The Lady's Slipper (25 page)

Alice set her shoulders back in an attempt to keep her dignity, speaking in her most reasonable tone. ‘There’s been a misunderstanding. My friend Sir Geoffrey Fisk will reward you if you tell him I am here.’

‘You must think I have chaff between the ears. Everyone’s talking about you, looking forward to the trial.’ He grinned. ‘Word is, you poisoned your parents and your sister, and a good few others too. And not a one has said otherwise, not your husband, nor your high-ranking friend.’

She could not take this in. He must be saying these things from spite. But a cold mist of dread began to settle about her.

‘And what about her?’ She pointed to where Hannah lay, barely breathing in the corner.

‘Trial for all the Quakers later that same day. Not much likelihood of a hanging, though, unless they decide on treason.’ He looked rueful. ‘Likely a longer sentence.’ He looked at Hannah with contempt. ‘They don’t believe in parsons anyway–’ he spat on the ground–‘so state of her soul’s her own business.’

‘Let me speak with the parson and see if he can find out what is the matter with my husband. He must be ill, or he would have come.’

‘No one’s been. And I can bet a coach and four no one will.’ With that he shifted his bulk from the doorway and the two lackeys followed, slamming the door back into its place and sliding the rough window shut, returning them to the murky half-light.

‘Thou art a good woman.’ Alice turned at the sound of the small hoarse voice. ‘No matter what they say about thee, thou art kind.’

‘Oh, Hannah.’ She leaned towards her and, feeling the wasted arms fasten around her neck, wept for them both.

At Constable Woolley’s house there was scarcely room to sit. The magistrate, Robert Rawlinson, had appropriated the constable’s official chair behind the desk and now Woolley stood awkwardly wedged between the table and the tiny window, with Geoffrey Fisk occupying the only other chair. The room was small and stuffy and smelt of sweat and beer. A flagon of ale was on the table, along with all the other paraphernalia of ledgers and writing implements. Behind the door was a row of wooden pegs with the instruments of the trade: cudgels, nooses, whips, a scold’s bridle, along with miscellaneous items of ill-kempt saddlery. Hanging next to these, the keys to the town gaol. Robert Rawlinson leaned back in the chair and lit up a clay pipe, puffing out clouds of throat-stinging vapour.

Geoffrey managed to ascertain that Alice Ibbetson had been transferred to Lancaster to await trial, and that, astonishingly, she had been seen with a knife, bending over the body in the ditch on the night of the murder. How this had come about, he did not know, but he intended to fuel this particular fire. He swallowed–the bitter taste of the lady’s slipper extract seemed to lodge in his mouth all the time now.

‘I should have known better than to do business with Mistress Ibbetson,’ he said, pressing home this fortuitous turn of events. ‘She always was a little unpredictable. I thought there was something awry from the first, but never dreamt her capable of something like that. Murder. Well, well, well.’

‘You would be surprised,’ said Constable Woolley. ‘I’ve seen the most delicate little hands, hardly fit to lift a needle, yet they have strangled grown men.’ He made a wringing gesture with his hands. ‘Appearances can be mightily deceiving.’

‘It certainly seems odd that all her family survived the war yet succumbed to mystery ailments,’ said Rawlinson, tamping on his pipe. ‘And her husband has not been back to speak up for her. I had to ask him to call, and he still has not appeared. It is very peculiar. What do you know of the husband, Geoffrey?’

‘Not very bright, I would say. He is a moneylender at the counting house in Kendal. But he seems to have a slack head for figures. And he is excessively idle and dull. It would not surprise me if he were unable to keep track of his wife’s comings and goings.’ Geoffrey paused. ‘Probably he knew nothing of her doings. She keeps her powders and potions under lock and key in a summerhouse at the back of their property. She makes out that the place is for her paintings, but…’ Geoffrey looked meaningfully at Rawlinson, who sat forward in his chair.

‘Well, Constable, I think we should go and have a look at the Ibbetsons’ summerhouse. If the husband will not give us a key, then we will break in. Perhaps we will find the knife or the poisons there.’

‘I would like to be there when you do that,’ said Geoffrey. ‘She had some of my property on loan–some plants, and a few paintings she was sketching on commission. She had quite a talent for likenesses. Mind you, I have always thought her more than a little odd. After the death of her sister, who literally wasted away into nothing, Alice Ibbetson seemed to be in mourning altogether too long for my mind, as if she was making sure we all knew she was grieving.’

‘We will go to the house directly, after we have spoken with the servant girl,’ said Rawlinson.

Ella sulked outside the constable’s door, chewing on a piece of grass. She had been somewhat affronted to be asked to wait outside the door when Sir Geoffrey arrived at the constable’s. She had been enjoying being the centre of attention and repeating the tale of how she had seen Alice bending over the body in a ditch whilst they were out gallivanting on the night in question. Of course she had not revealed what she and her friends were really up to, out near Fisk Manor, but said that they were celebrating a birthday and had taken to the lanes by wagon simply in order to get the party from one alehouse to the next. She had persuaded the other villagers to keep this diversion from the truth and not to mention the cuckolding, because they all knew it was to their advantage to keep their lips buttoned.

Several others on the wagon had seen Alice bending over something in the dark, had seen the glint of a knife, and she had convinced them that it must have been the old woman’s body she was crouching over. Ella smiled to herself. What a crowd of gulls they were–ready to grasp at any drama, so long as they could have a part in it.

She took the bloodstained shoes to the constable’s house the day after, and with her best innocent face told how she had found them concealed in the turnip sack only that morning. So far, her luck had held. No one else had come forward with any alternative ideas about who might be responsible, and once the seed of suspicion had been sown, people began to remember long-gone quirks in Alice’s behaviour, and to recall the time their cows refused to give milk after her visits, or that their babes cried or would not suckle when she was near. With each tale Ella’s chest swelled and her shoulders squared, and she was able to bask in the balm of righteous indignation. To think, she had been in the same house as a murderess! Had taken up her morning chocolate, whilst all the time her mistress’s hands were black with blood.

The constable had taken her at her word and been to see Audrey and Tom, and the miller’s boys, and all of them had added weight to her story–they too had seen Alice Ibbetson bending over the body in the ditch, whilst her husband was dining at the Fisks’. By the evening Alice was in gaol, and the next day Ella was back in the Ibbetsons’ house, seeing to Master Thomas’s needs.

Ella had wasted no time in filling the other side of Thomas’s bed. He was confident it was all a huge mistake, that they would find no evidence and let his wife go. Until then, he saw no harm in a few nights with Ella in his bed. She had not yet told him her tales of bewitching–that Alice was tainted by the Devil’s hand, that she had poisoned her sister and parents before that, and that he would be next if he did not take care. This was a shame, because her tales were so well told, so juicy and thrilling, that she almost believed them for the truth herself.

The trial was coming up, and the constable had wanted Ella to go over it all again before Justice Rawlinson. So he had summoned her back. Now Sir Geoffrey had arrived, and he would certainly know what they had been up to on the night in question. But he would not be able to prove anything, unless she slipped up with her tale.

She pushed her hair behind her ears, stopped chewing on the hank of grass-stalk she had idly pulled up from the hedge and pressed her ear to the door.

‘Speak up, for God’s sake,’ she whispered crossly.

She could smell the waft of tobacco from underneath but could only make out muffled talk through the thick planks.

Inside the constable’s office, Woolley squeezed past the table to the door and opened it. Ella, the Ibbetsons’ maid, was just outside. The three men exchanged glances; it was obvious she had had her ear at the door.

They summoned her into the room and bade her sit down on the only unoccupied chair before beginning their questions. Ella was surprised Sir Geoffrey did not immediately want to know what they were doing on that night out in the lanes, or about the horns on his front door. She was baffled. He never mentioned it at all. She could not make it out, he kept asking about Flora, Alice’s sister, and how she died.

‘And only Alice was allowed to nurse her, is that right?’

‘Yes, sir, she did not hold with anyone else taking up her broth or feeding her the remedies.’

‘What, even the physician?’

‘She said she would nurse her herself.’

‘Did you see what sort of remedy she gave the child?’

‘Once, sir.’ She scanned round the room at the three gentlemen, all hanging on her words, and began to expand her tale. ‘It was a right evil-looking mixture, smelt something awful. I remember thinking, she would have a struggle to get the little one to drink it. She had to hold her nose to get it down.’ The men looked at one another. Ella could see that she had given the right answer.

As the conversation progressed Ella was surprised to find that far from being Alice’s friend and staunch supporter, Sir Geoffrey seemed to be actively looking for gossip that would point to her guilt. She could not fathom it out, but she was more than happy to supply him with as much damning evidence as he might require. Indeed, it seemed to her suddenly that they were playing a little game: he would feed her a question, to which she could supply an incriminating answer. All the while the constable and Justice Rawlinson looked on, frowning and tutting.

When Woolley brought out the shoes, Sir Geoffrey seemed very interested in them too. He turned them over and over in his hands, examining them through an eyeglass that dangled from his button, paying particular attention to the brownish stains.

‘Are you sure these are Alice Ibbetson’s?’

‘Course. I saw them in her closet most every day. Ask anyone. Half the village has seen her wearing them. In the summer she even wore them to church.’ Justice Rawlinson raised his eyebrows.

‘Yes, sir. When the sister was ill, before she died. I thought them a bit fancy, myself. Didn’t seem right respectful, especially given the little girl lying there so poorly.’ She stole a sidelong glance at Sir Geoffrey and was rewarded with a slight smile.

In truth she had been reluctant to hand over the shoes, for she had become sore attached to them, but they were a small price to pay. She had set her sights on being housekeeper of her own house, mistress in deed if not in name, and then she could have any number of silken shoes so long as she kept Thomas sweet. She had seen a pair in the draper’s–lilac, with sprays of rosebuds made from wound ribbon.

A few more questions were asked, about whether Alice was present at the deaths of her parents, to which Ella answered that she was, though in actual fact she had not been employed by the Ibbetsons back then and had no idea. All Ella knew was that yes was the right response.

She sensed Sir Geoffrey was satisfied with her answers, and before long she was dismissed without a single word about the cuckolding having been spoken, just a scribbled message for Master Ibbetson, telling him that as he had not responded to their messages, they would be calling. She was free to go, and what was more, far from being her enemy, Sir Geoffrey Fisk seemed to be her friend. Ella tossed her head back and flounced up the street, her arms swinging. She was not going to enquire too deeply where the sudden change of events had come from, for they suited her just fine. She would go home and await Justice Rawlinson and his party, who would be along presently to search the summerhouse.

Ella had come back under their roof less than two days after she had made such a fuss about leaving. Cook was flabbergasted. Ella just turned up as if nothing had happened and Master Thomas had re-engaged her on the spot. Lord knows why, thought Cook, she was always a slow worker, and all the while young Lottie Jennings was after a position–she would knock spots off that wastrel Ella. But Master was quite set on it, and had insisted that April make up a room in the eaves for Ella so she could live in as housekeeper.

Cook fetched a piece of mutton from the cold store at the back of the pantry and looked it over. It would do for the evening meal. She slapped the joint down on the table and began to trim off the fat. With Mistress away, Cook could see that there needed to be someone living in–to put a flint to the morning fires, make the lists for the week and see to the master’s breakfast and so forth, but why not herself? She was the ideal choice, not that lazy Ella. Or even April–she was far more reliable and hard-working, if a little green around the gills. She looked over to where April was preparing the fire oven. A corn of resentment rattled in Cook’s chest. What was it all coming to? She shook her head. She had served Master Thomas all these years, and yet now she was passed over for that flibbertigibbet, Ella.

It was as if she never existed.

What was more, Ella had hardly done a thing since she was re-engaged–today, for example, halfway through the afternoon Ella blithely announced she had to go back to the constable’s and they had not seen her since.

It was a good hour later when Ella walked in. April was wide-eyed.

‘You’re back,’ she said. She began to ply Ella with questions.

I’ll have none of it, thought Cook. She cut April off short and sent her to lay the fires upstairs. She told Ella she did not need any help in the kitchen, and to go out to the yard to fetch some milk from the cow.

‘Get it yourself. I’m not engaged for a milkmaid,’ Ella had answered, and sauntered off, swishing her brand new skirts.

Cook pursed her lips. She did not like this sudden reversal of the pecking order. And she did not trust Ella. Nobody had yet explained the pilfering in the pantry, and when she had questioned Ella that morning she had denied it outright, saying, what of it, Mistress must have fancied a little jam with her bread. Cook was not convinced–in her experience, Mistress had always asked if she wanted anything extra. She had always been mindful of the hard times and could not abide wastefulness; she would never have unsealed a bottle if there was one already open.

It was all wrong somehow, Ella in charge and Mistress Alice in gaol. Cook had turned it over and over in her head, like a dog worrying at a bone, but she could not deny it–on the night of the cuckolding, she too had seen Mistress bending over in the ditch at the very spot where they said the body had been found. And she remembered that Mistress had been holding a knife–she had seen its tip glinting in her hand–but she would have sworn it was the little pruning knife she always carried, and you’d have a hard time murdering anyone with that, she thought.

Cook cut up the meat and put it into a crock for boiling. She wiped her hands down her sides, trying to weigh everything up in her mind. She had known Mistress Alice all these five years and never known her to be short with anyone. True, she was often a little distracted, caught up in her own little paradise world of gardens and painting, and not in this earthly place alongside everyone else, but she had a good heart. She wouldn’t hurt a fly. And as for the rumours that she had poisoned her sister, well–Cook’s face took on a worried frown–she had seen the depth of Alice’s distress at Flora’s passing, watched her gradually become paler, thinner, turn into a flimsy shadow of her former self. When she had said this to Ella the other day, her prompt response had been–guilt; Alice was worn to nothing by guilt, and Cook could not decide whether she was right. But for the life of her, Cook could not explain away the fact that she herself had seen Alice in a quarrel with the old woman not two weeks before.