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

cast both her and Flora into despair, how the walls of her own recovery would crumble. She realized that even as she held the girl in her arms, feeling her shuddering breaths, her joy was barbed, tinged, as if at this moment another Enid lay murdered.

Footsteps, hurrying downstairs. Maud, and the boarders.

“Oh, the poor thing.”

“The Lord be praised.”

Ellen, stiff, pushed herself to her feet, one hand on the table. She slid the stove dampers shut and shoved the kettle to the hottest lid.

“Can you sit up, Enid? Flora and Mr. Fairweather are looking for you.” Josephine plucked a strand of hair from Enid’s eye. “She needs to be soaking in a tub. Ellen, will you—”

Enid scrambled to her feet. Dazed, teeth chattering, she walked between Josephine and Maud. In the bathroom, she slid from their arms and collapsed on the rag rug. Miss Harvey appeared at the door, frightened face looking over a blanket clutched to her chest. She laid it over Enid, while Josephine shook Epsom salts into the water. Sunlight quivered through the window and turned the steam to gold.

All three women supported her as she stepped into the tub. She wept as Josephine squeezed hot water over the nape of her neck. “Oh, poor Flora. She don’t know, she don’t know I’m safe…she’s thinks I’m ruined or killed…”

The women exchanged looks.

“I’m not,” Enid sobbed. “I’m not ruined…but I think I was almost killed.”

—

Flora climbed down from the carriage beside the portico, where limp nasturtiums hung from a trellis, bearing faint residues of red and yellow. Night frost had completely burned off the nearby roofs of Creek Road. Mr. Fairweather leaned across the seat, as if reluctant to relinquish their intimacy of endeavour.

“I will phone and let you know what I learn from the constables.”

She let herself into the house. Maud came running out of the kitchen.

“She’s found, Flora! She’s here!”

“Here? Enid? Enid is…”

“I mean she’s not found, she returned. She walked into the house. A farmer picked her up on the road. Mr. Tuck had her, he took her to an empty house…”

Their boots trampled up the uncarpeted back stairs. “…she said that when she told him she had taken the brass duck, he…”

Flora, on the threshold of the bedroom, saw Enid in the white bed with a blanket around her shoulders, a cup of tea cradled in her hands—blue scoops beneath her eyes and the unblinking gaze of shock.

Enid put down the cup, spread her arms. Flora flew to her side, embraced her. Both girls burst into tears, seized by the violence of grief that had not come.

—

WAS THE WRONG MAN HANGED? POSSIBLE AXE MURDERER BOARDS AT MRS. SIMEON GALLOWAY’S HOME.

SISTER OF HOME CHILD TAKEN BY POSSIBLE MURDERER.

RUNAWAY MAN MADE MINIATURE HOUSES.

MINIATURE HOUSE IN POSSESSION OF MACVEY SISTERS. WE HAD NO IDEA, MISS MACVEY SAYS.

—

Evidence mounted: Jasper Tuck’s absence of connection to any person in the local area; and a rumour that two significant facts had been overlooked in the axe murder trial. Around the time of the murder, a man selling handcrafted toy fishing boats had been seen near the residence of the murdered woman, and a carpenter had gone missing from a house-building crew. The constables verified to the local paper that the murdered woman’s money had never been found. Neither had a small brass duck, mentioned by a witness as having vanished from her dresser.

Train stations were watched; livery stables and hotels were placed on alert. Posters were disseminated warning people not to take in a stranger with a missing wolf tooth, black hair and a wiry stature.

For two days, reporters frequented Josephine’s lane until she was driven to distraction and phoned Mr. Fairweather.

—

Warm rain brought down the last leaves, carpeting the lawn as if with a decaying quilt. The air smelled of wood smoke.

Harland stood beneath the portico.

“Mrs. Galloway has no new information. She asks that you respect her privacy and has asked me to tell you that she will answer no more questions.”

Josephine and Ellen, watching from the hall, saw two men break away from the group and approach the barn. They made blinders of their hands, looking in the workshop window.

“He’s a good speaker, he is,” Ellen remarked, jutting her chin at Mr. Fairweather, whose voice rang out, as it had, Josephine reflected, on the day of the pauper auction. He’d been sorry for the job he’d had to do. He was not sorry, now. He relished his role as Josephine’s protector.

A reporter raised a hand. “Why are you speaking for Mrs. Galloway?”

“I was the auctioneer on the day Flora Salford was sold at auction to Mrs. Galloway. The missing girl, Enid, is Flora’s sister. Both girls now live here.”

Another reporter called out.

“Wasn’t her sister at the Mallory place, in Nova Scotia? The man of the house now in custody for the death of a young boy?”

“Yes. But that is of no relevance.”

“Could this Mr. Jasper Tuck be any relation to those Mallorys?”

Harland remained calm. Firm.

“No.”

The rain changed from a patter to a teeming downpour; the reporters tucked their pads into pockets and went away. Mr. Fairweather came into the kitchen. He sat in a rocking chair. The fire made a faint, sporadic crackling. Bread rose in the warming oven. Josephine was digging in the caddy with a teaspoon; Ellen was making applesauce.

“Where are Enid and Flora?”

“They are upstairs. We are trying to keep them from seeing the newspapers, but Flora has glimpsed some of the stories. Enid weeps until we think she will be sick.”

“Flora reads to Enid,” Ellen added. Her face bore conflicted pride. “Storybooks.”

“Maud’s old books. The kind those poor girls never had.”

“Under this very roof, he was,” Ellen said, stirring apples. Rain drummed the veranda roof. “He was under our roof, Mr. Fairweather. I lie in bed at night, my mind going round and round. We all could have been killed in our beds. Savaged, first—raped, and then murdered. I think about the poor man they hanged. Then I think of Enid