The Last Confession of Thomas Hawkins Read online

The candle burned low and flickered out.

  I dreamed of Howard, drunk and raving in the moonlight. He screamed at me to fetch his wife, his lips flecked with saliva. ‘You are my friend,’ he cried. ‘You must help me.’ His lips pulled back into a snarl, his teeth yellow fangs sliding from his gums, his breath like rotting meat. He clawed at my shirt, shaking me, shaking me . . .

  ‘Mr Hawkins. Wake up.’ Sam’s voice, low and urgent. His hand was on my shoulder.

  I sat up, squinting as he held a candle to my face. ‘Sam. What on earth . . .?’

  Orange flame reflected in his coal-black eyes. ‘Murder.’

  Kitty. I tore the blankets from the bed and sprang to my feet. Sam blocked my path. ‘Sleeping,’ he whispered, putting a hand to my chest as I tried to pass him. He pressed a finger to his lips then led me stealthily across the landing to his own room, unlocked the door.

  The room was still, and black as ink.

  A rustle in the darkness. The low creak of floorboards by the window. And someone’s breath, sharp and ragged. I backed away, thinking of my blade, so far beyond reach in the hallway, two floors below.

  Sam raised the candle higher and the room came to life. A bed, a table covered in books of medicine and anatomy, the charcoal sketches pinned to the wall, a mirror . . . and a young woman cowering in a corner, blonde hair hanging wild about her face. Alice Dunn – Burden’s housekeeper. How the devil did she come to be in Sam’s room?

  She stumbled into the light. I cursed and drew back in shock. She was covered head to foot in blood. Dark stains spread across her pale-blue gown. Thin streaks clung to her tangled hair. Her apron was smeared with gory trails where she had tried to wipe her hands clean. She looked as if she had walked through hell.

  ‘Dear God!’ I cried. ‘Are you hurt?’

  She said nothing, too terrified to speak. Her eyes were wild. And fixed upon Sam.

  He took a step towards her and her hand flew up. She was holding a dagger. The blade was thick with blood from tip to hilt.

  Sam moved back, hands raised. Alice’s shoulders dipped, the knife wavering in her hand.

  ‘Sam,’ I murmured, keeping a close eye upon the knife. ‘Fetch some brandy.’

  As soon as he’d left the room, Alice gave a sob and dropped the dagger as if it were burning her hand. It clattered onto the floor between us. It was as I’d guessed and feared. She was afraid of Sam. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she answered in a numb voice. ‘Mr Burden. He’s dead.’

  Oh . . . this was ill news indeed. I reached down, slowly, and picked up the knife. My hand was shaking. It was a fine weapon, with a turned ivory handle chased in gold. The steel blade was sharp, six inches long. A handsome, vicious thing. ‘Did you kill him?’

  She shook her head. She kept her hands stretched out away from her body, away from all the blood and gore.

  ‘How did you come here? Did Sam let you in?’

  Even his name made her flinch. ‘It was him,’ she cried. ‘It was him. Oh, Lord. He’ll kill me too, I know it.’ Her body buckled and she sank to the floor.

  ‘Sit down here,’ I said, taking her arm and leading her gently to the bed. She clung to me, weeping silently. I studied her as the tears streamed down her face, searching for any signs of a fight. Burden was a mountain of a man – if Alice had attacked him surely there would be marks upon her body. Her wrists were circled with small bruises, a few days old, and there were more across her neck – four upon the left and one larger one on the right, just under her chin. Four fingers and a thumb. Someone had seized her roughly by the throat. Burden, forcing himself on her. Holding her down. I felt a sharp desire to find the bastard and knock him to the ground. And then I remembered – he was dead. Murdered.

  Alice had no fresh wounds upon her that I could see – not even a scratch. The blood was all his.

  Dread shivered through me. My neighbour – the man I had threatened only hours before, who had promised to testify against me in court – lay dead next door. And here was his servant hiding in my house, covered in his blood. If Gonson heard of this he would hang us both on the spot.

  ‘Alice – I know what Burden did to you . . . I’m sorry . . .’

  She bowed her head for a moment, as if shamed. ‘What will they say of me?’ she asked, in a raw, broken voice. ‘He made me . . . I had to visit him every night. I had no choice. But it was different tonight. The room was dark. I was glad of it. Glad I didn’t have to look at him for once. He never let me close my eyes. He made me pretend that I liked it, or else . . .’ She shuddered, then drew a deep breath. ‘I felt my way across the room and climbed onto the bed. It was soaking wet. So I lit a candle. I had to grope for it in the dark. I could feel the sheets, wet beneath my hands and then the flame caught and . . . He was lying there with that knife in his heart. The sheets were red. Thick pools of blood. Oh, God! I’d lain across it in the dark, in all that blood . . . My dress . . . my hands. It was all . . . it was everywhere. I had to stop myself from screaming.’ She held out the underside of her right arm to reveal a ring of teeth marks cut deep in the flesh. ‘They’d say I done it. Look at me! Look at me!’ She began to sob.

  ‘Why do you think it was Sam?’

  ‘He was the thief. I saw him. Nasty little rat, creeping about at night. I told them, but they wouldn’t listen. Judith said I was mad. Stephen was the only one who believed me.’ Her face softened. ‘I knew I’d hang for it if they found me like this. And I couldn’t run away.’ She gestured helplessly at the blood. ‘Please, sir. If you tell them it was Sam they’ll believe you. You’re a gentleman.’

  ‘But, Alice, it couldn’t possibly be Sam. He can’t walk through walls.’

  She stared up at me. ‘Yes he can, sir. Oh yes he can. And so can I.’

  I blinked, confused. Perhaps Judith was right. Perhaps Alice was mad.

  ‘He planned it all, Mr Hawkins. He’s evil, sir. That’s why Jenny left. She said—’

  The door opened, silently. Sam, returning with the brandy. In a flash Alice grabbed the knife and scurried to the corner again, bare feet crackling dried flakes of blood across the floor.

  Sam seemed more amused than offended. He poured a glass of brandy and offered it to her. She shrank back. I took the glass instead and knocked it down. Not as good as the queen’s claret, but it helped.

  ‘She thinks I done it,’ Sam snorted.

  ‘I know you did!’ Alice cried. She pointed to a wall hanging fixed in the far corner of the room – faded green silk, embroidered with a white cherry tree design. I had never once given it a moment’s thought. If asked, I would have guessed it covered a patch of damp or a hole in the plaster. I crossed the room, growing more troubled with each step. I knew what I would find behind the hanging, even before I drew it back.

  Alice really had walked through the wall. Or, at least, through a hidden door. Small, discreet, painted the same pale green as the rest of the room. I ran my fingers along its edges. It must have been sealed shut at some point, because there were cracks and splinters around the frame – clear signs that it had been chiselled open again. There was no handle, just a lock. The key was missing.

  ‘The windows and doors were barred, the night I saw him,’ Alice said, still holding the knife tight. ‘So I knew there must be a hidden passage. I’ve spent the last week hunting for it, every spare second.’ She pulled a hairpin from her apron and fiddled with the lock. There was a soft click, and the door swung free into the room.

  The entrance opened into the back of a huge oak armoire filled with fine but old-fashioned gowns in dark silks. The smell of must wafted through the air, and for a moment I was transported home to my father’s house, to a forbidden room filled with my mother’s dresses, fading slowly.

  ‘They belonged to Mrs Burden,’ Alice murmured. She trailed her fingers across a petticoat with deep flounces – a style I had not seen since I was a child. ‘I’d planned to show this to Mr Burden, to prove I wasn’t lying, or dreaming. Too la
te now, isn’t it?’ She glared at Sam.

  I pushed the dresses aside, but it was too dark to see into the room beyond. It was an ingenious idea, I had to admit. From Burden’s side, the door would appear to be the back of the large cabinet, unless one examined it very closely. This was the work of Sam’s late uncle, without question. Samuel Fleet had lived a complicated, dangerous life – one that needed as many escape routes as possible. I could see how it would have been irresistible to Sam. Had he discovered it by chance? Or was it a Fleet family secret?

  ‘You were the thief.’

  ‘Didn’t steal nothing.’

  ‘Didn’t steal anything,’ I corrected, before I could stop myself. Yes, of course, that was the boy’s great crime in all this – his use of double negatives. ‘What were you doing over there, if you weren’t thieving?’

  ‘Practising.’

  ‘Oh!’ Alice cried, horrified. ‘Oh, I told you, sir!’

  I put a finger to my lips. If anyone woke next door we would be in grave trouble. Sam was not confessing to Burden’s murder, he was not so foolish. He meant only that he’d been testing his skills; prowling about just as he had stolen into Jenny’s room in the middle of the night. He’d wanted to see how quiet he could be. Not quiet enough, by this account. It was disturbing behaviour, but not proof of murder. I rubbed a hand across my face. It had been a long, wretched night. ‘Did you kill Mr Burden, Alice?’

  ‘Me?’ Alice gaped.

  I gestured at her clothes, drenched in blood. She stank of it.

  ‘I told you – I never touched him.’ She put a hand on her heart. ‘I swear on my life.’

  I glanced at Sam, raised an eyebrow. Truth? He tilted his head. Maybe.

  It would have to do. ‘Very well. Hand me the knife.’

  She hesitated, then handed it over. I picked up the candle and put a foot through the door into the cabinet, brushing aside a damson-coloured mantua. These were expensive dresses for the wife of a carpenter. Alice gripped my sleeve. ‘What are you doing, sir?’

  ‘Saving you from the gallows.’

  She put a bloodstained hand to her throat. ‘I won’t stay here with him. Not without the knife.’

  Sam gave me an eager look. If he could not stay here, reason insisted he must come with me. I sighed, and handed him the candle. Viewing murdered corpses was not usually part of a gentleman’s education, but what choice did I have? And I suppose he did have experience of moving about the place in darkness. Let him play link boy again, just for the night.

  He slipped through, shielding the flame so it didn’t catch on the dusty clothes. I turned back to Alice. ‘Don’t leave this room. And don’t make a sound. Your life depends upon it.’

  She gave me a frightened nod.

  I pushed my way through the oak cabinet, praying that she was sensible enough to keep quiet. Sam was waiting for me on the other side, candle casting shadows across his face. Below us, the rest of the house slept on, oblivious. I glanced back at the armoire, a dark, solid presence that took up most of the wall. As solid as the man who had made it. I tiptoed towards the light in my stockinged feet, wincing at every groan in the floorboards. Something brushed across my face and I flinched. Cobwebs. I scrubbed them away.

  ‘No one on this floor,’ Sam whispered. There was almost no breath behind the words and yet somehow they were clear enough to understand. Another trick he’d learned from his father, no doubt.

  We crept down the stairs to the second floor, my heart thumping so hard I feared it would wake the whole house. If we were discovered now, all was lost. I could hear the deep tick tock of a grandfather clock from the drawing room below, the steady snores of someone sleeping well and deeply. Stephen, I guessed, dreaming happily while his father lay murdered across the landing.

  Sam cracked open a door, muffling the sound of the latch beneath a handkerchief. The door swung silently on its hinges; Burden must have oiled them so Alice could slip in at night without being heard. All that talk of sin and he was fucking a young girl against her will. Was his spirit watching us now, mute and helpless in the dark? Was he in heaven? In hell?

  I took a slow, steadying breath and crossed the threshold, the dagger in my hand. It must be discovered with the body. If it were missing, everyone would assume that the murderer had crept into the house and taken it with him when he left. And who would everyone suspect . . .?

  The bed was hidden beneath thick, red velvet drapes. Sam waited until I’d closed the door then drew them back in one fluid movement.

  Burden lay naked on his back, his eyes open and turned to the ceiling. His flabby white chest had been butchered; flesh ripped open, flaps of skin hanging loose. I shuddered. He looked more flayed than stabbed. The violence of it made my stomach turn. His face was frozen, mouth contorted in a final grimace of shock. The bed linen was soaked in blood and smelled of piss and shit. I put a hand to my mouth.

  Sam skirted to the other side of the bed, careful to keep the blood from smearing on his clothes. He placed a hand on Burden’s cheek. ‘Cold.’

  I forced myself to look closer. Burden’s lips were blue. The blood had begun to dry on the sheets. He could have been killed hours ago. And then his murderer had walked calmly from the room and continued about his business. Ned, Judith, or Stephen. The names rose unbidden in my mind. If Alice hadn’t killed Burden, it must be one of them. I narrowed my eyes, looking for any trace of a clue, but there was nothing except for the blood and the blade. Reason told me Ned was the most likely suspect – he had the strength and the grievance – but reason had no place here. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe any of it. ‘Strange,’ I whispered. ‘To think of them all sleeping soundly so close by.’

  ‘All but one,’ Sam replied, moving the candle down Burden’s body.

  I placed the dagger at the end of the bed.

  Sam glanced at it. Raised an eyebrow. Pointed at the wound in Burden’s chest.

  I gave a low groan. He was right. To protect Alice, to protect ourselves, we had to put it back where she had found it. Right back in the heart wound. I picked up the dagger. It was a handsome thing, save for the blood. I hesitated. Could I do this? Push a blade into a dead man’s heart?

  Sam plucked it from my grasp and with a quick turn of the wrist plunged the steel blade back into the wound. It made a vile, slurping sound as it travelled deep into Burden’s chest. I turned away. When I looked back, Sam was examining the rest of the stab wounds.

  ‘Sam. Enough. Come away.’ The ground was tilting beneath my feet. I could taste blood in the air – a heavy iron tang. I still couldn’t believe that Burden was truly dead. I half expected his corpse to sit up of a sudden and laugh, as if this were all some macabre jest at my expense.

  Ned, Judith, Stephen . . . There was one other possibility of course. ‘Did you do this, Sam?’

  He did not seem in the least put out by the question. Had seemed more offended, in fact, when I had accused him of thieving. ‘Why would I kill him?’ he asked, putting a hand to Burden’s ruined chest.

  ‘That’s not an answer . . . Oh, good God! Stop that.’

  He ignored me, probing each wound with deft fingers. ‘Not gentlemanly?’

  ‘This is not a game, Sam.’

  He gave a soft, secret smile, as if this were the best game in the world. ‘Nine stab wounds.’

  I stared at the savage gouges in his chest, the glistening clots of blood. Nine stab wounds. This was not the work of a cool-tempered assassin. Whoever murdered Joseph Burden had acted in a frenzy of hate and fury. He would have been covered head to foot in blood when he was done.

  Who had more reason to hate Burden than Alice? And I had left her alone next door while Kitty slept downstairs, with no warning or protection.

  It was time to leave.

  I took one last look at Burden’s bloody and butchered corpse. He’d wanted me dead – had been prepared to lie on oath to see me hang. My enemy in life – and he still had the power to destroy me in death. God damn it. I
would not hang for this. Wherever Burden was now – heaven or hell – I would not give him the satisfaction.

  Chapter Nine

  I need not have worried about Kitty. When Sam and I returned to his room, she was standing over Alice – with a pistol in her hand.

  ‘And when did you plan to explain this, Tom?’ Kitty asked, tilting the barrel towards Alice’s bloodstained clothes. ‘Is it true? Is the old bastard dead?’

  ‘Stabbed through the heart.’

  Kitty tapped Alice’s shoulder with the pistol. ‘D’you kill him? If that bloated hog tried to force himself on me, reckon I’d stab him.’

  ‘I never touched him.’

  I closed the door between the attic rooms. Sam slid the hanging back in place.

  ‘He was stabbed many times,’ I said.

  ‘Nine,’ Sam clarified.

  ‘Whoever killed him would be covered in blood . . .’

  We all looked at Alice.

  ‘I told you, it was dark. I didn’t see the blood until . . .’ She put her face in her hands and rocked softly. Kitty gritted her teeth, frustrated, while Sam watched them both, unblinking. No doubt he would sketch this, later. The maidservant drenched in her master’s blood and the girl with a pistol in her hand.

  ‘You must see, Alice, how this seems. You have the very best reason for wanting Burden dead.’

  Alice dropped her hands. ‘Save for you, sir.’

  There was a short, cold silence. And then a sharp click, as Kitty cocked the pistol. ‘Look at yourself, Alice! Tell me why we should not drag you at once to the magistrate?’

  ‘I didn’t do it!’ Alice howled, desperate. ‘You must believe me! There’d be no sense in it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Her shoulders slumped. ‘He was going to marry me.’

  We stared at each other in consternation.

  ‘He announced it while I was serving dinner yesterday. Didn’t bother to ask me first. No warning. No argument. Judith ran outside and puked in the yard. Imagine. Her maid was now her mother.’

  Kitty lowered the pistol. ‘You consented?’