Chapter 2
“My darling, Sam,” Fanny Bennet cooed. “You know what to do, do you not?” she asked as she stroked his member, offering pleasure in payment for services requested.
She was well over six months with child and with a swollen belly, but she needed to make sure that Sam Hodges played his part in her plan to rid herself of the demon child.
“Y-y-es Fanny,” he shuddered at the ministrations to his erect member, “everything is set. You will bring the brat to me, and I will take her far away and dispose of her.”
Fanny stopped what she was doing and looked at him closely, “You will bring me the spawn’s heart, will you not Sam?”
“Yes Fanny, I will,” he said as she straddled him and guided him into her core as reward for telling her what she wanted to hear.
Once he had given into his pleasure, Fanny asked Sam to help her dress then slipped out of his house in a manner that she considered stealthy.
Unbeknownst to Fanny, her sister saw her sneaking out of Sam’s dingy lodgings.
As Fanny walked the mile back to Longbourn, she reviewed the plan again with relish, sure that once she removed the demon’s influence from her home that everything would be as it should be, and her husband would give her the respect that she so richly deserved and all the jewels and pocket money she desired in restitution.
After dinner, Fanny passed the bottle with the thick brown liquid to the maid that took dinner up to the two nursemaids.
The routine was that the two would put the three occupants of the nursery to bed and then they would eat their meal and drink their tea.
Fanny had saved ten pounds of her pin money and gave the maid five pounds with a promise of five pounds more once she had placed the liquid in the teapot and Fanny verified that the two upstarts who protected the urchin were fast asleep.
An hour later, the maid nodded to Fanny to confirm delivery and that she had poured the liquid into the teapot.
She was unaware, however, that the liquid was laudanum.
Fanny had devised a plan long before and it had taken some time to save the money over the last two quarters as she was not miserly in her habits.
For these last three or four months she had gone up to the nursery to say goodnight to her beautiful Jane.
She would pointedly ignore the dark one, thus when she followed the same routine on this night Bennet thought nothing of it.
He had spent time with his daughters and John in the afternoon and would always wish them a goodnight before their final meals and washing at the end of the day before they went to bed.
Fanny entered the nursery just as she had every evening of late so as to not arouse suspicion.
Both nursemaids were fast asleep as the drug had done its work.
On seeing them neutralised, Fanny beckoned to the maid that assisted her and handed her the second five pounds she had promised.
Sam would drop her in town where he would give her another ten pounds, and she would leave town and disappear.
She saw the three small beds and woke Elizabeth up, cupping a hand over her mouth and pantomiming ‘shh’ to ensure that she did not cry out.
She then offered the demon some milk laced with the drug to make sure that she would make no noise until she was far away from Longbourn.
Being woken up from a deep sleep, Elizabeth did not pay attention to who was giving her the milk, so she drank her full and fell into a drug induced deep sleep.
Fanny picked it up and made sure that the hall was empty then slipped down the servant’s stairs to bypass the kitchen.
Once she was in the yard, she walked as quietly as she could past the stables.
Some of the horses nickered but did not draw any attention to her, and she was thankful there were no hounds to manage.
Had there been she would never have been able to bring her plan to fruition.
She exited the stone gate at the rear of the kitchen garden and made her way through the clearing where she found Sam and the hired equipage.
The maid was already seated and took the drugged child, who she assumed was fast asleep, from Fanny.
Once she had handed the hell child over to the maid, Fanny tried to rub its essence off her arms and pulled Sam aside out of earshot of the maid.
“Bring me its heart, Sam; do not disappoint me. I have to know that the evil has been excised,” Franny hissed.
“I will bring you what you ask for, Fanny,” he gave her a quick kiss then climbed up to the driver’s bench, and with a flick of the whip the horse strained as the curricle was put into motion.
Sam had the roof in place so no one would see who was inside as he turned onto the lane in the direction of the Great North Road.
Fanny felt happier than she had in, well since she married the boring man she was tied to.
She was free of the evil influence which had taken over her house for a year.
She managed to slip back inside unnoticed and went to bed.
She had told the maid that usually assisted her that she would go right to bed after she said goodnight to Jane and did not need help.
It was something that she had done a number of times over the months, so it was not wholly unexpected.
She fell into a deep, restful sleep, certain that everything would soon be set to rights.
Mrs Manning was the first to wake. She immediately detected the taste of laudanum as she had it some years before and hated the way it made her feel.
She saw that Miss Browning was still sound asleep as she started to become cognizant and rubbed the effects of sleep out of her eyes.
The clock on the wall told her that it was past four in the morning.
She panicked and ran to John’s bed, her knees almost buckling with relief as she saw her son sleeping peacefully.
Next to John she could see Jane’s blond hair on the pillow as the three-year-old slumbered.
When she looked at Miss Lizzy’s bed she started to panic in earnest. It was empty!
Sometimes the little miss would crawl under her bed, but she was not there, and she was nowhere else in the nursery.
The missing child, coupled with the fact that someone had drugged them ,made Tammy Manning realise in that horrible moment that there had been foul play.
She ran downstairs to the lone footman on duty, calling for him to wake the master and send him to the nursery then to rouse all the able-bodied servants.
Ten minutes later Mr Bennet was running up the stairs and burst into the nursery, the nervousness at being summoned at this hour plain to see on his face.
He knew when he was told he was urgently needed in the nursery that something was very wrong.
He was about to berate the sleeping nursemaid when Mrs Manning stopped him and pointed to Lizzy’s bed.
His feeling of dread multiplied by a million when he saw it was empty.
It took the former wet nurse but a few sentences to explain to the master what had happened; that someone had drugged them and taken the little miss.
The dinner dishes were still on the little table, which was not normal.
The maid that delivered them should have cleared them away hours ago.
Bennet lifted the lid on the teapot, dipped his finger into the liquid and tasted it. There was no question that someone had dosed the tea with laudanum. It was then that a dishevelled Mr Hill entered the nursery.
“Hill,” he barked, “have your wife wake Mrs Bennet and bring her to me, then have someone go wake Mr William Lucas as he is not only the mayor but the presiding magistrate as well. Please inform him that Miss Lizzy has been taken and we need as many men as possible to search for her.” Mr Hill nodded and rushed to carry out his master’s orders.
Miss Browning started to stir and woke up with her head feeling like someone had used it as a drum.
Bennet had all of the adults exit the nursery to give the two children within a chance to return to sleep.
When Mrs Hill appeared and asked where her master wanted to see Mrs Bennet, he told her to have her wait in his study and that she was to be guarded until he got there.
He went to his chambers to dress, and when he walked into his study his wife looked suspiciously calm for one so pregnant who had been woken in the middle of the night.
“Where is Lizzy?” Bennet demanded with no preamble.
“In the nursery sleeping,” she replied with a sniff. “I dare say that even demons need their sleep…” Before she could continue, Bennet did something that he had never done in his life before; he slapped his wife.
“As God is my witness, Fanny Bennet,” he closed in so there were scant inches as his face hovered over hers while she stared at him with a stupefied look at his having struck her, “if I find out that you had anything to do with this tonight, I will see you hang!” Fanny was not quick witted, but she knew that she had to stick to her story.
There was no evidence against her; it all pointed at the silly maid, Jenny.
“You can hit me as many times as you want, you brute,” Fanny said defiantly, “but I have no idea where your daughter is. When I went to kiss my Jane, she was in her bed.” Just then Mrs Hill knocked on the study door.
“Master,” she whispered, “the maid Jenny Brown, the one who delivered the nursemaid’s dinner, is gone.
All of her belongings are gone too, and I found this under her mattress.
” Mrs Hill held up a bottle with sticky brown liquid that was half empty.
Bennet took it, removed the stopper, and closed immediately as the putrid smell of the opium-lased drug wafted in the air.