Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the New World

And that was why he was there.

Not as a replacement for the man whose picture she cut from the magazine at all, but as a father figure in a much more traditional sense — as a priest, who was supposed to hear her confession and grant her absolution.

‘I’m sure you could never have done anything that other people would consider even remotely wicked,’ he said.

‘Wicked,’ Jenny mumbled, almost deliriously. ‘Wicked.’

‘But if you want to tell me about these so-called terrible things that you think you’ve done, I’ll be happy to listen,’ Blackstone assured her.

‘I betrayed the master,’ Jenny said. ‘He was never anything but kind to me, and I betrayed him.’

The knot in Blackstone’s stomach was now so tight that he was finding it difficult to breathe.

‘How did you betray him?’ he asked.

But from the strange look which had come into Jenny’s eyes, he doubted she could even hear him any more.

‘He’s dead because of me,’ Jenny whimpered. ‘He’s dead because I betrayed him.’

‘Jenny, listen to me!’ Blackstone said desperately. ‘Try to hear what I’m going to say to you.’

But it was hopeless — she was too far gone now.

‘It wasn’t a bullet that killed the master,’ Jenny whispered, her voice so faint that he had to lower his head closer to her mouth to even hear what she was saying. ‘It was me!’

Her grip on his hand had been growing weaker and weaker as she spoke these last few poignant words, and now there was no grip left at all.

The doctor, who had been watching the whole scene from a distance, now stepped forward and placed a finger on Jenny’s neck.

He shook his head sadly. ‘She’s gone, I’m afraid.’

Blackstone just stood there, looking down at the dead girl.

‘You can let go of her hand, now,’ the doctor said.

‘What?’

‘She can’t feel you any longer, so there’s no point in you continuing to hold her hand.’

No, there probably wasn’t, Blackstone thought. And yet his own hand seemed reluctant to release its grip.

‘There are things to do,’ the doctor said, a hint of impatience entering his voice. ‘We have to wash her and lay her out. We’re going to need the bed.’

Blackstone forced his fingers to open and Jenny’s arm flopped back on to the bed.

He turned and walked towards the door, and as he did so, he felt his eyes start to prickle. It was a long time since he could last remember crying — but he was crying now.

There was only enough space for a single bed, a night-stand and a small wardrobe in Jenny’s bedroom, but given her former life at the orphanage, thought Blackstone — who knew all about orphanages himself — it must have seemed unimaginably luxurious to the girl.

He looked down at the blankets and sheets which covered the narrow bed, and which were themselves covered with a dark brown stain.

How Jenny had bled!

How she must have lain there in quiet despair, watching her life slowly seep away!

‘Where are Isobel, Emily and Benjamin?’ he heard Meade ask from somewhere behind him.

‘At the moment, they’re with Mr and Mrs Barlow, our neighbours,’ Mary O’Brien replied. ‘But they can’t stay there for much longer.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wouldn’t be fair to the Barlows. They’re very willing to help, but they’re old people, and it must be a strain on them having even three well-behaved children around.’

‘So if they can’t stay with the neighbours, what are you going to do with them?’

‘The children must come back to the apartment.’

‘Is that wise — after what’s just happened here?’

‘This is their home,’ Mary said firmly. ‘And if it contains unhappy memories — as it unquestionably does — they must learn to come to terms with them. Because you can’t live your life by running away from unpleasantness or pretending it never happened.’

‘I still think you should consider. .’ Meade began.

But Mary had left his side and was already standing next to Blackstone and looking down at the bed.

‘I’ll have to clean this up before they get back,’ she said. ‘I can at least spare them that.’

‘If there’s anything we can do, you know that you only have to ask,’ Meade said.

‘I do know that, and I’m very grateful for it,’ Mary told him. She began stripping the sheets and blankets off Jenny’s bed. ‘I’d like to throw these away, but I simply can’t afford to. Still, the stains will hardly show if Jenny boils them really. .’ She faltered. ‘Jenny won’t be boiling them, will she?’ she continued, with a choke in her voice. ‘Jenny will never be boiling anything again.’

‘Perhaps it might be a good idea if you sat down for a while,’ Meade suggested.

‘There’s no time to sit down,’ Mary said, collecting up the bedding in her arms. ‘There’s still far too much to do.’ She looked down at the mattress, and saw that the bloodstains had left their mark there, too. ‘The mattress is beyond saving,’ she decided. ‘It will just have to be burned. Could you gentlemen. . could you take it down the basement for me, and ask the janitor if he wouldn’t mind putting it in the furnace?’

‘Of course,’ Meade said.

‘Be glad to,’ Blackstone told her.

When Blackstone and Meade returned from the basement, they found Mary pacing back and forth across the living-room floor.

‘There’s a bottle of whiskey on the table,’ she said. ‘Will you please pour us all a drink, Alex?’

‘I’m not sure that’s. .’ Meade began.

‘We must drink to Jenny’s memory,’ Mary said firmly. ‘We at least owe her that.’

Meade poured the three drinks, and handed one to Mary.

‘Patrick always said that it was an insult to good whiskey to drink it standing up, so do please sit down,’ Mary said.

But she did not sit down herself. With her own glass of whiskey held tightly in her hand, she continued to pace the floor.

‘There is so much to do,’ she said, not for the first time, and in a voice which kept oscillating between the despairing and the frantic. ‘So very, very much to do. The orphanage where Jenny was brought up was run by Presbyterians, you know, and once she came to live with us, we went to great pains to see that she continued to follow her chosen religion.’

Or, at any rate, the religion that had been chosen for her, Blackstone thought, because in that — as in so many other aspects of her life — she had been able to make very few choices of her own.

Do you think the fact that she killed herself means she can’t be buried in consecrated ground, Alex?’ Mary asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Meade replied.

‘It shouldn’t. It’s not fair that it should. But perhaps, even if it does, I can persuade her pastor — who is also the orphanage pastor — that she never intended to kill herself.’ She looked at Blackstone, perhaps hoping for some sort of support, but the inspector could think of nothing to say. ‘Or perhaps I can tell him that she was just punishing her body in the same way as the flagellants punish theirs.’

‘I don’t think Presbyterians do that,’ Blackstone told her.

‘No, I don’t suppose they do,’ Mary said. ‘Or that she did intend to kill herself, but changed her mind at the last moment.’ she continued, as if searching for something — anything — that they could agree on.

‘Perhaps that’s just what she did do,’ Blackstone said, feeling as if the words were being torn from him.

But he didn’t believe it. Not for a second.

Jenny had known what she was doing. Weighed down with her guilt over O’Brien’s death, she had sought the only escape she thought was open to her — and had taken her own life.