I took the candle and examined the gowns hanging in the cabinet, running my hands over the flounces and pleats. They smelled of campion. The heavy black mourning gown was missing.
On the day I searched the house, Judith had dressed herself in that gown. She had thrown a heavy lace shawl over her head that fell all the way to her waist. She had pinned it carefully with an ebony brooch, to cover the fabric beneath. Her appearance had struck me as strange and affected even at the time. Why not order a new gown, or have the older one tailored to a modern cut? No one would have expected her to be in full mourning dress so soon. I’d thought it a sign of her grief, or an unbalanced mind. I had pitied Judith then. I had thought her weak.
And so I had searched every corner of the house looking for bloodstained clothes, while Judith had sat primly in the drawing room, wearing the same dress she’d worn when she killed her father. Smiling on the inside while I searched like a fool for what was right in front of my eyes.
Clever, wicked girl.
Down on the next landing we paused, each drawing strength from the other. The plan we had agreed to on Phoenix Street had seemed simple enough. Kitty and I would coax the truth from Judith. Sam would stand watch. And we must be quiet. Ned would be sleeping downstairs in the workshop, Stephen across the landing in his father’s old room. If either woke we were all in trouble.
‘No blood,’ I whispered, for the hundredth time. I would not have another death on my conscience. Kitty and Sam exchanged guarded looks. I had the distinct impression they had agreed something rather different, out of my hearing. ‘Swear it.’
They complied, eventually, with a good deal of reluctance and head-shaking. I stepped closer to Judith’s door; reached for the handle and turned it slowly. The latch clunked and the door opened, creaking softly on its hinges.
The bed stood in the middle of the room, the canopy open to the night. I could hear Judith breathing softly. And this was shameful, was it not – stealing into a young girl’s bedchamber while she lay sleeping? I felt a prod in my back – Kitty urging me forward, most likely with the pistol. She was overly fond of that weapon. She closed the door behind us.
‘She murdered her father,’ Kitty whispered, catching the doubt in my eyes. ‘She let you hang, Tom.’
Judith stirred, legs swishing under the sheets. Her dark hair fanned out across the pillow, a few damp strands clinging to her cheek. Her pale-blue night gown lay unbuttoned at her throat, revealing a silver cross on a delicate chain. She had let me hang. And now she slept, peaceful and content.
Her eyes fluttered beneath closed lids.
Kitty hurried to the bed and covered Judith’s mouth with a folded handkerchief. Judith’s brows furrowed, then her eyes opened wide in shock. She tried to scream but the sound was muffled by the cloth.
Kitty clamped it harder to Judith’s lips. ‘Be still.’
She gave a slight noise in her throat then nodded slowly, watching Kitty.
I stepped forward with the candle held high. ‘Judith.’
She flinched at the sound of my voice and saw me at last. For a moment she lay senseless with shock, eyes bulging as she tried to understand what she saw. Then she began to whimper. I moved closer and her eyes rolled back in her head. She slumped back down in a dead faint.
‘That was obliging of her,’ Kitty said. She pulled out a couple of rags and tied Judith’s wrists to the bedpost. She used the handkerchief as a gag.
This did not sit well with me. I shuffled from foot to foot, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight.
Kitty gave me an impatient look. ‘Find the dress.’
I searched the closets while Kitty lit more candles about the room. I soon found the mourning gown and matching petticoat. I laid them out across the bed and lowered one of the candles over the skirts, tracing my fingers across the silk. It would have been drenched in blood the night of the murder. Judith must have spent many secret hours sponging it clean. There were still a few faint marks in the fabric. Some, caught in the stitched seams of the quilted petticoat, would be easily covered by an apron. The stains on the bodice were harder to discover, mere faded patches where Judith had scrubbed out the blood. I scratched a fingernail along a seam and a tiny dark brown fragment of blood flaked into my palm. A jury would call it dirt, an old smudge on an old dress, but I was satisfied. Judith had killed her father.
It was not just the stains; it was the defiance with which she had worn the dress during the search. At my trial. At my hanging. The tiny smirk on her face, as she enjoyed her own private joke. It was only now that I began to understand Judith and the depths of her sickness. We had all dismissed her as a poor, timid thing. And perhaps she was – her life smothered and ruined by her father, flinching beneath his hand, his sharp words. But something else had grown beneath that fragile surface. Something strong, formed of anger and bitterness. Alice had known the truth about her mistress – but only Kitty had listened. Kitty had suspected Judith all along.
Judith blinked, waking in confusion. Her face was pallid, her lips almost white. We had frightened her half to death.
Kitty tipped a jug of ice-cold water in Judith’s face.
She jolted with the shock, gasping beneath her gag. When she discovered that she was tied to the bed she gave a muffled cry and pulled at the ties, turning her wrists frantically as she tried to slip free.
I sat down upon the bed and she shrank back, terrified.
‘Be still,’ I whispered. ‘I’ve not come to hurt you.’
Kitty sat down on the other side of the bed, pistol resting in her hand. ‘Do not presume the same of me.’
Judith stared at her, then nodded her understanding.
‘I wish to speak with you, Judith,’ I said. ‘If we remove the gag, do you promise not to cry out?’
She nodded again.
I loosened the knot, then lifted the handkerchief free. She was trembling violently.
‘Are you a ghost?’
‘No, indeed.’
‘I saw you hang. I watched you die.’
I touched my throat, where the rope burns chafed my skin. ‘For your crime.’
For a moment she seemed almost ashamed. Then she pursed her lips and looked away.
I threw the mourning gown across her lap. ‘You did a fair job, soaking out the blood. But it’s still there.’
A long silence. She knew, now, that she was caught. A tiny, petulant shrug. ‘Well, it’s a maid’s job, is it not? Scrubbing clothes.’
‘It was clever of you to wear it. Easier to hide the stains.’
‘All those dresses,’ she murmured. ‘Turning to dust. He never let me touch them. They were for a woman, and I was not a woman. I was his daughter. I must never grow up. Have you seen all those fine silk dresses, sir?’ she asked, in a slow, dreamlike voice. ‘I shall have them unpicked and made anew, cleaned and restitched in the latest fashions. I shall do everything my father denied me. I shall walk about the town. I shall visit the theatre and the shops.’ She paused, a light smile playing across her lips. ‘I shall marry Ned.’
‘Is that why you killed your father? So you could-’
‘-So I could live. And to see his face. Oh… his face! He thought I was Alice. His filthy whore come to his bed again. Then he saw the knife. He was so shocked he didn’t even cry out. I stabbed him and I stabbed him and all he could say was, Why, Judith? Why? Croaking like an old toad. Even as I plunged the blade into his heart.’ She laughed. ‘Why, Judith? Why? I told him, when it was over. When he was still. He never let me speak. Always lecturing. But I could talk to him now he was quiet. I could tell him anything I wanted. I am not a little girl now, am I, Father? A little girl could not kill such a big man so easily.’ Her eyes flickered from mine to Kitty’s. She giggled. ‘I have shocked you both. The rake and his whore. How funny. You knew my father, how he treated us all. I was suffocating.’