The Lady's Slipper (26 page)

Cook’s eyes began to water; she missed Mistress’s absentminded requests for a little less butter on her bread, for a drinking glass to put a posy of the first daisies in, for a sneaky taste of the madeleines when they were fresh out of the oven. In town she had been astonished to hear accusations from the draper that Alice had hexed his shop when she went in to buy stockings and he had had nothing but bad luck since. And that the fact Audrey Cobbald’s chickens would not lay was because Alice had looked at her strangely in church. She had protested loudly at these accusations but got nowhere. It was a runaway cart, and all the world and his wife were sprinting to leap onto it.

When she had first heard that Mistress had been arrested, she had thought it was surely a mistake. She had made up a churn of beef broth and took it up to Master Thomas so he could take it to Mistress when he went to the gaol. But it lay on the windowsill for three days, untouched, and on the fourth day, tight-lipped, she threw its rancid contents down the sink. After that she resolved to deliver provisions to the mistress herself. The poor woman had been abandoned even by her own husband. Cook’s eyes took on a flinty determination; unswerving loyalty was something expected but rarely freely given by a servant, but it was deeply embedded in Cook’s view of what was right and proper. Besides, she knew that without something to keep up the spirits, people rarely lasted long in gaol, and Cook’s heart was soft, tender as the mutton stew bubbling over the fire.

Geoffrey rode speedily home from the constable’s and, within a few minutes of searching, found what he was after in the back of his closet. He drew out the hunting knife and weighed it in his palm. It made him feel faint to look on it. The scent of blood filled his nostrils. He could not bear to hold it for long, so he had hastily wrapped it in a cloth and now it nestled snug in his pigskin holdall in the back of the carriage. Rawlinson and the constable had gone to fetch levers and hatchets and the necessary equipment to open the door of the summerhouse, should Thomas not supply a key. Geoffrey was to meet them outside the church gate after the bell rang the quarter hour.

In fact he had to wait until the hour struck five before their conveyance arrived, and the light was already fast fading. Geoffrey was sweating, his head throbbing. Sometimes his eyes lost focus and every thing swayed. He knew it must be something to do with the new potion but he did not want to accept this. He was finally rid of the torture of the itching skin and he pushed the other effects to the back of his mind.

I must calm myself, he thought. It would not do for Robert Rawlinson to become suspicious. When he saw them wave from the window of the carriage, he followed on behind and the clattering drew people to their windows as they sped by. Ibbetson obviously had not received the message from his maidservant to expect them, for when they arrived there was nobody to greet them, only Ella.

‘Where is your master?’ asked Woolley.

‘Still out at the counting house, sir.’

‘It is a bad business, Geoffrey,’ said Rawlinson. ‘Who would have thought it?’

‘Show us the way then, girl,’ said Woolley.

Ella led the way down the narrow path towards the summerhouse, pushing away overhanging boughs of the last fading roses, their perfume sweet in the damp air. Geoffrey let the party go on ahead whilst he lagged behind, protecting his face from the springing foliage with his sleeve. The scullery maid, April, followed them all and had brought lamps down, for twilight was upon them. When April lit the lamps the garden receded into darkness, and the bright wicks only emphasized the inky windows of the summerhouse with the pictures of the dead girl floating behind, like drowned children in a pool.

‘There’s no key, then?’ asked Woolley.

‘Mistress took it with her. Never lets it out of her sight,’ said Ella.

Geoffrey watched as Constable Woolley took an axe to the doorframe, but the wood bounced it back in his face. Redoubling his efforts he hacked at the place around the lock but it gave little. The wood was solid oak, dense and close-grained, but limed over, pale and luminous in the growing dark. The constable lifted his arm again and again, but it made little impression on the heavy wood. Sweat trickled over his unwigged bald pate and onto his forehead.

‘You need more muscle,’ said Ella.

‘Get back to the house, girl, and do something useful,’ said Geoffrey. He gave Rawlinson a meaningful look, indicating Ella with his eyes.

‘Yes,’ said Rawlinson, ‘we shall need refreshment after this, and we will need to wait to explain our doings to Master Ibbetson. See to it there is something laid out for us in the dining room.’

Ella’s mouth turned downwards and she looked mutinous. Rawlinson was engrossed in watching Woolley trying to lever off the lock. Ella dropped the lantern she was holding so that it guttered and went out, and stalked off up the path. April scurried after her leaving the three men alone.

Rawlinson shook his head, picked up the lantern and relit it, then carried it around the side of the building.

‘It’ll have to be the windows,’ Rawlinson said from round the back.

‘Are you sure?’ Geoffrey said.

Woolley gave a curt nod to Rawlinson, and the sound of splintering wood and glass brought Geoffrey to squint round the side of the building to where Rawlinson had made short work of the window frame with a pickaxe handle. Now there was a hole in the delicate framing, large enough for them to enter.

Rawlinson went in first, forcing himself with difficulty through the gap. It amused Geoffrey to see him struggle to get his leg over the sill and hoist his large girth through such a narrow opening. Geoffrey and Woolley went next, over some sort of sideboard or table where their boots knocked several phials and jars onto the ground. Geoffrey jumped down carrying his holdall under one arm.

‘Careful,’ Rawlinson said. ‘We do not know what this stuff is in the dark, it could be something poisonous.’

‘I think it is just paint,’ Geoffrey said. ‘There are wall sconces and a candelabra here. Hold on while I find a taper.’

‘Ah, but painters use arsenic to make yellow, and all sorts of other poisons,’ Woolley said.

Geoffrey seized the moment. He felt for the clasp of his bag and pressed the catch. The top gaped open and he slipped his hand inside. The antler handle of his hunting knife found his open fingers. He drew it out from the cloth and slid out one of the desk drawers behind him silently. When he had pushed the knife inside he leaned his back on it, then went over and lit up the first sconce, and the room flickered into light. Geoffrey returned to lean nonchalantly on the side table, the brass drawer handle digging into the small of his back. Constable Woolley lit all the side sconces and then all the lights on the central table.

The room was flooded with a warm vibrating light that picked out the gilt on the portraits. The globe-shaped stoppers of the bottles refracted pinpoints of light around the walls like a hundred bobbing eyes.

‘’Tis almost as bright as day,’ Woolley said, wiping his forehead.

‘She needed it bright for painting,’ Geoffrey said, without thinking.

‘Or for mixing up potions,’ Woolley said.

‘True,’ Geoffrey said.

‘All these minerals, and powders. It might take a while to determine which are paint and which might be poison. It is a clever idea to conceal the venoms this way,’ Woolley said. ‘There was a woman once concealed rat poison in her pantry. Looked just like flour.’

‘Ah,’ said Geoffrey. He spotted the trestle shelf with two rows of earthenware plant pots, which might contain the lady’s slipper seedlings he was after. He would make absolutely sure his precious nerveroot did not finish up with Constable Woolley.

‘These plants are mine,’ he said. ‘I had loaned them to Mistress Ibbetson so that she could draw them when they flowered. But if it is of no matter to you, I will take them back to the manor.’

‘What sort of plants are they?’ Rawlinson asked. ‘Are they poisonous?’

‘No, just a pretty little wild garlic I brought over from Spain,’ Geoffrey lied. He chose one from the top shelf and held it out for them to look at. He was glad to see it looked like nothing at all, barely germinated, just a few negligible green sprouts. ‘But they are of no account’–he waved his arm airily–‘I can leave them here if you wish…’

His words hung in the air.

‘Take them, they are of no interest to us.’ Rawlinson barely glanced up but examined the ground minerals and powders with great interest. ‘All these powders must be looked at by a physician to see what they might be.’

‘Shall I break the door, to make it easier to load the carriage?’ Woolley hardly waited for a reply. He thumped the door from the inside now, using a hammer with obvious relish, until the door finally gave way to his boot and fell outwards onto the path with a great crash.

Geoffrey stepped onto it and methodically carried all seven plant pots to his waiting carriage. The largest plant looked like it might be already dead, the leaves drooping and withered as brown paper, but he took it anyway, it was difficult to be sure in the dark. Perhaps the roots could still be used.

When he got back after his last journey to the carriage, Woolley had discovered the hunting knife, still stained with blood, and he and Rawlinson were staring down at it where it lay glinting on the table, illuminated by the light of the dripping candelabra.

Woolley was looking at it in satisfaction.

‘Well. I do not need to tell you what this means,’ Rawlinson said. He placed his hand on Geoffrey’s shoulder. ‘I am sorry, man.’

‘She was right,’ Woolley said. ‘That maidservant was right all along. Who would have believed it? I always said these gentle-women were the crafty ones.’

‘Why would she have done such a thing?’ Rawlinson said.

‘Rivalry,’ said Woolley. ‘I have seen similar cases before. You see all sorts in my business. Things you’d rather not see, if you get my meaning. Margaret Poulter was a herbalist–some say a witch. Happen it was some sort of argument over territory.’

‘To think she had tea with my wife only a few weeks ago,’ Rawlinson shuddered. ‘Jane will be deeply shocked. If Alice Ibbetson is involved in the dark arts, then who else? It makes me fear for us all.’ His usual jovial face had a sombre cast about it now. ‘I must have a word with the parson. We must be certain all of our number are in attendance at church. Help me load the carriage,’ he said to Woolley. ‘All the jars and bottles. Search the rest of the drawers and bring their contents too.’

‘Who will talk to the husband?’ Woolley looked to the others.

‘I have not the stomach for it,’ Rawlinson said.

‘Sir Geoffrey, what about you?’

‘I don’t think it’s my place. Surely you will do that.’ He looked at Woolley, who was clearly reluctant.

‘I’ll send one of my men, later. What about your commission, Sir Geoffrey?’ Woolley said, remembering why Geoffrey was with them. ‘Can you see it?’

Geoffrey looked blank for a moment.

‘The painting you have come to collect?’

‘She appears not to have begun it. There are only these.’ He indicated the portraits around the walls. ‘I cannot see anyone paying for these now, can you? They might bring bad luck with them.’ He looked around the room appraisingly. ‘But she will not be needing them. I’ll take them for the frames, if you like.’

‘Go ahead. We are going to clear the place anyway.’

Geoffrey took a pocket-knife and slit the pictures from the most handsome frames, discarding the portraits to the ground. The room grew big and empty without their witnessing presence. Then he loaded the gilded frames into his carriage and drove away. He had done what he came to do; the plants were secure in his care, and Alice Ibbetson would not be returning for them. He was in the clear. Woolley would send someone to tell Thomas they had found the knife in her drawer.

In the summerhouse the rain lashed in through the broken windows. Moonlight reflected in fragments of broken glass. The floor was bespattered with pigment, which melted with the rain into dark pools of carmine, viridian and burnt sienna. The crumpled portraits on the ground blew into the corners, their eyes to the ground, their mouths smiling into the tiled floor. The wind picked up the beech leaves and whirled them in through the gaping doorframe. Nature had already begun to reclaim her territory.

Thomas returned a little late from his work, for he had earlier felt unwell and had ridden slowly. He had been breathless, and had found himself faint and sweating as if he had taken a fever. He was beginning to feel guilty that he had left Alice to lie in gaol for so long. Angry with her for dismissing Ella behind his back, he thought to punish her with a night in the town gaol. It would teach her a lesson. The next morning he had gone to Kendal as usual; when he returned home Ella was waiting and he had been so hot for her he had taken her on the drawing-room floor. Afterwards, when she suggested a warm bed, he had simply fallen into it.

He had let the situation drag on. Partly it was laziness, partly it was that he thought it was surely a mistake and they would soon let her go. And meanwhile he could have a few days’ uninterrupted pleasure with Ella. More than that though, it would be unpleasant to look at the whole business, and if there was one thing Thomas hated, it was unpleasantness.

When he arrived home it was to find Ella settled in front of the drawing-room fire in Alice’s chair, idly turning over a pair of white kidskin gloves in her lap. She jumped up sharply as he entered, from habit more than because she felt herself to be in the wrong. Thomas’s eyes took in her hands.

‘What’s that you have there?’

‘A pair of gloves, Thomas.’ She shook them by the wrists, the empty fingers dangling.

He was tetchy, because he felt out of sorts. ‘They are Alice’s gloves, are they not?’

‘Yes, but she won’t be needing them no more, will she. And it seems a shame they should go to waste.’ She stroked the flaccid leather with her forefinger.

‘What do you mean? I gave no permission for you to go into her closet. I forbid you to touch Alice’s things.’

The sight of Ella holding Alice’s gloves affronted him. Partly it was the look of the tiny gloves in Ella’s solid square hands, partly it was his ingrained notion of Ella as Alice’s maid, and there was something disconcerting about seeing someone else sitting in Alice’s chair. Another glimmer of unease about the situation arose in him, a small sliver of conscience.

‘Where’s the harm?’ Ella flung the gloves carelessly down on the chair. ‘Anyways, I don’t want them. I don’t want to touch anything that witch has had on her skin. Wearing them would be like wearing a curse.’

Thomas was about to protest, but Ella was already sidling up to him. She planted a lingering kiss on his mouth.

‘Let’s forget them gloves, Master.’ He liked it when she called him that. It made him feel powerful and in control. Slowly she felt down the length of his body until his hardness sprang up under her hands. He groaned and grabbed her by a thick handful of hair, tilting her face so he could look at her. She rubbed the hard place in his breeches.

‘Ella,’ he said, thoughts of Alice pushed to the back of his mind by the hand between his legs, ‘you will be the death of me.’

‘Not before I’ve jocked the life out of you.’ She licked his ear, before leading him up the back stairs.

Thomas looked down at the top of Ella’s head, at the parting of luxuriant brown hair, at her smooth peachy skin above her low-cut chemise, and felt the sensation of her hands roaming exquisitely over his buttocks and his legs. He felt better. And he placed Alice firmly out of his mind, as he had done since the day they took her away.

He rubbed his thumb over Ella’s nipple and started to manoeuvre her skirts up over her thighs. When they were done, she leaned over towards his somnolent body and poked him hard in the back.

‘Justice Rawlinson and Sir Geoffrey have been over with the constable. They were after searching the summerhouse.’

‘What’s that?’ Thomas was half in slumber. ‘I do not see why Sir Geoffrey needs to come. He is not part of the constabulary.’ He spoke sleepily, not really hearing what Ella had said. Thomas had always felt ill-at-ease in Geoffrey’s presence. Geoffrey was his superior and Thomas knew it, no matter how much Geoffrey shook his hand or exchanged jovialities.

‘No, but he is Rawlinson’s friend, so I couldn’t do much to stop them,’ Ella said. ‘And Sir Geoffrey said he had left a picture with Mistress, some business arrangement they had.’

‘What do they think to find, though? A few jars of paint and a lot of pictures, that’s all. There’s nothing there. It will all blow over.’

He thought about the wild accusations that had come to his door–like a cartwheel rolling downhill, the gossip was now unstoppable. And he had watched it gather momentum, bemused, like a spectator, as if it were none of his business. It had come as a mild surprise to him to find that Alice was absolutely dispensable, at least whilst he had Ella’s ample flesh to slide into. He knew he ought to care, and that caused him disquiet, but somehow he could not get around to doing anything about it.

Ella sat up and leaned on one elbow, fixing him with her catlike eyes. ‘You can’t get away from the facts, Thomas–her father, mother, sister, all dead within seven years. That sounds like a curse to me. And she was the only one near them when they died.’

‘Nonsense. Her mother died after childbirth.’

‘The midwife says she’s seen witches stop off the womb with their magic, then the babe won’t come. They had to pull and pull to tear the babe out, that’s why she died. You were living with a she-devil, Thomas, and you must pray to the Lord above that you have not been tainted by it all.’

Thomas considered the state of his soul for a moment, uncertain.

‘Poppycock,’ he said. He sat up grumpily, aware he would get no peace.

‘Did not you tell me that your mother and your brother had always hated her?’ Ella asked.

Thomas nodded. ‘That’s true, they did.’

Thomas thought back to when he had married Alice. His mother had been adamant that it was a totally unsuitable match because Alice brought no dowry, only the burden of her sister. After the mother’s death, Flora and Alice were living with an uncle, who worked them to the bone like servants for no recompense. It was Flora who had attracted Thomas, not so much Alice. Thomas had business dealings with the uncle, who was a pawnbroker, and had come across the little one carrying great scuttles of coal from the cellar. He had taken a shine to her and brought her secret supplies of sweetmeats when he called. He was always rewarded with a beaming smile.

The uncle was sharp-tongued and Thomas did not like to think of the poor mite skivvying for some hard-hearted ogre of a man. He had hit upon the idea of ‘rescuing’ the Longley sisters by marrying Alice, an idea which appealed to his sense of himself as a hero, but the more he insisted on marrying her, the more resolved his mother had become that it was an unsuitable match and he should not. Thomas had dug in his heels–it became a pitch battle between them–but he was determined, and for the first and probably the last time, he had rebelled against his domineering mother and won.

His reminiscence was interrupted by Ella. ‘Are you listening?’ Ella was still talking of his mother.

‘They could see evil for what it was, right in front of their noses,’ continued Ella. ‘She took you for a fat-witted fool, foisting herself and that child on you, no doubt thinking to get a hold of your fine little house and all your savings. It is just as well she was stopped.’

‘Maybe you’re right.’ Thomas was irritated now, and tired of talk of Alice, which pricked him with guilt, so he humoured Ella.

‘Anyways, they did go in the summerhouse,’ said Ella mulishly. ‘They found a knife hidden in a drawer. All covered in blood it was.’

‘What?’

‘And they made a right old mess, broke the windows and battered down the door, and took away all her jars as evidence. They waited a while, but when you did not come…’

Thomas was straight out of bed and pulling on his breeches as she spoke. Ella followed him to the doorstep, clutching the quilt around her. He hurried down the path, his bare feet stuffed into his work boots. At the bottom of the garden he stopped dead in his tracks. The gaping hole in the summerhouse, where the door used to be, was ragged like a missing tooth.

A minute later he blundered out of the broken doorframe, carrying a pile of torn canvases in his arms.

Ella saw his shadow stumbling up the path, crashing into bushes as he came. He was weeping, and he yelled something unintelligible at her before the front door slammed behind him. Ella was worried. She had never seen a man cry like that before. She waited outside a while, wondering how to bring him round. When she crept back inside, she heard him upstairs, talking to himself and walking back and forth in the mistress’s closet. When she called him he did not answer but moaned like a mare in labour.