Maplecroft (The Borden Dispatches #1)(6)

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Over the summer, the situation deteriorated.

I was busy—I was distracted by other patients, and by the gossip of William’s presence and behavior lingering over the place like a fog. The murky context of the Borden home life obscured the truth from me. It was not my place to cut through the word of mouth. I was a friend to them, yes, absolutely. Or I tried to be. But I was not family, and whatever was happening across the street was a family matter.

By the end of July the shouting had stopped. I know, because the weather was overly warm, even given the season. All of us left our windows open, but I barely heard a sound from my neighbors, though my wife said she’d heard strange noises—the kind that made her worry for their health. She had seen their shapes at the window, moving slowly past the wind-stirred curtains.

I told her she shouldn’t watch or listen for such things, that it wasn’t polite. She pointed out that it was difficult not to watch or listen, given that the house was scarcely twenty yards away from our own, and if they wished to keep their problems private, they could close the windows or leave the city for their negotiations.

Then she said that in fact, Emma Borden had done just that. She’d packed up her things and called a carriage, and that was the last anyone had seen of her. (Somehow, this had escaped my notice, too.)

For that matter, William had left town as well a week previously—not entirely of his own accord. Andrew’s influence had persuaded the authorities to become more aggressively involved, and the young man had vanished without returning.

Assuming this was the case, only Andrew, Abigail, and the younger daughter were left in the house. No wonder things had quieted. I hoped this meant the end, and that their lives could return to normal.

Surely if left in peace, the remaining Bordens would sort out their differences and their health would be restored.





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I’ll never forget the night of August 3. I wish I could—but I’ve played it over in my head a thousand times, and it’s burned there like a book of photographs, flipped together to make a moving scene.

It was late, but my wife and I were still up. We were turning down the wicks and extinguishing the gas lamps, settling in for the night when we heard a loud thump downstairs against our front door, followed by a gruesome wail that sounded part human, part drowning animal.

My wife was alarmed, but I told her not to panic and I lit another lantern to carry downstairs. “Stay here!” I commanded over my shoulder. It wasn’t necessary. She’d already thrown herself into the water closet and locked the door.

Down the stairs I rushed, stumbling over my slippers and wincing with every pound upon the door. They weren’t the ordinary knockings of a late-night visitor, or the frantic beating of a desperate patient—a noise I knew quite well, after a career of delivering babies and attending the dying.

Instead it was a low, dull thud repeated without rhythm, and the cry came with it again. I wanted to shut my ears against the bellowing yowl, but I forced myself down the corridor. And there, shadowed in the colored glass of the small-framed window, I saw a shape flinging itself heavily, repeatedly, against the front door.

I froze, reconsidering my decision to answer. Whatever struggled on the other side couldn’t be human, could it? But then I heard one word and my resolve quickened.

“Help.”

A woman’s voice. Garbled, even in that single syllable. But recognizable.

“Help us,” she tried again, and I rushed toward the door.

I flung it open and held up my lantern. There she was, Abigail Borden—for all that I scarcely recognized her. How long had it been since I’d seen her? This change could not have dropped upon her overnight. What kind of failure was I as a physician and neighbor that this ghastly transformation had eluded me?

Her skin looked like that of a waterlogged corpse, doughy and far too white. She seemed swollen, and her hair was wild around her shoulders, falling down her back in seaweed tangles.

I croaked at her, “Mrs. Borden!” though there was no good reason I shouldn’t have used her first name. I’d known her as “Abigail” for years, but this did not seem like her, for all that I knew it must be. I wanted to impose some distance between myself and this woman. Something was wrong. Any fool could see it. Even me.

I stammered again, “Mrs. Borden—what on earth is the matter?”

Her eyes met mine and they were rheumy and too large for their sockets, with surprise or stress or horror. She said, “It’s poison, I think.” Every word was thick in her mouth, and I wondered if she hadn’t been drinking. I struggled to convince myself of any new cause—alcohol? laudanum? Dependency could change a person terribly; this much I knew. I clung to this explanation of what stood swaying before me.

“Poison?”

She was unstable on her feet. I should’ve reached for her, taken her arm and steadied her.

In my career I’ve had my hands upon more revolting bodies than a layman is likely to encounter in a lifetime of trying. I’ve squeezed boils, soaked my hands in blood and pus, slipped in entrails, swaddled slippery stillborns, and pulled excrement from unwilling bowels by hand.

But I did not want to touch that woman. I couldn’t stand the thought of it.





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   All my oaths were failed in that night.