Ruth once told me that she had lost the capacity to shed tears, but she is crying now. Fat drops slide down her cheeks as fast as rain. If I did not know better, I would take her for a lost child.
Yet no child can invent a tale like this. These are not the hands of a child that slumber, clasped in the lap of her serge prison gown. Do not crocodiles weep, to lure in their prey?
Papa’s engagement and Sir Thomas’s accusations have made me short of temper. Ruth’s sniffles, which would usually arouse my sympathy, serve only to irritate my nerves. I rise from the creaking, uneven chair and begin to pace her compact cell, as if I myself am the prisoner.
‘Your sins are heavy enough, Ruth. Why do you insist upon adding dishonesty to their number?’
She covers the wreck of her face with her hands. Is this repentance, at long last? Or perhaps it is a screen. Perhaps she is laughing at me, behind her fingers.
‘The time for your fairy tales is over. You stand trial tomorrow. Tomorrow!’ How small this room is. Walking does no good at all, it only makes me feel more hemmed in. ‘Why will you not save yourself? You cannot lie to God! Admit, now, what you have done, before it is too late.’
An unpleasant noise escapes my throat, a sound halfway between a laugh and a groan. ‘Oh yes! Murder with a magical corset. Will you truly stand in the dock, tomorrow, and swear to this deranged fantasy?’
‘I can’t testify at my own trial, miss.’
Her words annoy me all the more, because I should know this. ‘It is just as well. You would perjure yourself, alongside all your other transgressions.’
A sob bends her forwards. I am confronted with the mass of her black curls, cloaking all marks of the crania beneath. For a moment, I quite forget myself. My hands grip her hair, roam over her skull without seeking her permission.
Bone. Inflexible, immovable beneath my fingertips, as if the matter of the brain could not shape it at all. ‘You do not have the skull of a madwoman! Or a liar, or even a murderer! What are you?’
My own voice echoes back at me from the limewashed walls. I have been shouting. Ashamed and short of breath, I retake my chair. Ruth remains in the same position, tucked in on herself.
I cannot endure this. Not any longer. I have sorrows of my own.
‘Why don’t you believe me?’ Ruth gasps. ‘Billy believed me. He saw what I’d done and …’ Her breath hitches. ‘He hates me for it. I wish he didn’t hate me.’
‘You have killed his wife!’ My tone is harsher than I intend it. ‘And what is more, you are making a mockery of the fact! Pretending you are so powerful, beyond medicine, killing without a trace. Well there were traces, Ruth. I expect you have never heard of the Marsh test. And for all you pretend to know about the inside of the human body, you are ignorant of its workings. Your mistress was not pregnant! The autopsy showed no signs of a child. She had only lost so much weight that her body ceased to menstruate!’
Her hands drop from her face, fast as a curtain. Red blotches linger on her cheeks, but the expression in her eyes has changed. It is so eager, so genuine, that it knocks the breath from me.
Hope.
‘I didn’t kill Billy’s baby?’
‘No. He did not have a baby.’
More tears fall, but they drip past a watery smile. ‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!’ She is almost laughing. But then she collects herself. ‘Poor Kate. If only she’d known. Her last days might have been easier for her, in the mind. She thought the same as me. And so did Nell. We didn’t realise … ’
And as she trails off, it comes to me like an epiphany: bright light, shining into the hidden corners, revealing the deeds of darkness. The scales fall from my eyes.
She does not know.
I think I may choke. There is no joy, as in biblical revelations; this knowledge is painful, too searing to hold. All these visits, and I never suspected. I worked on the assumption that she knew how Kate had died.
Footsteps outside, the slide of the bolt, a key grinding in a lock. Too soon.
‘Ruth …’ I begin. With her background and education, of course she would not have arranged the pieces into their proper shape. But me! What is my excuse?
‘Miss Truelove, I am afraid I must ask you to leave.’ Matron looms in the doorway, keys glinting at her waist. ‘Butterham has her trial tomorrow. Her lawyer is here.’
‘I must speak to him.’ Even as I rise to my feet, I hear the mounting hysteria in my words. ‘I must …’
What can I possibly say? What evidence do I have to present him with? There is not sufficient time to prepare a case, I have frittered it all away pursuing my scientific theories – and even they have proved to be false.
Matron places her hand upon my arm, steers me towards the door. ‘I think it will be best if we leave the learned man to deal with his client alone, don’t you? They do not have much time together.’
I see it now like an hourglass, the sand spilling. ‘Ruth!’ I call desperately. ‘Did you tell this story to your advocate? The chaplain?’ If I deciphered the clues, perhaps they might, also.
But Ruth shakes her shorn head. ‘I only trusted you.’
I am distraught, I want to grip at the doorframe with my nails like one of the rabid prisoners and refuse to leave, but the door clangs behind me.
‘Ruth!’ I shout. ‘Ruth, I believe you!’
I do not know if she has heard me. I am marched, as if in custody myself, down the halls and away from her.
‘Dora? Are you listening?’ I snap my eyes up from my plate of eggs and see Papa, fork suspended halfway to his mouth, intent upon me. ‘I bid you to remain at home. You appear most unwell.’
I feel it. Nausea and giddiness are my constant companions. I have neglected my health, in the tumult of these past weeks. That is why my stomach cramps, why I do not wish to eat, why even my coffee tastes strange of late.
It must be. I will not countenance any other possibilities.
I lace my fingers around the cup and stare into its dark depths, rather than Papa’s face. The similarities I detect between his countenance and mine repel me. ‘Not in the least. One of my women stands her trial today,’ I say, as casually as I can manage. ‘I am simply nervous for her.’
‘That is all?’
It is not all. Already Mrs Pearce hovers like a spectre at our breakfast table, shoving aside the quiet, gentle spirit of Mama. But I nod, attempt another sip of my coffee. Was it always this bitter?
Sir Thomas’s worried visage obtrudes itself into my memory. I slam the door upon it.
Papa is evidently thinking of Sir Thomas too. ‘You have not received any post? Something distressing, or … interesting?’
I feel his grey eyes probing, cool as a steel scalpel. Subtlety was never his strength. ‘No, I do not believe I have. I must work on my correspondence tomorrow, I owe Fanny a letter.’
He chews, meditatively. Swallows. ‘I thought,’ he says, spearing another piece of ham, ‘that I saw something arrive from Heatherfield, the other day.’
I dab my mouth with a napkin, concealing its tremor from him. ‘Goodness me, no. Lady Morton does not correspond with me, Papa. I do not believe I am quite elegant enough for her.’
‘Then I must have been mistaken.’
‘Yes.’
‘For you must know I could not tolerate any neglect towards that family. Not now our name is finally returning to its proper dignity. I have worked tirelessly to cultivate an acquaintance with Sir Thomas, and should anything happen to offend him … I do not believe I could abide such embarrassment, Dora. Neither could dear Mrs Pearce.’
I push back from the table. It is difficult to muster the strength to stand. ‘Will you excuse me, Papa? I must prepare for this trial.’
He harrumphs. ‘Not in your present state. Your hands are shaking. I forbid it.’
‘I really must attend, for the sake of this woman. She is friendless.’
Still watching me, he pulls his napkin from his lap. ‘Well, then. I must accompany you, I suppose, and ensure you conduct yourself correctly.’
I can devise no excuse. If it is a case of going with Papa, or not going at all, my choice is clear. I must hear the evidence, I must either confirm or quash my fears.
‘I am not certain the nature of the trial will be pleasant to you,’ I warn him. ‘You may become uneasy.’
Without meaning to, I have made him laugh. ‘If you can withstand it, Dora, as a young lady, I certainly can. Do you view me as your silly old papa, tender in his age? I have far more backbone than you give me credit for.’
He is correct. Perhaps, in my filial partiality, I have not given him credit for nearly enough.