The Crimes of Charlotte Bronte (12 page)

Mr Nicholls smiled a little as he remembered how his words had calmed Miss Charlotte, almost as if they were magic to her ears, and she had been forced to admit that she
had
spurned him. From that moment on, he said, she acted almost as if
she
was the one at fault, and the time came when she even seemed to believe that it was Miss Emily who had made the running in their friendship.

Knowing Miss Charlotte as I did, I cannot but think that usually she would have taken a lot of what he said with a pinch of salt, but it is evident that she heard the words that she wanted to hear, and they were enough to make her heedless of any doubts that she may have had. It must have been then that she began to see that she, plain as she was, could make that handsome man hers if she thought and acted with care.

The talking went on for quite a while longer, but Mr Nicholls says that he had sensed something of what was going on in her mind, and he thought that a turning point had been reached, but it was only when he placed his hand gently upon hers and she did not withdraw that he knew that an unspoken agreement had been reached.

The problem of what to do about Miss Emily was still there though, and about Miss Anne as well, come to that, but by then he was ready with his answers. I can well imagine how he put on his best soothing voice as he pointed out that Miss Emily might not be with child at all, and that if she was not something else must be ailing her that seemed to be getting worse. Miss Charlotte was not so sure though. What
she
wanted to know was what Mr Nicholls had in mind to do if she
was
expecting, or if she recovered from whatever else might be wrong with her.

They were questions that needed direct answers, and Mr Nicholls has confessed to me that for a moment he was not sure what to say. Then, feeling a sureness that had been coming back to him the longer they talked, he decided to take a chance. Gently, very gently, he put it to her that one answer could be that he should help Miss Emily along just as he had helped Master Branwell. Of course, he did not tell her that he was already doing so – he was just sounding her out – and he said that he held his breath as he awaited her reply.

When it came, however, he was not really surprised. It was very much as he thought it would be, although she put on a good show of being shocked, and told Mr Nicholls that he should put any such notion right out of his mind. They should wait a while and see what happened. Mr Nicholls has told me that it was very much the answer that he himself would have given in her place because it allowed her to play for time and safety. Should Miss Emily die of a natural cause that would be all well and good. However, she must have known that, if that looked unlikely, Mr Nicholls would take up his poisoning ways again, but if he did and she had not been part of it she would never know for sure that he had, and could always tell herself that her sister had died naturally.

As I have said, Mr Nicholls was not deceived because it was the sort of answer that he had expected from careful, sly Miss Charlotte. He simply pretended to agree with her, safe in his knowledge that Miss Emily would not be a problem for much longer, and that he might expect no bother from Miss Charlotte when she died.

From what he says, there was a little kiss on the cheek when they parted, each knowing what was on the other's mind, but I knew nothing of that because at that moment I had had to creep quietly back to the kitchen.

I heard Mr Nicholls leave though, and a few minutes after that Miss Anne was closeted with Miss Charlotte in the same room, and with the door once again closed tight. However, I was busy getting the vegetables ready with Miss Aykroyd; so any hopes of getting back to listen were dashed, and it was not until some months later that I learned what had passed between the sisters.

According to what Miss Anne wrote, Miss Charlotte told her that she had spoken to Mr Nicholls and had told him, very firmly, that she would make his misdeeds known unless he married Miss Emily. That, she said, had quite taken him aback and he had said that he would marry her just as soon as she was well again. Miss Anne took that as the truth for, after all, she had no reason to doubt her sister, and her mind was set at rest. Not only had she been able to share the secrets that had burdened her so much, but now there was to be a happy outcome.

Of course, Miss Emily knew naught of any of this, and certainly she did not know how angry Mr Nicholls was with her for blabbing to Miss Anne in spite of her promise to him to keep everything secret. On the outside, though, he kept up his show of loving care, and Miss Emily became quite sure that he would marry her as soon as she was well enough.

That Winter of 1848 was a very cold one, and in December it was bitter. I would dress as warmly as I could, and sometimes I even wore my mittens, but it did no good and the Parsonage was always so cold once you were away from the stove or a fire. I was plagued with chilblains, and everything froze up. On several mornings I had to let the bucket drop quite heavily into the well to break the ice. The dark days dragged by, and with each one Miss Emily got worse until she looked nothing more than skin and bone.

Miss Charlotte put on a show of concern about her, and she told folk that she had sent away for something for her sister to take, but it was all an act. One day I asked Miss Emily if the medicine was doing her any good, but she looked at me askance and asked what I was talking about. I felt myself going red, for it was evident to me that she knew naught of any medicine and that I had opened my mouth too widely, and stammered that I must have been mistaken for I thought she was taking something.

As Christmas neared we were all kept very busy getting things ready for the Feast, both at the Parsonage and at home. It was always a happy time for me, and I was quite caught up in the general excitement. I was 20 by then and, in particular, I was looking forward to having some time off so that I could get to the 2 dances that were to be held in the village.

It makes me sad to think of it now, but in all the hustle and bustle most of us tended to forget about poor Miss Emily, and many a time since I have wondered how she must have felt seeing everyone elso so happy. Mind you, she was never one to complain, and so it was simple for us not to notice how very much worse she must have felt, poor woman. Taken up with myself, I now recall prattling on about my own concerns, and telling her about one certain lad that I was hoping to see a lot more of. Once she smiled and said I was a comely lass, and that she had little doubt that I would soon be leaving them to get wed. I always feel a strong sense of guilt when I recall that talk because it was on the very next day – the 19th – that, to my great surprise, I was told by Miss Charlotte that I was to hurry for Dr Wheelhouse and ask him to come at once.

As I say, the errand came very much as a surprise to me for, many times, the latest being when I had asked her about the medicine, Miss Emily had told me that she had no time for doctors and so I knew that something had to be very much amiss for her to have changed her mind.

I ran as hard as I could, holding my skirts up out of the mud as I went which made a lot of folk turn and look at me, especially some lads, but I did not care. Miss Emily had always been very kind to me and it was the least I could do.

It was quite a way, and I was puffing, and quite hot for a change, when I got to the doctor's house, and I had to catch my breath before giving the message to the housekeeper who answered the door. I waited in the hall for what seemed an age before he came out, but he was soon ready, with his coat and hat on, and his little carriage had been brought round so we were quickly back at the Parsonage.

Somehow I knew as we hurried up the path that something was very much amiss. The front door stood wide open, and everything was so very quiet. As we got inside I could see Miss Anne at the end of the hall, near the bottom of the stairs, and she seemed to be weeping. At that moment, though, Miss Charlotte came out of the sitting room and said quietly, ‘I'm sorry, Doctor, but you are too late.' She told me to go into the kitchen, and then led the doctor into the room where, with the door being ajar, I could see Miss Emily lying on the sofa, with Mr Brontë sitting in a chair pulled close to it.

I walked across the hall to the kitchen and by then Miss Anne was in a corner and I could see quite clearly that she was indeed weeping, but I said naught. In the kitchen, Miss Aykroyd sat at the table, also weeping, and with her head in her hands, whilst a young girl – whose name I now forget, but who had worked with us for a short time – stood as if not knowing what to do with herself.

Of course, I knew by then that Miss Emily had passed on, but I asked the girl when she had died, and she told me that it must have happened almost as soon as I had left, because she heard Mr Brontë calling for Miss Charlotte whilst I was running down the path.

It was a terrible day, and then, what with the funeral and all, Christmas was a very sad time. I still went to my dances, but my heart was not really in anything and I must have been a disappointment to the lad I had my eye on because he seemed to want naught to do with me after that.

That, though, was the least of my worries because, even though I knew very little then, I felt that something very bad was going on, and I wondered what the New Year would bring for us all.

[
] As usual, most of what we know about Emily's symptoms comes from Charlotte. She stated that Mr Williams had recommended two fashionable London doctors whom Emily might consult, and that when Emily had rejected their services he had suggested that she might turn to homeopathy for relief. He advised that Dr Epps be consulted, and therefore, in her reply of 9 December 1848, Charlotte sent a description of what she said were her sister's symptoms in the hope that Dr Epps would prescribe by mail.

Now the symptoms which she listed coincided neatly with those of consumption, many of which she would have remembered, as both her elder sisters had died of consumption when she was a child – but there was one important, and interesting, omission.

On the very next day after replying to Mr Williams, Charlotte wrote to Ellen Nussey and told her about her letter of the day before. She stated that she had written to ‘an eminent physician in London', and had given him ‘as minute a statement of her case and symptoms as I could draw up'. Note that word ‘minute'. Earlier in her letter to her friend, Charlotte told her: ‘Diarrhoea commenced nearly a fortnight ago, and continues still. Of course it greatly weakens her, but she thinks herself it tends to good.'

So there we have two sentences devoted to diarrhoea in the same letter to a friend but, amazingly, there was not a single mention of it in the ‘minute' statement sent to a doctor on the previous day! Is that not strange?

One could understand the omission had it been the other way round and she had mentioned it to the doctor and not to the friend. I do not suppose that diarrhoea would really have been considered a proper subject of correspondence between two genteel Victorian ladies, and therefore it would not have been surprising had Charlotte not mentioned it to her friend. On the other hand, it would not only have been acceptable but very relevant to have included the symptom in a letter to a medical man. It was a most peculiar omission but, as we shall see, there was a very good reason why it was not included.

I think that we may safely assume that Emily did not suffer from diarrhoea during the early stages of her ‘illness' because, in that same letter to Dr Epps, Charlotte told him that her sister had occasionally taken ‘a mild aperient'. Now one does not take a laxative if suffering from diarrhoea, and so we know that only one of the two statements is true. Either Charlotte was lying about the aperient, and Emily was subject to diarrhoea throughout the whole of her illness, or she was telling the truth. If she was
not
lying, then her sister must have been slightly constipated during the first two months of her incapacitation, but was affected by constant diarrhoea from the end of November.

There are two important reasons why I have gone into this matter at some length, distasteful though it may be. The first is that, if Charlotte was
not
lying about the aperient, the onset of Emily's diarrhoea coincided with the beginning of the poisoning. Then, secondly, comes the question of why Charlotte concealed her sister's distressing symptom from Dr Epps because – let there be no mistake about it – conceal it she did. Now why should she have done that? The answer, to my mind, is simple. It is because diarrhoea is a very common and well-known symptom of irritant poisoning, and Charlotte did not wish to alert Dr Epps to the possibility that all was not as it should have been.

Actually, she need not have worried herself. Diarrhoea often occurs during the later stages of tuberculosis, but it would seem that she did not know that.

All this, of course, goes a very long way in confirming what Nicholls told Martha, namely that Charlotte had every reason to suppose that Nicholls might be poisoning Emily, but that she did nothing about it.