Page 76 of The Vanished Sister

“Is that Mrs. Carstairs’s first husband?” asked Inspector Treadles.

Mrs. Watson nodded, her stomach clenched as tight as a white-knuckled fist. Surely, Mrs. Osmond’s affair hadn’t been with Reverend Robinson?

—who, though he himself possessed only modest means, made sure to help us maintain a measure of dignity.

For that reason I’d always viewed him with immense gratitude and admiration.

Reverend Robinson married late in life, as a man of forty. He deemed his wife a woman of both great beauty and great virtue. I myself was no less charmed by the then–Mrs. Robinson, to the point of emulating her fashion and her many domestic talents.

When Reverend Robinson passed away in the winter of 1857, I was devastated, but suspected nothing. When his widow married Mr. Carstairs of Noble House, however, I remembered what my cousin had said in jest one time, that she’d married him, an old vicar, solely because he was a family friend to the first Mrs. Carstairs and a regular guest at Noble House.

I had no evidence, not even proper misgivings at that point. Instead what I had was too active an imagination and a love of everything sensational. I’d kept a lock of Reverend Robinson’s hair as a memento. When I saw an advertisement in the papers for a new analytical laboratory in Manchester, I sent in his hair for analysis on a lark.

The laboratory found no arsenic in the sample. I laughed at myself. Of course there wouldn’t have been—I’d read too many penny dreadfuls and that was that.

As luck would have it, not long after, I advertised for a new cook and the first one to inquire about the post was none other than Reverend Robinson’s old cook, Mrs. Biggs. When Mrs. Robinson became Mrs. Carstairs, Mrs. Biggs, who was accustomed to running her own kitchen, didn’t want to become an undercook at Noble House. The old lady who next hired her passed away and now she was again in need of employment.

I happily took her on. Her work proved most satisfactory. And everything might have stayed exactly the same had I not decided to eavesdrop one day, when I heard her dressing down our kitchenmaid.

The kitchenmaid had strained some coffee and Mrs. Biggs had somehow discovered that the girl had not used cloths specifically set aside for the task, but taken a square of linen she’d found elsewhere in the kitchen.

Mrs. Biggs was irate. She first emphasized the importance of not mixing up straining cloths for different purposes—did anyone want their coffee to taste like beef tea? Then she went on to safety. Why, when she worked in Reverend Robinson’s household, a tragic incident had very nearly taken place.

My ears perked up.

“We had a careless maid-of-all-work there, too. On a day when the coffee cloth drawer was empty, she took one that seemed clean enough from somewhere else. We were fortunate that our mistress happened to be in the kitchen. She knew every pin and needle in the house, our lady. And she immediately recognized the cloth the stupid girl was about to use as one that had been missing for weeks, a cloth that was last dipped in an atropine solution to use as a collyrium.

“Do you know what that is, a collyrium? An eyewash. Dear Reverend Robinson needed it occasionally for his poor, overused eyes. And do you know what atropine is? That’s the stuff from belladonna that would kill you dead.

“Thank goodness Mrs. Robinson—Mrs. Carstairs now—thank goodness she was there. We threw away the coffee, threw away the cloth, even threw away the coffee mug. Aye, she saved him from certain poisoning.”

Mrs. Watson clutched at her chest. Dear God. Thank goodness Justina had saved her husband. She was beginning to fear the worst.

Mrs. Biggs heaved a great big sigh. “It was really too bad that the influenza took him not too long after that. When the Good Lord wants you in Heaven, to Heaven you will go one way or the other.”

I did not have a eureka moment then and there. In fact, as Mrs. Biggs approached the end of her lecture, I became immersed in guilt.

I should have attended my dear cousin on his deathbed. In fact, almost everyone else believed me to have been at his house on the day he passed away. But in truth I was fifty miles away in Spalding, betraying my marriage vows yet again.

My late husband was a scholar—the reason he and the late Reverend Broadfield, Mrs. Whitehill’s first husband, became good friends. But whereas Reverend Broadfield also loved people, Mr. Osmond preferred to avoid them whenever possible: He liked it best when the house was quiet and empty and he could work to his heart’s content.

Which meant that I often took the children by myself to visit family and friends. And on one such visit I met T, the man who eventually became my lover.

Our two-year affair came to an end only when he left for India. I was both devastated and relieved. The next time I visited Reverend Robinson, I asked him to hear my confession. He did, and though he shook his head, he absolved me with great compassion. I entrusted to him all the letters I’d ever received from T, asking him to burn them for me, as I could never bring myself to do the deed.

However, a year later, T returned from India, and my resolve to be good evaporated like summer mist when the sun rose high.

To meet with him, I left my children and their governess at my mother-in-law’s place, claiming that I needed to visit Reverend Robinson, who was feeling poorly. Not until I reached his vicarage did I find out that he was indeed unwell. But I left after only a few hours and rushed off to meet my lover.

Forty-eight hours later, when I returned to the vicarage, my dearest cousin was dead. Between my grief and an onslaught of panic—good heavens, how was I to keep everyone from learning that I was not at Reverend Robinson’s house when he died?!—I simply assumed his death to have been a natural one.

Mrs. Watson shut her eyes tightly. Must she read on?

Miss Charlotte’s words of gentle warning came crashing back. But the truth hardly ever conforms to anyone’s hopes. And the full, unfettered truth may deny you not only the resolution you seek but your ability, in the future, to tell yourself a version of the story that would bring some solace.

It was too late now, wasn’t it? In fact, it had been too late ever since Justina showed up at Sans Souci, asking to see her.

She forced herself to go on reading Mrs. Osmond’s confession.