The Poisoned House (5 page)

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Chapter 9

All the laughter left me as fear took over.

I was sure that at any moment Mrs Cotton would step behind the screen and drag me out. I couldn’t imagine what punishment she would devise. And could I conceal the fact that Rob and Lizzie were part of the plan too? Mrs Cotton must surely see that my presence was orchestrated by several people.

‘I say again, troubled one, reveal yourself.’

His voice was softer this time, and still Mrs Cotton hadn’t said anything. With my heart thudding, I crept back to the screen and peered through.

They were seated just as before, their eyes still closed and hands clasped. Neither was even looking in my direction, but Dr Reinhardt’s face was tensed, his jaw muscles tight lines under the skin.

‘Ellie,’ whispered the doctor, ‘come forth. Explain yourself.’

Relief flooded over me, drowning my panic.

Then, from somewhere, there came a draught. One of the lamps flickered. Mrs Cotton’s eyes opened in alarm then closed again. I looked at the windows, but both were shut with the curtains three-quarters drawn.

‘Ellie,’ said the doctor calmly, ‘we are your friends.’

If he was playing a trick, he was quite an actor. There was nothing overly dramatic in his voice. He spoke as if to an old acquaintance, warm and faintly mocking.

Something in the room had changed, however. The darkness seemed to have deepened, as though someone had dimmed the lamps.

‘Ellie?’ asked Mrs Cotton, as the light played across her hard features.

‘No,’ said Dr Reinhardt anxiously. ‘Not her. Not Ellie.’

He had been sitting up straight before, but suddenly he tipped his head, lowering his chin to his chest. It was as though he was drifting into sleep.

Mrs Cotton opened her eyes. ‘Doctor? What do you mean, not Ellie?’

The doctor didn’t reply. I couldn’t see his face clearly, but I thought that in the shadows his lips were moving.

‘Ow!’ said Mrs Cotton. ‘You’re hurting me, Doctor.’

She tried to pull her hand away, and I could see that the doctor’s fingers had hers in a tight grip. The rest of his body was motionless.

‘Doctor!’ she cried. ‘I must insist –’

He suddenly released her hand and she fell back in the chair, pale with shock. As she did so the fire in the grate went out, not with a slow fizzle but suddenly, as though the chimney had swallowed it. One moment it was blazing high, the next it was gone.

I gasped, and if Mrs Cotton had not done so in the same instant, I would have given myself away. The room was suddenly cold.

Only the oil lamps were now lit. Gooseflesh rose across my skin.

The doctor began to move again. Both hands seemed to slither back to his chair, and his knuckles whitened as he clutched the armrests. His head lifted slowly, and even in the gloom I could see that his eyes had rolled back, showing the whites.

I thought he was having some sort of fit. His lips were drawn up over his teeth and his head turned to left and right in frantic jerks.

‘Doctor?’ said Mrs Cotton. She was shifting in her seat, casting glances into the corners of the room.

When the doctor spoke, the voice was not his own. It was an unearthly moan that seemed to rise from the pit of his stomach. He spoke a single word in a wail of desperation. The word was ‘Murder!’

Mrs Cotton’s face was a mask of horror. Her mouth moved as though she were trying to speak, but couldn’t. My attention was quickly drawn back to the chair. Dr Reinhardt had started to shake. I could hear his teeth rattling.

‘Doctor?’ said Mrs Cotton again.

A white foam began to bubble on the man’s lips, flecking his chin and dripping in clots on to his waistcoat. Mrs Cotton rose from her seat as a monotone growl rumbled from his mouth, and the arms of the chair creaked as he strained against it.

‘I’ll fetch help,’ she said, crossing the room in a flurry. ‘I’ll come back.’

She rushed from the room, and now there were only two of us.

What was I to do? Stay put or run? If I was caught leaving the room . . . It didn’t bear thinking about.

A series of sharp convulsions gripped the doctor’s body and on the last, the chair toppled sideways. He landed like a sack of coal, upturning a side table and sending a lamp crashing over.

I rushed to his side. Blood trickled from his nose. Whether this was caused by the strength of the seizure or a blow to the head when he fell, I didn’t know. His pupils were visible again, but dilated.

‘Doctor Reinhardt?’ I said. ‘Can you hear me?’

His pupils focused suddenly and his gaze locked on mine. Fear tightened his brow, but there was something else. Bewilderment isn’t the right word, nor sadness.

He looked at me with recognition.

Tears made his eyes suddenly glassy, and he reached up slowly. I don’t know why I didn’t shrink away as he touched my cheek, his hand smooth and warm.

‘Little Snowdrop,’ he said.

My face was suddenly hot. I thought I must have misheard.

‘My Snowdrop,’ he said again, and this time there was no mistaking it. ‘You must leave here.’

The word on my lips found its sound. ‘Mama?’

It will sound foolish, of course, but through the sheen of sweat and the bloodied aquiline nose, through the jaw matted with the shadow of a beard, past the narrow lips, through his brown eyes – through all these things, so unlike my mother, I swear, as God is my witness, that I saw her.

There were footsteps on the stairs. Not long now.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

‘Murdered, Abi. You –’

‘Stand away, Abi,’ said Rob. The doctor’s hand fell limply from my cheek and suddenly the room was a bustle of people. I was brushed aside as Rob knelt beside the stricken doctor, loosening his tie and cradling his head. Lizzy stood back and Mrs Cotton hovered near the door, fingering the collar of her dress nervously. If she noticed I was there, she showed no sign of being suspicious. Her eyes were on the doctor.

‘Get me some brandy, Elizabeth,’ said Rob. ‘Come now, sir,’ he said to the doctor, slapping his cheek gently. ‘Let’s see you well.’

As Lizzy busied herself with the drink, Dr Reinhardt stirred. His hand drifted to his nose. ‘Where on earth? What? Oh dear!’

‘Easy does it,’ said Rob, propping the doctor up against the chair. ‘You had a turn, sir. Nothing more. Better now. Take it slow.’

The doctor accepted the proffered brandy glass in a trembling hand and took a slow sip. His eyes travelled ashamedly across each of us in turn. ‘I assure you,’ he said, with a measure of composure, ‘this has never happened before.’

I searched his gaze for any sign of what was there before, but it was gone. Before me, sitting on the carpet, was a middle-aged man. Nothing more. Whatever spirit had possessed him had left.

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Chapter 10

My hands were shaking so much I thrust them beneath my apron so that no one would see.

The doctor had asked for a second ‘restorative’ following his first, and had almost finished that ten minutes later. The room had been righted and I had fetched a brush to sweep up the broken glass from the fallen lamp. Normally the thought of getting oil out of the carpet would have filled me with despair, but I was glad to be out of the room if only for a moment.

‘What can you remember?’ Rob asked.

‘I recall entering the room,’ said the doctor, ‘and my conversation with Mrs Cotton about . . .’

From my knees on the rug, I caught the glance from the housekeeper that silenced him.

‘. . . yes, but then nothing. I must have been unconscious after I hit my head.’

Rob and Lizzy both looked at Mrs Cotton expectantly, but she too had regained her composure and her brusque demeanour. ‘I went to find help as soon as I saw the beginnings of your attack, Doctor. Like you, I am at a loss to explain it.’

Lizzy stoked the fire. I could see from the corner of my eye that she was trying to catch my attention, but I didn’t dare look up for fear of what she would see in my face. I needed time to think.

Doctor Reinhardt finished his drink and placed the glass on the table.

‘Well, it’s late,’ said Mrs Cotton, ‘and I’m sure you will not want to be detained any longer, Doctor. Robert? The gentleman’s coat, please.’

Dr Reinhardt nodded. Even if he wasn’t ready to leave, Mrs Cotton’s tone implied no invitation to linger. He stood stiffly, gathering up his bag.

‘If you require my services again, madam, you have my details.’

Mrs Cotton replied that she had, and left the room with a brief farewell. The doctor paid no attention at all to me as he followed her out into the hallway. Why should he? I was a girl, an insignificant member of a household. A layer of fires, a scrubber of saucepans, a sweeper of rooms.

But to me he was everything. He had opened a door into a room I had thought locked twelve months before. I wanted more than anything to stop him, question him further, but I couldn’t. Even to put a hand on his arm would have been deemed improper.

And so I watched as Rob closed the door on him and the doctor slipped from my life, taking with him the key to the closed door – the door to my mother.

‘Well,’ whispered Rob, running a hand across his forehead in mock relief. ‘What happened?’

His eagerness irritated me. ‘Not now,’ I said crossly, turning to the stairs. He caught up with me and placed his hand on my shoulder.

‘Abi, what’s the matter?’

His smile had gone. Some can cloak their feelings, but not Rob. His face had no means of dissembling, and I could see I’d hurt him. ‘It’s nothing,’ I said. ‘Let’s talk in the morning. I’m tired, that’s all.’

He nodded and wished me goodnight.

‘At least tomorrow is a day of rest.’

Normally I would have laughed at our private joke. Sunday was only a fraction less toilsome than the rest of the week, in that we were given time off after lunch for ourselves. Unless, that is, Mrs Cotton devised some tasks for us. She herself would visit the church in the morning, returning to take dinner with her brother-in-law. Lizzy, now seventeen, was permitted to venture out alone in the afternoon, but I was not. After my failed escape, I doubted I would be allowed outside unchaperoned ever again.

I lay awake for yet another night.
My Snowdrop
, he had called me. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I briefly considered that it might have been a trick Mrs Cotton was playing, but that was too unlikely. She might have heard the name my mother used for me, but not even she would go to such lengths to torture me.

What other explanation could there be for the events of that evening?

The doctor had called me ‘Abi’ too, and we had, of course, not been introduced. And why had he stopped speaking when the others came into the room, unless the message was meant only for me?

I had heard of mediums before. My mother had been a woman with no time for nonsense, and she had spoken of them in the same breath as con men or pickpockets. Yet she had chosen to use one of them as a way to reach me.

My mother had died of cholera, like so many others in the previous year. I forced myself to remember her final days, searching for a clue that something worse than illness was to blame.

From the moment she first fell ill, complaining of cramps in her stomach, Mrs Cotton had refused to enter the room for fear that the miasma would somehow pass to her. So it was left to me to tend to my mother, carrying out the pails of waste her body rejected, and taking in water by the gallon to meet her unquenchable thirst. Through her tears she had told me that she burned inside. After a day, her violent retching had given way to silent spasms that shook her body and made her whole body damp with sweat. The doctor had said there was nothing to be done but keep her comfortable until the illness either passed or took her with it. In the early morning it had done the latter. She seemed in an hour to become an old woman, her flesh shrinking across her bones, her lips turning the blue of violets. She died at seventeen minutes past four according to my father’s watch.

That wasn’t murder, unless . . .

‘Poison.’

The word leapt to my lips without me thinking. But it made perfect sense. Only poison could have looked like cholera.

One thing was clear: I could tell no one of what Dr Reinhardt had said. Not yet. They would think that I was out of my mind. After the scare in His Lordship’s bedroom and the hand at the window, perhaps I was.

I knew, of course, that there could be no murder without motive, and in the early hours I lay awake wondering what possible reason there could be to kill my mother. Who could harbour such hatred towards so gentle a soul?

My mind reached for a name, but I could hardly countenance it. Mrs Cotton was such a God-fearing woman and the act itself so monstrous. She and my mother had hardly seen eye to eye, but to call that a motive for murder was a step too far.

Unless she was more diabolical than I’d ever imagined.

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Chapter 11

The note which arrived after breakfast made me forget for a moment at least about murder and visitations from beyond the grave. It didn’t take long for the news to filter through the house while Mrs Cotton was at church. Samuel was at Portsmouth, and being transferred to London.

‘He will be with us tomorrow,’ said Cook.

Rob was sent to notify Dr Ingle. The mention of his name made me turn from the dishes I was washing. Dr Ingle had come to certify my mother’s death, though his arrival had been delayed as he was busy with wealthier patrons. I had often wondered whether the outcome might have been different if he had come sooner. It occurred to me, for the first time, that his visit had been a quick one. He’d come and gone within ten minutes, enough time to give the body a cursory examination only.

So who had diagnosed my mother’s condition? The cholera was rife at the time, the papers full of it. It was well known that the only way to bring respite to the patient was to give them as much water as possible. But what if we had all been labouring under a misapprehension?

My skin began to tingle. The doubts I had about Dr Reinhardt’s strange words were falling away. If it wasn’t cholera, then was it such a leap to poison and murder?

Upstairs, Elizabeth was brushing her hair while I changed into my cleaning dress.

‘Lizzy,’ I said, ‘you remember my mother’s death?’

She paused a moment, then put down her brush and came over to me.

‘I’m so sorry, Abi. It’s a year since, isn’t it?’

‘Near enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve been thinking about it.’

Elizabeth, along with me, had taken her turn at nursing my mother through her final hours, fetching water and thin soup and changing the soiled sheets.

‘You shouldn’t, Abi,’ she said, holding my shoulders to face her.

‘How did we know it was cholera she suffered from?’ I asked.

A frown crinkled Lizzy’s forehead. ‘Well, what else could it have been?’

‘It wasn’t Dr Ingle said so, was it?’

‘Abi, I don’t understand,’ she said, turning away. ‘There’s nothing to be done now, is there?’

I held my tongue. I should have told her then about Dr Reinhardt’s message but doubted myself still – I was getting carried away.

She must have mistaken my silence for grief. She looked at me again, framed by the window.

‘Those that died are in a better place, Abi,’ she said. There was a tear in her eye.

I cursed myself silently. One of Elizabeth’s two sisters had been carried off by cholera a few months before my mother, and Lizzy had thought at the time that she had brought the sickness into her house – Mrs Cotton said as much in a moment of panic. Later, though, the papers claimed it was something in the water.

‘Silly me,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry to go on, Lizzy.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Lizzy, wiping her eyes. ‘Now, how do I look?’

‘You look lovely,’ I said. She always did on a Sunday, but it wasn’t the Almighty she was dressing up for, I guessed. ‘Are you seeing Henry later?’

His name brought a blush to her cheek.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘He’s promised me a gift.’

‘Then I hope it is a fine one,’ I said, giggling.

According to Lizzy, she and Henry had met one Sunday at the local church, the September before last, when he had offered her a ride home. She had asked him if his employer would not object, for it was hardly a servant’s place in the back of such a handsome carriage, and he had replied that it wasn’t half handsome enough for her. I’d rolled my eyes at his easy flattery, but since then Elizabeth seemed to look forward to her Sunday outings more and more.

‘If Mr Ambrose sees you flirting with his footman,’ I said, ‘word will get back to Mrs Cotton. You know she won’t countenance it.’

Elizabeth dusted a little rouge on to her cheeks and rubbed it in, checking her reflection in a hand-held mirror.

‘I had better be careful then,’ she grinned. ‘Wish me luck.’

‘Good luck,’ I said, ‘and do be careful.’

She skipped out and down the stairs, and I couldn’t help but smile. There weren’t many places to find happiness at Greave Hall, and Lizzy deserved hers, but she knew as well as I that Mrs Cotton had dismissed the previous parlourmaid, Anne, when she discovered her with a ‘follower’. The man in question was a clerk from an office in the city, my mother told me. Well-to-do in most respects, but when he’d been found lurking by the back door after curfew, it was the last we saw of Anne.

As we suspected, there was little rest that Sunday. Mr Lock was out running errands with His Lordship and Rob while I was set to ironing Samuel’s freshly laundered clothes. It was a labour heating up the irons against the stove one at a time, then holding them with a cloth to protect my hands.

Cook was bustling to and fro, taking stock and planning the meals for the week ahead. While I came to fetch another iron, she emerged from the pantry and added another item to her list.

There was something I needed to ask her.

‘Miss McMahon,’ I said.

‘Hmm?’ she grunted.

‘The other night, when I tried . . . you know . . .’

‘Better if you had,’ said Cook. ‘One less mouth to feed.’

I had learned not to expect any outward show of affection from her. My mother told me that after her husband, a tanner, had died, she was forced into service because she could no longer pay the rent of her home. She had children somewhere.

Despite her gruff manner I knew she cared a little, for she would sometimes allow me a dip of honey on my bread when Mrs Cotton wasn’t looking. Her kindnesses were small ones, rationed out like sugar.

‘Did you draw the bolt across on the coal store?’ I said, pointing through to the scullery.

‘Bolt?’ she said. ‘I did no such thing, child. Why should I?’

‘I thought you might have done it to help me. You see, that’s the way I went out.’

‘Well then, you are to blame for any bolt, my girl.’

‘You don’t understand,’ I said. ‘I didn’t put the bolt
back
across.’

Cook waved her hand as if to shoo me away. ‘I haven’t got time for talk of bolts now, Abi. Must have been Robert, or that Elizabeth.’

‘But it wasn’t them,’ I said.

‘Mary, mother of God!’ she gasped. ‘It must have been Rowena then!’

The cat lifted her nose at the sound of her name, then settled once more.

Cook’s anger took me by surprise and my hand slipped on the iron. I cried out as it burned me.

‘Oh, you daft thing!’ she tutted crossly, leading me over to the sink. She placed my hand in a bowl of cold water. Pain throbbed under the skin in time to my heartbeat.