Page 37 of All of Us Murderers

Twenty

Gideon went off shortly after that, presumably to go about finding out what he could, as well as to pack.

Zeb had packed his things, such as they were, before coming down to breakfast. Hopefully, the doctor would have the space to take the bags while giving them a lift to town.

If not, Zeb would happily abandon his luggage as the price of departure.

They were assuming Gideon could just leave along with Zeb, of course.

Would that look odd? Did Gideon have to resign?

Did he have a notice period, and was that enforceable when your employer was an unconscionable swine morally responsible for a death?

Zeb had always been sacked, so the question of notice had never arisen.

Gideon would know his own situation and make his own plan. Zeb just had to make sure he was ready to go whenever the doctor got here. It couldn’t possibly be before noon, but he intended to be poised and waiting by eleven at the latest, in case.

As he was finishing his third cup of tea, reiterating Ready at eleven in his head to fix it there, Jessamine walked into the breakfast room. She wore a long black dress with an extravagant black lace shawl around her shoulders, like a dowager of the previous century.

“Good morning, Cousin Zeb,” she said in the hushed tones appropriate to a cathedral. “Oh, you have breakfasted. I don’t know how anybody could.”

“You’re in mourning,” Zeb said.

“Of course. Poor, poor Elise.” Her mouth worked, and she pulled out a black-edged handkerchief. Clearly, they had all the funereal trappings conveniently to hand.

“It’s very sad. I hear you’re going to marry Hawley.”

“He asked me to. And I said yes, if Wynn will give his permission—because I do need someone, one of you, but—but Zeb, oh, Cousin Zeb—” She gave him big liquid brown eyes in a pleading look.

“I don’t know how to say this, with poor Elise lying dead, but I must. I could not bear it if I lost my chance at happiness, even if it costs my modesty. Zeb, will you hear me out?”

Zeb was absolutely not going to sit through a girlish proposal, and particularly not since everything about her was cementing his conviction that Elise had been right.

There was something studied in her manner, something knowing or even mocking behind her eyes, and he felt a violent prickle of hostility. “Sorry, I don’t have time to talk now.”

“Why not? What else have you to do?”

Zeb grabbed at the first excuse that presented itself. “I have to pack,” he lied.

“Pack? You’re leaving?” Something in her face changed just a little. “But you promised to stay.”

“Well, I’m not going to,” Zeb said, and left the room because there was a limit to how much he could tolerate before ten in the morning. He headed for the library instead. A room full of books felt safe.

He walked in, took a long breath of relief, coughed at the taste of it, and realised Bram was in the most comfortable chair.

He looked appalling, hollow-eyed and pallid, sucking on one of Wynn’s vile cigarettes. There was a pall of smoke around him already; God knew how long he’d been here. He glanced round at Zeb as he came in, but said nothing.

“Bram,” Zeb said, and realised he had no idea how to proceed. I’m so sorry your wife’s dead, unless of course you murdered her. I’d offer my condolences but you raped the housemaid. I don’t know how to think about anything any more.

“Bram,” he said again. “Nice day. Er, I mean the mist. Lifted.” Bram didn’t respond to that hopeless display. Zeb could hardly blame him. “How are you?” he tried.

“She’s dead,” Bram said.

“Yes. Yes, she is.”

“They’re both dead.”

“Both—who?”

“The women. The women are dead.”

Zeb pulled over a chair and sat down. “Elise is dead, yes. What happened to her?”

Bram shook his head. He looked—Zeb was trying very hard not to think haunted—dismayed. “I did as she asked. I tried to please her, but nothing was ever enough. I could have been better, more generous to you, if she—”

“Elise didn’t owe me anything,” Zeb said over him.

“You set us against one another from the start, as if she and I were fighting over your money, but you made that happen. You broke your promise to me: nobody else. And I don’t know what you mean by ‘more’ generous,” he added, unable to stop himself. “You couldn’t have been less.”

“She was my wife!”

“You had a mistress!”

Bram didn’t respond with a jab of his own, for once. “I did,” he said. “And I repented. I pledged my fidelity to Elise. I proved it. You have no idea what I did for her.”

There was something in his voice as he said that. Zeb felt an unpleasant prickle down his spine. “What did you do?”

Bram sucked hard on the dog-end of his cigarette, stubbed it out, lit another in a puff of cloying smoke. Zeb said, “What, Bram?”

“It was the girl. Florence. She came to my house, made demands. I told Elise she didn’t matter. I showed her in word and deed. I could hardly risk my marriage. What did she expect? How should I have known?”

“Known what? What happened?”

The fingers of Bram’s free hand were tapping convulsively on the arm of his chair. “She claimed she was in a delicate situation. Her father had thrown her out of her home. She said it was mine, my child to provide for. That she needed my help.”

“Your mistress came to your house in the family way? Mother of God!”

“She told Elise. Elise—Elise told me to prove that I cared only for her. And I did, I proved it. Not one penny, and so I told Florence. Coming to my home, forcing herself on my wife’s notice—Elise would have left me, scarcely two months after the marriage!

What would people have said? And Florence had no claim on me, in law. No proof at all.”

Zeb took a deep breath. The smoke caught unpleasantly in his throat. He glared at his brother. “So she was expecting your child, her father threw her out, and then you threw her out. Congratulations, you upstanding pillar of the community. What happened?”

“She attempted an illegal act to rid herself of the consequences. That wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault!”

“She attempted an abortion,” Zeb translated. “And—?”

“Died.”

Zeb stared at his brother. Bram’s hand shook as he brought the cigarette to his lips. “Don’t look at me like that. She came to my house, talked to my wife. She ruined my marriage, and she stopped me having children!”

“What?”

“Florence. When we told her to leave—Elise and I together—she prayed we would never have children. Called on God as her witness. She cursed us then, and she has come back to finish it now. Elise is dead, and she has come for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“On the wall of my room,” Bram said hoarsely. “Last night, after—I returned to my room and there was writing on the wall. A message from Florence.”

“And don’t tell me, after you went out, it vanished?”

“No,” Bram said. “It’s still there.”

“Oh. Well, that’s hardly supernatural,” Zeb said. “Anyone can write on a wall. Except a dead person, obviously.”

“She signed her name. She wrote that she will have her vengeance, and she signed it Florence.”

“For goodness’ sake, man. Who else knew about this girl?”

“Elise. Elise and I killed her. Elise made me choose, and I chose her, so Florence died and now Elise is dead and Florence has come for me—”

“Bram!” Zeb yelped. “Stop it! Look, are you absolutely sure she’s dead?”

“She fell down the stairs! You saw her!”

Zeb breathed deeply. “Not Elise, Florence. If Florence’s still alive, she could have—”

“I saw her grave,” Bram said. “I did not go to the funeral—I should hardly have wished to associate myself, in the circumstances. But I went to the grave.”

Zeb briefly constructed a plot around a death elaborately faked a decade ago and then told himself not to be ridiculous.

“Right. Well, clearly someone else knows. This house contains at least one peculiarly unkind practical joker, and you are the latest victim, that’s all.

You mustn’t believe this stuff or you’ll run mad. ”

“But she blames me,” Bram said, with terrible simplicity. “She blames us for her death, and she has avenged herself on Elise, and now she will come for me.”

Zeb’s loathing of him in that moment was a physical force. “Everything’s about you, isn’t it? You and the women you pick up and throw down. What about Rachel?”

“Who?”

“The housemaid!”

“What?”

“The one you had your way with,” Zeb said savagely. “Remember? In this house?”

Bram looked utterly blank. “What are you babbling about?”

“You forced yourself on one of the maids!” Zeb was spitting furious.

It swamped his usual feelings towards Bram, the complicated, ugly mix of anger, sorrow, and weary resentment.

“This visit or a previous one, I don’t know which, but you screwed one of the housemaids and she did not want you to!

Jesus Christ, you can hardly have forgotten!

Or did you simply not notice you were committing a rape, you prick? ”

“I did nothing of the sort.” Bram didn’t look defensive, or guilty, or even self-justifying, an expression with which Zeb was all too familiar. He just looked confused. “You must mean Hawley.”

Zeb gaped at him. Bram returned an equally baffled look. “I should hardly trouble Wynn’s staff in my position as his heir, Zebedee. That would be foolish in the extreme.”

“Wait,” Zeb said. “Have you bedded—pawed, touched, had any form of congress with—any of the staff here? Ever?”

“No.”

“The housemaid with dark hair? She wears it pulled back?”

Bram gave a tiny shrug, its sheer indifference more convincing than any oath. Zeb put his face in his hands.

He didn’t believe that Rachel had lied; he knew too many people who had suffered intimate assaults, and how much shame was attached to victims, to dismiss any such claim, and in any case, it had sounded true. He was also depressingly aware that Bram had a talent for believing his own bluster.