He started up in bed, his face in the night-light sweaty, depleted of all fat. ‘Did you find her, Amy? Go to the post office. I know a letter has come.’ His voice was dry and painful. She stumbled to her feet. He began to beat the bedclothes, moaning with pain.
She gave him some Vichy water; to swallow was difficult. He looked like a dishevelled, desperate child.
‘Try and sleep, Reggie. Is that better? I’ll find Annie, I’ll look after her,’ she promised, taking his hand and stroking his head. She felt guilty to add to his suffering.
‘Will you really look after her, Amy? Promise me you will?’ He grasped her hand tighter. It was dreadful to see his concern and to know he had never felt with such depth about her. Had he loved her, thought Amy, as he had loved Annie Luke, how different their life might have been.
‘I promise.’ She kissed him gently and sat down by the bed. ‘You’re not to worry about Annie.’ She bathed his brow with lavender water. She felt for him as she did for the children. Her patience was endless, her anger was gone. Sadness was the strongest emotion she felt for Reggie now. She would do anything to help him become the man he should have been. Reggie closed his eyes and Amy stood up. ‘Poor Reggie,’ she said to herself.
She swayed upon her feet, nauseated with exhaustion. It had gone on like this now for almost a week. The room was airless, rain outside beat upon the windowpanes. They breathed the sickening, fetid smells of Reggie’s disgorging body. However quickly she disposed of the mess, however much carbolic was used, the odour of vomit and diarrhoea clung stubbornly to the air. The noise of the rain and the stench of the room threw her back to that time in Sungei Ujong.
She was ready to scrap the whole Annie Luke plan, no longer sure she could carry it off; in exhaustion she had lost conviction. Amy had gone without heart to the post office as Reggie had insisted. But instead of a letter from Annie Luke, she collected his own letter to the woman, unclaimed as she had known it must be. She felt guilty for such calculation, when Reggie lay so ill. And yet she knew, whatever she felt, she must now protect herself against him. She was filled with sudden compassion for Reggie in his present state. But once he was himself again her feelings might revert. She could not trust fate to engineer a new compatibility between them. If, when Reggie was better, she decided to continue with the plan, she had her first piece of evidence. For now fatigue claimed her, the days behind were confused by the pressure of each sickly hour. Reggie stirred again.
‘I didn’t take my Fowler’s. Give it to me, Amy, the usual amount in water.’
‘Surely you’ve had enough of that? It doesn’t seem to help any more than Dr Charles’s prescriptions. Maybe it’s even harming you. I think you should tell Dr Charles of your arsenic,’ she said, worried for him suddenly.
‘I’ll get it myself, and don’t you tell him. He knows nothing, he’s a fool,’ Reggie growled, struggling with the bedclothes. She stumbled up again, bringing him the dose.
‘It always works. The cure can be sudden, just as it was in Sungei Ujong. You remember it, Amy, then?’ He threw back the dose. She was too tired to know how much he took, how many times she had poured it out or he had administered to himself. Unlike the time in Sungei Ujong, when the houseboy had bought it from the Chinese chemist in whatever amounts were needed, she was now settled with the responsibility of securing Reggie’s arsenic. His clandestine sources were beyond her reach.
‘You’ll have to go to the usual shops, Schedel’s, Maruya’s, the Normal Dispensary. If you buy from each in rota, I could acquire the right amount. It’s only a matter of a few days,’ Reggie hoarsely instructed. ‘If you’re a man like me, there’s arsenic in plenty in Yokohama – any taxidermist could tell you. But you’re a woman. I must have my supply the above-board way just for these few days.’
She had given him her own small bottle of Fowler’s, prescribed by Dr Charles and bought, as he told her, from the other chemists. She had gone twice in the last few days and on Sunday, while she was out with the children, Reggie told Rachel to send a rikisha man to Maruya’s with a chit he had written. More would be needed tomorrow; they could not go on indefinitely buying it like this. She settled down to sleep again.
*
Reggie had learned to read the shadows thrown onto the ceiling, the movement of a rikisha in the road below, the breeze through the loquat trees. The creak of mahogany, a tread on the stairs, the familiarity of voices appeared through pain and drowsiness as islands in uncharted days. He knew he was ill, worse than ever in Sungei Ujong or when invalided home the year he married Amy, the year he had spent with Annie Luke. Pinioned now upon the horizontal, his perspectives of the world had changed. People loomed up without warning and he was flattened by their benevolence and his wretched dependence upon them. He was resentful of everything – Cooper-Hewitt’s unquenchable jokes and health, Amy’s irreproachable, dutiful ministering, the sight of beef tea or the innocuous potions that fool Charles produced from his bag of tricks. He resented the lack of control he had over his fate or his body. His innards showed a flagrant disregard for all he secretly sent down to quiet them.
He woke to pain or a sponge of lavender water cutting through repulsive odours. His body squirted like an old used bag filled with fetid waters, it hung in loose folds about him. And yet at times, for hours, this state of siege retreated and he sat up, tottered about or staggered to a chair. The days wore on, he had lost count of how many were strung up behind him. He smiled blandly, released from pain a fog appeared to fill his exhausted mind. Time jumped about erratically, throwing up irrelevant memories. Again and again Annie Luke was conjured up before him, smiling her thin, enigmatic smile, turning bitterly away. The wrong he had done her filled him now, a separate, throbbing pain.
‘Reggie? Reg?’ The voice called. Annie held her child up for him to see its fair, tight curls, its sailor suit. He saw it had her eyes.
‘Annie? Where are you?’ She smiled and pain knotted in him. Again the lavender sponge came forward, dripping and dribbling uncomfortably. Behind it the face leaning forward was Annie, then Amy, changing in a slippery way, deceitful as the shadows.
‘Annie?’ He struggled to sit up. A hand pushed him down. It was Amy keeping Annie away, or maybe she could find her. Maybe she was the only one who could find Annie Luke.
‘Go now, Amy. Find her, please. She’ll be there this time, I’m certain.’
Sometimes the hand on him changed. Sometimes it was old Charles with that horny wart on his thumb and his persistent needles shooting strange substances into his veins, until his gentle dreams of Annie gathered in vivacity to burst within his mind. Then the ripple of the breeze in the loquat trees echoed like a roar. Annie’s face became twisted and vicious, her nails grew longer than spears, she beckoned to the air. Then over the windowsill, slimy, shelly things crawled towards his flesh. He screamed and screamed, but nobody heard.
There were times when he awoke alone to the room, and found himself at peace, his mind and body free. At such times he turned to his medicine shelf, to the Fowler’s, throwing back larger doses than Amy administered at his instructions. Amy might secure Fowler’s Solution, but white arsenic was out of the question. He had only one packet at the back of a drawer, that he was saving for the worst. He cursed the lack of foresight that had caused him to have no store of the stuff.
He had got himself to a chair again. His nightclothes stuck to him sweatily, his belly was sticky with the liniment of sugar of lead. He was haemorrhaging slightly; at these levels the arsenic had that side-effect. He was determined to hide it from Dr Charles, who would immediately investigate the cause. He had read in his medical books that the very sugar of lead he applied externally was, if injected in such severities, a deterrent to haemorrhaging. It was already Monday; he should have been up and about by now. Sugar of lead might work the same way if he swallowed a bit, the essential thing was to get it inside him. To that end one method was surely much as another. He poured some of the liniment into a glass, and when Rachel entered the room with clean linen asked her to fill it with soda water. He gagged upon the foul metallic taste as he drank it down, but later the haemorrhaging appeared to have stopped. His prescription had not been wrong. He knew as much as that old fool Charles.
*
‘Just look at you,’ said Mabel unsympathetically. ‘Your gloves don’t match and your hat’s all askew. In town I’d be forced to disown you.’ She walked ahead of Amy through the garden. ‘You may be tired, but it’s no excuse.’
Amy looked down at her hands in consternation.
‘Now this is the Dragon’s Den,’ Mabel announced, leading the way into a labyrinth of caves and stairways and fretted stone gratings. ‘It’s copied from the Mandarin Garden at Shanghai. Patrick sent some architects over to China to get the right idea.’ It was to see this new wonder in Mabel’s garden that Amy had been summoned. She was glad to get away from the house and Reggie’s infirmity. Mabel had also invited the children; they followed behind with Rachel.
‘You’re the first people to view it,’ Mabel said. ‘The last workmen departed only yesterday.’
Tom rushed suddenly forward past Amy to pull excitedly at Mabel’s skirt. ‘Where’s the Minotaur live? Their homes is in places like this. All horrid and rocky and frightful.’ He brought forth his new word proudly.
‘Let go of my skirt,’ Mabel demanded. ‘Has your mother taught you no manners yet?’ She glared at Tom.
Amy stepped forward to retrieve him. She held his hand firmly and walked him along.
‘The Minotaur was Greek, Tom. The story we read was about Ancient Greece. Aunt Mabel’s garden is Chinese. There are no Minotaurs in China,’ Amy explained. She felt too tired to tackle Tom. Rachel made no effort to come forward and take him. The girl was quietly insolent now whenever possible. Amy sighed. She could not blame her after what had happened.
‘Not true,’ Tom insisted. ‘Minotaurs everywhere, in all frightful places. Don’t like this place, Mama, it’s horrid. Tom going home.’ He struggled with Amy’s hand.
‘This is called the Dragon’s Den,’ Mabel turned on him sternly. ‘I’ll call out my dragon if you don’t behave.’
Tom scowled blackly at her. ‘Where is he then? Show Tom. Minotaurs kill dragons.’
‘Not this one,’ Mabel answered.
‘Stupid dragon,’ Tom muttered, but walked quietly by Amy, looking fearfully up at the grotesque rocks eroded into weird shapes by the currents of deep river beds, from where Patrick Rice had secured them.
‘Here we are,’ said Mabel as they came to a clearing and stood before a Chinese summerhouse, reminiscent of a pagoda. Servants waited, tea was laid out inside. Tom broke free and rushed ahead. A servant laughed and blocked his way.
Inside they sat on black-wood chairs and couches inlaid with mother-of-pearl. In the middle of the summerhouse a huge, ornately painted urn had been turned into a fish tank. Mabel took the children to it and pointed out the goldfish, each with six long tails.
‘It’s cruel,’ said Cathy, looking at the thick-walled urn. ‘They can’t see out of that.’
‘Oh, my!’ said Mabel. ‘And why should goldfish need to see?’
‘Because they’ve got eyes,’ answered Cathy. ‘My goldfish is called Peter. He lives in a glass bowl next to my bed. There’s nothing he cannot see.’
‘Eat your tea,’ snapped Mabel, ‘then you can go home.’
Soon they went, each side of Rachel, looking apprehensively up at the rocks, retreating from the Dragon’s Den.
‘Thank God they’ve gone,’ said Mabel. ‘Children have simply no appreciation. They shouldn’t be born until they’re twelve years old. I’m tired out already by them.’ Mabel sipped her tea.
‘How do you expect them to like a place like this? It’s enough to give them nightmares, all these grotesque rocks. They haven’t got adult eyes,’ Amy defended them.
‘Patrick has spent a fortune,’ Mabel said. ‘Don’t you tell him that.’ Amy leaned back in the uncomfortable chair and closed her eyes in exhaustion.
Mabel observed her over her teacup. ‘What are we to do with you? You look a mess, I don’t exaggerate. Is Reggie really no better?’ Amy shook her head.
‘Perhaps he’ll die,’ said Mabel, refilling Amy’s cup.
‘How can you say such things?’ Amy demanded.
‘I’d have thought nothing could be more convenient,’ Mabel replied.
‘It’s not right to think like that,’ Amy said, closing her eyes again. All she wanted was to go to sleep.
‘You’ve become so virtuous and boring,’ Mabel replied. ‘If I were you I’d have fed a man like Reggie arsenic years ago.’
Amy opened her eyes but said nothing.
‘Doesn’t he take arsenic or something as a tonic?’ Mabel inquired in sudden curiosity. ‘I think Patrick heard a rumour once.’
‘There isn’t much that Reggie hasn’t tried in the way of medicines,’ Amy said.
‘Well, if he’s immune to arsenic, rat poison might do,’ Mabel decided.
‘Oh, do leave me alone,’ complained Amy. ‘Sometimes you’re worse than the children.’
‘I’m only trying to cheer you up.’ Mabel sounded hurt. ‘You’re just no fun any more.’
Mabel drank her tea in silent disapproval. She understood nothing of this new, chaste Amy, austere enough to make even Mabel take hurried stock of herself.
‘I can’t bear it,’ said Mabel suddenly. ‘You’re making me as dull as you’ve become yourself.’
‘I wouldn’t say dull,’ said Amy, opening her eyes. ‘Only wiser.’
‘Oh, my!’ said Mabel. ‘Haven’t we changed?’ Amy shrugged, and prepared to get up.
‘I don’t regret a thing I’ve done. I’ve got over my guilts.’ She remembered Guy le Ferrier and the misery shared with Mabel. ‘I can even see purpose in it now.’
‘Great words, great thoughts,’ mocked Mabel from her black-wood chair. ‘Maybe you’ll take up philosophy.’
‘A bit of that wouldn’t do you any harm,’ Amy responded.
‘Now don’t forget,’ said Mabel as Amy reached the summerhouse steps. ‘If he’s immune to arsenic, rat poison will do.’
‘You know,’ said Amy stopping to look back at Mabel. ‘I’ve never liked Reggie – in fact I dislike him – but it’s hard to hate him enough for that. Sometimes now I find myself feeling sorry for him. He’s trapped within himself. He can’t find the way to be a bigger, better man. He maddens me unbearably, but at the same time he’s rather sad. He hides behind his hedonism; he’s afraid to face himself. He even believes he’s enjoying life. Just look at the wreck he is, the waste of each year of his life. Poor man. I’ve lost all that anger I used to feel towards him.’
‘Oh, go home,’ yawned Mabel. ‘You’re a bore.’
‘I may leave him soon,’ said Amy. ‘I can live no longer with him. I’ve seen a way at last, if I decide to take it.’
‘Tell Auntie Mabel. I’m all ears now.’ Mabel sat up at once. Amy laughed and walked on down the steps.
‘Arsenic or rat poison will do the job quicker,’ Mabel shouted after her.
*
He slept, then woke feeling better, and struggled to a chair. The sun was mellow,’ it was afternoon. As he reached the chair he was suddenly in an agony worse than before.
‘Amy!’ He rang the bell but she did not come. Pain doubled him up. Through the open door he saw Jessie Flack walk across the landing to the nursery.
‘Jessie!’ he called. He had some idea she had accused him once of assaulting her. He remembered nothing, and Jessie Flack with her bony mind and body was not his type of woman. But he knew her strait-laced sort. Their own dreams in the end destroyed them.
She stood prudent upon the threshold. ‘Help me, girl,’ he gasped, staggering back to bed. The spasm convulsed him, his eyes bulged, he writhed about. She stood immobile in the doorway, staring.
‘Get me my medicine, help me,’ he panted.
She hesitated, as if making a decision. ‘The mistress is out. She said you’d sleep through. Dr Charles gave you a draught.’ She spoke accusingly.
‘Well, I’m awake and in need of medicine. If I could get it myself I would.’ He wheeled over with pain again.
She came into the room, her hands clasped together, white at the knuckles.
‘In that top drawer of the dressing table, at the back in a small paper packet. Yes, that one. Give me half in a glass of water, but only half, mind you. Stir it up well.’ He watched her face in the mirror. She raised her eyes to his and looked hurriedly away. He doubled up again, sweat poured off him. He-heard the clink of the spoon as she stirred the medicine, the closing of the little drawer as she replaced the remainder of the powder. When he opened his eyes she stood before him with the glass. He drank it down, swirling it about to get up all the grains of arsenic; then he lay back, exhausted.
‘That’s better. I’ll be all right now.’ He belched as he spoke and saw the disgust in her face. She turned and left the room.
He did not know how long he slept; a mist surrounded him. It was night, it was day. Faces passed before him, pain squeezed him like a nutcracker, his juices oozed away. Something was strangling him, drawing tighter about his throat. And the insects had come again, crawling under the sheets and upon his bare flesh until he screamed.
It was afternoon when he opened his eyes. The sun was setting through the window, Amy slept on the camp bed. He whispered her name but she did not stir. He felt slightly better, he pulled himself up upon an elbow. It gave a feeling of normality to look things in the eye. He felt flattened by his constant view of picture rails, cupboard tops stacked with dusty hat boxes, plaster mouldings and hanging lamps. He was suddenly sure the crisis was over. The dose of white arsenic had done the trick, he should have taken it before. He had come to no harm too with the sugar of lead the other day, and its effect had been as he hoped. The liniment was on the table beside the bed. He poured some into his brandy and soda left from earlier in the day. He drank it down, Amy did not wake. Soon he would be better now. Old Charles would of course take the credit himself. The pain seemed to ease dramatically and soon he fell asleep.
*
That Monday night Jessie Flack prayed hard upon her knees, her hands a tight ball before her. It had upset her more than she could tell to have stood before Mr Redmore again, to have ministered to him. She was sure he did not even remember that terrible night; he had been too drunk. The hate stored up more and more in her with the passing of each day. That hate and his illness seemed in some way connected. His face came back to her as she prayed, tortured and entreating her to help him as he had that afternoon. She should have left him; she should have done nothing for him.
In her mind she went over the occasion again. Mrs Redmore had gone to the post office with Cathy; Jessie was to join her there with Tom. She had been crossing the landing from the linen cupboard when Mr Redmore called her in. She had hovered before the open door. He was sitting in a chair doubled up in agony. He staggered to the bed, collapsing in a spasm, his face sweating and ugly. She watched, satisfaction at his labour filling her. She had concentrated on his pain so that it should use him pitilessly, leaving no corner. She wished no end to it for him.
‘Help me, girl,’ he had gasped, squinting up at her.
She closed her eyes, turning her hate like a knife within him. Her hands, clasped before her, were white at the knuckles, a ring pressed into her flesh. Yet she did as he told her when he regained himself, taking the packet from the drawer, saying not a word.
‘Half in some water. Stir it up well. But no more than half, mind you,’ he ordered, leaning back upon the pillows exhausted, mopping his brow.
She took the glass and filled it with water. The packet was small and tightly folded, inside lay a heap of greyish powder, flattened by constriction. She sensed him staring at her and raised her eyes to meet his in the mirror. As if her look had touched him, his pain flared up again. He wheeled over and her hands began to tremble. It was as if she had the power to manipulate his agony. It was his punishment; it was God at work. She was certain of it suddenly, shivering in excitement. She looked down and saw in her agitation that all the powder had slipped into the glass. He would never know. She stirred it up quickly, threw away the empty paper and shut the dressing table drawer. He drank the stuff down with difficulty. He sat back and belched loudly.
‘That’s better. I’ll be all right now,’ he murmured. She turned in disgust at the repulsive sound and left the room without a word. It was obviously something to relieve his gas. She was satisfied she had administered nothing to alleviate his pain.
Now, seeing clearly God’s wrath on her behalf, she prayed hard upon her knees. ‘Punish him, Lord, in the name of all men like him.’ The memory of that night welled up again. Punish him. As the words rolled through her she heard again her own strange cry, released that night to echo unendingly in her. She put her hands to her ears but it would not stop. She picked up the words again and they swayed like comfort through her.
‘Punish him. Punish him. Punish him, Lord.’
*
From that Monday Reggie appeared worse each day, haggard and rasping, spewing forth from every orifice without alleviation. It frightened Amy. Dr Charles did nothing but fumble about in his worn black bag and pull out innocuous things.
‘Tomorrow is Thursday and will make a full week. How can he go on like this?’ she asked Dr Charles when he came. ‘Once for a time, while I was away in ’93, he saw Dr Baeltz in Tokyo. Perhaps we could have his opinion too,’ Amy reasoned.
Dr Charles was not averse and said he would cable. But during the day Reggie rallied; he seemed to have turned a corner. He sat up in bed and then in a chair, asking for brandy and soda, he kept down a few teaspoons of cornflour.
‘Dr Baeltz has replied that he cannot come until tomorrow, but I doubt we’ll want him now,’ Dr Charles announced when he returned. ‘It’ll be a needless expense; we can see how Reggie is tomorrow. He has retained his food, it is a decided improvement. My treatment is working.’
‘You see,’ croaked Reggie after the doctor had gone. ‘I’ told you I’d be better. But I’ve not a dose of Fowler’s left. You’ll have to send for more.’ Amy bent over him and rubbed his stomach with sugar of lead. The odour of the liniment clung to her hands.
After tiffin she wrote out the chits for Fowler’s Solution and gave them to Jessie Flack. There was also a book to take back to Kelly & Walsh and a note for the furniture dealer about the need to restain the bureau. It would be an outing for Cathy and Tom. If not so tired, she would have gone herself.
She was writing to her mother in the dining room when they all returned. The children ran to her, Cathy with some wild flowers, Tom with a beetle secreted in his pocket. Jessie Flack placed three small bottles on the desk. Her mouth was tight, and she looked at Amy sullenly with unusual accusation. Amy took no notice. She went to the sideboard and prepared some cocaine for Reggie in a glass of brandy and soda, as Dr Charles had prescribed.
The improvement Reggie had shown that Wednesday morning disappeared in the night. He was consumed by pain, his body strained to expel its very juices. He could not swallow and his thirst was a torture. Amy melted ice upon his tongue. He shivered and was clammy, his pulse abnormally slow. In the middle of the night she called the servants to light a fire and apply hot water bottles to him. The pain took him in convulsions. At five o’clock on Thursday morning she sent a chit to Dr Charles. He came with more cocaine and a draught of hydrate of chlorine.
‘Reggie is worse than ever. I feel extremely anxious. Nothing seems to work,’ she told him.
Dr Charles was silent, looking at her sternly. He bent and snapped his bag together. His cigar fell out of his pocket and he wheezed as he stooped to pick it up. ‘I have confidence in my treatment,’ he told her. ‘There is not a disease without its crisis. I regard his progress as satisfactory. I have to attend Mr Boag’s funeral. I’ll return in the afternoon.’
When he was gone she sent a chit to Mr Cooper-Hewitt, who visited Reggie regularly. He came at once and she explained her disagreement with Dr Charles. ‘Please talk to him,’ she implored.
‘I’ll go and see him now and return before we all have to go off to old Boag’s funeral. A suicide – I expect you know. Blew his brains out on his bed,’ Mr Cooper-Hewitt said with relish.
He returned as soon as promised, walking complacently into the room. ‘Old Charles says you’re alarming yourself unnecessarily. It’s the female nature to magnify anxiety. You’re worrying too much. Wait until after this funeral. Then we’ll all be free to confer,’ suggested Mr Cooper-Hewitt.
By nine-thirty the sun spread over the garden in a full and fleshy light. The children ran about, Amy heard their voices there below as they waited for Jessie to take them to the Bluff Gardens. Cathy bounced a ball, Tom buried a dead fledgling in a tin box that had once contained mint humbugs. Amy turned from the window to Reggie; he drifted in and out of consciousness. She sat near him through the morning, too tired to think of diversions, dozing as she could. Tomorrow Dicky would return from Kobe where he had gone for a series of inter-port cricket matches the day before Reggie fell ill. It would be a relief to see him back.
*
Above the Bluff Gardens the sky was blue and cloudless. Below, the passive lawns and neat box hedges were distant from the bandstand throbbing with audacity. A troupe of performing monkeys had been allowed to occupy the bandstand for the amusement of the children. The monkeys, dressed in hats and skirts and braided pantaloons, swung about and sneered with indiscriminate insolence at both their audience and trainers. One ran out amongst the children and snatched away a doll. The Gardens echoed with the terror of the amahs and their charges.
Jessie Flack and Bertha Kaufmann observed the chaos from their bench beneath a tree. Tom and Cathy and the Phelps children sat apart from danger, delighted with the trickery. The monkey picked at the eyes of the doll from underneath a bush, a trainer scrambled after it.
‘I returned home by twelve o’clock, just in time for tiffin. She was in the dining room, I put the bottles on the table.’ Jessie shivered. ‘It’s weird, it is. There’s something funny going on. Why should she be buying stuff like that?’
‘Stuff like what?’ Bertha whispered.
‘She gave me papers for Maruya’s. She wrote them out herself – she had no doctor’s prescription. And then, when I passed Schedel’s on my way home, there was their assistant waiting on the steps with another bottle for me. She must have sent a chit after I left and told them to look out for me.’
‘Stuff like what?’ repeated Bertha.
‘Poison?’ Bertha drew back in amazement.
Jessie nodded in confirmation. ‘I’d never have known the seriousness of it, but for that clerk in Maruya’s. I’d never been in there alone before. He took the paper quietly, never asked for a real prescription, but he inquired of me outright why at our house we bought “so plenty deadly poison”. That’s the way he put it. I was taken aback, and that’s when I asked him what the stuff was and he told me it was arsenic,’ Jessie disclosed.
Bertha gave a gasp and hunched herself forward near Jessie again.
‘Well, I told him,’ Jessie continued, ‘I didn’t know a thing about it. I hadn’t hardly been to his shop before. He said some had been bought the day before, once a rikisha had come, and once a lady, Mrs Redmore. He even asked if I was her. He couldn’t tell the difference between one foreign lady and another – we all looked alike to him, he said, on account of our bigger noses. He told me then to warn Mrs Redmore how she used so much arsenic, to be careful. You can imagine how I felt.’
Bertha sucked in her breath unsteadily.
‘Well, what else can I say,’ whispered Jessie, ‘except you know how sick the master is and no one attends him but her. She gives him all his medicines. She sent me up to him with something in a glass – cocaine, she said it was. I gave it to him but he refused, he shouted at me horribly. He said he had taken a whole chemist’s shop already that day, he wanted only brandy and not whatever else was in the glass. I took it back down and told her and then she went up and forced him to take it. I followed, I watched from the door. She told him Dr Charles had prescribed it and at last he drank it down.’
Jessie closed her eyes, for suddenly as she talked the sight of Mr Redmore’s suffering face came vividly before her. The memory of that terrible night thrust through her. She drew her breath in a sob. Bertha patted her arm, innocent of the reason for such emotion. Jessie had not told Bertha, and could not have told her if she had wished, of that night a week ago. The experience was embedded in her like a barb that if pulled free would bring with it a part of her flesh.
In the bandstand the monkeys were walking a tightrope whilst eating cake from blue plates. Jessie and Bertha sat in silence before either of them spoke again.
‘All these, they are very serious things you are saying,’ said Bertha at last.
‘Oh yes, indeed,’ agreed Jessie, her voice still thick with memory.
‘And nobody knows why he is so ill?’ Bertha reaffirmed.
Jessie shook her head. ‘The doctors are mystified; none of their prescriptions help.’
‘How could they, if she is giving him secretly all that stuff?’
‘I reckon she thinks she’ll be free of him and marry that Mr Huckle,’ Jessie whispered.
‘If you are knowing these things, then before God, it is your duty to tell the doctor. Otherwise he cannot know. And if your master dies and you have said nothing and it is known you went to buy the poison, even if she sent you, or that you had given him the stuff, even if she asked you, who can say what will happen or how it will look for you?’ Bertha said.
‘Yes, she might turn it all about. Otherwise why should she send me to buy the stuff? She’s trying to trap me,’ Jessie burst out in panic, the whole evil plan clear to her. She saw Mrs Redmore like a spider constructing a web for an innocent victim. ‘Oh God, please help me!’ She began to sob. Bertha put a hand upon her. Jessie had looked ill all the week, preoccupied in an agitated way. Now Bertha understood; it was enough to frighten anyone.
‘God helps those who help themselves,’ Bertha reminded her. ‘I think there is no time to waste. We must inform my master. All the men will soon go to Mr Boag’s funeral. If we hurry we will catch him. He can tell the doctor when he meets him there. We have our evidence, those letters prove what Mrs Redmore is. This is the time to use them. We shall hand them now to Mr Phelps, then he will believe us. We must hurry.’ Bertha stood up, Jessie followed, pulling nervously at her bonnet.
‘The Dawsons’ amah can bring our children home. She will not mind, they live next door,’ Bertha decided before they left. They turned out of the gate and hailed a rikisha. Behind them the monkeys scratched their chests beneath the ridiculous clothing and bared yellow teeth while swinging upon trapezes. The children clapped and screamed.
Things happened quickly once they handed the letters to Mr Phelps. A number of expressions passed through his face as he read what he could of the patchwork sheets and listened to their story. Mrs Phelps was also in the room. Jessie began to sob with anticipation and importance.
‘You must both wait here until I come back. I’ll bring the doctor with me,’ Mr Phelps instructed. He was a bald man with thick-fingered hands, he spoke in a tired, bare manner.
He returned an hour later with Dr Charles, who looked at Jessie in a hard, strange way and asked abruptly, ‘What is this I hear about arsenic?’
‘Oh,’ she sobbed, the strain overcoming her so that she had to sit down. ‘Oh, doctor, what do you suspect about that?’
‘I suspected last night and again this morning, but I didn’t know where he was getting it from,’ Dr Charles replied. She did not believe him. It was only because she had pointed it out that he now suddenly understood. She gave him a sullen look.
‘I would like you to put your suspicion in writing and send it to me at my house. I shall act now as I feel best. We must remove him to the hospital; we must get him away from that house. Only then will he be safe,’ Dr Charles declared. He left the room with a curt nod, but lingered outside with Mr Phelps for a further while.
At first Jessie refused to write a thing. A sudden terror filled her at all she was precipitating. Mr Phelps stood over her, but her hand still shook too much. In the end it was Bertha who wrote on the paper, ‘Three bottles of arsenic in one week from Maruya’s.’ She did not wish to sign her name and Mr Phelps agreed she need not, just the evidence at this point was enough. He sealed the note in an envelope and sent it to the doctor. Before tiffin Jessie went home with the children as if nothing had happened.
Dr Charles returned before Jessie to the Redmores’. He walked into the house authoritatively, his voice had a ring that had been absent in the early morning. Amy supposed he was upset by her questioning of his competence, but it seemed to have determined him to take some positive steps.
‘I am removing him to the hospital,’ Dr Charles said. A smell of stale cigars hung about him, some crumbs were caught in his whiskers. ‘He is only going from bad to worse.’
Amy was surpised by the sudden change in his opinion. Before he left Mr Cooper-Hewitt arrived, they exchanged a look that annoyed her. Mr Cooper-Hewitt announced he would stay with Reggie until Dr Charles returned with a stretcher. She left them together and went downstairs to instruct the cook about some tiffin for Mr Cooper-Hewitt. When it was served he refused to eat.
Dr Charles arrived again at the Redmores’ by two o’clock with an ambulance and a stretcher. Jessie bobbed a curtsey but he took no notice of her. She watched from inside the nursery door as they carried Mr Redmore out, groaning on the stretcher, Mr Cooper-Hewitt was still there. Her heart beat with excitement. She did not care if Mr Redmore lived or died, she had not spoken out to rescue him. Whatever must happen could now rightly happen. She was free of Mrs Redmore’s evil plan.
Reggie gasped for breath. He tried to raise himself on an elbow as Dr Charles bent over him but fell back, convulsed by pain. Dr Charles injected him with a stimulant. The room was full of ambulance men, they clustered around the bed. Amy hovered in the background as the men heaved Reggie upon the stretcher. She came forward with an extra blanket to wrap about his feet.
The Naval Hospital was a few hundred yards away along the Bluff. Amy walked silently with Mr Cooper-Hewitt behind the horse-drawn ambulance. At the gates of the hospital, although she pleaded, she was not admitted. Mr Cooper-Hewitt offered no help. Women could not enter the hospital, but she had heard of numerous exceptions in extenuating circumstances.
‘Those is my instructions,’ argued the gatekeeper. ‘You’ll have to speak to the doctor.’ She looked to Mr Cooper-Hewitt for an explanation, but he had already slipped inside the gates and walked behind the stretcher up the drive. As she watched, the hospital doors opened, then closed upon them. The gatekeeper eyed her curiously. She was too tired to fight. The tall, faceless walls of the hospital filled her with a sudden feeling that made her turn away.
It was Mr Cooper-Hewitt who returned at four o’clock with the news of Reggie’s death. Jessie Flack was not surprised. She had already confirmed that God was on her side. It was nothing more than retribution. The news filled her with exhilaration. Now at last she could leave the Redmores’ without fear of recrimination. She would give Mrs Redmore her notice. She was now living with a murderess; the thought alone pole-axed her.
*
There were people coming and going in commiseration for hours. Jessie had to wait until the evening. Mrs Redmore sat with her feet on the couch. She leaned back upon the cushions, her face destroyed by strain.
‘I wish to give you my notice, ma’am.’ Jessie pulled at a pleat of her skirt as she entered the room to stand before Amy.
Amy started, a look of alarm crossed her face. ‘But why, Jessie? Why now, when I need you most? I could understand if you had left last week after … after … But now Mr Redmore is ….’ She broke off in confusion. ‘I don’t know what my plans are. Probably I’ll return to England as soon as I can settle my affairs. I can take you back with me then.’
‘I want to leave your service, ma’am,’ Jessie said, taking a breath. ‘Certain things have come to my notice, I can no longer remain.’
‘Things? What things?’ Amy swung her legs off the couch, her voice gaining strength. She did not like Jessie’s manner.
‘Jessie?’ Amy demanded.
‘I have reason to believe Mr Redmore is dead from arsenic poisoning. I have told Dr Charles and he agreed,’ Jessie said in a rush, her voice uneven. ‘I believe you have poisoned him. Believing that, I cannot stay.’
‘Jessie!’ Amy jumped to her feet. ‘For what reason should I poison him? What nonsense all this is!’
Jessie’s voice rose, all the stress of the days before releasing suddenly now. ‘You poisoned him to marry Mr Huckle, ma’am.’ She felt the warmth of satisfaction as she saw the shock in Mrs Redmore’s face.
‘Mr Huckle? Jessie, are you mad? This is too absurd.’ Amy gave an anxious laugh.
‘I have proof, ma’am, in Mr Huckle’s letters to you, plain for anyone to see. You tore them up, but I sewed them together. This is an evil house, I will not stay another day!’ Jessie’s voice filled the room hysterically. ‘Mr and Mrs Phelps and my friend Bertha have seen the letters and their proof of your wickedness, ma’am. And I have told Dr Charles of all the arsenic you made me buy, and that you bought yourself.’
Amy sat down suddenly. The room reeled about her. Jessie’s thin face swung and then steadied. She held her head in her hands until she felt better before looking at the woman again.
‘You little ….’ All the breath had left Amy. ‘You have given the letters to Mr Phelps? Dr Charles you have told of the arsenic? What a thorough job you’ve done.’
‘I am going now. I have already packed. I am going to stay with Miss Brittain.’ Jessie turned on her heel and left the room.
Amy had written already to Dr Charles, asking him to visit, thinking it strange he had not come to give her the facts of Reggie’s death. And, apart from telling her tersely of that news, Mr Cooper-Hewitt too had stayed away. Now she understood. Things were maturing suddenly with uncomfortable clarity. All day she had been tossed from one emotion to another; the stress of the night and Reggie’s torture, the shock of his death and the terrible guilty relief that had flooded her at the news. God had heard her wish to be free and released her at last. Nobody had guessed her relief. Except maybe Mabel who, subdued and strangely useless in a crisis, had sat with her for hours.
‘How odd to think that only the other day we even talked of killing him. And now it has really happened. You’re free,’ Mabel had said faintly, again and again.
‘You said so, not I,’ Amy reminded her.
‘I’m sorry. Truly, I’m sorry,’ Mabel apologized, her voice unsteady with emotion.
It was late when Dr Charles arrived, almost eleven o’clock. Amy sat in an unlit room, staring from the window at the silhouette of the Naval Hospital, visible over the loquat trees. It seemed already, even in death, as if Reggie’s grip on her life continued in a sullen way.
Rachel let in Dr Charles; she showed him into the drawing room. Amy left the darkness and went across the hall to meet him. The lights in the house seemed to blind her. His manner was impatient, he hovered near the door, his sympathy strained in the way Mr Cooper-Hewitt’s had been.
‘We’ll have the results of the autopsy tomorrow. It’s possible there will be an inquest. You must be prepared,’ he said. He observed her curiously, as if he might locate within her things to disinter. She looked away.
‘There is one thing, doctor, I ought to have told you before. Reggie suffered from stricture and he was in the habit of taking arsenic to relieve it.’ She saw a muscle move beneath the thick flesh of his jaw; his eyes showed no expression.
‘It is a pity you did not mention it before,’ he said.
‘Reggie would not have it. He did not wish you to know. He was a man who believed he could treat himself. He had taken arsenic for many years.’ She heard the unevenness in her voice. Dr Charles looked at her coldly. She did not sound convincing even to herself.
‘I knew nothing of a stricture, he never complained of symptoms. He gave no indication of the debility nor that he had any disregard for my opinion.’ He clipped his words and moved towards the door.
Panic filled her. ‘A few days ago Reggie asked me to get him a bottle of Fowler’s Solution of Arsenic and a bottle of sugar of lead that he used as a liniment when his pain was bad,’ she said, holding down her desperation. Dr Charles turned back from the door to look silently at her.
‘I don’t know where these things are. I can’t find them. I’ll look again tomorrow,’ she added. Dr Charles raised an eyebrow and turned into the hall. She watched the front door close behind him.
It was true. She had searched that evening and found not a single bottle of Fowler’s. Reggie had finished the stuff, and after he was admitted to the hospital she had ordered Rachel and Asa to clean and disinfect the room in readiness for his return. They had thrown out the empty bottles, tomorrow she would tell them to search the rubbish pile. Dr Charles did not believe her; she wondered if he ever would. And she sensed the conjecture that must already be growing from Mr Cooper-Hewitt’s tongue. Yokohama, ever restless for diversity would turn without conscience to a cannabilistic meal. Dicky would be back tomorrow from Kobe; he would tell her what to do.
*
‘What have you done, Amy? What have you done?’ was all Dicky seemed to say when at last he returned. He paced the drawing room, spacing his steps erratically. He picked his chin in agitation.
‘I’ve done nothing. Nothing,’ she repeated, twisting her rings. She got up from where she sat and poured them both a brandy. ‘Help me, Dicky, please. You’re also involved,’ she reminded him.
‘Do you think I’m unaware of that?’ he returned bitterly. ‘If there’s an inquest – and I’m sure there will be – it may lead to God knows what if they wish to believe it’s a murder. And as a motive, those letters of mine will be all over Yokohama. They’ll be read out in court, printed in newspapers. I shall not only be a laughing-stock, but an accomplice to murder. I’m ruined.’ He sat down abruptly in a convenient chair.
‘That’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘You know it’s not murder.’
‘It’s not what it is, but how it looks that matters at the moment,’ Dicky said. ‘How could you be so careless? If it was just the business with the arsenic, you could be got out of that, I’m sure. But you’ve given the town a motive, with ample proof into the bargain. I’m finished with the bank. Oh, God.’ He dropped his head into his hands.
‘We must think,’ he said at last.
Amy nodded. It was what she had hoped he might do.
‘Tell me more about this hare-brained lark of yours, about this Annie Luke,’ he said. She had told Dicky everything in her distress, she had kept nothing back. He knew now that Annie Luke’s visit was only a fiction. He knew now of her compromise with Reggie, of her liaison with Guy le Ferrier and also with Matthew Armitage. She had, she felt, no choice but to enlighten him if he was to help her. He had looked at her in disgust.
‘Could this Annie Luke, do you think, possibly kill Reggie?’ Dicky asked after a moment.
‘What do you mean?’ she replied.
‘You yourself have already set the tone of mystery in public about this woman. There is no knowing why she wished to see Reggie and what, had she had access to him, she may have tried to do.’ Dicky’s voice began to rise in a positive way.
Amy looked at him, bewildered.
‘We need evidence of intent,’ Dicky decided. ‘If so much that is untrue is now being construed by the minute against us, I see no reason why we should not throw our own fictitious spanner into the works. We shall play Yokohama at its own game.’
‘But how would we get this evidence?’ Amy questioned.
‘Why, you shall write it, just as you have written up the rest of Annie Luke. You will come forward with your own bundle of letters. They will come to you anonymously, full of threat and malice,’ Dicky advised.
‘You must help me. You must tell me what to say,’ Amy agreed. They sat down side by side on the sofa and began to think again.
‘Something of his must come to you from her, to prove her contact with him,’ Dicky reasoned.
‘A letter?’ Amy suggested. ‘There is Reggie’s last chit written to me from the club after he saw Dr Charles and his illness began.’
‘Splendid,’ said Dicky, getting suddenly into the rhythm of the thing. ‘Tear it up like my own letters, then stitch it together.’
‘Oh, how could I do that?’ she said.
‘Well then, stick it together with paste,’ he said. You’ll say it came to you anonymously before Reggie died. And then we’ll need, some threatening notes to you, and in the end Annie Luke shall sail away after killing Reggie, undetected,’ Dicky decided. ‘You must alter your writing,’ he warned. ‘Why don’t you copy that little minx Jessie’s just as an extra complication? You say Rachel caught her copying your handwriting, for what reason we do not know. You need have no conscience. And if that letter to you from Reggie is torn and put together, too, it may cast doubt upon her. She deserves a bit of something for all the mischief she has caused,’ Dicky said.
But Amy was not so sure, thinking back to that terrible night only a week before. She was not convinced of anything Dicky was suggesting. Only desperation moved her to agree with him.
He saw her hesitation. ‘It’s a matter of self-preservation, Amy. Make the letters out in Jessie’s writing as near as you are able. They should be suitably idiotic. They must come from her mind, not yours. She has had no scruples about implicating you, you must have none either. I’ll back you up. I shall say I have seen a strange woman about Yokohama to complicate things.’ Already importance filled out Dicky’s voice, and hope pulled at Amy’s face.
*
Jessie Flack lay in the dark of Miss Brittain’s house. It was an attic room, the rafters sloped steeply towards her, and if she sat up without caution she bumped her head. The inquest was over. There had been an open verdict; it did not look well for Mrs Redmore. People said she would now be charged with her husband’s murder. It was as Jessie had suspected; there would be a trial. It was difficult to say how Mrs Redmore ever thought to get away with such a crime.
Jessie had sat through the inquest, listening to it all. She had given her evidence, swallowing down her nervousness, speaking out clearly to all she was asked. People had been kind. Miss Brittain had bought her a pair of new gloves, and Mrs Phelps had given a motherly talk about her duty to God and Yokohama and gone with her to the court. People everywhere knew her name as well as that of anyone of importance. The Redmore Affair was on everyone’s lips, every detail privately discussed, if not yet publicly disclosed. Most people had already decided their verdict.
The moon shone through a gap in the curtains that Jessie had closed with a wooden peg, and showed up the dire need to whitewash the rafters. But Miss Brittain’s was clean and reeked of carbolic, the smell even infused Miss Brittain herself. Jessie could not sleep. She had not slept well for weeks, ever since that night. God had punished Mr Redmore, yet she found with his death nothing was ended but went on in her as before. She had lost weight and fainted frequently, dark circles framed her eyes. Miss Brittain had declared she must see a doctor. Her sleep was full of fiends. Worst of all was when her own cry echoed again in her ears from that night.
She pulled herself up on an elbow and poured out a glass of water, it was already two o’clock. Water pipes clanked below in the house, a dog barked, there was a creak of bedsprings in the next room. Mr Phelps had refused to hand over Mr Huckle’s letters to the authorities until after the verdict of the inquest. He said he was not obliged, unless there was a trial. He had even gone to see Mrs Redmore, to tell her he would return the letters if the inquest ended satisfactorily. Jessie could not understand his attitude; his lack of enthusiasm disappointed her. But now there was to be a trial people would see what Mrs Redmore was; nothing could protect her now. Jessie coughed in satisfaction.
The inquest had been full of unexpected things, like that woman, Annie Luke. There had also been much medical jargon, and talk of different kinds of arsenic. There was the arsenic in bottles that Mrs Redmore had procured to feed her husband, and there was arsenic in glutinous specks of white powder stuck to Mr Redmore’s guts. The doctors declared that this proved the arsenic was taken also in a powder form Mrs Redmore was not seen to buy. If she had bought one type she could buy another, Jessie thought impatiently. One doctor had the audacity to declare that a single dose of that powder, taken even several days before Mr Redmore’s death, could alone have brought about his end. It was absurd; even the coroner had expressed surprise. And at that juncture there had flooded back to Jessie the occasion when Mr Redmore had asked her to give him his medicine. She remembered that envelope of powder, all of which, in her agitation, had slipped into the glass. For a moment her heart had almost stopped beating, until she recalled that the medicine she had administered to Mr Redmore was a harmless substance for the problem of gas. She remembered again that repulsive sound that had gurgled up from his innards unasked, as soon as he swallowed the stuff. It was nothing more than a calmative for his ravaged guts. The relief was so great she had broken out in cold sweat, there in her seat at the inquest.
Jessie Flack turned on her side. A shaft of moonlight slit the bed, severing her upon it. As she moved, it seemed as if she loosened the memory of that awful night and again the sound of her own strange cry echoed in her head. She placed her hands upon her ears. It seemed as if she would be forced to listen until it drove her mad.