The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins - [44]

The story made me uneasy, even so – the old bear snapping and snarling and refusing to leave his cage. I wondered if he were concealing a darker truth – some pressing reason why the family had to stay on Russell Street. Perhaps the cage was locked.

I looked down at Stephen, weeping in his father’s clothes, and felt wretched for the boy. Wretched for myself too – there was no honour or decency in this. And I would gain no more from him now. I left him, crossing the landing to Judith’s room. I could hear Felblade speaking with an older woman: Mrs Jenkins, who ran the bakery across the street. Of course. She would have scurried here as soon as the news reached her, eager to offer comfort and lap up the drama. A foul-weather friend, Kitty called her.

I tapped lightly upon the door and entered unobserved save for Felblade, who offered me a dry, mirthless grin. Judith lay beneath the sheets, face to the wall. Mrs Jenkins sat beside her, murmuring the usual platitudes. Your father was a good man. He’s at peace now, my dear.

‘Twice a day, Mrs Jenkins,’ Felblade creaked, holding up a bottle filled with a viscous brown liquid. Opiates, I supposed, mixed with molasses. Or coal tar, knowing Felblade.

‘I must speak with Miss Burden before she drinks that,’ I said from the doorway.

Mrs Jenkins gasped as she saw me. ‘Oh! You devil! Have you come to murder us?’

It was only then that I realised I was still clutching the dagger. Unfortunate. I slipped it in my coat pocket. ‘No indeed, Mrs Jenkins.’

‘My heart! I shall die of shock!’ she declared, clutching her bosom and looking sturdy as a carthorse.

Judith sat up as if waking from a dream. Her dark hair hung lifeless about her face, falling into her soft grey eyes. She seemed shocked and frightened – just as she had the night Sam had stolen into the house. The night she’d discovered her father was sharing a bed with Alice.

I gave a short bow. ‘Miss Burden. My deepest condolences.’

Her brows furrowed. ‘You were arrested.’

‘A misunderstanding. I have been charged with investigating your father’s death.’

‘But you hated my father. No… no… do not deny it.’ A desolate look crossed her face. ‘I hated him too sometimes. There were times when… When I wished him dead.’ She began to shiver. ‘Wicked,’ she murmured under her breath. ‘Such a wicked girl.’

I sat down upon the bed, in the warm dent left by Mrs Jenkins. Judith cast me a timid look, pushing the hair from her face. Her left eye was bruised and swollen.

‘Who did this?’

She twisted the sheets beneath her hands. ‘It was my fault. I couldn’t stop crying. Stephen had to strike me, to calm me down…’

‘Stephen’s a good boy,’ Mrs Jenkins interrupted. ‘I’m sure he feared you might have another fit.’ She gave me a sharp look. ‘Judith is a delicate girl. We must all be very gentle.’

‘Unbalanced. Melancholic,’ Felblade agreed, packing away his bag. He slurped his tongue across his teeth. ‘A bleeding will restore her. I shall return tomorrow…’

‘No… no!’ Judith cried in alarm. ‘No more blood. No more blood.’ She closed her eyes and began to shake.

‘Shame on you, Mr Felblade,’ Mrs Jenkins tutted. ‘We will have no more talk of blood and knives, or corpses butchered like pigs in a market. We must not speak of such things! Murderers creeping about the place in the dead of night. Poor Mr Burden stabbed and stabbed again with a vicious blade. Murdered in his own bed while everyone slept! Where is your sensitivity, Mr Felblade? Miss Burden is not sick – she’s tired and frightened. And who can blame her after what she saw this morning? Oh! It makes me dizzy to think of all that blood… You’ve been very brave, my dear,’ she called across to Judith. ‘I’m sure I should have fainted clean away if I had seen my father with a blade plunged in his heart. Warm broth and bed rest, that’s what’s needed.’

‘Quite right, Mrs Jenkins,’ I said. There had been quite enough blood spilt in this house.

Mrs Jenkins’ face scrunched. ‘I’m sure I don’t need his approval,’ she huffed, and began scolding Felblade over the price of his opiates.

‘I’m sorry I accused you before, sir,’ Judith whispered. ‘I was… not myself. I am quite certain that you are innocent.’

I smiled thinly. Easy enough to whisper my innocence in a private room. She had already shouted my guilt to the whole street. I leaned closer. ‘Miss Burden. Who do you think killed your father?’

Judith stared at me in surprise. ‘Alice Dunn, of course.’

‘I see… But… I believe your father planned to marry her?’

‘Never!’ she snapped. She sat up very straight, her eyes fierce and dark as storm clouds. ‘My father would never marry that filthy whore. It was a jest – a silly jest. Alice Dunn – mistress of this house? No, fie – not in a thousand years! She killed my father, I am quite certain. And may she burn in hell for it!’

Silence, as Felblade and Mrs Jenkins stared at each other in surprise, and then at me. Mrs Jenkins rubbed her palms together. ‘Warm broth,’ she trilled, in an anxious voice. ‘And rest.’

I rose from the bed, shocked by Judith’s outburst. For a moment I had seen pure rage burning beneath her dazed, dreamy surface. Had that rage erupted last night? Could