Deadlight Hall (Nell West/Michael Flint #5)(71)
I stared at him. ‘You are saying you could – you would – pay people to ensure that instead of Mrs Breadspear being deported, she is released into your care.’
Even as I said it I could hear how incredible it sounded, but he instantly said, ‘Yes, exactly that. She will not be put on board that convict ship. As for where she goes when she is placed in my hands – well, I can’t keep her in my own house, of course. For one thing the arrangement of the rooms makes it impossible to provide the necessary accommodation for her. She would be seen – and heard. For another thing – to be frank with you, I can’t bear the prospect of having her under my own roof.’ He made a gesture of repulsion. ‘She is the woman who brutally killed her two children and mine. But her wits are in shreds, as we both know. And,’ he said, assuming an air of piety, ‘she is my wife, and I feel an obligation.’
‘And so you want to put her in Deadlight Hall?’ I said, bluntly. ‘As a hidden prisoner?’
‘I do.’ His eyes gleamed and he said, ‘I prefer to have her under my own control.’ His lips twisted in an unpleasant smile, and again that other person showed. ‘A hidden prisoner,’ he said, half to himself.
‘But you referred to young people being at Deadlight Hall. Children with no parents – or parents who did not want them. Young apprentices from the various manufactories.’
‘Yes?’
‘Wouldn’t there be danger?’ I said, in a lowered voice. ‘From – from your wife?’
‘Not if she were kept properly secured.’ Again I heard and sensed the ‘otherness’ behind the words. In that moment I believe I understood him, and I saw that he actually wanted his wife to be within tantalizing reach of children – not because he wanted the children hurt in any way, but because he believed it would add another layer of cruelty and punishment to his wife’s captivity.
Then, in an ordinary voice, he said, ‘Such an arrangement would have to be reliant on certain things. As I said, I need to employ some suitable person as a keeper – ideally someone with a little medical knowledge—’
‘It would be a residential post, I take it?’ I asked.
‘It would have to be,’ he said. ‘And I appreciate that as a married lady that might pose a difficulty. But for the right person, I am prepared to pay very handsomely.’
We looked at one another. Then I said, ‘I think something might be arranged.’
But this is a situation that requires careful thought. I will certainly accept that Mr Breadspear can, as he calls it, oil the wheels and that he has – or will – persuade certain people to let his wife go. I suppose there will be some sort of plan by which it will appear she has been put on to a convict ship. In reality, though, she will never go aboard. She will remain here.
It is Breadspear’s own behaviour and manner that disturbs me. In particular, that moment when he said, ‘I prefer to have her under my control.’
I am convinced that Augustus Breadspear wants to witness as much as possible of his wife’s captivity and her suffering. What is worse, I believe he will enjoy witnessing it.
But in his own words he is prepared to pay handsomely.
Michael leaned his head back against the latticed window, his mind tumbling with images. So they had brought Esther to Deadlight Hall, and they had imprisoned her in the attics. It had been a twisted punishment on Breadspear’s part, and on Maria’s …
On Maria’s part, what? Greed, most likely.
He glanced back at some of the entries, and it occurred to him that Thaddeus Porringer had died rather conveniently. Had Maria been behind that? She had certainly recorded buying half a grain of arsenic in the Poison Book.
He flipped over to the next page. Here, indeed, was a note of Thaddeus Porringer’s death, with Maria writing that in view of the sad demise of her beloved husband and the looming loss of the shop that had been his life’s work – which she feared was inevitable and imminent – she was accepting Mr Breadspear’s offer of work, and glad to do so. There were cousins who might take on the business, she wrote, but it was no longer her concern what happened to the place.
Most of her entries were undated, other than an occasional reference to it being Thursday 12th, or Monday 16th, or sometimes the time of day, but a brief time appeared to have elapsed before her next entry.
This was a list of work done by various tradesmen in Deadlight Hall, along with the costs, and dates the accounts were paid. Had that all been for rooms in the attics for Esther? Yes, of course.
A later page had details of the children placed in the Hall – the majority seemed to have been bastards of the local gentry, which Michael had already picked up from the material in the Archives Offices. He hoped the journal was not going to degenerate into a dry account book. He did not much like what he knew of Maria Porringer, but it could not be denied that she had an energetic way of setting down her exploits, and she sounded very organized and efficient.
He was glad to see she seemed to have thought it prudent to set down some of the daily routines she had instigated at the Hall. For, as she wrote:
People are not always to be trusted, and at some time in the future I may find it valuable to have a record of my work.
So, for that reason, I will detail how I take the prisoner’s meals to her myself – collecting a tray from the kitchen, and carrying it up to the attic floor. Breakfast, midday dinner, and a light supper. It is plain fare we have here – such children as are being housed do not, I consider, require anything more. The prisoner has the same.