Libby had been missing for five cold, wet days. Arnold, grumpy because of a chill caught while helping with the search, frankly didn’t care if she lived or died. In fact, he hoped she had frozen to death, wherever she was.
He’d had it with the Budd family. Sylvia never shut up these days. She was always either bawling or mouthing off about the baby, her voice a relentless whine, sawing away at his brain. And Jack was full of lip, just like Libby would have been if she could talk.
He’d near lost his reason when Sylvia told him she was having another brat … no doubt another little lunatic like its sister, with her fits and seeing things. He clutched his stomach, wincing as the familiar pain fired up in his gut.
No, he wasn’t hanging around for that. He’d already decided to torch the cottage and claim the insurance money, but now Sylvia and Jack were going to burn with it. Libby too, if they found her alive. They were all driving him crazy.
He’d insured the cottage with the Victoria Insurance Company. The agent had been more than pleased to secure his business, smiling and bowing and scraping. The fool wouldn’t be smiling when his company had to pay out.
And the chemist had happily sold him more than enough laudanum to send the entire Budd family off to sleep. There’d be no chance of their waking in time to escape once the cottage was alight.
He’d play the part of the bereaved and grieving husband and stepfather while he waited for the insurance money to come through, then he’d be off. Damned if he’d ever set foot in this godforsaken place again.
The funeral for the Bramwells’ baby had slowed the search for Libby, with the men taking time off to attend it. He couldn’t see what all the weeping and wailing was about. The mother was just a bloody Chow, and the baby had only lived a few hours, but everyone carried on like they mattered. Fussing around Henry Bramwell, kowtowing to him — he grinned sourly at his pun — giving him their condolences to pass onto his missus. As far as Arnold was concerned, they’d all be better off if she gave up the ghost. She’d be no loss. One Chow less to pollute the place, and it’d put a stop to her breeding more of the buggers.
Libby had fled over the back fence after they’d discovered her hiding in the storeroom. Once they’d stopped looking for her, she’d sneaked back in. For days now she’d eaten nothing but dried dates, apples stored from the previous season, and lemon barley water. The sparse diet had given her the trots. Her backside was on fire and she craved real food. Thankfully the lavatory was next to the storeroom, but she’d been caught short once.
The door opened. She crouched behind the sacks.
‘Christ, it smells like a rat’s died in here.’ Henry’s voice was edged with disgust. His footsteps neared the piles of sacks and boxes, stopped, then went back toward the door. It closed.
Libby’s bowels twisted. She crept to the door and peered around it, yelping as she was suddenly yanked outside.
‘Going somewhere, are we, Libby?’ Henry grabbed her sleeve and held fast. ‘Phew! I don’t wish to be unkind, but I wouldn’t recommend your perfume to my worst enemy.’
Libby lashed out at him with her feet.
‘Lord, Libby Budd, I shall need a bath as well as you after this.’ Henry waved a hand in front of his nose, more ruffled by her stench than her vehement disinclination to accompany him to the kitchen.
Sympathetic as she was to Libby, Anne nevertheless banished both her and Henry outside the minute she laid eyes on them. ‘She smells worse than a pen full of pigs. She’ll have to wash in the back yard or else the smell will go through the house and the shop. You won’t have a customer brave enough to set foot inside.’
Henry set up the tin bath near the back door, filling it with hot water while Anne quickly hemmed one of Mai’s nightshifts for Libby to wear.
‘I’m shocked at the state of the girl,’ Henry said quietly, watching Anne sew the last stitch on the hem before biting the thread to break it. ‘She was always a bit soft in the head, and given to tempers, but wouldn’t most of us be the same, given the hand she’s been dealt? Yet I would never have thought her in any way mad — not like some of the poor beggars up the hill. Simple, yes; mad, no.’
‘I suspect losing her father may have set her off.’ Anne shook the creases from the nightshift and examined her handiwork. ‘By all accounts she doted on him. You’ve said yourself Will Budd was a fine man and well liked by all. It must have been a great shock for Libby to have his place taken by Arnold Price. To my mind, Price seems a nasty piece of work. But then, there’s no accounting for taste.’ She thought of her own husband, a rogue and robber, and she’d never tumbled to his dishonest ways. ‘Clearly, Sylvia sees something in the man.’
‘Hmph,’ muttered Henry. ‘Lord knows what Will would make of all this, but I know it would break his heart to see Libby so ill and distressed.’
The police had been told of Libby’s whereabouts, and a constable despatched to the Prices’, to inform them she was safe, if not altogether well. Anne was uneasy at the thought of Libby returning home. After spending time with her in Seaview, she wondered if she was more frightened than mad. Of what, she couldn’t say, but she did wonder if the girl’s stepfather was at the bottom of it.
She hadn’t dared tell Libby her mother and stepfather would soon be on their way to collect her, and had warned the others not to do so. If Price was in any way a cause of Libby’s condition — and Anne was only guessing he might be — the child was liable to fly into another tantrum or succumb to a seizure.
Sylvia and Arnold Price arrived at the shop just before noon the following day. The minute Libby saw them, she arched like a terrified cat and started shaking so violently Anne feared her head might snap off her neck.
It seemed an age before the spasms eased. Price took a bottle of laudanum syrup from his jacket pocket, uncorked it and tipped some of the liquid into Libby’s mouth. She sagged into Anne’s arms.