Chapter 47

C HAPTER 47

It is my belief … that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not

present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful

countryside.

—Arthur Conan Doyle

"Poison." Marigold was horrified by such an act of self-malice.

With her long white hair in a frizzy braid and her oversized, overlong nightgown tattered at the sleeves, Alva Hatchet looked more like a hopeless, rather lost old lady than an evil goblin, but Marigold suspected the malevolent spirit that haunted Hatchet Farm was merely hiding, lying in wait.

Dr. Oliphant went close enough to the bedside to examine the glass she clutched. "A solution of crushed foxglove leaves," he surmised.

Alva chuckled, and all the layers of falsity and old-lady befuddlement were stripped away. "It's too late now. I'll never leave Hatchet Farm." Some of the old woman's resolve seemed to waver—tears gathered in her eyes and her voice caught. "He never should have left. None of this would have happened if he'd just stayed like I told him. He should have stayed." She all but bared her teeth at Marigold. "This is all your fault." Alva's spite held. "I hope you're happy—having your way and ruining everything."

But Marigold was a Manners—still—and had her own crocodile smile, along with as much persistence as the old woman had ill will. "I am happy for them," Marigold said more reasonably than she felt. "Because I didn't have my way—they had their way. My way would never be to marry like Daisy nor go on the stage like Seviah. Nor preach like Ellery, nor even to stay here and run the farm like Wilbert. But to each their own."

"They were all meant to stay here," Alva insisted. "None of it would have happened if you hadn't come—if they had listened to me and driven you away or done you in, like I asked. But you turned their heads—made them over to you. Just like she knew you would." Alva transferred her odium to its timeworn target. "Sophronia ruined everything by writing you. I told her she'd rue the day, and now I'll tell you. Esmie's girl, they call you," she taunted. "Trying to convince you. Trying to convince themselves! But she knows the truth." She pointed her bony finger at Sophronia. "That you're not Esmie's girl at all."

Marigold broadened her crocodile smile. "Indeed, my mother told me. I know that it is Daisy who is dear Esm é 's daughter. And by the by, she got married today, our sweet Daisy, to young Mr. Thaddeus Endicott. She is free from your pernicious influence."

"No!" Alva's eyes darted back and forth between Marigold and Sophronia, trying to gauge the truth of Marigold's statement. "You told them of your adulterous sin?"

"Are you sorry she spoiled your surprise?" Marigold probed. "But you seem to like trying to spoil people's days—just like you spoiled your son, Ellery Hatchet's chance to get away from here, by poisoning him, didn't you?"

Alva narrowed her eyes. "Who told you that? Cleon?"

"You did," Marigold answered. "Right now."

"You think you know everything, don't you?" Alva's smile was full of spite. "Well, you don't know everything. None of you do."

The malice in the old woman nearly took Marigold's breath. "Why did you poison him? Because he left and wouldn't be bound by your curse?" Marigold persisted. I've broken the chains you've bound around me, Mother.

"To make him come back and stay as he ought! Just like before. Just like he promised."

It wasn't much of a confession, but it was enough for the law. Still, there was the question of the stabbing. Alva didn't look as if she could have stabbed a piece of cake with a fork—she looked so old and fragile, her oversized nightgown enveloping her, like the ghost of her former self. She put her hand to her chest, as if it pained her, and Marigold was momentarily diverted by pity.

But Alva had nothing of pity in her. "I should have killed her too." Her spiteful gaze found Sophronia. "And those Black women too—both of them."

"One of those women is your granddaughter," Marigold reminded her.

"Never," the old woman fumed. "You're none of you mine but Wilbert."

Poor Wilbert looked horrified by the distinction. "You killed Pa!"

"All he had to do was stay." Alva melted a little more into the little puddle of nightgown and shawls. "Same as my Elijah. Stay put and stay with me. I couldn't let him leave too."

This time it was Sophronia who asked, "Did you poison your husband too?"

"I had to." Alva's breath began to come in pants. "He was going to leave—leave me here alone." She closed her eyes and gripped the crumpled linen. "I showed him. He wanted to go to sea, so I put him in the sea. Just like I did with all the others."

"What others?"

Alva turned her mouth down as if she would say nothing more, but she was ready to unravel the web of lies she had so carefully spun over the years. "All of them, those women and girls he brought here. Drowned them all to keep him safe. To keep him home. Any of them that tempted my boys, my Ellery, or eyed my grandsons. Luring them away from where they belonged."

Marigold remembered how Minnie had talked to Seviah of leaving their one-horse town. It was Alva and not some bounder who had done her in.

"Hatchet always did have a careless, roaming eye," Sophronia observed.

"He wouldn't have if you'd have done your duty and been a better wife to him," Alva rasped.

"I tried that, didn't I? You made sure I did." Sophronia shook her head at the old harridan. "I did love him once. Enough to marry and leave my family and come over the water out to this place. Had my son here and put down roots. But Hatchet wasn't satisfied. Didn't know how to be happy with what he had—didn't know how to be happy at all. So he looked elsewhere."

"Who wouldn't?" was Alva's response.

"You," was Sophronia's mirthless rejoinder. "You did everything you could to tie him to the place—tie us all down here like tethered stock. Cursed us all, calling down misfortune like the rain that never came. Keeping him so no matter what he'd done or how many sins he committed, you'd find some way to bring him back. You'd keep this place and keep your secrets."

"You're happy he's dead," Alva accused instead of answering. "You wanted him gone."

"Made me no bother that he'd run off to join his circus," Sophronia observed frankly. "I didn't need him dead."

"No one did," added Wilbert.

"I needed him to find the treasure," Alva hissed.

"What treasure, Granny?" Wilbert asked. "Why have I never heard of this before?"

"Because it was mine—what he promised I'd have if I married him and came out here to this godforsaken rock. But he hid it from me—told me he'd buried it away where I'd never find it."

"Pa?"

"No, no. Elijah. My Elijah."

"I know where the treasure is, Alva," Marigold told her. "All these years, and it was never more than a few feet away."

Alva's black eyes widened. "You!"

But it was too late now. Alva Hatchet took her last rasping breath and was dead by her own hand.

Dr. Oliphant retrieved the glass she still clutched. "I'll have to test this, to be sure—"

"It'll be the foxglove," Sophronia remarked, "not arsenic. Took that on the regular, she did. Has for years."

Dr. Oliphant frowned. "Poisoning herself?"

"Building up her immunity. Slow like, bit by bit, for years. Reckon you'll find that in there too"—she nodded at the various piles of detritus—"if you keep looking." Sophronia let out a long sigh, as if she'd been waiting years to have her say. "Keep a bit of rat poison, like all farmhouses," she explained. "Had a scare, if you like, some time ago. It wasn't enough to do him in, Hatchet—just enough to make him know it was done. Keep him obedient, was my guess. Hatchet accused me of poisoning him. But it weren't me. So I locked the larder up and gave Hatchet the key."

I'll not take anything from your snake-fed hands.

"That's why Cleon cooks?"

"Ayuh." Sophronia nodded. "But Mother Alva had keys to all the rooms, she did, all but mine—reckon you'll find those, too, in here if you look." She waved her hand at the piled refuse. "That's why I got my own locks—traded for them with the druggist. To make sure I wasn't gone crazy."

"You're not crazy," Marigold swore. "You may be the only sane one left amongst us."

Sophronia's eyes grew surprisingly glassy. "She tried it on you, her poison, just as I suspicioned she would—first dinner you took at this table. Had Cleon put it in your bowl."

The wedding china that ended up crashed to the floor. "You broke it on purpose."

"Looking out for you," Sophronia said tersely. "So's you could do what you were meant to do."

To find out all of Hatchet Farm's secrets.

It had been Sophronia who had been watching—and watching out—for her. All those uncomfortable moments when Marigold had felt a presence—it had been her mother trying to take care of her, keeping her from harm.

Marigold reached for Sophronia's hand.

Sophronia raised it to her lips, to kiss her daughter at last. "Ayuh," she said through tears. "You've got some powerful magic in you."