Nor I. I stepped back so I might see the house better. Judith’s room lay at the back. One hour a day. I’d had more freedom in gaol. Eighteen years looking down upon the same view, the same little plot.
Crowder stood on the yard step, spat in the soil. ‘Nothing here.’
I pointed towards the privy in the corner. The stench leaked out across the yard – there had been no one to tend to it since Alice had left.
Crowder’s lips puckered. ‘I’m not searching in there. I’ll catch the plague.’
We argued for a time until at last I agreed to pay him a couple of shillings. He searched with such ill grace I was tempted to kick him in. But there was nothing to find – not in the corners, nor in the hole. He picked up an old plank of wood and pushed it into the filth below. It slopped and sucked against the wood, releasing an even thicker stench. As he pulled it back out there was a sharp squeal and a fat rat leaped from the hole.
I jumped back as Crowder raised the plank and dashed it hard over the rat’s body, knocking it senseless. He drew out a knife before it could recover and skewered it in the neck. The rat screamed and writhed under the blade as its blood squirted up Crowder’s sleeve. Crowder twisted the blade, gouging a hole until the rat’s head was half-severed from its body. At last, it lay still.
I staggered away, light-headed. The rat, the blood, the stench. I put my hand against the wall and bent double, heaving out a mouthful of acid bile.
Crowder found this hilarious. He kicked the dead rat back into the privy hole where it landed with a soft splat. I took a deep, steadying breath and stood up straight.
Ned was watching from the yard step. He looked puzzled.
‘The blood,’ I explained, pleased he had witnessed this. Perhaps now he would not be so ready to believe I could murder his father in such a brutal fashion.
I paid Crowder his fee and sent him off to the Turk’s Tavern. I had no further need of him. I would search the rest of the house alone.
In the drawing room the women were still talking. Ned waited outside, pacing. ‘I cannot make you out, Mr Hawkins. My father said you were a wicked devil. And yet… I cannot tell.’
Glints of gold thread in the mud. Quite a concession. Ned had been raised to believe in absolutes. Weak or strong. Friend or foe. Pious or damned. That a man could be half a rogue was an uncomfortable discovery.
The voices in the drawing room had grown louder of a sudden – and sharp with it. There was a shout, followed by the sound of crockery smashing to the floor. Mrs Jenkins gave a cry of dismay. ‘Miss Burden!’she scolded.
Judith ran from the room, her face contorted with misery.
‘Judith…?’ Ned asked, astonished. He reached to take her arm.
‘Do not touch me,’ she cried, dragging herself free. ‘Don’t… don’t…’ She broke into a sob, covering her mouth with a black-gloved hand as she stumbled up the stairs.
Mrs Jenkins clutched the door frame. She looked as though she might levitate with excitement. ‘She called Miss Sparks a-’ She stopped herself. ‘Well. I am almost dead with shock.’ She ran upstairs after Judith, thrilled.
Kitty swished her gown through the door with a triumphant smirk.
‘What have you done?’ Ned cried. ‘What did you say to her?’
‘I told her you once groped me, in the shop.’ Kitty flexed her fingers, and grinned.
Ned was aghast. ‘I did no such thing.’
‘Of course not. I’d chop your hand off. I was curious to see how she would react.’
‘That was cruel of you – tormenting a young lady in mourning.’
‘In mourning? Celebrating, I should say. Why would she mourn the man who kept her prisoner for eighteen years? Who wouldn’t let her marry her beloved Ned Weaver?’
Ned stared at her, horrified. ‘Did you… you did not tell her… that I am…’
Kitty stepped closer. ‘Her brother?’ she whispered, holding his gaze for a long, dangerous moment. Then she drew back. ‘No, I held my tongue. For now. Was that not kind of me? Are you not most grateful that I kept your secret?’
‘It would kill her,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sure of it. Felblade says she is unbalanced. Her humours… We must be kind, Miss Sparks. It is only a passing attachment.’
‘She’s in love with you, Ned. She is sure you will marry her, now her father is dead.’
An unhappy silence settled in the hallway. This was where we had seen Judith collapse upon the stairs, after she had seen Alice in her father’s bed. Whatever she had said in that moment, Burden had struck her for it. Struck the words from her mouth.
Ned shook his head. ‘Miss Burden would never hurt her father. I will not believe it.’
He walked away, back to the sanctuary of his workshop.
‘It was Judith,’ Kitty said as we headed upstairs to find Stephen. ‘I’m sure of it. That temper.’
‘It’s not proof, Kitty.’
When we reached the landing, she paused to loosen the ribbons across her stomacher. She untied the handkerchief covering her chest and released a few stray locks from her cap. ‘How do I look?’
I stared longingly down her gown.
‘Perfect,’ she grinned. ‘I shall have Stephen spilling his secrets in a heartbeat.’
‘He’ll spill something.’
But Stephen’s room was empty. His bed had been stripped, his closet was bare. I pulled back the furniture to search for any hiding places or discarded clothes, but found nothing save for a miniature, lying in the middle of the floor, of his sister as a young girl. The surface was cracked and the frame bent. It looked as though Stephen had deliberately crushed it under his shoe.
The mystery of Stephen’s disappearance was quickly solved: he had moved into his father’s room. We found him slumped in a chair by the fire, dressed in a loose chemise and velvet breeches, a pipe dangling from his fingers. Strange, that he should move so swiftly to the room where his father had been brutally killed. The floor by the bed was still stained with blood.
Stephen barely stirred as we entered. Drunk, I realised – and my thoughts flew to Henry Howard, Henrietta’s son. Another boy pretending to be a man, pretending to be his father. Stephen had struck his sister yesterday. From rage? Grief? Or the desire to fill his father’s boots?
Kitty knelt by his bare feet, offering him a generous view of her chest. He blinked and rallied a little.
‘I am sorry about your father,’ she breathed, touching his hand.
He swayed in his seat and brought his pipe to his lips. Missed, and poked his nose. Once he’d found his mouth he took a tentative draw. Coughed out the smoke, eyes watering.
Kitty attempted a few questions, but the boy was fuddled with drink – and grief, perhaps. Let us be generous. I searched through all the garments I could find – Burden’s rough work wear and sober suits, Stephen’s fine-tailored clothes. It must have cost Burden a great deal of money to send his son to school and dress him as a gentleman. And yet at the end of his life he seemed to have regretted the decision.
What a strange and sombre household. There had been so much at work beneath the surface that it was a struggle to make sense of it. That is true of all families, I suppose, but this one was… peculiar, as Kitty said. Three children, all now orphans, and yet they seemed locked in their own private gaols, barely conscious of each other’s presence. Judith trapped behind her veil, muted by Felblade’s opium. Stephen stupefied with brandy. And Ned in his workshop, brooding. Each wondering if the other were guilty. One of them knowing the truth.
This was how Burden had raised his children – isolated from the world, breathing in a noxious atmosphere of threat and mistrust. Who did they have, save for Mrs Jenkins? No family that I could tell. Where was their lawyer? Where were their friends from church, their uncles and aunts? They had no one but each other – and yet they had rejected even this small comfort. Each one a fortress, guarded and alone.