The Sister's Tale by Beth Powning (e reader for manga .txt) 📕

JOINED HER PARENTS for midday dinner and told them what Mr. Eveleigh had said.

“Oh, Josephine,” her mother said. Emmeline had short eyebrows, like a terrier, and a patient, worried face. She glanced at her husband, who set knife and fork to pot roast, repressingly, not looking at Josephine. “I’m sorry. I am sorry. You are sorry, too, aren’t you, dear?”

Josephine watched her father, Gordon, his fork scraping the plate as it pierced a cut of beef.

“The law is the law,” he said.

“It’s a terrible law!” Emmeline protested. “If women had the right to vote, there would never be a law saying that wives are not kin. That women do not have custody of their own children. That women are men’s property.”

He paused, knife raised, shocked. He pointed the knife first at his wife and then at Josephine. “And you never will have the right to vote, my dears, because women are not capable of logical thinking. There’s a very good reason for that legislation.”

He sliced his meat, and chewed another mouthful. He sighed, patting his lips with his napkin.

“Eat, Josephine,” Emmeline murmured.

“We looked,” Josephine said to her father, leaning forward with her hands flat on the linen tablecloth. “We tore the house to pieces. It must have been thrown away by mistake.”

Choleric in any event, spots of red bloomed on his cheeks. “Simeon should have taken more care with the disposition of his will. He should have informed you of its whereabouts. It should have been in a strong box.”

“I—” She looked up at him. Formidable grey-streaked eyebrows bristled over blue eyes, whose expression softened. He was angry for her, frustrated by the law. She saw that he was torn between caring and propriety, and was forcibly reminded of the number of people in this town he employed.

“I’m sorry, my dear.” He folded his napkin slowly and laid it beside his plate. He brushed the starched linen with his fingertips, not looking at her. “I am very sorry.”

She picked up her fork, stared at her uneaten dinner. She felt their guarded sympathy as a renunciation of Simeon, the young man who had refused a job in the boot and shoe factory.

“I will pay for the rest of George’s education,” he said. He drank deeply from his water goblet. “I will offer him a position in the factory as soon as he has graduated.”

No mention of the girls, Josephine thought. She felt both anger and the inability to express it. Embarrassment, shame. Her father had offered her a gift without asking her if she would accept it.

Her mother murmured into the maid’s ear. A dog barked in the yard.

—

On the day that Josephine met with her lawyer, the household was in a state of limbo. Normally, Mary told Flora, on such a warm day they would begin preparing for summer. Winter curtains would come down and be washed and folded and put away. Summer curtains would be hung. Carpets would be cleaned.

“Every carpet. Usually we take them outside about now and whack the bejesus out of them.”

She and Flora were sitting on the lower step of the attic stairs. They had put everything to rights, keeping an eye out the whole time for the missing will.

“Do you ever think of going home to Ireland?” Flora said.

Mary tugged at a string in her apron, broke it. She wrapped it around her little finger until the skin turned white. “No home for me back there. Don’t know what became of my father, and me mam’s dead. Brothers are…” A wounded expression, and Flora wished she had not asked.

They did not hear the front door opening, only the slam of its shutting.

A crash. Tinkle of glass. Sailor.

The girls ran down the hall, down the stairs. The dog stood in the door to the hallway, barking.

Josephine was walking in circles, grinding the shards of a small smashed mirror into powder. Her hat lay halfway into the parlour, on the Persian rug. Its feather still quivered.

She looked at the girls: furious, blind. She turned to the large hall mirror and began to lift it. Mary ran forward. Josephine threw down her hands. She went into the parlour and stood staring down its length towards the sun-filled turret room.

—

“They’re calling more witnesses,” Ellen said to Mr. Dougan. She was following the axe murder trial as if it were the one sure thing in her life. She was certain that the bachelor had done the deed. Single, sex-crazed. Why else would he have invited the victim to share his tiny house?

Mary and Margaret, eating rice pudding, were subdued. Their mistress was in the process of “asking around”; she assured them she would keep them until such time as good employment could be found. Mr. Dougan sat in the kitchen more often, since Josephine gave him no instructions about the gardens, the paths, the shrubs. She did not order him to purchase pullets to replace the old hens. She hinted that the mare might have to be sold.

He refused pudding, but accepted a third cup of tea.

Ellen filled his cup and then sat in her rocking chair by the window. She resumed her perusal of The Weekly Record.

“Mr. Tatum, the bachelor, says he ran to a neighbour. Now. This is what the neighbour has to say.”

She adjusted her reading glasses.

We went into the house—and got there about twenty minutes past six. It was dark and we lighted the lamp and looked at the body. We did not examine it. She was lying on her back. Her clothes were turned up leaving her person exposed. The cat was in the room and eating at her head. I saw quite a stream of blood flowing down near her left side…

She skimmed ahead, reading silently.

“Oh, Lord. Now here he talks about the murder weapon.”

We took up the axe and examined it. The axe had been used. It had blood on it about one quarter way up the handle. There was quite a lot of blood on the axe itself. The