Chapter 15 #2
Caroline was on the very edge of her seat, the hard lip pressing against the backs of her thighs.
“He gave me a little glass of liquid. It was bitter and…odd. Like leaves or something. It made me very relaxed. It was nice, actually. I slumped onto the table, then I must have slipped out of my chair, because the next thing I knew, Rab was helping me up. I had a scratch on my arm, a bruise on my leg. And a terrible headache. He was very kind. He looked in my pupils, made me drink a cup of tea, wouldn’t let me leave until I could walk straight.
But when the dizziness faded, I felt fine.
Relaxed.” Her lips curled into a self-deprecating smile. “It was nice.”
“I saw you,” Caroline said. “A week ago. I saw you at the chemistry.”
Mary Jane nodded glumly.
“I tried a few other nerve tonics after Charlie disappeared. To dull the edge, help me sleep. They all made me groggy. But none made me forget the way Rab’s had.
So I went into his chemistry last week and asked for a bottle.
He wasn’t happy to see me. I told him I had money, I could pay, but he said the tonic he had given me wasn’t for sale.
Said I was better off sticking with gin. ”
Caroline swallowed her disappointment. “What happened next?” she pressed, resisting the urge to bounce her foot. “After you woke up, I mean. After you tried the medicine.”
Mary Jane’s eyes flicked to her lap. Caroline watched a wave of sorrow break across the other woman’s face, and she was sorry to be the cause of it. But she must push on this wound. She was so close to the truth. She could feel it.
“Charlie was waiting for me when I got home,” Mary Jane said.
“Straightaway, he knew something was off. Saw the scratch on my arm, looked into my eyes. He was more upset than I had ever seen him. He didn’t hurt me, but he grabbed my shoulders, told me I’d better tell him what had happened.
It…it reminded me of Peter. It scared me.
So I told him the truth. And when I was done, he got up and left.
“I didn’t know what I’d done, but I knew it was bad.
I paced the room, thought about going out into the streets, but it was nearly dark, and I didn’t know where to look for him.
When Charlie finally appeared in the courtyard, I ran out, threw myself at him.
I was so happy to see him. He’d brought a bag full of clothes.
He’d left the boardinghouse. He said he was going to live here, with me. ”
Stay in Stafford, her brother’s note had read.
Don’t come here, whatever you do. Something has changed. I can’t say more, but it’s not safe. I’ll come to you. As soon as I sort things, I’ll come to you.
Was this the change he had spoken of? That he’d left the Full Moon and was living here? Caroline resisted the urge to glance over Mary Jane’s shoulder at the little bed, the uneven mattress that she and Charlie had shared. There would have been no place for Caroline here.
“It was the happiest month of my life.” Mary Jane’s voice was tight, her eyes suddenly bright. “But then…”
She lifted the chipped mug to her lips. It was empty, Caroline knew, the muddy leaves cold and congealed. But it was something to do with her hands.
“I…I know I should have waited. Until we were married. He said he wanted to marry me. He gave me this ring.” She raised her hand, turned her wrist so the gold caught the light. “But I should have waited.”
The blood blazed in Caroline’s cheeks as she belatedly caught Mary Jane’s meaning.
Not your business, said a voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like Carys’s. But it was her business. Her brother had disappeared without a trace. No detail was too small, too intimate. She could not look away now.
Caroline reached across the table, touched Mary Jane’s fingers with her own.
The contact seemed to calm the other woman. She gulped a breath, went on, “In March, I told him…I told him I was expecting. I thought he’d be happy. But he wasn’t. He got real quiet. Real still. And he said he had to talk to Rab. Got up and left without another word. I never saw him again.”
Silence fell, thick and sticky as blood.
That was it. No answers. Only more questions. And Caroline did not want to ask the one sitting in her mouth. Did not want to know the answer. All those curls of dead hair in the Blevins Bible. The miniature headstones beside her mother’s.
“And the baby?”
Mary Jane shook her head. A fat tear fell into her teacup. “Smart thing. Left me, too. Jumped ship before she got too big. Must’ve known I’d be no good of a mother.”
“Where on earth have you been?”
Mrs. Easton stood with her hands on her hips, her brow creased in a mixture of anger and concern.
Caroline leaned the umbrella against the wall by the cellar door and steeled herself.
“Well, Miss Huxley? I was about to send for the police!”
“Sorry.” Caroline turned, feigning cheerfulness. “The line at the miller’s was through the door, and it was raining so hard I was worried about the wheat. So I popped into the teahouse on Chicksand Street to wait it out.”
A flimsy story, but it was the best her addled mind could come up with.
“Just ‘popped into the teahouse,’ did you?” Mrs. Easton barked. “For two hours? With a murderer on the loose?”
“I ran into someone I knew. Someone from…from before.” She hoped the whiteness of her face was convincing, would allude to some trauma she did not wish to relive. “I lost track of time while we were talking. I’m so sorry I worried you, Mrs. Easton. It won’t happen again.”
The sack of flour had felt twice as heavy as she lifted it onto her shoulder in that poor little flat in Spitalfields.
She had left Mary Jane her whole purse of money, save Mrs. Easton’s change from the miller.
And the raisin bun from the bakery, which Mary Jane had started eating before Caroline closed the door.
“Fix that window,” Caroline had said as she handed over the coins, nodding to the wad of rags and newspaper plugging the shattered pane.
“I will.” Mary Jane’s eyes widened at the heft of silver in her hand, and when she raised them to Caroline’s, they shone with unshed tears. “I had so hoped to meet you one day, Miss Foster. I’m sorry it had to be like this.”
Caroline had swallowed hard against the swelling lump in her own throat. For something to say, she asked, “What happened? To the window, I mean.”
“Oh.” Mary Jane shrugged as she pocketed Caroline’s purse. “Some man. They act like little boys sometimes.”
A man. A client had done that.
“And the…the bedrolls?”
It was inappropriate. She was being rude. But she did not know if she would have another opportunity to ask, and the neat line of blankets and pillows would stick like a seed in her teeth as she replayed this strange hour over again in her head.
“For my friends,” Mary Jane said, flicking long fingers across the courtyard, to where, Caroline remembered, a group of women stood huddled against the rain. “It’s not safe out there. Not safe to sleep rough, with the Ripper walking the streets.”
—
That’s what Caroline thought of as she helped Mrs. Easton turn the ground wheat to bread dough, as she rubbed beeswax on the banisters and polished the parlor mantelpiece.
Four women sleeping together in that tiny flat, with the missing windowpane right beside the door, and a murderer prowling the streets.
She was lucky to have this job, lucky to have a roof over her head and food on the table.
If she was caught in her lie before she found Charlie, she might find herself beside those poor women, sleeping on Mary Jane’s brick floor.
If she wasn’t killed first.
“Right,” Mrs. Easton said, checking the list she’d made on a piece of butcher paper.
Caroline had felt the landlady’s eyes on her as she’d gone about her tasks, but her vague story seemed to have done the trick, as Mrs. Easton had asked her no further questions.
“We’ll wash the windows next. And we can beat the second-floor rugs in the morning if it’s not still raining… ”
Caroline nodded and smiled politely, but her mind was far away.
Only six more nights before the full moon.
She would give the landlady no reason to suspect her.
She would avoid Rab at all costs, and if they happened to meet, she would keep her face a mask of pleasant politeness.
He had drugged Mary Jane. He had been the last person Charlie saw that night in March.
He was the reason for her brother’s disappearance. She was certain of it.