Deadlight-Hall(88)

I crept back down the stairs, across the hall, and out through the main door. It had been locked and bolted for the night, but the keys were on the ring. I was as quiet as I could be in opening it. Once outside, I locked it again – perhaps I had some idea of making sure the children did not get out.

And now I had two choices – two people to whom I could go for help. One was Augustus Breadspear, who would certainly come out to the Hall and would most likely bring some of his household with him. But Salamander House was a fair distance – I am not a young woman and I did not think I could reach it before midnight.

What, then, of the other possibility?

I hesitated, glancing back at the house. A light flickered in the tiny attic window – the light of candles or an oil lamp, and as I looked, two small figures moved across it. It was God’s guess and the devil’s mercy as to what they intended to do to Esther Breadspear. But whatever it was, they would wait until midnight – until the twelfth chime, the Silent Minute – which meant I had perhaps half an hour.

There was really only one choice. Summoning up my energy, I set off as fast as I could towards the old carriage path. Towards Willow Bank Farm and John Hurst.

It was a terrible walk. There was very little light – thick clouds hid the moon, and there were flurries of thin, spiteful rain that whipped into my face. Twice I walked blindly into a hedge, and once I stumbled on an uneven piece of ground and almost went headlong, which is a shocking thing for a woman of my years.

As I ran through that bitter, stinging darkness, alongside the fear something ran with me – a knowledge so dreadful I hesitate to write it. But I will write it and I will write it here because it belongs to that part of the story. It was with me throughout that night.

Esther Breadspear was innocent of the murders. That is the knowledge that overshadowed everything as I ran towards Willow Bank Farm for help. She did not slaughter her two small daughters as everyone believed. She found their bodies – she heard them cry out, and when she ran to their bedroom, they were already dead. But she did not kill them. I think she tried to revive them and when she failed, her mind splintered, and she ran screaming for help through the house, her nightgown soaked in blood.

When I learned of her innocence it was too late to help her, because by that time she was not just half mad, but completely so. What the discovery of her daughters’ bodies began, the ordeal of the bungled execution completed.

I should never have known the truth if it had it not been for the gossipy tongue of the constable who came to the Hall to search for Rosie and Daisy Mabbley. He was more interested in lossicking in the kitchen and drinking tea than in making a search for the girls. I added a goodly slug of gin to his tea, I will admit, for I did not want him too alert during his search of the house. Perhaps it loosened his tongue that little bit more, because he boasted of the important arrests he had made – and of one in particular. That of a drunken vagrant, caught poaching on Sir George Buckle’s land.

‘Nasty, vicious piece of work,’ said the constable. ‘And will you believe this – he told me he was the one who had killed the two Breadspear children. Ah, I thought that would shock you.’ He slurped more of his tea in drunken triumph. ‘Perfectly true, though. Brazen as you like, he was, telling how he’d been angry at old man Breadspear for laying him off a month or so earlier and intended to have his revenge. Meant to kill Breadspear himself is my guess, but was so drunk he got into the wrong bedroom.’ He took another swig. ‘I never told anyone,’ he said, righteously. ‘The man was roaring drunk – he’d have denied the whole thing later, and I’d have been called a liar. Kind of thing that could ruin a man’s career. And Esther Breadspear’s long since gone – swung on the end of a rope, although there’s some as say her old man got her away – money talks, don’t it? – and that she was sent off to Australy. Can’t bring her back whichever it was, so I shan’t say anything.’

I had never said anything, either. The world believed Esther either hanged or deported to a penal colony, and for her to be brought back would have exposed the devil’s pact I had entered into with Augustus Breadspear, and damned us both.

But the knowledge that she was innocent clamped itself painfully around my mind that night as I struggled through the darkness to John Hurst. With it was the memory of Mr Glaister and the Home Office gentleman, on that bleak morning, talking about an Act of God intervening in the execution.

As I reached the end of the carriage path, the old church clock at St Bertelin’s sounded the half-hour chime. Thirty minutes to midnight. I redoubled my efforts, and saw, with gratitude, the gates of Willow Bank Farm ahead of me.