Page 38 of The Awakening of Ivy Leavold
“That she was killed in the early hours of the morning. Thrown from her horse. That Mr. Markham was purported to be the first to find her, but that there were other footprints in the frost…”
A thick piece of paper was presented to me as I said this. It took me a moment and several rotations of the paper to make out what I was looking at. “It’s the sketch of a footprint,” I said.
“Yes. April can be, for all its chilly nights, quite mild during the day. A servant had come from Markham Hall very early to tell us that Mrs. Markham was missing. By the time the police had come, she was dead, obviously, and the frost had mostly melted off the grass. Mr. Markham told us of the tracks, that he was certain another party had found his wife before he did. We found nothing until an officer, working to find the horse’s prints, found a spot of half-fading frost under a nearby bush. There we found a vague footprint along with other marks that suggested someone had knelt there before they stood.”
I tilted the paper again. “It looks quite large,” I said. “It must be a man’s.”
“I agree. It is nearly the same length as my own feet. But do you see how pointed it is at the top? How distinct that point is! Mr. Markham owned no shoes with such a point, although that in and of itself isn’t such solid evidence. He would have had plenty of time to hide or even burn a pair of shoes if he wanted, before the police arrived.”
It didn’t fit with my image of Mr. Markham at all, a hunched man furtively feeding a pair of shoes into the fire. And I had seen his eyes and his face, had heard his voice when he told me about finding Violet that fateful morning. No. I believed Mr. Markham on this point at least. The print belonged to someone else.
Another sketch was passed to me, this time of the saddle. I studied it for a moment. “Yes,” I murmured. “It does look as if someone cut it.”
“They cut a little more than halfway through the cinch itself. And they would have known Mrs. Markham to be quite a vigorous horsewoman—everyone knew it. She had only crossed half the field behind the stables before the saddle failed and she was thrown.”
I set the sketch down, banishing the image of her body tumbling from the horse, trying to unimagine the sound of a scream cut short. “Mr. Mayhew, do you have any reason to believe that Mr. Markham killed my cousin? That seems to be the popular opinion in Stokeleigh and beyond, yet he wasn’t charged with the murder, so how complete can his guilt truly be?” I sounded like I was trying to convince myself, not ask a genuine question. I cleared my throat. “I would like to know, for Violet’s sake.”
Mr. Mayhew plucked at the corners of the paper stack in front of him. “That’s not an easy question to answer, Miss Leavold. They were heard fighting viciously the night before her death—”
“By the rector’s wife?”
“—by an entire dinner party of people. Her relative unhappiness seemed to be well-known. And…” he seemed reluctant to speak whatever he was thinking out loud, handing me another paper instead.
I scanned through it. It took me a moment to realize it was the coroner’s description of Violet—or of her dead body. Clinical descriptions of her twisted neck, of her skin otherwise unmarred, of her early state of—
I gasped.
I reread.
No, it was impossible even on a second inspection. It could not be true.
My heart pounded. “Was he—is he—the coroner, I mean, is he quite certain?”
Mr. Mayhew slid the paper out of my trembling fingers. “I do not want to trouble you with the particulars of his often gruesome vocation, but yes—he was entirely sure. His best estimates put the age of the fetus at somewhere between two to three months—closer to three, he felt.”
Nausea coiled in my stomach and I was suddenly very glad that Mr. Mayhew didn’t allow me to read further, to flip over to the penciled drawings on the back.
“You must compare the dates of the pregnancy with her marriage to Mr. Markham,” he said, neatly stacking the papers. “The child was clearly conceived before the wedding ceremony. Not as unusual as people often suppose, perhaps, save for that Violet Markham was known in London for—pardon my boldness here—being at times too fond of the company of the opposite sex. Even though she and Mr. Markham were engaged to be married, he may have had reason to believe the child was not his own. I’ve seen one or two men driven to passionate violence at the discovery of ordinary infidelity. But I have seen many, many more fly into a fury when they realize their wife carries another’s child.
“So,” he continued, his voice almost bland with professionalism, “do I believe Mr. Markham killed his wife and the fetus inside of her? Personally, I do.”
Dread nestled against the nausea. I didn’t speak, trying to master my thoughts, which presently fled from any semblance of order.
“However, there was not enough evidence to lay the charge at his feet. The fighting, the pregnancy, his placement at the scene of her death—to me it speaks of certain guilt. But where is the knife that cut the saddle? Where is the witness to him doing it? And what of this lone footprint that seems to corroborate his version of events? He is a powerful man in this county, Miss Leavold, and the person who accused him of murder would have to have more than instincts to call to his aid in a courtroom. Would you like a glass of water? You look pale.”
I knew I must be pale; it felt as if all of the blood in my body was pouring out of my heart and on to the floor. A baby. There had been a baby. That was heartbreak enough. And then to hear Mr. Mayhew’s calm, experienced voice laying out his interpretation of the facts so precisely…
It’s only his interpretation, I told myself.He doesn’t know Mr. Markham like you do—he hasn’t seen how lonely he is, how tender he can be.But I couldn’t find it in myself to give those words the credence they needed to ring true. I didn’t know what to believe about Violet’s death or what to believe about Mr. Markham.
And yet I was still in love with him.
When I got back to Markham Hall, I took a small dinner of soup and bread in the parlor, and then retired to the library, too restless to sleep and too agitated to lie still. I tried to read, tried to focus my mind on anything other than Mr. Markham and the suspicions that surrounded him, but it was useless. Instead, I found myself staring at the small portrait of Arabella Markham. What sort of girl had she been? Quiet and shy? Or dainty and demanding? Had she known that she loved a future murderer? If gossip was to be believed, herownfuture murderer?
And if Mr. Markham had killed Violet, which Mr. Mayhew seemed certain of, had he known about the pregnancy? Was that his motivation or was it something else? Was the child his?
Without meaning to, I pressed my hands against my own stomach. Would I carry his child one day? Could I be right now, at this very moment? And why, oh why, did that idea thrill me as much as it scared me?
I paced and paced, at turns furious with myself and terrified. How could I both love and desire a man accused of such evil? And what was this resistance to the very idea of not loving him? He could be passionate, brooding, forceful…perhaps he was carried off in a fit of temper, I tried to justify.Perhaps she provoked him…
