Mr. Munt crooked a finger over his full lips as he cogitated. Most would have seen a headmaster wrestling with a convoluted decision; I saw a despot to whom suffering was as amusing as a penny concert.
“I am moved to be merciful,” he concluded, “but Clarke’s punishment must stand if you remain at Lowan Bridge. The pair of you are potentially harmful to the others when acting together. If you agree to the asylum, Clarke can return to regular meals. If you prefer to remain and repent, her rations shall remain as they are.”
When I opened my mouth, it was empty—save for my heart, which lay aquiver in my throat. He was inclined to be merciful, and thus was offering me a choice of my life or Rebecca Clarke’s. The seconds elongated, an out-of-tune music box winding ever more slowly to its finish; Mr. Munt, smiling, picked up his pen as if to correct my altered numbers.
I was not inclined to be merciful, however, and thus gripped the letter opener and plunged the sharp point deep into my headmaster’s neck.
My earlier metaphor had been wrong, I discovered. The splash of ink from the pen dropping onto the page looked nothing like a spray of blood at all.
TEN
. . . like any other rebel slave, I felt resolved, in my desperation, to go all lengths.
There is a passage in Jane Eyre: An Autobiography which puzzles me mightily; and because it only tickles at the edges of my understanding, I cannot help but read it over, sitting with a glass of dark sherry as the sun grows teasing and hides behind the elms:
All said I was wicked, and perhaps I might be so: what thought had I been but just conceiving of starving myself to death? That certainly was a crime: and was I fit to die?
I present to the reader an enigma: my mother rushed the giddy business of dying along and was almost universally reviled for it. Speaking as a woman who has deserved to die since the age of nine and often thinks death a charming notion anyhow, I burn to know: When Miss Eyre demands philosophically, and was I fit to die? is she asking whether she is wicked enough to earn capital punishment, or holy enough to merit release from the torments of her browbeaten life?
And if she wanted to die . . . did she deserve to any longer?
? ? ?
Few among us are aware of how much blood the human body contains—surging in thick waves should it chance to be spilt.
I had spilled it, meanwhile, and therefore drastic measures were required.
Mr. Vesalius Munt was felled by a strangely skilful blow—as if I had studied the act, when in fact I had simply decided that he should stop being alive. He gurgled a disbelieving shriek, eyes ablaze with wrath and fear, looking perversely more alive than ever, each muscle taut with severest alarm. He even got halfway to his feet, reaching for me, rich gore soaking the fateful ledger.
Then his lips bubbled crimson, his blazing eyes hardened, and he slumped forward over the desk. His fingers, so graceful in life, twitched like the poisonous insect he was; his back ceased to shudder.
I cocked my head and gauged his condition: dead.
I paused to be medically certain; but as he continued dead, I heaved a breath and looked around me, beginning with the mirror above the fireplace.
The spray of crimson across my school uniform was not inconsiderable, and another plume of blood had feathered my hand; I carefully wiped these drops on Mr. Munt’s own sleeve. Using the late Mr. Munt’s coat the way one would a handkerchief was an act of sufficient disrespect that I turned away giggling, the giggles followed by a hysterical peal of laughter.
A bottle of amber spirits sat upon the side table. In for a pound, in for a penny. I poured. The taste was much harsher than the laudanum I had once pilfered from my mother’s dressing table; the sear returned my senses and, after spluttering awkwardly, it occurred to me that I was in a not-insignificant amount of danger.
My heart pattered a rhythm like spring rain upon a roof; according to the tall clock, I had nearly an hour before the close of Sunday services.
I rifled through the secretary as well as any drawers I could open without shifting my latest victim, scattering papers and pens. When my pockets contained coins in the neighbourhood of five pounds, a dented silver watch tucked away for repair bearing the initials VOM, and the almost-forgot volume published by Clarke’s family, I shut the door of the study behind me and raced silently down the corridor.
? ? ?
Reader, would you prefer me to have felt remorse in the aftermath of my second slaughter?
Though the brutality of the act sent fearsome tremors through my small frame for days and weeks afterwards, never have I regretted ending the life of my headmaster.
Dressed in a too-large brown travelling suit stolen from Miss Lilyvale’s wardrobe as by then I owned nothing save school-issued clothing, having wrapped my bloodied uniform in paper and stuffed it in my trunk, I was raiding the pantry an hour later when Clarke discovered me.
A small cough sounded, and I whirled around.