Winterwood (26 page)

Flora insisted on visiting Willie the next day. He was wide-awake now and sitting up in bed looking important. His face, without its coating of soot, was pale and perky, with a squirrel brightness. He seemed pleased rather than otherwise about his brush with death.

“The doctor had to pump out me stomach, so he did. I’d been eating them berries. I didn’t know as they were poisonous. They never did poison me before. Now I’m to stay here for a week and have nourishing foods. Pa’s mad as anything. He says if I stay here and eat too much I’ll get too fat and then I’ll be no use. But reckon I can find another job.”

“What sort of job do you want, Willie?” Flora asked earnestly.

“I’ll do anything, miss,” Willie said cheerfully. He tensed his skinny arm. “I’m strong as a horse.”

“Then I shall ask Papa to give you a position. You can be gardener’s boy for the present, and later, when I get my own establishment, you can come to that.”

Flora was doing her grand-lady act, and the little bundle of bones sitting up in the hospital nightshirt was suitably impressed.

“Oh, miss, that’ll be a rare treat. Then you’re not cross with me for drinking that stuff in your room. It tasted fine and I was fair starving, although I’d been eating all them berries. But I’m sorry I did it. I didn’t know you was so kind.”

“There will be plenty of milk for you to drink in my house. I’ll never allow one of my servants to be hungry. Miss Hurst, where are the toys Edward sent?”

Lavinia produced them, and Flora tumbled them onto the bed. But Willie was much more interested in his youthful benefactor.

“Ain’t you got no legs, miss? Do you have to sit in that chair forever?”

Flora abruptly tumbled from her magnanimous lady-of-the-manor pose to that of an indignant child.

“Indeed I do not, Willie Jones! Don’t you ever say that to me again or I’ll tell Papa about you drinking my chocolate. That was stealing. You could be put in jail for it. I’d never be able to employ anyone who had been in jail.”

“I never bin in jail, miss!” Willie was losing the thread of the conversation, and so was Flora, who began a discourse on the evils and corruption of the unfortunates who had served prison sentences.

“You’re talking too much and foolishly, Flora,” Lavinia said sharply. “Come, we must go.”

“But it’s true, Miss Hurst. I could never trust anyone who had been in jail to be near me. Papa would never never allow it. Do you believe he would, Miss Hurst?”

“No,” said Lavinia quietly. “No, I don’t.”

At first, when she found the laudanum bottle in Flora’s room two-thirds empty, she blamed the servants. One of them must have been helping herself for some reason, perhaps toothache or some other trouble. Though to take such a lethal dose just for toothache would be mad.

But Mary, when Lavinia questioned her, said in her shrewd way, “Lor, if anyone was to take that much, Miss Hurst, they would be dead asleep for hours, and Mrs. O’Shaughnessy would be bound to know.”

Dead asleep. Willie Jones had been dead asleep…

Willie Jones had drunk Flora’s chocolate, left prepared by Mary. No one had known he would come down the chimney and drink it The chocolate had been Flora’s usual mid-morning drink, and naturally it was assumed—by whom?—that she would drink it. But Willie Jones had been hungry and thirsty and had found the steaming cup of refreshment irresistible. And he might later have died had he not had prompt medical attention and a tough constitution.

Flora had not a tough constitution…

Lavinia put down the bottle very carefully to conceal the fact that her hand was shaking. She had to see Daniel at once. There were a thousand monstrous thoughts crowding into her head. Charlotte had bought the laudanum from the apothecary in the village. She had said that Flora had toothache, which had not been true. She had insisted that Flora be given a dose whenever she was in a tense and overwrought condition. For that purpose the bottle had been left conveniently at hand.

Charlotte had come in from riding that morning with Jonathon Peate. They had been talking earnestly.

She had immediately enquired whether Flora had had her morning chocolate, and insisted that she do so.

Later, when she had looked in at luncheon and had seen Flora sitting at the table, perfectly normal, she had fainted.

She had said, “It must be very cold to be dead.”

She had bitterly resented Flora, her own daughter, being an heiress.

If Flora were to die, her parents, as her next of kin, would automatically inherit her fortune.

If it were to be found that Flora had died from an overdose of a drug, Charlotte would insist that Lavinia had been careless in administering it. It would be little use for Lavinia to deny that, for, with the ensuing notoriety, her past would inevitably come out. She would be blackened before she was heard.

Lavinia tried to compose herself. Surely all those wild imaginings were untrue, merely pieces of a nightmare.

But Daniel must be told.

Daniel was out, and when he came in, he was occupied with his steward. It seemed as if he would never be free.

When Lavinia at last was able to see him, she had worked herself into such a state of agitation that she could scarcely speak coherently.

At first he misunderstood her and demanded twice, “Is Flora all right?”

“Yes, Mr. Meryon. I have told you that it was the chimney sweep’s boy who—had the accident. But it was intended to have been Flora, I am sure.”

She hadn’t thought his face could go so cold, so hard.

“Did Doctor Munro say the boy had had a dose of laudanum?”

“No, Doctor Munro attributed the cause to the berries Willie had eaten. Some of them must have been poisonous. But there was the bottle almost empty. The last time I used it—”

“You
used it, Miss Hurst?” He might have been speaking to a stranger, and a stranger he distrusted at that.

“Yes, I gave Flora a few drops the other night when she was hysterical.”

“Did you often do this?”

“Only once or twice. Mrs. Meryon had told me to do so. I admit it did work wonders.”

“It was only a small bottle?”

“Quite a small one. I can show it to you.”

“Then if you had used it several times, wouldn’t it have been nearly empty? Are you sure you remember just how full it was?”

“I am not blind.”

He looked at her, his distrustful gaze suggesting that if she were not blind her memory might be unreliable.

“Was the cupboard the bottle was in locked?”

“No.”

“Then anyone could have had access, any servant who might have a secret taste for opium. Oh, these things, as I am sure you must know, do happen. A habitual opium drinker doesn’t necessarily fall asleep. When, apart from today, did you look at the bottle to see how empty it was?”

He flung the questions at her as if he were cross-examining her in a court of justice. The echoes of other questions were so vivid—“Will the witness tell the court on what terms she was with the deceased. Friendly? Intimate? Did she, earlier in the evening, invite him to her room? Was the game of cards a pretext for that midnight meeting?” Lavinia began to feel dizzy. She could hardly believe that this inquisitor’s face before her was Daniel’s, that it was Daniel’s cruel unrelenting voice to which she was listening.

“You see, Miss Hurst, you can’t swear to any of these things, yet you seem to be suggesting that my wife may have had something to do with this. How
dare
you!”

She wouldn’t let herself realize that he had the grim look of a man whose heart was breaking. She only knew that she could be as angry as he.

“I do dare because I care about your daughter’s well-being. Yes, I do care, little as I wanted to when I first came. And I am not accusing anyone in particular. I am only telling you the facts. Before you completely discredit what I say, you must at least discuss this with Doctor Munro. And with your wife, and her cousin. I have told you that it was your wife who encouraged the use of laudanum in the first place. She had got it by telling the chemist she wanted it for Flora’s toothache, but Flora didn’t have toothache. Why should she have told a lie?”

As quick as a flash he had seized on that weakness in her story.

“At that time her aunt was alive?”

“Yes.”

“She hadn’t made the new will? At least Charlotte didn’t know about it.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“Then what fantastic story did your mind invent, Miss Hurst, as the reason for my wife’s obtaining a deadly poison? That she had plans to hasten her aunt’s death in case she should change her mind about her will?”

“You can’t be making jokes!”

“No. I am not making jokes. I have no motives for doing so.” She seemed to shrivel before his accusing eyes. Could he think she was trying deliberately to destroy Charlotte? “You had better go back to your charge.”

“And you?” she got out.

“I will do as I think fit.”

There was nothing to do but go and leave him there. This was no time to think of her own feelings. If she had blackened herself in his eyes forever, at least she had the wry satisfaction of having acted purely for Flora. Had she been wild and impulsive? Did her mind run too much on disaster? Perhaps it did. Perhaps her own tragic experience had deprived her of the ability to reason calmly. Perhaps she had imagined the lethal reduction in the contents of the laudanum bottle. Perhaps Charlotte had taken a dose herself, as probably she often did, and her addiction to it had been her sole reason for buying it.

There must be a simple answer. She was sure she could find it if she were to reflect calmly.

But all she could wonder, with frozen disbelief, was that the man downstairs with his hard eyes and cruel words could ever have said he loved her.

When Flora had her supper later, Lavinia had Mary bring an extra tray. She didn’t feel like going down to dinner, she said. Flora had to be reassured that she was not ill, but later the child was doubly intrigued by the activity that went on.

“Miss Hurst, what
are
you doing?”

Lavinia was carrying in blankets and directing Mary and Lily, who were panting with the weight of the mattress they carried.

“Put it there, by the window. I intend to sleep in here, Flora. Now that you’re getting so strong I have the fear you might fall out of bed in the night. I have never thought you should sleep alone.”

Flora was instantly suspicious.

“Am I worse?”

“No, you’re much better. That’s what I’m telling you.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Of course I am. When do I not tell you the truth?”

“Then why are you looking so angry? I don’t need you to sleep in my room if you hate it.”

For once Lavinia couldn’t keep her patience.

“Don’t be so aggravating, pray. You must allow me to use my discretion.”

The servants were puzzled, too. She knew they would start gossiping. All the better. The sooner—someone—knew that Flora was never to be alone at any moment of the day or night the better it would be.

The mistress had gone down to dinner, Mary reported. Her face had looked as pale as a ghost’s, and she had worn her black mourning again. Then she had been upset because the master wasn’t there, but he had come in late, when they had reached the third course. He said he had had late business out of doors. Mr. Peate was there, of course, and he, for once, was in a bad temper and hardly spoke at all. But he drank a great deal (this report had come from Joseph, who had been waiting on table) and smoked the master’s cigars. He had sat over the port alone after the master and Sir Timothy had retired to the library. Sir Timothy had been saying something about the plans for the new wing arriving, but the master had said he was no longer interested in them, at least not at this particular time. He had too many other things to worry about.

Daniel, as well as Charlotte, would have benefited from Flora’s death. He could have gone ahead with his cherished plans for Winterwood, which had had to be put aside when Lady Tameson had made her new will. He could have attempted to console himself for the loss of his dearly loved daughter by making an historic addition to his equally beloved house.

The twisted thoughts would not leave Lavinia. At last she sat down to write to Eliza, whom she missed sadly. Eliza had begged for news from time to time, especially news of Flora. She had left her sister’s address in Norfolk with Lavinia.

It was a great relief to pour all her deadly worries onto paper. Eliza, at a distance from the events, would be able to reason calmly, and draw conclusions. Lavinia sealed the letter, and sent it down to the mailbag in the hall, and wondered impatiently how long she would have to wait for an answer.

Then she began to prepare for bed, her pallet on the floor, where she would sleep uneasily, if at all. Never had she felt as alone as this.

She had just begun to remove her dress, however, when there was a tap at the door and Phoebe was saying that the master wanted to see her downstairs. She, Phoebe, was to sit with Flora until Lavinia came back.

He was in the library alone. He told her brusquely to shut the door and then to come and sit by the fire. She said, childishly, that she preferred to stand and hear what he had to say, but he said curtly that he was tired, and how could he sit down if she were standing.

So the scene became warm and intimate against her will. What blandishments was he going to use on her now? The hard look had gone from his face, and he did look tired, as he had said.

“Why were you not down to dinner, Miss Hurst?”

“I preferred to eat with Flora.”

“Yes. Yes, I see. Has Phoebe remained with her now?”

“Yes, Mr. Meryon.”

“Good. Well, then, you will want to hear what Doctor Munro had to say.”

Lavinia could not help leaning forward eagerly.

“You saw him?”

“I saw him and discussed the type of poison from which Willie Jones was suffering.”

“And what did he say?”

“He’s an old fool. Half-blind, too. I can’t think why we still use him except that he has always been our family doctor. Still, one can’t go on employing a doctor who has the beginnings of cataract in both eyes. I didn’t realize how bad his sight was until this evening. He dropped his pipe and couldn’t see where it had fallen although it was right in front of his eyes.”