The Governess (7 page)

‘Blood? Oh-h-h, blood.’

It was John. His face, which had been red as a turkey cock’s under the Sergeant’s battering a moment before, had gone suddenly a sickly green.

‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant, not sparing him so much as a glance. ‘Yes, the truth. In blood. Here.’

And he shot out a hand and seized hold of the sleeve of Miss Unwin’s modest brown alpaca dress.

She looked down to where the Sergeant held the material of the sleeve to the light. There, true enough, unnoticed by her up to now, was a dark stain.

‘The woman of blood,’ Sergeant Drewd said. ‘The woman of blood here before us.’

Miss Unwin, for all her guiltlessness, could not suppress an inner dart of fear at the Sergeant’s dramatic accusation. Blood on her dress. The blood of the murdered man. It did indeed seem to cry out, for justice.

But her flutter of panic was only momentary. Then bedrock commonsense re-asserted itself.

‘Yes, Sergeant,’ she said, finding her voice in answering every bit as steady as she could wish. ‘Yes, no doubt that is blood on my dress. You saw it, although I had not noticed it. But I told you not ten minutes ago, did I not, that in the library I looked carefully at Mr Thackerton to try to see how much time had passed since that dagger blow had been struck. It must have been then that the sleeve of my dress brushed against – against the blood. There is nothing more sinister in the stain than that.’

But if she had thought her words would silence the Sergeant she was mistaken.

‘That may be so,’ he shot back at her. ‘Or it may not. Who’s to tell? Without evidence who’s to tell? And what is it that we’re lacking in this affair? Evidence. Evidence, miss. Was there any other person in the library with you? There was not. I have heard as much already. For that I have got evidence. I have got the evidence of Joseph Green, footman. You were in the library entirely on your own. Were you not?’

He fired a pointing finger at Miss Unwin dramatically as if it was a bullet from a pistol.

‘Yes,’ she answered, steadily still, ‘I was in the library on my own. I do not deny it. But, Sergeant, that was after Mr Thackerton had been stabbed. You know that.’

‘Do I know it? You ask me if I know a certain fact, and I reply: I know what I have evidence for, and I know nothing more.’

‘But you have evidence. You have Joseph’s evidence. He went
into the library and saw Mr Thackerton lying there. It was only when he came out that I went in.’

‘Yes,’ said the Sergeant.

Fingers and thumbs went up to the points of his little waxed moustache and twirled like very demons.

‘Yes, miss. The man Joseph went into the library and saw his Master there. But did he see him dead? I took particular care to question him upon just that point as we made our way here by hansom cab. And what was his answer?’

Miss Unwin felt a chill foreboding. But she spoke as calmly as she could.

‘His answer can only have been that he did see his Master dead,’ she replied. ‘He came out of the library, and he told me that Mr Thackerton had been stabbed. He said that he had been murdered.’

‘Did he now? Did he indeed? And I suppose that you have witnesses for that assertion?’

‘You know very well that, apart from Joseph, no one else was there.’

‘Yes, indeed. I do know that. I know it very well, and I know too that Joseph said nothing to me about “stabbed” and “murdered”. Nothing at all did he say.’

With the sense of foreboding gathering within her like some rapidly darkening storm cloud Miss Unwin turned to her sugar-mouse thief of not so long ago.

‘Joseph,’ she said sharply. ‘Tell the Sergeant exactly what you said to me outside the library door.’

‘Outside the library door, miss?’

She saw a quick flash of Joseph’s long teeth.

‘Yes, you know very well where I mean, and when. Tell the Sergeant, tell us all, exactly what it was that you said to me.’

‘Why, I’m not sure as how I can recollect exactly, miss.’

It was then that Miss Unwin felt as if the darkening storm cloud had burst in a chilling downpour.

Joseph was not going to say that he had seen Mr Thackerton dead. This was to be his revenge for her having caught him out over his ridiculous thefts. A petty revenge. But one that could be terribly serious for her.

‘Come,’ she said, drawing on her courage once more. ‘Come, did you or did you not say to me: “The Master’s dead, miss, stabb.’”

‘Stop!’

Sergeant Drewd had jumped in front of her and was holding up his hand as if he was ready to catch a bolting thoroughbred by the bridle.

‘Not one word more, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Not one word more. You were about to put a reply into the mouth of a witness. Now, I won’t have that. That I will not have. Let the man say what he has got to say of his own free will. That’s the way Sergeant Drewd goes about obtaining evidence, and that’s the way Her Majesty’s Judges in their wisdom like to hear evidence given.’

Miss Unwin took half a step backwards.

‘Very well, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘if that is what you want.’

‘It is what I want. And it is what Her Majesty’s Judges want. So let that be the way they are going to get it.’

Despondency settled on Miss Unwin then, sullen and resistant to any sun as black ice.
What Her Majesty’s Judges want
. Could it really be that she was in danger of appearing before one of those Judges? That she was going to find herself charged with murder? Impossible. She was innocent. She had not – she had not – plunged that Italian paper-knife into Mr Thackerton’s throat. Yet was innocence enough to prevent that charge being made against her? She hoped, she prayed, that if she did find herself charged with this terrible crime her innocence would at the last shine through. But simple reasoning told her that mere innocence might not be enough to prevent the charge being made if Sergeant Drewd, that formidably sure-of-himself figure, had got it into his head that he had in one short hour of triumphant questioning discovered William Thackerton’s murderer.

It seemed, too, that he was convinced. There was a look of unmistakable joy in his quick-darting eyes.

He was turning back to Joseph now.

‘Well, my man, since the lady is no longer putting words into your mouth, let’s hear what you’ve got to say. Did you see William Thackerton Esquire dead in his library before Miss Unwin entered that room, or not?’

Joseph lowered his gaze to the richly patterned carpet at his feet.

‘I will say no more than what I said in the cab, Sergeant,’ he answered. ‘No more and no less, so help me. And that is this: I cannot recollect seeing any paper-knife nor any dagger in the body of my Master when I entered the library of this his house in order to take him his nightcap which he took regular at that time o’ night.’

Miss Unwin felt the prevaricating words as if they were so many knots in a noose being tied round her neck. She realised, too, that there was nothing she could do to rebut them. Joseph was asserting that he had not seen Mr Thackerton dead. She knew perfectly well that he had. He had blurted out to her the very words ‘stabbed’ and ‘murdered’. But she could not prove he had done so. It was at best his word against hers.

And Sergeant Drewd, for whatever reasons, seemed a great deal more inclined to believe Joseph than to believe her.

She straightened her shoulders.

‘Well, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘there’s your plain statement, unaffected by anything I might have said to influence it. You have heard it said that no one saw Mr Thackerton dead before I entered the library. You yourself pointed to the stain of blood here on my sleeve. Are you going to arrest me now for Mr Thackerton’s murder?’

Sergeant Drewd stood in front of her, a confidently diminutive figure. He twirled once at his wax-pointed military moustache.

‘No, miss,’ he said. ‘I have no intention whatsoever of arresting you.’

At his words there happened to Miss Unwin something that had not in the whole course of a life of painfully raising herself up by her own efforts ever happened to her before. A sudden grey dizziness swirled up within her.

She had only just time to think to herself /
am going to faint
, only just time to hear as from a far distance a voice oddly echoing aloud the very words she had thought in her head, before blackness overwhelmed her.

‘She is going to faint. Catch her one of you. Quick. Quick.’

It had seemed to be, of all people, Mrs Thackerton, the aged-before-her-time, afflicted, new-made widow, who had seen what
was about to happen and had called out, in a voice a good deal stronger than she had shown herself capable of using in all those afternoons of reading aloud.

But this was a thought that had scarcely impinged before the swirling darkness had blotted everything out.

Miss Unwin did not remain unconscious for long.

It must, she decided, have been only a minute or so before she had some notion of herself being helped out of the dining-room in the sturdy grasp of Vilkins, of being half-carried up the stairs by those same rough arms.

She was in full possession of her faculties, certainly, when Vilkins, with clumsy carefulness, laid her down on her own bed and began to loosen her dress.

‘It’s all right, Vilkins,’ she said. ‘I – I feel better now. I can manage.’

‘Oh, lawks, Unwi – Oh, lawks, miss, I ain’t half glad to hear your voice, that I am. Are you really in the land o’ the living again?’

Miss Unwin found herself smiling.

‘I don’t think I was ever out of that land,’ she said. ‘Though I did faint. For the first time in my life.’

She smiled again.

‘Fainting,’ she said. ‘That would never have done for us when we were little, would it? We learnt to be tougher than that, didn’t we?’

‘We did an’ all. If we didn’t never learn nothing else.’

Cautiously Miss Unwin swung her legs off the bed and managed to heave herself up to sit on its edge.

‘Well, I suppose if I was going to faint I had reason enough,’ she said. ‘It cannot happen to everyone to hear themselves accused of murder.’

‘Why, no more it can’t. An’ what that devil of a Sergeant wanted to go a-doing that for is more nor I can say. But you didn’t faint away when you heard that, you know. You had more of the old work’us spirit in you nor that.’

‘Well, perhaps I did. But nevertheless I had good cause to faint then, I think.’

‘P’raps you did. P’raps you did. That Sergeant turning on you like that. Why, I almost believed –’

Poor Vilkins came to an abrupt halt and looked every which way in confusion.

Miss Unwin gave her a sad smile.

‘You almost believed, dear Vilkins, that your aid friend had committed that terrible crime,’ she said. ‘For all that you know me better than anyone, the circumstances the Sergeant brought to light almost convinced you. Wasn’t that the way of it?’

‘Oh, Lord forgive me, Unwin. It was. It was.’

Vilkins’s confession, which she was too unskilled in the ways of the world to have wrapped up in any evasive phrase, brought home in its full force to Miss Unwin the precariousness of her position.

‘I really don’t know why the Sergeant did not arrest me,’ she said. ‘He seemed to have so much evidence against me, false though the worst part of it was.’

‘That Joseph,’ Vilkins said. ‘I knew it. He was lying, weren’t he? He’s one o’ the sort that can’t stop hisself lying, no, not never so much as he might want to speak the truth.’

‘Yes.’ Miss Unwin gave a long sigh. ‘Yes, Vilkins, Joseph was lying, and you can guess why he wanted to spite me in telling his lies. But the Sergeant believes him. Joseph had the chance to get his word in first while they were coming here in the cab from Great Scotland Yard, and he made good use of it.’

‘That villain. I could put me ‘ands around his throat an’ strangle him.’

Another smile, despite herself, broke through for Miss Unwin.

‘I don’t think you should do that, Vilkins dear. Really I don’t. Not however hard-pressed your friend of old is.’

‘Well, but Unwin, what can we do? What can I do?’

The momentary light that had gleamed over the landscape of Miss Unwin’s mind gave way to overcast gloom again.

‘I don’t know what’s to be done,’ she answered. ‘I don’t know what I can do. I don’t believe there is anything you can do, my dear, much though you may wish to. But, tell me, did the Sergeant say anything after I had fainted as to why he did not arrest me?’

‘Well, he did, in a sort of way, though I was too busy a-holding you up and a-taking you out to pay much heed.’

‘But you heard something, Vilkins? You caught a few words?’

‘Oh, yes, I did. An’ I’d have liked to have stuffed ‘em back down inside of him till he was fair choked to death, so I would.’

‘Yes. But what did he say?’

‘He said –’Vilkins creased her cheerful, broad brow in a mighty frown of effort. ‘He said there was three on ‘em.’

‘Three of what, Vilkins dear? Are there two others the Sergeant suspects?’

‘Oh, no. No, Unwin, it’s only you what he’s got his eye on. You can be sure o’ that.’

She looked delighted. Pleased to have one thing certain in the difficult course she had been asked to set out on.

‘Well, if the Sergeant is so certain that I am the one he ought to have his eye on, what three things is it, so it seems, that are stopping him arresting me?’

‘Oh, no, it ain’t three things as is stopping him. That I do know. Two on ‘em’s all right by him. I’m sure o’ that.’

‘So it is only one thing that lies between me and a prison cell. Is that it?’

‘Yes. Yes, that’s right,’ said Vilkins.

‘But what is that thing? Can you remember at all? Please.’

‘It’s one o’ the three, that I do know.’

‘Yes? Well, what are the three then? Can you remember one single thing about any one of them?’

Vilkins stood frowning like a gridiron, plainly hoping that the very intensity of that operation would somehow bring into her mind again whatever words it was the Sergeant had spoken.

‘Come, just one thing, Vilkins dear.’

‘Mean! That was one of ’em. He said he was going to be mean …’

But her voice had faded away into uncertainty.