‘I reckon Mr Livingstone missed a trick when he wrote that telegram,’ Mrs Holt muttered. ‘He ought to have had you both committed.’
Even his name was a blow to the gut. There was no Mr Livingstone now, no good to come of all her sorrow: there was just the wreck of a handsome young man lying splayed on the gravel like a fallen bird. ‘My baby,’ her numb lips said. ‘My boy.’
‘See?’ Mrs Holt jerked her head. ‘Crackers.’ She leant in close so Elsie could see the nets of wrinkles around her eyes and smell her old, peppery breath. ‘You might have lost a baby, madam, but that is nothing to losing a daughter full grown, the hope of your life. Seeing her skewered like a piece of meat on a roasting jack!’ Her face looked frightful, distorted with tears. ‘God knows I should pity you for your malady, but I can’t. I can’t do it. I only pray I’ll see you swing for what you did to her.’
At any other time, her mind might have put the pieces together. But Elsie found herself staring at Mrs Holt with the same confusion that was lining Sarah’s brow. ‘What are you talking about? What daughter?’
Mrs Holt ran a hand over her ravaged face. ‘I suppose there is no need to keep the secret, now. There was a reason Mr Bainbridge called me his angel. There was also a reason that I came out here to the middle of nowhere.’
‘Oh!’ Sarah breathed. ‘You were carrying his child.’
She closed her eyes and nodded. ‘I was. You see, my mistress was so unwell and he needed . . . He was not a bad man. He wanted to do the right thing by both of us.’
‘So he advanced you. Gave you a house where you would be free from gossip.’
‘I hid the babe away at first. Then later, I trained her up to work alongside me in the house. I wasn’t daft, I never expected Helen to be raised with Master Rupert.’
‘Helen. Helen was your daughter? And so . . .’ Sarah placed a hand on her chest. ‘My cousin?’
‘She was. That wretched woman sitting before us has taken family from you too, Miss Sarah. You must let me go for the police.’
Elsie did not fear Mrs Holt’s hatred. She yearned to cling to her as someone who had felt this same pain and survived. Or had she? The woman remonstrating with Sarah was not the same Mrs Holt she had met that first night. She was a hardened version, an iron version, bitter at heart.
‘Go,’ Elsie said. ‘Please. Go for the police.’
Mrs Holt blinked her watery eyes.
‘No,’ Sarah cried. ‘No, Elsie, you are not thinking straight. You have to get out of here before the people from the asylum come and—’
‘Let them come. What does it matter, now?’
‘It matters to me! I need you!’
Elsie laid her head back against the chair. ‘I won’t leave Jolyon. I won’t have strange hands washing him and laying him out. I’ll be there when he’s buried as I was there when he was born.’
Sarah exhaled, her shoulders sagging. ‘Then I suppose . . . Mrs Holt is right. We must go for the police, or the asylum people will send for them the moment they arrive. It will look worse for us all if that happens.’
‘Three bodies in the house,’ said Mrs Holt. ‘Three.’
‘One of them outside. Come, let us bring him in before I go to fetch the constable.’
‘You?’ spat Mrs Holt. ‘Why would I trust you to go for the police? Only last night, you were trying to break her loose!’
Sarah laid a hand on Mrs Holt’s shoulder and turned her away from Elsie, towards the fireplace. ‘It is a long trek to Torbury St Jude. You have been there and back today already.’
‘But will you honestly—’ Her sentence ended abruptly. Something was changing, shifting beneath her expression. ‘Did you do that?’ she hissed.
‘Do what?’
‘That!’ Mrs Holt’s arm flailed out at the hearth. ‘Was that you or was it her?’
‘I do not understand you.’
But Elsie did. She saw the change that had taken place while their backs were turned to the fireplace. Her skin crawled.
‘It wasn’t like that when I came into the room. Look at it!’
Frantic white lines marked the wood. Deep, angry gashes.
The eyes of the gypsy boy had been scratched out.
Needles of rain hurtled past the open door. The afternoon air smelt strange: peaty and rich. Elsie tried to focus on the scent, to lose herself in it; anything to distance herself from the terrible scene playing out before her eyes.
Neither Mrs Holt nor Sarah was strong. They half pushed, half dragged Jolyon’s body across the threshold. His head lolled, grotesque. Flecks of gravel stuck to his cheeks and the lashes framing his open hazel eyes.
She had always tried to save him. God, how she had tried.
They laid him out like a broken puppet on the same oriental rug where Rupert’s coffin had sat. Mrs Holt folded Jolyon’s sprawled arms so that the hands rested, overlapped, on his stomach. She frowned. ‘There are splinters on his fingers.’
Elsie flinched.
‘There were splinters on Rupert,’ Sarah said. ‘And the baby.’
The housekeeper’s lips twitched. Elsie could see her struggling with the unpalatable truth: believing; not wanting to believe; trying to prove herself wrong.
‘Did Mabel or Helen have splinters?’ Sarah asked.
‘I didn’t see. I didn’t check.’ Mrs Holt took a step. Stopped. ‘I might . . . go and look.’ She darted another glance at Elsie.
Elsie understood. The housekeeper wanted to hate her. She would rather find Elsie’s bloody fingerprints around Helen’s neck than a spray of splinters.
Poor Mrs Holt. Far better to believe your child was murdered quickly rather than stalked, living their last moments in a paroxysm of fear. She watched the old woman disappear behind the baize door and her heart went with her.
‘I don’t understand.’ Sarah bit at a strand of her hair, agitated. ‘What does this thing want? What did it fail to find in Rupert, or the baby? What does it need, exactly?’
She swayed on her feet. ‘I do not know, Sarah, and I do not want to know. I am only thankful Jolyon is free of it now. I won’t give it another chance. Fetch me some water, please. I am going to wash him.’
Sarah hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that you can. If the police come to investigate, they will want to see him . . . as he was.’
‘As he was!’ A dry sob came out. ‘Dear God, we all want that.’
Sarah hung her head. ‘You do . . . You still want me to go for the police?’
‘Yes! Someone has to help us. We cannot face this alone.’
‘But they will not believe in the companions! What if they arrest us?’
Prison, the asylum. It was all the same, without Jolyon. ‘Then let them arrest us. At least we will be out of this damned house.’
Sarah went to fetch her bonnet and tied the ribbons hurriedly beneath her chin. While she pulled on her mittens, Elsie gazed at the baize door. Mrs Holt had not made a sound since she had passed through it.
‘Do not worry, Mrs Bainbridge. We will get through this, you and I. It seems impossible now, but . . . Somehow we will rebuild our lives. Together.’ Sarah squeezed Elsie’s shoulder. ‘I think Rupert would have liked that.’