When I finally dared to enter the bedroom, she was dead. Her white face had turned grey, her eyes were open and she was staring at the ceiling. Her silvery white hair was wild and knotted from where she’d struggled. Her mouth was stuck wide open in a silent scream. It was misshapen, as if something, maybe my conspirator, the Devil, had blown a great wind into her, forced it open and reached inside with an arm to take her soul. I took the rest of the box of flypapers, threw them in the hole I’d dug and filled it, because I was the fly and that was my broken window.
35
I stuffed Mrs Wiggs and her lead-heavy limbs and big skirts into a cupboard. I was in a complete panic; any lucid thoughts I’d clung to were crumbling away. I was filled with anger at her. If she’d let me leave, she wouldn’t be dead. I refused to feel guilty. It was her own fault. It was self-defence. If she’d only let me leave, she’d be alive now; cursing me, yes, but alive and with her precious monster of a son.
Her skirts kept billowing back in my face as if they were laughing at me, too voluminous to fit in the cupboard. Her old-fashioned habits still fought me, even in death. My thinking became haphazard, desperate and littered with unrealistic peaks of optimism. If I could get to my solicitor, if I could get some money, he would help me. I would go abroad, run to France, walk to Spain if necessary. I would keep running until I fell off the edge of the Earth.
I’d pulled out pudding bowls and crockery, shoved them onto other shelves and heaved her bleeding body, hips first and folded over, into the bottom cupboard. I had no idea when Thomas would return with Dr Shivershev, but if the two of them walked in and found her dead on the floor, they would call the police. By doing this, I might still escape, if I were clever.
I saw myself in court, in a prison cell, trying to explain how I’d been imprisoned against my will, raging from the dock that my husband was Jack the Ripper, the typical hysterical shrew. There would be rows of pale and pompous bewigged men, grey faces puckered in disapproval, and when they heard I was the daughter of a prostitute and had lied my way to becoming the wife of a gentleman, I would be done for. I had wandered across London dressed as a man and mourned a dead woman lover. I would not stay to see how any trial played out. It would end with me imprisoned, or with my feet swinging clear of the ground, or in the asylum, though without any perambulating around a Surrey lake.
A steady flow of blood dripped from between the cupboard doors. Without proper soap and water, I was smearing it everywhere and covering clean linens in blood. I was creating more evidence out of thin air. I couldn’t breathe, my chest snatched shallow gasps. I had to wipe up what I could and hope Thomas would not enter the kitchen, at least not immediately. He would think I had escaped and that Mrs Wiggs had pursued me. He would wait for her to return and would not find her body until much later; that was my hope. My dress had blood on it, my hands were red with it. I pushed my hair out of my face and smeared blood across my cheeks. It was hopeless.
A knock at the front door cracked through the house like thunder. I thought my bones would crumble into dust. I tried to open the back door, but it was locked and there was no key. If I’d had any sense, I’d have realised the key must be on Mrs Wiggs, but I didn’t think of it. I crept back up the stairs towards the hallway, towards the knock at the door. I heard men’s voices and saw dark shadows shuffled through the mottled glass. It was Thomas, and he’d brought Dr Shivershev to diagnose the lunatic. As I neared the door, they knocked again, so loud it made me tremble.
They were waiting for Mrs Wiggs to come to the door. I remembered now that I had thrown the attic key under the sideboard when I fell down the stairs. Thomas had commandeered Mrs Wiggs’ key, and she had then had another cut to make up for the missing one, routine had returned and I had forgotten all about that missing key. I knelt down and found it in the same place, covered in dust. I raced up the main stairs and had got as far as the attic staircase when they gave up waiting. I could only be grateful for Thomas’s dependency on Mrs Wiggs: he was so pampered by his mother that it took three knocks before he could be bothered to reach all the way into his pocket for his front door key and open it himself.
I locked the attic door behind me as they clattered into the hallway downstairs. Inside the attic, I was in darkness. There were no windows, but streaks of light beamed like torches across the roof where the pigeons came and went in holes in the side of the roof. I was sure there had been a candle on the desk, but I didn’t dare try to find it for fear of knocking it over and making a noise. I moved across the floor on my hands and knees to the roar of my rapid heartbeat. It was freezing, but I didn’t feel it because of the terror that kept my blood surging. The floor reeked of mouse piss and mothballs. I
