Page 52 of The Peculiar Incident at Thistlewick House

‘I shouldn’t be here. It’s making everyone uncomfortable,’ Mallory said, when they were left briefly alone in the dining room after luncheon.

It had been a stilted affair, the formality of it clearly made her uncomfortable and she ate very little.

She pushed back her chair, stood up and walked to the windows. Edward joined her.

‘My cousin is still master here and the staff are paid to do as he instructs. It doesn’t matter what they think.

Besides, I’m simply not prepared to part with you now, or at any point in the future; partly because I fear for our lives, but also because I love you, Mallory Hornchurch: Living Wonder, lusus naturae and incredible Toad Girl – even though I seem to have declared this to everyone but you. ’

‘But we are very different people and we want different things, Edward. I have no desire for great wealth and am content with my simple life.’

‘Amassing a fortune is no longer as important to me as it once was. I spent years striving to do just this as a compensation for the way I was born and the injustice I suffered at my father’s hands.

But last night, in your tumbledown cottage, there was no banquet to be had, no expensive port and no guest bed with feather mattress and silk coverlet.

We didn’t need money to have a hearty meal, a good laugh and an amazing evening. ’

He bent down, closer to her face and she tipped her head up to his.

Their lips met briefly, as his hands cupped her cheeks.

He reached for her slim waist and pulled her close.

She slid her arms up his body and rested them around his neck.

They stood in silence for a few moments – the longing between them almost palpable.

He let out a small groan, then released her.

More than anything, he wanted to lead her upstairs to his room and demonstrate exactly how strong his feelings for her were.

Being together in her isolated cottage, where they knew the truth of her identity, was one thing.

But any such behaviour in his cousin’s respectable household, was quite another.

Mallory, however, as much as he loved her, was currently a distraction and he needed to focus.

They should return to the village and ensure the constable investigated Mr Palmer’s involvement in the horrific events of forty years ago.

His meandering thoughts wandered to the Benevolent Committee – the three men running the village back then, even though the old doctor had been the only one still alive until yesterday, and had at no point been capable of chasing him through the woods with a gun.

They’d always been the moral backbone of Thistlewick Tye and yet, it was now apparent that the village had always been decidedly lacking in morals.

But even the committee’s successors had no real motive for wanting Edward dead.

The current Dr Appleby and Reverend Fallow were too young to have been involved with the circus, and Christian Felthorpe had been so desperately in love with Zella that Edward found it hard to believe he’d have been part of such a thing.

Mrs Drayton knocked and entered, still embarrassed by all that had passed that morning, but aware of her duties.

‘Miss Cleyford is here to see you, sir. She seems rather agitated.’

A moment later, Sarah was shown into the room, looking quite flushed. ‘It’s my mother. She passed away a little while ago and I was with her when she took her dying breath—’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Mallory stepped forward and embraced her friend.

‘I knew it was coming, regardless of the influenza, and we’ve had a difficult relationship over the years, but I will miss her.

’ Finally Sarah’s voice cracked and she allowed herself a few moments of grief, her head resting on Mallory’s shoulder, before she wiped her eyes and pulled herself together.

‘It was her time, but it’s not the reason I’m here.

To my amazement, the very next moment she started rambling in a strong accent, anxious about the safety of her daughters.

As unbelievable as the idea was, I could only assume the Russian fortune-telling lady had appeared in my poor, dead mother’s body.

So, when I saw the doctor leave for his rounds, I rushed across the road for Hazibub.

We were able to explain everything to her and he’s currently at my house, and disturbing truths are spilling out, thick and fast. He has news of his own and it’s imperative that you and Mallory return with me. ’ She looked at Edward. ‘Now.’

The pair didn’t need telling twice and Edward led the ladies to the hall, grabbing their coats and his cane, and asking the housekeeper to let her master know they were heading to the village.

* * *

Ten minutes later, the three of them were standing in the Cleyfords’ front parlour, with Hazibub and Sarah’s extraordinarily sprightly looking mother sitting in the fireside chairs.

‘This is the man I told you about,’ Sarah said, pushing Edward forward. ‘Mr Blackmore.’

‘Ah, the man who spent a lifetime pretending to talk to spirits but had no such ability, and yet is the person I understand we must rely on to sort out this horrific mess?’

There was no trace of an accent, which surprised them both, after Sarah’s claims.

‘You don’t sound like Katerina,’ Mallory said.

Mrs Cleyford – or whoever was possessing her – sighed.

‘The time for charades and lies has passed, don’t you think, my little Toad Girl?

The very reasons I pretended to be a foreigner all those years ago are the reasons I must own the truth now.

Like many who join the circus, I was running from an uncomfortable past and created a new identity to make sure I was never discovered.

I had befriended a young Russian artist, and was his muse for a couple of years, so I took on his nationality.

It suited me to be dark and mysterious.’

‘I knew it,’ Mallory said, folding her arms across her chest.

‘And I always knew you were brighter than most,’ Katerina replied.

‘The truth is this whole mess is my fault and I am responsible for all these deaths – both back then and now. I was hiding from my past and did not want to be recognised. I’d spoken with that accent for so many years, that by the end I was even dreaming in it.

’ She took a deep breath and shook her head.

‘It became second nature, and even my beloved Samson didn’t know the truth.

I was Russian; I was exotic; I could be anything I wanted to be—’

‘What is going on?’ The door to the parlour burst open and young Dr Appleby entered the room, having clearly let himself into their house. ‘My maid said she saw my father heading this way with Miss Cleyford earlier.’

Edward was cross at the interruption. Katerina had been about to explain why she felt the murders were her fault, although he couldn’t imagine that she’d poisoned her family and friends…

or had she? Mallory said the woman had disappeared the afternoon of the massacre and her body was not amongst those dead around the campfire.

‘Ah, the man who was killing little Esfir,’ Hazibub announced and the doctor looked as shocked as Edward felt by the pronouncement.

‘Get the constable,’ Edward whispered to Sarah. If accusations and secrets were to spill out, they must be witnessed. ‘Go now.’ She nodded and slipped out of the room unnoticed.

‘Father, what are you doing here?’ Appleby went to Hazibub’s side and laid a concerned hand on his shoulder. ‘You should be in bed. You’re not well.’

‘I am being greatly better than you think,’ Hazibub replied. ‘And I am also knowing now that you put the needle in Mrs Shaw’s arm and watched her die. We discussed it not two hours ago, did we not?’

The doctor looked at the faces in the room and gave a half-chuckle.

‘My poor father’s infirm of both mind and body.

Please pay no mind to his dramatic pronouncements.

’ He glared at the old man. ‘Come now, Father, we must be going.’ He put out his hand but Hazibub shook his head and remained in the armchair, as Edward worked through the logic of the shocking claim and the truth hit him.

‘Of course! I’d suspected poor Mrs Drayton of the crime but this makes much more sense.

It’s been dancing around the edges of my brain – how Barnabas talked of rushing into the bedroom to embrace his wife’s body, lifeless and pink.

How he lifted up her soft, warm arm. But the significance of his words have only just occurred to me.

She can’t have died in the early hours, because the blood would have ceased to be pumped around her body and started to settle.

Whilst it is true that the dead can remain warm for many hours, had she died when the doctor claimed, she would have appeared pale, and rigor mortis would surely have started to set in. ’

Mallory gasped and Katerina threw the doctor a look that would have frozen over the hottest desert.

‘You walked into her room,’ Edward confidently surmised, ‘arriving ridiculously early, quickly establishing that no one had been in to see her since the previous evening, and administered the overdose right there and then. She had been dead mere minutes when my cousin rushed to her side.’

‘How dare you accuse me of such! You doubt the word of a doctor?’