The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (85 page)

You could have killed that child!

Of course the Reverend Agate had lost his temper. What did he care that Sophie had simply made a mistake? What did he care that the baby had eventually awoken with no ill effects, after giving his mother the first bit of peace she’d had in months? The point was, the Reverend Agate was responsible. There had been questions from the rector and the St Cuthbert’s Guardians, and a stern note from the doctor at the infirmary. Mrs Carpenter had forced her way in and berated him like a fishwife in the hopes of eliciting a payoff.

You could have killed that child.

The words drummed in her ears. They reverberated round the walls.

She was haunted by the randomness of it, by the complete absence of warning. She had started that fateful day as she’d started countless others before: she had bathed and dressed and eaten her breakfast, and opened her letters. Then she’d made her way to St Cuthbert’s with the usual sense of pleasant tedium and mild exasperation. She’d argued gently with the Reverend Agate. The afternoon had become busy. Sibella had arrived unannounced.

Then, without knowing it, she had stepped over the edge of a precipice. She’d handed the wrong bottle to Mrs Carpenter, and sent her away. Only the infant’s iron constitution had prevented a charge of manslaughter. If the child had been a little weaker, or Mrs Carpenter a little more generous with the ‘quieting syrup’, Sophie Monroe would have killed a child.

Sophie Monroe, child-killer.
Every time she thought of it she broke out in a cold sweat.

She could never go back to St Cuthbert’s. She could never face anyone again. All thoughts of Ben, and the Reverend Chamberlaine’s Register, had been pushed aside. Fever Hill no longer mattered. Nothing mattered but this.

The Reverend Agate was right. She had no business trying to help people. No business going anywhere near the sick.

She felt as if she were standing at the edge of a volcano, looking down and watching the thin crust cracking open beneath her feet to reveal the churning orange lava below. All it took was a single mistake, and a child was dead. The wrong bottle taken from a shelf in an unguarded moment. The slightest symptom missed or mistaken. The seemingly innocuous stomach ache which turns out to be a deadly brain fever.

As if it were happening all over again, she remembered those first terrible days after Fraser’s death. Everybody kept telling her that it wasn’t her fault. But it was. She knew.
She knew.

She glanced at her jewel box on the dressing-table. In the bottom tray lay a tiny envelope of ivory card containing a folded piece of blue tissue paper; and inside that, a lock of her nephew’s hair.

Clemency had pressed it on her the day she’d left Eden; she hadn’t known, this time, how to refuse it. All these years it had lain at the bottom of her jewellery case: unopened, unexamined, but never quite forgotten. Now she could almost see it opening of its own accord.

You could have killed that child.

How had she ever dared to help the sick? How had she ever dared to do anything?

The private detective perched on the edge of his chair and ran a finger inside his cheap celluloid collar. He was honest, painstaking, imaginative and anxious. Ben guessed that somewhere he had an anxious wife and a clutch of anxious children.

‘To date,’ said the detective, anxiously scrutinizing his notebook, as if it might contain some revelation that he’d hitherto overlooked, ‘a degree of progress has been made on your – on – the mother, sir.’ He paused. ‘Unfortunately, the – er, remains, are proving somewhat inaccessible.’

Ben leaned back in his chair and tapped the desktop with his fountain pen. ‘Meaning?’

Again the detective ran a finger inside his collar. ‘I regret to inform— That is to say— There has been a degree of, er, construction work over what was once the churchyard.’

‘What kind of construction work?’

‘A – a brewery.’

Ben thought for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. Poor old Ma. She’d never had much luck when she was alive, and now they’d gone and built a bloody brewery on top of her.

The detective was disconcerted. He looked down at his notes, and then away. He pretended interest in the study’s appointments.

Ben stopped laughing as abruptly as he’d started. Again he tapped the desktop. ‘What about – the older daughter?’ It annoyed him that he couldn’t bring himself to say her name. But he couldn’t. Not after that bloody dream.

‘Ah, yes,’ said the detective, relieved to be back on track. ‘Katherine.’ His face fell. ‘I regret, sir. Nothing as yet.’

Ben put down the pen and kneaded his temple.

‘But the younger brother,’ said the detective, brightening, ‘now that is beginning to look reasonably promising. Yes, I think I may go so far as to say that in a few weeks’ time—’

Ben shot him a look. ‘Are you sure it’s him?’

‘Why – yes, I believe so.’

‘I don’t want belief. I want certainty.’

The detective swallowed. He looked like a rabbit caught in a flashlight. ‘Of course, sir. Sir has always been most clear about that. And I have noted down here all the – the means of identification. The name-plates, the crucifixes, and so on.’ He held up the notebook as evidence. ‘Depend upon it, sir. There will be no mistake.’

‘There’d better not be,’ said Ben softly, still holding the detective’s gaze. ‘I shall know it if you play me false. Remember that.’

A sheen of sweat broke out on the detective’s forehead. ‘Sir, I would never dream— Truly. I would never dream—’

Ben leaned back in his chair and passed a hand across his eyes. He was disgusted with himself for bullying this weak, honest man. Of course the poor bloke wouldn’t dare to lie. That was why he’d got the job in the first place. ‘Anything else?’ he said curtly.

The detective studied his notebook with a hopeful look. Then his shoulders sagged. ‘Not as such.’ Suddenly the spirit seemed to go out of him. He seemed to think that he was going to get the sack.

Again Ben kneaded his temple. All this effort, and he still couldn’t find Kate.

And she wanted him to. She did, didn’t she? That was what this was all about. The dreams. And that time in Jamaica when she’d appeared to Evie.

But why Jamaica? he thought suddenly. Why only in Jamaica, and never Brazil or Sierra Leone or Panama?

Jamaica.

He sat up. Was that what she was trying to tell him?

His heart raced. He forgot about being tired.
Jamaica.

He’d been planning on going back for some time now; just to show them what he’d made of himself, and maybe teach one or two of them a lesson. So why not take his dead along too?

Why had he never thought of it before? It was perfect. The clean, sweet air. The warmth. The colours. It was everything they’d never had when they were alive.

He glanced at the detective, who sat meekly with his head down, waiting to be sacked. ‘In a few days,’ said Ben, ‘I shall be leaving London for good.’

The detective raised his head and gave him a small, defeated smile. ‘Very good, sir.’

‘I shall be going to Jamaica.’

The narrow shoulders sagged. ‘Yes, sir. To be sure.’

‘I shall want you to continue your work. Redouble your efforts. I’ll pay you a monthly retainer. Say, ten pounds. Will that do?’

The detective’s mouth fell open. Two spots of colour appeared on his sallow cheeks.

‘Will that do?’ Ben said again.

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir. And – if I may say so, sir, more than generous—’

‘I shall want a report every week, without fail.’

Weekly reports
, wrote the detective in his careful copperplate, and underlined it twice. Then he raised his head, eager for more. ‘And where shall I, er—’

Ben waved a hand. ‘My secretary will sort out the details. But be sure and address the reports to him, rather than to me. The Honourable Frederick Austen, Fever Hill, Trelawny.’

The detective nodded, and wrote it all down in his book.

The curtain had gone down on the first act of
Il Trovatore
, and Sibella had hurried away to talk to an acquaintance in another box, having despatched Alexander to order champagne.

Sophie didn’t want any champagne, but Sibella insisted. ‘You can’t come to the opera and not have champagne.’

‘Can’t we have the champagne without the opera?’ suggested Alexander.

‘Ridiculous boy,’ said Sibella. ‘Now do what you’re told and go and fetch.’

While they were gone, Sophie sat and fiddled with the tassel on her evening bag, and hoped they would come back soon. It was her first time out of the house in a fortnight, and she couldn’t shake off the sense that everyone was looking at her.
There’s that woman who almost killed a baby. Deplorable case. Deplorable.

It was ridiculous, of course, for no-one knew about Mrs Carpenter’s baby, and if they had known they wouldn’t have cared. But she couldn’t help herself.

To her relief, Alexander swiftly returned with a waiter in his wake bearing an ice bucket, glasses, and two bottles of Piper-Heidsieck.

As she watched him dealing with the waiter, she felt a surge of gratitude. How amazing to think that just two weeks before, she had longed to be free of the Trahernes. Then had come the horror at St Cuthbert’s. And after that Sibella had quietly extended their visit, to help her friend through what she called ‘everything’. And now Sophie couldn’t do without them. She didn’t
want
to do without them, not ever again.

Sometimes, a part of her mind would warn that she was becoming dependent on them. But then reality swiftly returned. She wasn’t
becoming
dependent. She already was. It had been self-delusion to imagine that she could be anything else.

Once, she had believed that she could be self-reliant, that she could achieve something by herself. Now she knew that to be a mistake. St Cuthbert’s had taught her that.

‘Sophie,’ said Alexander, as he shooed the waiter out of the box and handed her a glass of champagne. ‘Sophie – I wonder, could I talk to you for a moment?’

‘That’s what you’re doing,’ she said with a smile. She took a sip of champagne. It was just what she needed: icy and dry and delicious.

‘Quite so,’ he murmured. He paused, as if composing his words.

She knew what was coming next. She had thought about it a great deal. And she knew that what she was about to do was right.

‘I don’t know if you remember,’ he began, ‘but a few weeks ago, I said that I would wait a while, before I asked you whether you would—’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He gave her an enquiring glance.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘The answer, Alexander, is yes.’

Chapter Twenty Three

Fever Hill took Ben completely by surprise.

He had never expected to like it. He’d only bought it on a whim, because it amused him to imagine their faces when they found out. But when he got there, he fell in love with it.

He arrived in May, just after the rains, when the whole estate was bursting with life. The air buzzed and hummed and chirruped. The trees were in full flower: lemon-yellow cassias and dusty pink oleanders; vermilion poincianas and powder-blue jacaranda. One morning he stood on the great marble steps and looked out over the shimmering cane-pieces and thought in astonishment, Yes. I’m home.

For the first time in his life he was at peace. No more restlessness, no more black moods. No more dreams of the old days. He was finished with all that. He’d left it behind in London.

For two months he lived peacefully on the property. He left the running of the estate to the manager who’d handled it under Cameron Lawe, and bought half a dozen thoroughbreds, and set about schooling them. Isaac came to stay for weeks at a time, preferring to walk and survey the hills, rather than run his own place at Arethusa, on the other side of Falmouth. Even Austen was enjoying himself, having confessed somewhat sheepishly to a passion for bird-watching.

The weeks slipped by. Ben watched in amusement as Isaac and Austen finally became used to one another, even venturing out on joint bird-watching and surveying expeditions. He himself spent his days on long solitary rides, and his nights sitting up late, drinking rum and working his way through the latest crate of books. He was at peace.

Then, in the middle of July, the telegram arrived from the private detective.

Your brother Robbie, sisters Lilian and Katherine found. Report follows. Request instructions.

Robbie and Lil and Kate. Found. After all this time.

He stood on the verandah blinking at the telegram; trying to suppress an odd, nagging sense of apprehension.

They
deserve
to be out here, he told himself angrily. They deserve to escape the stink and din of London for the peace of Fever Hill.

But he couldn’t quite shrug off a suspicion that whatever had been plaguing him in London was now following him out.

Two days later, he and Austen caught the train to Kingston, and plunged headlong into arrangements for bringing out the bodies. They spent hours in shipping offices and the Telegraph Department. Ben forced himself to refer to his brother and sisters as ‘the remains’, slamming the lid down hard on thoughts of the rough, larky street kids he’d grown up with. Then, when he couldn’t stand it any longer, he left the rest to Austen, and took Evie out to lunch.

He took her to the Constant Spring Hotel, six miles out of town, and sat back in the hired carriage, and enjoyed her enjoyment. She loved it all. She loved the drive through the foothills ablaze with poinciana and bougainvillaea. She loved the great hotel with its manicured gardens and magnificent dining-terraces, and the enormous French menu that was entirely free of any taint of Jamaica. She loved the fact that their fellow diners – mostly wealthy English and American tourists – were all white, except for one well-to-do coloured family whom she felt entitled to ignore, as they were darker than she.

She wore a narrow gown of pale green silk which suited her willowy figure, and a wide-brimmed hat of fine pale straw, elegantly trimmed with cream silk flowers. Both hat and gown looked expensive, and Ben wondered how she could afford them on a teacher’s salary. But he dismissed that as none of his business, and told her that she looked enchanting.