Chapter Fourteen
FOURTEEN
FOR DAYS AFTER his return from London, Reacher slinks around like a wounded animal, shutting himself up in the study, or in his room with only Finchley for company.
I don’t think he expected me to call his bluff on the deed, and now that I have, he doesn’t know what to do with himself.
Whenever I enter a room that he’s already in, he’ll find an urgent excuse to get up and leave.
Won’t eat his meals with Arabella and me.
He’s just as angry with her over the whole business as he is with me.
‘He always was a sulker,’ Arabella reassures me.
‘A true master of the silent treatment. But he will see sense once the loan is secured. In the meantime, shall we play a merry piano track over his movements, like in the cinema?’ But the piano is wedged in a corner, missing several keys since its outing at Christmas and covered in dead orchids, so we decide against this trick.
The two of us normally take an afternoon tea break in the drawing room, Mrs Allen leaving out a tray of bread-and-butter or sandwiches for us after she’s started the fire in there.
It’s coming up to that time, one day in late March, when I spot Mutton creeping across the east lawn as I’m scraping off my boots.
Something in his gait makes me stop to watch: he seems off-kilter, like when you’ve spun round and round in circles and can’t walk in a straight line any more. A drunken sway to his step.
‘All right there, Muttsy!’ I call out to him.
He lifts his head slowly, looking around till he spots me, then starts to approach with the same slow shamble. As he draws closer, I hear a low whine in his throat. His eyes are large, showing the whites.
‘What’s the matter, boy?’
He can’t answer me, but cringes when I try to touch his flank. It’s hard to tell with a dog, but I think he’s in pain. The whine heightens in pitch when he moves.
‘I’ll go and fetch Tom,’ I tell him. ‘You stay here.’
When I find Tom, he’s out by the boathouse, chopping up a tree that came down earlier in the year from the winter winds. The axe is dull-bright in his thick hands.
‘Mutton’s not himself,’ I tell him.
The axe blade falls with a thunk, sending chips of wood flying. He pauses, propping its hilt against the remainder of the felled trunk. ‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. Come and see.’
Back on the east lawn, Mutton has disappeared. Can’t have made it far, though, not at the speed he was moving. I have a walk-around, and eventually hear scrabbling coming from the old cottage. Must have gone in there to hide.
Inside, it’s hard to recognize this as the place I’d called home six months ago.
The door – swollen from the flood – has never closed properly since, leaving the interior open to the elements.
Pools of stagnant water sit on the floor, alongside piles of mulch where vegetation has blown in to rot.
The stench of fox piss. One of the chairs had toppled over, nibbled at by something.
And here in the middle of the scene is Mutton, cowering at the foot of what was once the armchair.
He’s been sick: yellow-pink vomit glistens by his head.
When I get closer, I see flecks of blood floating in the pool.
Tom rushes over, squatting to examine the dog. ‘What’s happened, boy?’
Mutton looks up at him, his panting laboured. A plea in his canine gaze.
‘Mutton!’ He reaches out to touch the dog’s back, but Mutton flinches away, then yelps at the pain the movement causes him. Tom hesitates, then tries Mutton’s face. This is tolerated: Tom caresses his snout, his brow, his ears, gentle as a mother with a newborn baby.
‘I don’t know what happened,’ I say. ‘I just found him like this, walking funny.’
There are tears glittering in Tom’s eyes, and when he speaks again, his voice is rough, choking. ‘His ears are all cold.’
I come closer, and that’s when I catch it: a faint smell of garlic on the dog’s hot, heavy breath.
Nothing so strong that you’d normally notice it, mind, but it’s enough to send ice shooting up my back.
That scent haunts my nightmares. Underpins the stark memories of that terrible day in Penarth – just after Dad was let go.
I can still see the Reese family clearly, each member hunched over in pain.
Mr Reese, Mrs Reese, the old woman, the nanny and Kenneth.
A sudden illness striking them all like the biblical plagues.
Their faces contorted in agony. Moaning, squirming.
Clinging to sick bowls. That garlic mingled with bile and shit.
Blood in the bed pans. All of us helping to fetch and carry – even Mam called up from the kitchens, even me.
Fresh water, blankets, lavender-scented cloths to wipe their foreheads.
The little boy in his nursery bed, shaking in a seizure.
Eyes rolled back in his skull. Blood as he bites his tongue.
Child’s pulse sputtering like a trapped bird.
His little hands so cold, so very cold. The doctor delivering his verdict.
‘Arsenic,’ I say. Mutton must have got into the rat poison. But it’s kept high up on a shelf in the shed. The tin is sealed, the door locked. He couldn’t have got at it. Unless he found and ate one of the dishes left scattered around on Reacher’s orders. Tucked out of sight to tempt the vermin.
‘You greedy bastard,’ Tom sobs. ‘Why’d you do that, Mutton?’
The dog only whimpers in response.
‘What do we do?’ Tom looks up to me, putting me in charge.
But I don’t remember what the doctor did for the Reeses.
I don’t remember any medicine passing their lips at all.
‘Let’s take him inside,’ I say at last. I fetch a blanket and we roll Mutton on to it as if it’s a medical stretcher.
Carry it between us as gently as we can.
Still, the dog cries at every tiny jostle.
Tom and I take him through to the kitchen.
‘Put him by the oven,’ Mrs Allen tells us, after I explain things, touching a wobbling hand to her mouth. ‘That’s his favourite spot.’
So we lower him with great care on to the floor. Somewhere he can feel safe and warm.
The commotion on the lawn must have reached the main house, as Arabella and Reacher appear shortly, stepping tentatively into the servants’ quarters. Strange to see them here, where they don’t belong, but Mutton gives an exhausted wag of his tail when he hears their voices.
‘Should I drive up to town to fetch the vet?’ asks Reacher once I’ve filled him in, our quarrel momentarily forgotten in the face of this shared disaster. He looks stricken, his face pallid with concern.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. Try to remember the doctor in Penarth. What had he said? No antidote – that was it. Just bedrest, taking plenty of fluids. Time and waiting. ‘I don’t think there’s anything a vet could do,’ I say. ‘He’s already thrown up. We should try to get some water into him.’
So Tom has a go at dribbling water on to Mutton’s mouth and nose with a damp rag.
The dog twitches his tongue, but makes no effort to drink.
Arabella taps her fingers nervously on the kitchen table.
Reacher blows his nose loudly. Otherwise, we all sit in silence, not really noticing the cups of tea that Mrs Allen sets out for us.
The feeling of keeping vigil. The Reeses all recovered in the end.
Even Kenneth … after a fashion. I heard – afterward – he was never quite the same.
Not so bright. Struggled to remember things.
The poison creating a permanent barrier in his unformed mind.
But I don’t know how true that is; I wasn’t allowed to see him for myself.
Warm in his blanket and surrounded by his family, Mutton flutters his eyes shut and falls asleep. One paw twitches. Goes still.
After what feels like hours, I set down my still-full mug and stand, stretching the cramp from my back. Night is falling outside. I go over to Mutton and tuck the blanket over him, covering his slack face, the peep of white that glitters hollowly from between his eyelids. ‘I’ll put him outside.’
‘Not in the cold,’ says Tom.
Mrs Allen rubs circles on her husband’s back. ‘We have to, love. We can’t leave him by the stove. Look, in the morning we’ll dig him a proper—’
Tom closes his eyes. ‘Don’t say it.’
Reacher sniffs loudly, clears his throat. ‘Poor old boy.’
‘We’ll find a nice spot tomorrow,’ I tell Tom. ‘I can plant something over him.’
‘What if the foxes get him?’
‘All right,’ I try, ‘how about the larder, then? He’ll be safe in there.’