The Governess (23 page)

Her eyes had been fast closed when the cell door was opened and she made no move when, with a booming clang, it was shut and locked.

‘Old Fits,’ the constable announced from the far side of the bars. ‘I dare say she won’t do you any harm, now she’s had her sleep.’

Miss Unwin stood looking down at her companion, so ominously introduced. There was just room on the bench and after a little she cautiously went over and slid down on to it.

She had meant to go over in her mind all the facts of her situation with the intention of having her arguments ready for Mr Superintendent Heavitree when he came from Great Scotland Yard. But hardly had she recalled once again the moment when Joseph had come out of the library and had said to her that Mr Thackerton had been stabbed – and he had truly done that, she told herself, and all his assertions to the contrary were no more than spite – when from beside her there came a croaking voice.

‘Mrs Fitzmaurice,’ it said. ‘Mrs Honoria Fitzmaurice.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ she answered, hardly believing what she had heard.

‘It is customary, I believe,’ her bedraggled companion on the narrow bench replied, ‘for one lady to give her name to another when that lady first announces hers.’

And the voice was, Miss Unwin noted, beyond gainsaying ladylike.

She took a cautious look sideways. But it only confirmed her first opinion: here was a drunken, out-at-elbows creature sleeping off the excesses of a Saturday night rampage. But she supposed that she had better answer in the vein in which she had been spoken to.

‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ she said. ‘You surprised me in a moment of reverie. Allow me to introduce myself. Miss Harriet Unwin.’

‘Ah, Miss Unwin. A good enough sort of person, I suppose, though by your dress I should say you are some sort of governess in half-mourning. Yes, a governess.’

Despite the faint note of contempt, Miss Unwin answered civilly as she could.

‘You are perspicacious, ma’am. I am, or perhaps I should say I was, a governess.’

‘And what are you now, if you are a governess no longer?’

Miss Unwin found the question a little difficult to answer.

‘I suppose I am a lady in a prison cell, charged – charged with murder,’ she said, in a voice scarcely above a whisper in the end.

Mrs Fitzmaurice, Old Fits, gave a sharp little laugh.

‘And I am a lady in a prison cell charged only with drunkenness and being disorderly,’ she said.

‘But I feel obliged to tell you,’ Miss Unwin added, ‘that the charge against me is wholly unjust.’

Again Mrs Fitzmaurice gave her spiky little laugh.

‘Shall I tell you that the charge against me is unjust?’ she said. ‘No, I scorn to do so. I was drunk last night. Whether I was disorderly or not, I cannot say, though I think it likely. And I tell you this: I hope I shall be as drunk or drunker again tomorrow. Otherwise life would be unbearable.’

Miss Unwin hardly knew what to reply. She thought about the black, spiky figure beside her. There could be no doubt from her voice and manner that her claim to be a lady was true. But how
far down she had sunk. Because from the great whiffs of stale gin she received each time Mrs Fitzmaurice had turned towards her it was clear that her confession to being so drunk the night before that she had not known what she was doing was sadly true.

The need to find a reply was spared her, however. Mrs Fitzmaurice, after a barely suppressed groan and once more closing her eyes, opened them again and went on.

‘Yes, unbearable. That is what life is for me, now and always. Unless one way or another I can get enough drink to blot out everything that I see or hear around me.’

Once more she let out her pointed little laugh.

‘A governess,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you that I had governesses through my hands as if they were housemaids once. Yes, governesses for my children one after the other. And where are they now? They have forgotten me, forgotten me entirely for all the consideration that I used to show them. If they passed me in the street, they would turn away in disgust. And so would my children. Yes, my very children would disown me. Disown me, and go crawling to their beast of a father.’

Suddenly a hand, plainly engrained with dirt on top of its dead pallor, shot out and grasped Miss Unwin by the forearm.

‘Yes, my children would have nothing but pretty words for the father who walked out on them and on me. Yes, walked out on me, and left me to manage how I would. Can you wonder that I began to take a little more wine than I should have done? Do you despise mc for that? Do you? Do you?’

‘I hope I do not,’ Miss Unwin said.

‘Oh, yes, Miss Mealy-mouth, the governess. You hope you do not. But you do. You think you would never do such a thing yourself. Don’t you? Don’t you?’

Miss Unwin sighed.

‘To be truthful, ma’am,’ she replied, ‘in my present circumstances I cannot answer for what I might do.’

Mrs Fitzmaurice raised herself a little on the bench, giving another deep groan as she did so, and peered down into Miss Unwin’s face, breathing on to her yet another sickly whiff of stale gin.

‘Hm,’ she said. ‘But I doubt if you would do anything very
terrible. I see some spirit in you. And you needn’t bother to try and contradict me. I see more spirit in you than ever I had. If I’d had spirit, my girl, I wouldn’t have taken to the bottle. I wouldn’t have drunk all the wine that wretch left in the house. I wouldn’t have run up bills at the wine merchants until they took me to court. I wouldn’t have sunk down to where I am, to where I’d give the devil my soul for just one nip of gin.’

‘But I’m sure –’

‘No. I don’t thank you for your being sure. I don’t indeed. Look at this. Look.’

From where it rested on the floor at her side Mrs Fitzmaurice picked up a black straw reticule. She flourished it directly in Miss Unwin’s face.

‘Yes. Yes, I see it. Your reticule.’

The old woman laughed then. Not the sharp little spiky laugh of earlier on, but a long, high-pitched giggle that ended in her choking.

‘But you don’t know the trick of it,’ she gasped at last. ‘You don’t know the trick of it. You don’t know what will happen when my good and dear friend Mrs Childerwick comes to see how I am after my night of drunkenness. My dear friend Mrs Childerwick, the laying-out woman, with the smell of the corpses on her hands. The lowest of the low, my fit companion.’

‘I am afraid I do not understand.’

‘And so you shouldn’t. So you shouldn’t. Because he doesn’t understand either. That pig-headed constable who always starts me off in this cell because he thinks while I’m drunk enough I’d tear out the eyes of those trollops in there, as no doubt I would. As I most certainly would.’

Miss Unwin began to edge away along the bench. Then she stopped herself. If this was a lady she was seated next to, in whatever extraordinary circumstances, she owed to her ladylike assistance and comfort.

‘I’m sure that you are painting a worse picture of yourself than you need,’ she said.

Mrs Fitzmaurice produced her short, jabbing laugh again at that.

‘I am sure that I do not,’ she answered. ‘But I have yet to tell
you about Mrs Childerwick, my friend, and I suppose that you are trying to turn the conversation, thinking it is something you had rather not hear. But hear it you shall, my girl. Hear it you shall, because perhaps one day you’ll come to it, too, despite the spirit I see in your looks.’

‘I am quite willing to hear whatever you have to tell me.’

‘Quite willing, quite willing.’

Mrs Fitzmaurice laughed again, with spite. But a moment later she turned, bathed Miss Unwin anew in a waft of old gin fumes, seized her arm and began again.

‘No, let me tell you. Let me tell you all about my little device. About what I have sunk to. When Mrs Childerwick appears, and I hope to God she doesn’t delay much longer, she too will be carrying a cheap black straw reticule, the very image of mine. And she will put it down just at the foot of the bars. Then, as we talk a little, I will put my reticule down on this side of the bars exactly beside hers. And then – and then –’

She gave another eldritch cackle, so unlike her usual sharp laugh.

‘And then when she goes she will take my reticule and I will take up hers. And in it I’ll find – I’ll find – Ah, God, I had better find, a quartern of gin.’

Mrs Fitzmaurice launched herself upright at the thought of the succour that was on its way and went over to stand and peer through the barred front of the cell, looking more than ever like a wind-blown rook, all spiky, jutting-out feathers, as she waited for the laying-out woman.

But evidently there was no sign of her, because in a minute or two she turned, came back to the bench, sat herself wearily down, uttered a long groan and closed her eyes.

Miss Unwin sat beside her, hearing the occasional shouts and curses coming from the other cells and trying not to let them recall to her, as they all too vividly did, the wild disorderliness of her earliest days. Instead, she attempted to concentrate on the course of her troubles up to the moment when Sergeant Drewd had arrested her. But the spectacle of Mrs Fitzmaurice, the thought of her descent to where she was really even lower than she herself had been when she had begun life, so invaded her head with drab
thoughts that she could not give her own situation any logical consideration.

She must, she supposed, have been sitting in a stupor of unthinking misery for the best part of an hour when she was roused by the sound of brisk steps approaching the lobby at the other end of the row of cells. At the noise Mrs Fitzmaurice had woken too. She looked up with an air of elated expectancy, but almost at once lapsed into slumped silence muttering ‘Not Mrs Childerwick, not the Childerwick style at all.’

From the lobby came the sound of voices, of brisk orders being given. Then the constable came in sight, tramping down towards the cell jingling his heavy bunch of keys.

‘She ain’t gone for you then?’ he observed, seeing Old Fits with her eyes firmly shut. ‘Ain’t had a go at you? Well, that’s something, I suppose. And now you’re wanted. Mr Superintendent Heavitree wants to see you.’

He unlocked the door, motioned Miss Unwin out, re-locked the door and then led her, swinging his keys as if he were a monk of old swinging an incense-swirling censer, through his lobby and back along the bare-boarded corridor she had come down before. Near its end there was a door to the left. The constable opened it and ushered her into a small room with lime-washed walls and a single high, barred window.

In its centre was a table with a bentwood chair in front of it and on the other side a similar chair with wooden arms occupied by the man she guessed must be Superintendent Heavitree.

Her spirits rose at the sight of him. He had none of the sharp knowingness of Sergeant Drewd. Indeed, his appearance was very much the opposite, a large, comfortable-looking figure wearing a suit of quiet grey tweed with a thick watch-chain running across the waistcoat. The eyes beneath the grey jutting eyebrows appeared to be regarding her with a look that might well be kindly and his face, lined and wrinkled with experience, was framed in a pair of stout mutton-chop whiskers.

He rose to his feet as she entered.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Miss Harriet Unwin. Well now, let’s see what we can do about you.’

Miss Unwin went forward and sat in the chair he indicated.

A small glow of hope sprang to life within her. Superintendent Heavitree might be a detective officer, but he looked, surely, as if he was a man who would listen. And all she needed, she told herself, was someone who would listen to what she had to say and draw the conclusions warranted by the facts she had at her disposal.

‘I am at your service, sir,’ she said.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Very glad.’

Mr Heavitree put his hand on to the button of a domed brass bell that was the only object on the table between them.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘let me just ring for a shorthand-writer, and then we’ll get your confession down on paper all in the proper way.’

Miss Unwin felt as if she had heard not a mere suggestion that a shorthand-writer should now record her confession, but a Judge himself pronouncing sentence on her at the Old Bailey …
that you be taken from hence to a lawful prison and from thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck till you are dead … And may the Lord have mercy on your soul
.

That someone she had seen as both kindly and intelligent should without so much as hearing a word she had to say assume that she was a double murderess and wished to confess: it was the worst shock that had yet come to her. It was worse, far, than hearing Sergeant Drewd bouncily say the words that had put her under arrest. It was worse even than that first moment when the Sergeant had seized on the splash of blood on her sleeve on the night Mr Thackerton had died.

She very nearly allowed Superintendent Heavitree to tap his outstretched fingers down on to the knob of the domed brass bell and summon his shorthand-writer. But she had some spirit left.

‘No, sir. There is no question of my confessing to anything. I should like you to understand: my arrest was a grave mistake on the part of Sergeant Drewd.’

Superintendent Heavitree shook his head from side to side.

‘Perhaps you feel bound to say that, my dear,’ he answered. ‘But let me sincerely advise you: it will do you no good. No good at all.’

‘On the contrary, since I am guiltless, saying so as clearly as I can should do me nothing but good.’

‘Ah, but, my dear young lady, you are not guiltless, you know. I wish you were. I wish you were. Do you think I like having to come here and talk to a young creature like yourself, well knowing that not once but twice she has taken away a person’s life? But, no, my dear, you must make up your mind to it. Confess everything to the very last word, it’s the only way. Then, when you’ve
done that, we’ll set about seeing if we can’t make out some sort of defence for you, find some exonerating circumstance.’

‘But there is none, Mr Superintendent. There cannot –’