard my approach, and I paused in the shadow of some shrubbery, trying to summon up the resolve to go forward.

Lee was telling the child how the tree would be replanted. ‘Today we will trim it, and tomorrow the gardener will put fresh soil and compost in so the roots can be nourished. Then we shall have juicy apples.’

Elvira appeared to consider this. She stared down at the tree and at the newly-dug patch of earth.

Lee said, in a very casual voice, ‘How much do you remember about the night your mamma died?’

‘I remember bits, but I don’t understand them,’ said Elvira, frowning.

‘What bits?’

‘You were there,’ she said. ‘If I keep looking at you, I remember you shouting and standing by the stairs.’

‘Do you?’ he said, very softly. ‘That’s a pity, Elvira.’

‘I want to remember properly,’ she said. ‘Because you did something that night – what did you do?’ She broke off, and even from where I stood I saw a horrified realization come into her face. She was staring at Lee, and I saw she was starting to remember.

Lee saw it as well, and that was when the change came over him, as it had done in the bedroom that night. He had been idly holding a big spade, presumably left by the gardener, and I saw his knuckles whiten as he tightened his grip on it. A tremor of fear went through me, and I came out from the shelter of the trees.

He saw me at once and half-turned. I saw with horror that the madness still glared from his eyes. In a dreadful, slurry voice – a voice that was somehow no longer that of William Lee – he said, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Have you come to stare at me like she does? Those great accusing eyes . . .’

‘Mr Lee – it’s Brooke Crutchley. You know me. You let me into your house an hour ago.’

He was staring at me with more attention. ‘You were there,’ he said, suddenly. ‘You were the man in Elizabeth’s room.’

‘No . . .’

‘You were,’ he said, and the child gave a cry of sudden fear, staring at me. Lee ignored her. ‘So that open-legged whore added the clockmaker to her conquests, did she?’ he said.

‘No,’ I said again, more firmly this time. ‘Never.’

‘No matter,’ he said. ‘One more is neither here nor there. But you saw, didn’t you? You
know
what happened.’ The dreadful maniacal glare was fading, but he said, ‘You do realize I can’t allow you to speak out?’ He took a step towards me, and for a moment I thought he was going to attack me. But he did not, and after a moment I felt safe to look away from him and at Elvira. She was huddled on the ground, staring at me with panic, and pity sliced through me.

Lee glanced down at her. ‘She’s remembering it all,’ he said. ‘A little at a time, but soon she will remember it all. I can’t allow that.’

‘If you make any attempt to hurt the child, be very sure I shall see you brought to justice.’

‘What could you do?’ he said, dismissively. ‘Who would listen to you?’

‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘Elvira is not to be harmed.’

I have spent the rest of the day and most of the night in a ferment of anxiety. I cannot believe William Lee will really harm his daughter—

But writing that, I’m reminded that she isn’t his daughter – or so Elizabeth said. Has that engendered in him a hatred towards her? And added to that is the fact that she knows he killed her mother. And that I saw it happen.

I have no idea what to do. I think he might try to silence me, although I don’t know how. But I believe I can protect myself against him.

What worries me is how I can protect Elvira.

27th November

Marston Lacy is buzzing with shock. No one knows the exact truth, but the word is that Elvira Lee has been admitted as a patient in Brank Asylum. Gossip and speculation is running everywhere like wildfire. Everyone insists it’s too incredible for belief, but then agrees that the poor scrap’s reason might have been overturned by the death of her mother. From there it’s been a short hop to people remembering that the Marston family – Elizabeth’s people – were not noted for their restraint or self-control. Old Roland Marston, say the older members of the community, was much given to boisterous behaviour and even fits of ungovernable rage.

It’s generally agreed that if Elvira’s mind has given way under the shock, it’s tragic that there’s no family to whom she could be sent. But William Lee’s parents are both dead, and so are Elizabeth’s – in fact, Roly Marston fell down of an apoplexy while rogering the barmaid from the Black Boar, and her mother expired from the shame.

For myself, I believe Elvira has started to remember more and more of what she saw the night her mother was killed, and that this is William’s way of ensuring she never talks of it. Then I remember that flare of vicious anger in his eyes and the way his grip tightened on the spade, and I’m dreadfully afraid for her.

Is it possible his action might be more altruistic, though? Is he afraid he might harm her, and is he therefore putting her beyond his reach? I don’t know. What I do know is that I would do anything to keep her safe from that terrible fury I glimpsed. He hates her – not only because he thinks she could speak the words that would hang him, but also because she’s a bastard from some unthinking liaison of Elizabeth’s.

I believe I shall now close these diaries, and this time it really will be for good. The lamps down here have burned very low, and shadows are creeping forward from the corners.

A few minutes ago I fancied I heard sounds above me. Could someone have broken into the workshop? But it’s unlikely. And I see that it’s past midnight, and that’s an hour inclined to make a man feel a little nervous.

The sounds have come again. Someone
is
up there. There are footsteps . . .

The trapdoor is being lifted – someone is coming down the stone steps towards me . . .

A sense of tidiness prompts me to take up Brooke Crutchley’s pen and make a closing entry in what is clearly a journal of many years’ standing. As I write that, I hear my wife jeering at me. ‘Tidiness, William?’ she would have said. ‘You never had an iota of tidiness in your entire body – you strew your belongings everywhere in the house with no consideration for anyone else.’

Perhaps she was right – occasionally she could be, the whoring bitch. But I believe I have a tidiness of mind – a scholar’s mind – and that’s what has compelled me to take the virgin pages from Crutchley’s desk and record what I have just done.

I have killed him. I stole out to his house in the village earlier on and hid in his workshop. I saw him open the trapdoor at the side of the old stove and descend the steps. And I thought – haha! my fine sly gentleman, so you have a bolt-hole, do you? But now I have you cornered.

He could not be allowed to live, you see. I’d like anyone who might ever read this to understand that. And once a man has committed one murder, the second does not seem so very bad. You can only be hanged once. You can only suffer hell for one eternity.

Brooke Crutchley knew I killed Elizabeth. And I believe him to be an honourable man – a man who would think the law should extort its due punishment. Two days ago, in the gardens of Mallow House, I knew I should have to silence him to prevent him talking. And tonight I have done precisely that.

It was remarkably easy. Murder is easy – the books never tell you that. Killing Elizabeth was easy – that blow to the head in the bedroom, then the push down the stairs. Several years of fury and jealousy were behind those two acts, of course. The taunting, the humiliations, the sheer bitter hatred . . . It is not given to all men to have rampant appetites or capabilities, and I was brought up to believe it was not within a lady’s nature to possess those appetites. (Street women are different – they are coarser-fibred, their sensitivities are less delicate. Or so I am led to believe.)

Killing Brooke Crutchley was easy as well. He had been diligently writing away in this room – and who would have thought an ordinary, rather stout clockmaker would have created this remarkable underground room? I have not inspected the books on the shelves in any detail, although I shall do so before I leave. But even a cursory glance by the flickering lamplight suggests he has some rare and curious treasures in his collection.

He was seated behind the desk when I came down the steps, and he stared at me, his mouth in a round
O
of surprise. I didn’t hesitate. I had brought with me what I believe is called, among street ruffians, a sandbag – a receptacle filled with ordinary garden soil. I had taken a silk bag from my wife’s sewing table (she did have one or two ladylike pursuits) and filled it with the soil from around the old apple tree. There is a drawstring at the top – I pulled this tight and fashioned a loop.

Crutchley started out of his chair when I entered, demanding to know what I was doing there, but I gave him no opportunity to say any more. I swung the bag high above my shoulder and let its own weight carry it straight towards his head. It struck him squarely on the temple, and he went down like a poleaxed bull.

I believe I stood staring down at him for quite a long time and – this is a curious thing – it was as if something stood with me. Something that approved of what I had done, something that nodded a scaly head and patted me with a fleshless hand, and huffed foetid breath into my face as it leaned forward to whisper, ‘Well done . . . Oh, well done . . .’

The devil, they say, likes murder very much – not that I’m imagining the devil has condescended to stroll into this very ordinary workshop and insinuate himself down the stairs to this room. But there’s
something
here, for all that . . .