Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

‘You weren’t to know what would happen,’ Meade told her.

‘Wasn’t I?’ Mary asked fiercely.

‘No, you’ve-’

‘When I told her that because of Patrick’s death I was going to have to let her go, I saw how depressed she was. So I should have known then. I should have damn-well known !’

‘Who found her?’ asked Blackstone, as the policeman who never entirely left him took control of his head again.

‘Mrs. . Mrs Kenton. She’s the part-time cleaner who helps Jenny with the heavy work. She. . she wasn’t due to arrive until eleven o’clock, but for some reason she got there at about half-past ten.’ Mary shuddered. ‘The doctor said that if she’d arrived even a few minutes later than that, poor little Jenny would already have been dead.’

She bowed her head and seemed unable to go on.

‘As I understand it, this Mrs Kenton behaved truly admirably,’ Meade said, trying his best to sound cool and efficient. ‘The first thing she did was to apply tourniquets to the girl’s arms to stop the bleeding, then she bandaged her wrists. And having taken things as far she could herself, she stuck her head out of the window and shouted to a passer-by that he should summon an ambulance.’

There was one question that almost seemed too crass to ask, but Blackstone knew that he had to ask it anyway. He gestured to Meade that they should move a little distance away from Mrs O’Brien.

‘It’s a terrible thing to have happened,’ he said, as the knot in his stomach continued to tighten up. ‘A truly ghastly thing. But what I don’t really see is why we’re here.’

‘We’re here because Jenny wants to see us,’ Meade said. ‘Or, to be accurate, she wants to see you .’

‘What?’

‘She keeps losing consciousness, but every time she comes round, the first thing she wants to know is why you’re not here.’

She was the second girl in an hour who’d asked to see him, Blackstone thought, as he felt the heavy weight of responsibility pressing firmly down on his shoulders.

He already knew why Trixie had asked for him. She’d thought he’d have a better — and more sympathetic — understanding of her situation than Alex Meade would have done.

But what possible reason could the servant girl — who had only met him once — have for being so desperate to talk to him?

The girl was unconscious, and was dressed in a white surgical shift which was only slightly paler than her own complexion.

The bed she had been laid on was no more than the standard size, yet it seemed far too big for her. She looked lost in it, Blackstone thought. She looked as if she was drowning in it.

‘What are her chances?’ he asked the doctor, a youngish man who looked as if he had not slept for days.

‘Not good at all,’ the doctor replied. ‘She doesn’t appear to have had a particularly robust constitution to begin with, and she’s lost a great deal of blood. We’ve no idea what state her vital organs are in — they could be failing even now, for all we know — but she’s so weak that we daren’t risk trying any explorations.’

‘Tell me something — anything — that I can pin a little hope to,’ Blackstone demanded.

The doctor thought about it. ‘If she manages to live through the day, I might start being a little more optimistic of a recovery,’ he said finally.

‘Well, that’s something, isn’t it?’ Blackstone asked.

‘But if she died without ever recovering consciousness again,’ the doctor continued, ‘I wouldn’t be in the least surprised.’

Blackstone thought back to the dream he had had, only two nights earlier. Not a dream of Hannah or of Agnes, or even of Ellie Carr, but of Jenny. It had puzzled him at the time that she should have a key to his sleeping world, and it puzzled him even more now.

The girl groaned.

‘She seems to be coming round,’ the doctor whispered. ‘Go and stand by the bed, where she can see you.’

Blackstone did as he’d been instructed, and arrived there just as Jenny opened her eyes.

She smiled weakly at him. ‘Hello,’ she said.

‘Hello, Jenny,’ Blackstone replied.

‘I’m an orphan,’ the girl told him.

‘I know.’

‘I don’t ever remember having a papa of my very own, but I saw this picture of a gentleman in a magazine once, and he looked so nice and kind that I cut it out and kept it.’

‘Did you?’ Blackstone asked, feeling as if his heart would break.

‘I’ve still got it. I used to look at it sometimes and pretend that he was my papa. Isn’t that silly?’

‘No, it’s not silly at all,’ Blackstone said, as a wave of helplessness and inadequacy swamped him. ‘It’s sweet.’

‘And when you came to the apartment that time, with your friend, you reminded me of my magazine papa.’

So that was what this was all about, Blackstone thought.

‘I wish I had been your papa,’ he said. ‘I would have been proud to be your papa.’

‘Would you. . would you hold my hand?’ Jenny asked timidly.

Blackstone looked to the doctor for guidance, and the doctor mouthed back that it would be all right, as long as he was very, very gentle.

Blackstone took Jenny’s hand, and the girl gripped his with what little strength she had left in her.

‘You slit your own wrists, didn’t you, Jenny?’ he asked softly. ‘Nobody helped you. Nobody else was involved.’

‘Nobody,’ Jenny confirmed, almost dreamily. ‘I did it all by myself.’

‘Tell me how you did it.’

‘I waited until the mistress had taken the children off to Central Park, and then I went into the kitchen and took a sharp knife out of the drawer. I. . I. .’

‘Gently, Jenny,’ Blackstone cooed. ‘Take it gently.’

‘I took the knife back to my bedroom. I wanted to get it all over and done with straight away, but somehow I–I just couldn’t. I must have sat staring at that knife for hours before I got up the courage to use it.’

Not hours, though it may have felt like it, Blackstone thought. But an hour at least.

He could almost see her, sitting there on her bed, looking at the sharp knife she was holding in her trembling hands, and willing herself to find the strength to end it all.

‘If I’d done it just a few minutes sooner, I’d have been dead by the time Mrs Kenton arrived,’ Jenny said plaintively. ‘When you see her, tell her I’m sorry for upsetting her, will you?’

‘There’ll be no need for that,’ Blackstone said, with feigned heartiness. ‘You’ll be able to tell her yourself in a day or two.’

‘No, I won’t,’ Jenny said, with a certainty that was quite chilling. ‘You know I won’t.’

‘ Why did you do it, Jenny?’ Blackstone asked, still softly. ‘Whatever possessed you to want to end your life?’

‘I did it because I’m no good,’ Jenny told him. ‘I did it because I’m a very wicked person.’

‘No, you’re not,’ Blackstone said soothingly.

‘You don’t know,’ Jenny said, with as much passion as her weak state would allow. ‘You’ve no idea.’

Up until perhaps a minute earlier, he’d firmly believed that the reason she’d asked to see him was because he’d become her new father figure — a living breathing replacement for the picture she’d cut out of the magazine.

And that was probably just what she believed, too.

But there was so much more to it than that, Blackstone was now starting to realize.

Jenny knew she was going to die, and something deep within her — perhaps the soul she was probably only vaguely aware she even possessed — was driving her to unburden herself before death took her.