Victorian Maiden (26 page)

“It's good to see you of course, Atticus and Mrs Fox,” Dr Roberts exclaimed as he entered the library of Sessrum House.

He was holding one of their calling cards between his fingers with the folded corner marked ‘affaires' facing upwards.

“But I wasn't expecting a call today. Is it regarding your account? I'm so sorry that I haven't had an opportunity to settle it yet, what with Aunt Elizabeth's trial beginning tomorrow and all.”

“No, Dr Roberts,” Atticus replied, “It's nothing whatsoever to do with our account. I'm afraid that it has more to do with your grandfather's death.”

“In that case, we'd better go up to the Annexe. You've just missed my lawyer. He's kindly charged me five guineas to tell me that he thinks the case is hopeless and that we need to throw ourselves on the mercy of the judge.”

“Perhaps on the mercy of God,” Atticus observed, and Roberts bit his lip.

“Mary has been administering chloral hydrate to my aunt,” Roberts continued hurriedly. “She's been very distressed and we've needed to increase the dose substantially.”

“Is that safe?” Lucie asked. “Perhaps I ought to see her?”

Roberts shrugged.

“Perhaps that might be for the best.”

Elizabeth looked serene, sleeping and dressed as she was in a pretty, new silk nightgown. She was propped up on deep white pillows, with a Bible laid across her lap and a tiny silver cross hanging from her fingers on a delicate chain. The Bible was open at her favourite passage of scripture; the twenty-first chapter of Revelation, where they knew that she always found the promise of no more pain, no more tears and no more sorrow, a great comfort.

On one side of her, a large bottle marked ‘Chloral Hydrate' stood in an enamelled dish, and on the other, Mary Lovell sat perched on her bedside. Mary's eyes were red, and her lips were pursed resolutely.

“How is she, Mary?” Lucie whispered.

At the sound of Lucie's voice, Elizabeth's eyes, as if in slow motion, seemed to drag themselves open.

“How are you, Elizabeth?” Lucie repeated.

The eyes slid towards her.

“She's at peace, Mrs Fox. I don't believe she's been better since before her mama died,” Mary replied.

“That's good.”

“She won't be able to cope with a trial, you know,” Mary added. “Or with whatever comes after.”

Atticus wielded the blow.

“But should she be standing trial at all?” he asked. “Did Elizabeth Wilson actually kill Alfred Roberts?”

Mary Lovell and Dr Roberts stared at each other with identical, stunned expressions.

“Of course she did,” Roberts spluttered at last, “You both agreed that she did, and so did the police.”

“I have to tell you, Dr Roberts,” Atticus said, with a glance to his wife, “That one or two things have perplexed us right from the beginning of this whole sorry business.”

“Indeed, Atticus?”

“Indeed, Dr Roberts. For example, throughout the entire ordeal, you have spoken very protectively of a woman – notwithstanding the fact that she is your aunt – whom you had just met, whom you had just had brought here, and who, from the evidence, had just violently murdered your grandfather.”

“I…”

Atticus' raised his finger to silence the doctor's protests.

“You didn't – you don't – even want her locked away. You only ever wanted her to live here, in your Annexe, with Miss Lovell taking care of her.”

“That would be the only natural justice, Fox, as I've said many times,” Roberts replied.

“Secondly,” Atticus continued, “When you first told us of the murder and you described your grandfather's injuries, you mentioned in particular the blow that penetrated his brain through his eye socket. You said then that his ‘death was instantaneous.'”

“It was, damn it.”

“We don't doubt it.”

Lucie's softer tone replaced Atticus'.

“But you said, ‘death
was
instantaneous,' not, ‘would have been instantaneous.' You spoke as if you were actually present at the time that he was killed. And then there is the bloody palm print I noticed on the back of Miss Elizabeth's hand. You said that it was likely your grandfather's, or that it might have been left by Miss Lovell as she brought Miss Elizabeth in from the bedroom. But there is a question there too.”

As she spoke, Atticus took a neatly folded pocket handkerchief from his pocket and let it fall open. In the centre was a large, vivid handprint, dark now with the passing of the days.

“I took this impression at the time, you will recall. As you can see, it is a large handprint, much more likely to belong to a man than a lady. Your grandfather had no bloodstains on his hands, so, should we ask you and Miss Lovell to place your hands against the print to compare them? Do we need to do that?”

Roberts licked his lips.

“No, Mrs Fox, you do not. I admit that it is mine. But it proves nothing; it proves nothing whatever. I must have led Aunt Elizabeth at some point, that's all.”

“It proves that you've been less than honest with us, Doctor,” Atticus retorted.

“There is also the vexing fact that the print was on the outside of her hand and not on her palm, as we might have expected if she had been led anywhere. We also have to question whether or not such a violent assault could have been inflicted by a lady who can barely stand. So please, before she stands trial tomorrow, tell us what really happened.”

There was a long, unbearable silence, a silence that seemed to compound with the oppressive air of the Annexe, and grow louder and louder and louder. Then, mercifully, Mary spoke and the tension was broken.

“Elizabeth and I fleeing from Sessrum House didn't mark the end of the Friday Club, Mr and Mrs Fox. Oh no. Long after we had left, any child, female… or male; stranger… or kin, who happened to stray within Mr Alfred's reach, was still in great danger from him and his loathsome friends.”

Lucie gasped.

“Long after – any child, female or male, stranger or kin – surely you don't mean that Dr Roberts' father…?”

“Yes, Mrs Fox, even my father, even his own son; even, as it happens, his own grandson.”

Roberts' expression crumpled in pain, pain that was resurrected instantly into anger.

“There are three people here in this Annexe whose lives have been destroyed by that man: Mary's, my aunt's, and mine. My father took his own life when I was just a child. Who is to say that it wasn't as a direct result of what my grandfather and his damned Friday Club did to him? I don't know. I never had a chance to ask him.

We all wished Grandpapa dead. Of course we did. We wished him dead with every waking breath. I had never met my Aunt Elizabeth. Her name was hardly mentioned in the household, except of course in whispered conversations among the servants. I knew that she had been condemned to live here, in this Annexe, for over two years, and so I guessed that the rumours had to be true.

I tracked her down. I tracked her down to the Union Workhouse in Knaresborough where the good people of Harrogate send those individuals that the grand visitors to the town might be offended to look upon. I befriended the Medical Officer there and learned about my aunt's condition – about the way in which she had been forced to live her life, and how finally her mind had fallen prey to dementia. But I also learned that Mary Lovell was there too, and that she had devoted her own life to her care.

And so a plan evolved. Mary and I became acquainted and we saw how we could restore Aunt Elizabeth to a modicum of comfort and at the same time ensure that justice was served. Not Her Majesty's justice, perhaps, but true, natural justice nonetheless.

I had already incarcerated my grandfather here, in this Annexe. Not because he was old, or frail, or anything of that you understand. No, again it was simply in order to serve up plain, natural justice. You see, he had imprisoned countless children in the Annexe over the years, mostly in a big dormitory room below us on the ground floor. For a time, he had me imprisoned in there too, guarded by Mr Otter, the club steward.”

He took a handkerchief from his pocket with a trembling hand and wiped it across his mouth.

“I beg your pardons, Mrs Fox and Mary, but my Grandpapa Alfred also used to sodomise me; he and another of his monstrous companions called Mr James. They would bugger me and they would make me do other things to them too vile even to mention.”

He shuddered suddenly, violently.

“After my father shot himself, I began to tell people what had really been happening in the Annexe. I no longer cared what they thought, I suppose.

So he had me locked up. Grandpapa had some doctor, a friend of his called Wright I believe, who was up to his neck in league with the Club to say that my papa's suicide had unhinged me and driven me insane. He used it as a reason to keep me imprisoned downstairs, and worse, to discredit my word. Of course, they continued to use me as they wished, and that, together with the loss of my father, almost did drive me to insanity.

Then, one day, my grandmama died.”

“Mr Alfred's wife,” Lucie exclaimed, “The one who was addicted to absinthe?”

Roberts nodded.

“My poor Grandmama Agnes. Later on, my grandfather would try to blame her for what he'd done. He would say that if she had been a proper wife and if she had paid him his due attention, then he would never have had to resort to buying little girls off the street. Utter nonsense, all of it; she was as she was only because he was as he was. She knew what he did, and absinthe was the only way she had to escape the horrible truth of it. No, Mrs Fox, he enjoyed what they did to those children, to Aunt Lizzie, to Mary, and to me. He enjoyed the power it gave him over us, and he enjoyed the excitement. I hope he is tormented forever
in Hell!”

“Did he never regret his actions in the end, Dr Roberts?” Lucie asked.

Roberts was silent and still for a moment, almost as if he hadn't heard her speak at all, but then he shrugged.

“Only God truly knows that, Mrs Fox. He said that he did. The death of his wife and the suicide of my father seemed to change something in him I suppose. But then occasionally one of the old Friday Club members would visit him here, and I would listen to them, revelling in their memories.

There was also a young boy… Peter, I think he was called. They'd taken him up to the Holy Island off the Northumberland coast with some other child victims. They were going to sodomise him I imagine, because Mr James went with them. But it all went terribly wrong. Somehow he managed to escape from them in the dark, and then, as he ran away, he was caught up by the terrible tides they have up there, and he drowned.

The Friday Club was eventually disbanded, and my grandfather began to pretend, even to himself, that it really had just been a philanthropic society. Then he pretended that it had never existed at all. That was when I had the photograph mounted on the wall in the smoking room, out of his reach and protected by the grill. It was to remind him constantly that it had.”

Their thoughts turned automatically to the smoking room, and to the portrait of the gentlemen and steward of the Friday Club leering down from high on the wall. Was it their imagination or did there seem to be something more brutal, more bestial, in the rows of unblinking eyes?

“I wanted my grandfather to be continually reminded of them,” Roberts went on, “And of his former self, and of what they had done together, every day for the rest of his life.”

He smiled weakly.

“It was only natural justice, you see.”

The smile withered.

“But it was not enough, it wasn't nearly enough recompense for my father and my grandmother, or for poor little drowned Peter, and for the countless other little children who suffered at their hands.”

He lifted his handkerchief once more and held it for a moment against his lips.

“We knew that if we told him that Aunt Elizabeth was coming back, Grandpapa would never be able to resist the opportunity to see her once again after so many years. We also saw to it that when she did come, she'd have had the chance to pick up a knife; one that could be easily traced back to her. The rest of it followed a natural course. My aunt would have wanted to kill him, Mr and Mrs Fox, I'm sure of it. She'd told Mary as much, many times before her mind started to fail. We did too, Mary and I. We wanted him to pay the ultimate penance for what he'd done. We just made certain that Aunt Lizzie had the opportunity, and then perhaps, just perhaps, we might have offered the tiniest bit of… assistance.”

His elbow twitched as he spoke.

Atticus and Lucie stared wide eyed at his arm, as if willing it too to take up the confession.

“So you all killed him – all three of you – together?”

Lucie's question wasn't really a question at all.

Roberts nodded.

“I admit nothing of course, Mrs Fox, nor would we in a court of law. I was so sure that my aunt would be allowed to live here afterwards you see. She wouldn't have known the difference, she truly wouldn't. But now you know. Now you know the whole of it.”

The relief seemed suddenly to be sweating out of him, forming into tiny beads on his brow.

“But you can't take the law into your own hands, Doctor,” Atticus protested.

“You can't administer summary retribution no matter how just you think it to be.”

“But I had to, don't you see? My grandfather and his friends were beyond the law of the land. No court would have even tried them, let alone convicted them, of anything. But they aren't above the laws of natural justice, Atticus. No sir. They aren't above the law of the Almighty. Their guilt was beyond dispute. The only question was the manner of their punishment: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a life for a life.”

He paused to dab the sweat from his forehead.