The Lady's Slipper (20 page)

He thrust his hands in the water trough at the stables and brought them out of the icy water dripping. He rubbed at them in a sort of trance. It was so dark it was difficult to see if he had washed them clean. He saddled his horse with fumbling fingers. He could barely see the holes in the girthstrap, his head throbbed and the leather traces on the sled shimmered and waved before his eyes. He turned aside and his guts heaved. A stream of hot vomit shot from his lips. He hung over the steaming patch of liquid, the sting of sweat running into his eyes. Still fighting nausea, he bundled the body and the leather bag on the sled and attached the traces. The bag was almost heavier than the woman and crunched as if full of broken glass. The horse trampled and side-stepped but Geoffrey mounted and kicked it on into an almost silent canter along the grass beside the drive.

There was no sign of anyone now–as rats do, they had bolted back to their holes. At the end of the drive he emptied the sled unceremoniously into a ditch, pushing the body under the hedgerow. Even in the dark he could see the sled was stained with blood. A sense of unreality hung over him, a weariness. Now he would have to clean the sled. Back at the stables he swilled it over with straw and water from the trough. His head ached still, his teeth were clenched. He watched his hands sliding the straw back and forth across the wood as if they were not his own. He lugged the sled back to its storage position and swept the bloodstained straw under the dung heap in the corner of the yard.

As he did so, his thoughts raced. He could make no sense of it. Cuckold’s horns on his door. The old woman had it coming. He would not stand by and be humiliated in front of his guests. She should not have been on his land. A trespasser. It was an accident. It wasn’t murder, it was protecting his property.

Geoffrey scuffed the gravelled chippings over the small tell-tale stain at the bottom of the steps with his red-heeled shoe. The shoe-buckle glinted eerily in the light from the house windows and he found himself thinking it was fortunate that his heels were red and would not show the blood. How did he come to be scraping blood from his driveway with his dancing shoe? He looked up at the house. The noises from inside had ceased and the air was still.

Realizing the play must have finished, Geoffrey turned back towards the big oak door. The horns were still there. Geoffrey loped across and using the bloodstained knife began to cut them down. As he did so there was a flurry of activity in the hall and Robert Rawlinson and his wife appeared, dressed in their outdoor cloaks and mufflers. Geoffrey hastily pocketed the bloodstained knife.

‘Geoffrey. There you are. Can you arrange for our carriage to be brought…’ Robert paused, sensing that Geoffrey was not listening. He peered at Geoffrey’s ashen face, at his sweaty forehead and bloodshot eyes. ‘Good God, man, you look most unwell.’

He called out behind him into the vestibule. ‘Someone fetch Patterson, his lordship is unwell.’ Robert tried to steer Geoffrey towards a chair.

Acutely aware there might be blood on his clothes and that his eyes must hold evidence of his guilt should he look at anybody, Geoffrey thrust Robert away and wordlessly rushed past him and up the stairs.

Robert’s eyes followed him reproachfully.

‘The worse for drink, I’d say,’ said Jane, in a whisper that was designed to be heard.

As they bustled through the front door they caught sight of the horns, still hanging there.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ Robert said. ‘No wonder he was so upset.’

‘Do you think there’s truth in it?’ Jane indicated the horns by touching the coloured ribbons hanging down the door.

‘Well, who would have guessed it? I’ve always thought Emilia a bit of a cold fish, and Geoffrey’s never exactly been known for his “amour” either. But someone knows something, and the sign’s up for all to see.’

‘Do you think anyone else has seen it?’ Jane said.

‘I doubt it, dear, we’re the first to depart.’

‘We could take the horns down then, before the others see them.’

‘Well, it’s not my house and I wouldn’t know what to do with them–it’s his servants’ job to do that sort of thing.’

‘Of course, dear, you’re right.’ They smiled at each other in under standing. ‘Much better to let the servants do it.’ And they strolled down the steps, arm in arm, leaving the door open and the horns there for all to see.

Geoffrey lit all the candles in his chamber so that the room blazed with an unusual fierceness and the thick scent of beeswax and tallow assailed his nostrils. He felt safer in the light–he needed to somehow shine a light into the corners of his mind, to clarify the dark and confusion. It was as if he had forgotten something important but did not know what. He undressed himself with shaking hands and put himself into a robe. He bundled his other clothes into a trunk at the back of the closet, the knife still in the pocket. He shoved the trunk into the dark recess, noticing as he did so that his hands were peculiarly white and bloodless.

Patterson arrived, having heard he was indisposed. Geoffrey dismissed him and sent him to remove the hideous object from the front door forthwith and get rid of it. Geoffrey pressed his temples. The blood had brought back images of the war, and the memories had somehow entwined themselves with the night’s events. He had killed a woman and felt the life ebb out of her. Killing men in war was quite a different thing. Women were defenceless, untrained, unready for conflict or acts of heroism. Especially old women. He thought of his mother, remembered how her body lay limply in his arms, heard the hoofbeats of Wheeler’s men galloping away.

Geoffrey continued to wash his hands and meticulously soaped and rubbed his clothes and boots until all evidence of the night’s proceedings was gone. Thankfully, the woman’s thick cloak had absorbed the stains and protected his clothing. Geoffrey could not help but wonder who she was, whose mother, and who might be waiting at home for someone who would never return. The knife had slid into her belly, so softly, with barely a sound, like gutting a fish–easy, slippery, over in a moment with the minimum of fuss. That moment would never leave him, she said. He felt cursed. He sensed the noose already tightening around his neck.

He paced the room, tugging distractedly at the hem of his clean shirt, his fingers unable to be still. His life seemed to be falling into pieces around him. He was unwell. True, his skin had improved, but now some other dreadful malady assailed him. The world would suddenly slip out of focus, he would see things that weren’t there. He could be losing his wits. He seemed to think a woman was dead, and somehow he had done it. It could not be true. He remembered scrubbing the sled and groaned. His stomach gave a great lurch.

As if he had not trouble enough already. He had lost control of his finances, his estate was full of dissenters and his wife was cuckolding him behind his back. And now there was this.

With a start he recalled the memory of Emilia dancing. He had been gulled by his wife. What was more, he was a laughing stock, and people must know–be sniggering behind his back. Bile rose in his throat. He would make her pay. Emilia would not get away with this, the two-faced trollop. He put his head in his hands. The thought incensed him. Who was the man? He racked his brains. The whore. It could have been any of them.

‘Hetherington,’ he said aloud. The bastard. To think he had let it happen behind his back without so much as an inkling of suspicion. He must be losing his powers of discernment–he had always thought he had the measure of Emilia, that he understood her stupid petty needs. As far as he could see, her only desire was for frills and fineries. And he had supplied her, like the dutiful husband he was, with all she requested; he had been a good provider.

But even this he knew was a lie. She had brought her money and bought him–bought him in return for a title and a ticket to the higher strata of society. He had been bought, and now he had been duped. He shirked from looking deep in himself, for he knew they had never felt any real connection, that he had somehow missed the way of making a meaningful relationship with her, but it still came to him as a shock that she would dare to do this to him. She had betrayed him, opened her legs for that scoundrel Hetherington before coming home to eat dinner and hide her lust behind that limp and simpering façade.

The blazing lights of his room dazzled him, made his eyes water. He blew each taper out with a controlled and deliberate breath and lay down on his bed in the hot clammy darkness behind his locked door. When the knocking came he ignored it and rolled over, clutching the crumpled feather pillow to his face, feeling the room lurch and keel as if he was still aboard his schooner. When he retched again, he thought he was leaning over the rails with the black ocean below, but the vomit splashed with a clap over the wooden floorboards and seeped sour and yellow into the edge of the turkey rug.

Tomorrow, by God, he would deal with Emilia.

In the village, word was soon out that old Widow Poulter had disappeared. The landlord of the Anchor was irate because she had left without paying him, and his son was still suffering with a rash of boils she had promised to poultice that morning. The general opinion was that she had sneaked off in the night, probably back to Preston, and folk thought no more about it, other than to think the worse of her, as people are wont to do.

It was one of the milk lads who found the body. When he was out on his round, he’d stopped the dray to have a smoke. When he went to relieve himself in a hedge he’d seen her lying there. He’d thought her drunk, until he tumbled her over and saw the deep red wounds gaping through her bodice, her white-filmed eyes rolled back in her head. He’d run back to the dray, all of a bother, pipe still smouldering in his lips, and set off to fetch his brother. Between them they manhandled her onto the back of the cart and took her to the constable’s.

The milk lad lost no time in announcing it to all and sundry in the village, and so the speculation began. Some said Margaret was a great healer, almost a saint, and others that she was an evil charlatan involved in certain skulduggery, who deserved everything that had happened to her. Nonetheless, everyone was concerned that there might be a cutthroat in their midst, and it soon became the favourite occupation of the day to guess the identity of the perpetrator of the crime. At Ella and Sadie Appleby’s house, the news was delivered by the neighbour, who’d heard it from the milking lad at Trout Farm. Ella had answered the door reluctantly, in her shift, for she had been late abed after a night of carousing in the alehouse after the great success of the cuckolding. But Ella was soon excited by the scandal of Margaret’s passing and interrogated the neighbour for juicy parts of the story she could savour and pass on as the centre of attention. She hurried to dress and get to the Ibbetsons’ with her tale before anyone else got there first.

She dressed provocatively, for now it was a habit; her low-cut blouse would attract Thomas’s attention, like a pig to swill. And he was on the verge of buying her a new gown, she knew it. Just a little more persuasion and he would be in the draper’s, ordering her something fancy. She took a peek at the shoes under her mattress. She did this every day, partly to reassure herself they were still there and had not been stolen by her sister or her father, and partly because they embodied for her all her ideas about gentility and beauty. To walk on the muddy ground in such peach-soft, smooth, light slippers, with their delicate sprigs of floral embroidery, must surely mean you had arrived–you were a lady of refinement. Shoes spoke a lot about folk, she thought. You could tell what sort of a person you were dealing with straight away by what was on their feet. Thomas’s fine brown calf-leather boots were a mile away from her father’s down-at-heel clog-boots with his grimy toes pushing through cracks in the leather.

The shoes held a fascination she could not have explained. Partly it was just the texture, the almost sexual smoothness of the satin, its coolness, the slight sheen of the surface. Partly it was the colour, a rich butter colour that spoke of the fat of the land, that conjured the foods she would never eat at home and had to connive and wheedle to get whilst at work. She stared again at the dark stain disfiguring one of the cream stitched roses, rubbing her finger over it before pushing the shoes back into their hiding place.

She smoothed down her apron, twirled her brown hair into a semblance of a ringlet at the front and straightened her cap.

When she got to the Ibbetsons’ she was aggrieved to find that the news had already reached the kitchen–Cook’s husband had been to the farm and heard it direct from the farm boys. Petulantly at first, but then with growing enthusiasm, she joined the gossip about who could have been responsible.

‘Slit right across the belly, she was. Must have been a carving knife or a hunting knife.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said Ella. ‘She had a right temper on her. I saw her last week, right here on our front path, shouting at the mistress.’

Cook put down her mixing bowl, and the young scullery maid, April, put down the laundry that was steeping in the stone sink and set her posher to one side, and they gathered around, wiping their hands down their sides.

‘Really?’ April said.

‘You’re right,’ Cook said. ‘I saw them too, from the upstairs window.’ She indicated the floor above with her eyes. ‘I’d gone up to collect the tea tray from Master’s room and I saw them there–Mistress Alice and that old woman–the one that’s been killed–they were shouting and carrying on.’

‘You don’t say.’ The scullery maid’s eyes widened.

‘Yes,’ Cook said. ‘She had a hold of Mistress Alice by the arm and was cursing and swearing. I’ve never seen Mistress look so angry.’

‘She was screaming like a she-cat, and spitting,’ Ella said, ‘and I heard Mistress say, “Get out and never come back, you old witch!”’

Cook looked doubtful. ‘I didn’t hear her say that.’

‘Well, you’re getting on a bit. I heard her clear as anything. Mistress was red in the gills and yelling like you’ve never heard. I tell you, if looks could kill…’

‘You don’t think, I mean, surely you don’t think…’ April said.

‘No, don’t be a lummock,’ Cook said, glaring at her.

Ella turned away from the conversation. Her hands absentmindedly picked up the scrubbing board and she started to rub away at one of the master’s shirts. A seed had been planted in her mind and was slowly germinating. She scrubbed gently at first, with a slight smile on her face. Her hands worked mechanically, lathering the soap back and forth on the white cotton fabric. Her eyes stared unseeing out of the steamy window. Then the scrubbing became faster and more fevered and the water splashed and frothed around her elbows until Cook said, ‘Leave off that collar now, Ella, you’ll wear it out.’

Ella came to, as if with a jolt. She dropped the shirt back in the sink. Cook and the scullery maid were staring at her as if she had lost her senses.

‘I’m taking the morning off.’ Ella unfastened her apron and threw it over the back of a chair.

‘But you only just got here—’ April began to speak at the same time as Cook.

‘But what about Mistress Alice? What am I to tell her?’

‘Tell her what you like.’ Ella paused by the door. A shadow flitted across her face as if something else had just occurred to her.

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said. ‘I won’t be coming back at all.’

‘Not in time to help with the dinner either?’

‘No, not at all. I’m not coming back here, not to this house, not whilst she’s in it. It’s evil, and I will be well out of it.’ With that, she turned on her heel and swept out of the room, leaving Cook and the scullery maid staring at her retreating back in astonishment.

‘What did she mean?’ asked April, timidly.

‘I’ve no idea,’ snapped Cook. ‘Something she’s cooked up in her head, I shouldn’t wonder. She always was a bit fanciful.’

‘What did she mean, that the house is evil?’

‘I don’t know. All I know is, there will be one less hand today and there’s all this to do.’ Cook held out her arms in a gesture of frustration towards the heap of sodden clothes in the sink before pushing her hair back under her cap and saying, ‘Shape up now, girl. You get on with that lot, whilst I run over to Jennings’s–I’ll see if their Lottie’s free to give us a hand.’

April looked despondently at the clammy pile of dripping cloth and the washboard. She knew it would be harder without Ella to help wring the sheets and hang them out. Ella was strong, whereas April was always considered a weakling–like a weeping willow, she seemed to buckle if she was asked to carry too much weight. And Ella had told April stories whilst they worked. Cook said they were tall tales and that Ella was a tittle-tattle and it was all scum and lies, but April always enjoyed hearing them all the same. Seeing her still standing gazing at the sink, Cook flashed her a warning look and April scurried over to it, rolling her damp sleeves further up her skinny arms.

Ten minutes later Cook was back, with young Lottie Jennings in tow.

‘There’s trouble brewing,’ she said. ‘Lottie’s pa saw Ella outside the constable’s. He reckoned she must have done something real bad.’

‘Do you think Mistress has found out about her pinching stuff?’ April looked back over her shoulder.

Cook’s chin retreated back into her neck and she looked blankly at April for a moment before her chin jutted forwards again and she said, ‘What’s this?’ She approached April with her eyes narrowed.

Realizing from Cook’s reaction that it had been a mistake to open her mouth and hastily retracting, April quivered. ‘If she pinched stuff, I mean to say, she wouldn’t, but if she did…’ She tailed off lamely, red in the face.

‘Do you think I don’t know what goes on in my own kitchen?’ Cook shouted. ‘Lottie, stop gawping and help April with the wringing.’

Out of the corners of their eyes, over the twisting of the sheets above the sink, Lottie and April watched Cook go straight to the pantry. Moments later they witnessed her bring out several half-full jars of jam and line them up silently on the table. Neither of them spoke. They dared not. Cook’s face was clabbered, as though she had just swallowed a ball of camphor.