Authors: Bonnie
she, and what were the circumstances of her death? Why did the boys seem to hold their father accountable? Did he truly have some hand in her death, or was it mere childish blame for a loss they couldn’t comprehend?
If so, I understood that feeling. After my father, infant brother, and two sisters died, I’d been illogically angry with my mum, as if she should have done something to save them. Weren’t adults supposed to be all-powerful and protect their children, even defying death itself? It had taken me a bit of time to shake off such foolishness, and then Mum had given me a real reason to resent her by bringing Roger Dwyer into our lives.
I considered who in this odd household might be willing to talk to me about the
Allinson family. I finally decided my best bet might be Smithers.
One afternoon, I stopped by the boys’ room to tell them to read for a while, only
to find both sprawled across their beds, sleeping like cherubs. An earlier tramp through nature that day had worn them out.
Downstairs, I wandered through several rooms, admiring paintings, antique
furniture, ornate lamps, and family heirlooms. I stopped to study a portrait of some long-dead Allinson whose handsome features remained alive in Sir Richard. Put the master of the house in a ruff and cape and he could pass for his ancestor.
“May I help you?” Smithers’s unexpected voice came from behind me.
I turned to face his unblinking gaze. “Actually, I was searching for you. I wanted to ask a few questions.” He didn’t reply, so I forged ahead. “I’m rather adrift here. I feel as if I’ve walked into the middle of a play and don’t know all the characters or what has transpired. It would help if I knew more of the circumstances surrounding Lavinia Allinson’s death. I know nothing other than that she has passed.”
“The circumstances need not concern you, nor should they affect your ability to
impart knowledge to the young masters.”
How did he talk without moving any facial muscles except his lips?
Extraordinary.
“I don’t mean to pry or indulge in idle gossip. My first responsibility is to the
twins, and I feel I can best reach them if I understand more about their loss.”
The man blinked slowly. “Next month will be the anniversary. Mrs. Allinson died
from a sudden fever. If you have further questions, I suggest you ask them of the master.”
He stepped aside, making it clear I should vacate the room. I walked past him,
feeling his eerie presence behind me, and continued on toward the rear of the house, thinking I’d take another quick walk before dealing with the boys again.
When I turned to say as much to Smithers, the butler had vanished.
“Sneaky as a cat,” I muttered.
It was a little too chilly to be outdoors without a coat, but I couldn’t bear to return to the house. Once inside, I might not be able to escape again. So I strode quickly down one garden path then another to get my blood rushing, and surveyed the detritus of the summer’s growth. Soon those crunchy stalks and flowers gone to seed would melt back into the earth. Barren winter would hold sway for many months of drenching rain and occasional spitting snow, and always the rushing wind over this barren northern land.
On my left, I passed an overgrown yew hedge. Curious to see what the garden on
the other side might be like, I walked the perimeter but found no entrance. The hedge was far too dense to infiltrate, with no bare spots through which I might peer at the other side.
I stepped back and studied the uninterrupted wall of green.
My whim became a mission. I
would
find my way to the other side. I’d always felt obstacles were made to be overcome.
The quiet murmur of someone speaking on the far side of the hedge caught my
attention. I held my breath and listened more intently, but the moment I focused on it, the soft whisper ceased. Was someone or several people inside the garden? Perhaps it was a clandestine meeting place for lovers? I grinned at the idea of scrawny Smithers and behemoth Mrs. Growler indulging in a forbidden affair. That was something I must see.
Of course, I didn’t really believe they were the couple. Maybe that little maid
Molly and some footman or stable lad I hadn’t yet met. Certainly not Tom. That was beyond even my imagination.
I walked the hedge more slowly this time. The voice seemed to come and go
intermittently, never loud enough for me to be certain I’d actually heard anything. I had a growing sense the disembodied voice wasn’t a living person but an audible remnant of something long past.
A few of my London friends practiced spiritualism. I’d participated in some of
their séances and half believed—all right, maybe more than
half
—that the dead moved around us, unseen and unheard until they manifested to someone receptive enough to be aware of them. I’d never been a “sensitive” such as my pseudo-medium friend Madame Alijeva described, but supposedly even the most committed skeptics occasionally had an encounter. Given what I’d experienced since arriving at Allinson Hall, I could well believe in otherworldly entities existing here.
As if bolstered by my faith, the murmuring voice seemed to gather strength,
though still not sufficient for me to make out words. At the same moment, I spied a narrow gap in the hedge. I pushed aside a swath of branches that had hidden it and wedged my body through the hole, scraping my face and hands on twigs. If this had once been the true entrance to the garden, no one had used it in quite some time.
When I scanned the hidden garden, I wasn’t surprised to see no one there. I
rubbed at a scratch on my cheek and picked leaves from my hair as I turned in a slow circle. The flower beds were as untended as in the other gardens. A rose bed become a tangle of thorns graced the center of the rectangular space with a dry fountain as its centerpiece. A goat-legged satyr played his Pan flute. The basin below him held green slime-coated water and a spill of dead leaves.
Stone-paved paths had been devoured by grass and knee-high weeds. I trudged
through them to examine a stone grotto across the garden. This six-foot-tall alcove held the marble statue of an angel with her arms outstretched in blessing.
I stopped in front of the statue, grimed with dirt and moss and missing one hand
and the tip of her nose. She stood on a base as tall as my waist. Arranged around her feet was a pool of blue satin—a woman’s gown, an altar cloth of sorts. Only the statue’s white feet gleamed in the dimness. Polished by small hands, I realized as I noticed the camp inside the grotto.
A soggy rug covered the ground between the angel’s base and the stone wall.
Several mildewed pillows rested on it as well as a blanket and a rusty tin box. Boyishly crafted rifles made of slabs of wood, a slingshot, a dilapidated stuffed bear, also soggy from the recent rain.
Careful to disturb nothing, I squatted to open the box with the broken lock. Inside were normal boyhood treasures, jacks and a ball, a couple of miniature lead soldiers, toy horses. There was also a folded sheet of paper, well worn at the creases. Convincing myself it wasn’t prying and I needed to learn more about my charges, I unfolded the paper to read the boys’ secret thoughts.
We somenly vow to avenge Mothers death.
Sincrly,
The twins’ carefully written names were followed by two brown-red fingerprints.
A blood pact. Did they truly believe their father was somehow accountable?
Was he? Why did the circumstances surrounding Lavinia Allinson’s death seem
shrouded in mystery? A
sudden fever
seemed far too vague an explanation. I must uncover the heart of it and whether there was another side to Sir Richard, one darker and more sinister than I believed him capable of.
I replaced the box and left the boys’ camp. No—their refuge, notable for the fact
that it was outside the house.
As a youth, I’d had someplace similar to retreat to when things grew rough at
home. After my father died, Mum grasped on to brutish, hard-handed Roger Dwyer, who controlled our house with an iron fist. I’d escaped at every opportunity, hiding in my burrow in a nearby cemetery, sleeping in one of the older crypts with easily broken hinges. For the two years Dwyer ruled our house, this was my private space. I’d only slink home occasionally to see if my mum or Cynthia, needed anything. I invited Cynthia to join me if ever Dwyer laid a hand to her, but my older sister had her own escape. His name was Johnny Carlson, and she married him at age fifteen. Later, when they moved from London, they took my mum along.
Now, as I wandered the overgrown paths in the secret garden, I recalled that
terrible period in my life. I’d locked it away for quite some time, since it meant nothing in my adult life. I could look back now and feel sympathy for the youth who’d found a cemetery less frightening than home. I’d had quite a tutorial watching from my little den as men coupled in one of the few secret meeting spots available to them in the city. It was a common practice for working-class Joes to meet rich men with coins to spare for a little pleasure.
This practice I participated in myself when I grew a bit older. I became so
accustomed to observing men sucking and fucking, I nearly forgot society in general didn’t hold with it and we could be prosecuted for our perversion. The act never seemed wrong to me, no more than Sallys-in-the-alleys who lifted their skirts for customers with far less fear of coppers. I probably would’ve eventually gotten nabbed down on my knees in front of some bloke if Sylvester Leighton hadn’t taken my life in an entirely different direction. Now I’d diverted my life onto yet another path, one that had proven stranger than expected, I thought as I headed back to the gap in the hedge.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Allinson or ghost of some long-dead lady-in-waiting,” I said to
the garden before climbing through the opening.
I headed toward the house in that golden time before twilight. The sun wasn’t
quite setting, but the land was gilded in late-afternoon light. I had a view of the wilder lands beyond the garden stretching to the horizon, vast stretches of land that made a city man like myself, used to enclosing buildings, uneasy.
I spotted a mounted figure thundering across the landscape. Bareheaded, dark coat
flapping behind him, erect in the saddle as a general leading men into battle. The dark rider blended into his black horse so I could hardly tell where one ended and the other began. Sir Richard—it could be no one else—was a thrilling sight to behold and a figure straight from my romantic fantasies. I couldn’t easily put him out of my mind or ignore my attraction, when every time I turned around he seemed to be right in front of me.
Was I growing rock hard and shaky-kneed for a man who’d done something
awful to his wife and who terrorized his sons? Was I as bad as my weak-willed mother, who’d been so charmed by a vile man and so afraid of being alone she’d put up with anything to remain with him? If Roger Dwyer hadn’t gotten beaten to death in a street brawl, she probably never would’ve been free of the man.
Not such a fool as that. I could separate my primal desire for Allinson from a
clear-headed investigation into whether he was a murderer—not that I actually expected to discover he was. No messy feelings would cloud my judgment. I was Graham Cowrie, tutor extraordinaire and now Sherlock Holmes of the north.
It was difficult to uncover facts when there was no one to talk to except two
young boys, whom I could hardly grill about the circumstances surrounding their
mother’s death. I didn’t mind my time with Clive and Whit. Although they weren’t the easiest children to grow fond of, we got along all right. I grew quite invested in the challenge of creating new ways to keep their busy minds occupied.
We soon fell into a routine of sorts, starting our days with lessons best learned by rote, such as the times table, then moving on to history. When they went to boarding school, the boys would be expected to know the dates of some major events, but I tried to bring history alive with the more personal stories of the people involved. Anything told as a story became instantly more memorable.
Sometimes I’d call on the boys to help me act out a scene. This was tricky since
Clive could deliver no lines. But he
was
good at swordplay, and I’d often allow them to play under the guise of learning. Active children are happy children—or as happy as these two odd ducks could be.
By midmorning we—meaning I—were ready for a break. Unless it was pouring
buckets, we’d trudge across the wild lands or play tag in the gardens. I never let on that I’d found their secret hideout. The walled garden belonged to the boys alone.
Back in the schoolroom, we’d devour our lunch, then relax over an art project or
craft before beginning afternoon classes.
I caught not a glimpse of Sir Richard, who never sent for the boys to be brought to him in the evenings. I’d learned from Sylvester Leighton that was the way of the wealthy, a daily cursory acknowledgment of their offspring. Allinson didn’t seem to care even that much. His neglect made my opinion of him shift more to the negative side. But for all I knew, he’d left the estate again. Certainly no one would keep me informed of his comings and goings.
As days passed, I experienced no more intimations of an invisible presence,
movements at the edge of my sight, mysterious whispers, or those dark moods that had overcome me just after my arrival. But I also kept myself as far from the older parts of the building, including the tower, as possible.
Tom came to me each evening for his lessons, which consisted of him drawing or
painting with great talent and me occasionally watching but mostly working on my story.
I’d questioned Tom about the woman in the tower, but he wouldn’t say who the drawing was meant to depict. I learned he could talk, but his vocabulary was limited, and he expressed more through his drawings than with words.