Dr Milne looked gently encouraging, but said nothing.
‘I dreamt about Cara,’ I said. ‘Or rather about that poor little servant girl, but in the dream they were one and the same person. Cara was lying in bed and her mother was there and so were you and there was blood simply everywhere.’ I dared not look at Dr Milne to see how any of this was going, but ploughed on, finding my stride. ‘I had to wade through it up the stairs to the attic, and by this time it was the attic here at Gilverton – you know the way one can never dream very convincingly about the unknown and so one substitutes something more familiar? – and the blood was hot as though it were flames and where it spattered on the walls in the little bedroom it was singeing and blackening the paper, and when it hit the people’s faces – and it did, you know, it went simply everywhere – they screamed as though they were being burned. It was quite, quite dreadful, because you see I knew, in the dream, that we were all going to die there, that none of us was able to escape and there was a voice coming from somewhere reading a dispatch like in the war, telling how we had all perished in a fire and Cara started to scream, “No, no, no. Not a fire! It was the blood. It was the blood!”’
I stopped at last and squinted at Dr Milne from under my brows. He looked as thunderstruck as one might expect after what had turned out to be rather a Gothic narrative, but he did not look at all anxious or afraid.
‘Most unpleasant, Mrs Gilver,’ he said. ‘Thoroughly nasty. What were you reading before you put out your lamp?’
‘Oh yes, I daresay you’re right,’ I said. ‘At least, it was all rather torrid at the cinema. Or could it have been that dashed flea? You know, in my sleep I could feel it feasting on my blood and making me burn with itches? Or perhaps not.’ I really should try to rein in these excesses; he was gaping at me now.
‘But the worst thing is, Dr Milne,’ I said after a pause, ‘that I can’t seem to shake it off even in the cold light of day. I just can’t get rid of the silly idea that Cara was the maid and the maid was Cara. And so just now when you said that you had never met either of the two girls before, I suddenly thought perhaps I was right. Perhaps my dream was a premonition! Not that I believe in all that, and it would be a post-monition anyway, wouldn’t it? Or a message from the spirit world or something.’
Now he looked anxious, and I hurried to put things right.
‘I don’t really mean that. Of course I don’t believe in such things, but it would be a real kindness on your part if you could reassure me that no such thing is possible. I mean, the servant was a servant, wasn’t she? And she really did – I mean, she really had – I mean, did you actually see…?’
Professional calm reasserted itself in Dr Milne’s flushed face, now that he presumably had me placed one short step from the gates of the madhouse. He reached out and patted my arm.
‘Come now, Mrs Gilver,’ he said, placidly. ‘You are far too mature and sensible to give way to these flights of fancy. It was a nightmare. A very shocking nightmare, but no more than that. The film, the flea, as you say, and I expect the very fact of me being here and you seeing me again, all these things together and nothing more are to blame for your restless night. But if you are sure it won’t simply upset you further, I can put your mind at ease.’ I nodded bravely and he went on, sitting back in his chair and looking at the carpet as he spoke.
‘The poor little girl whose body I examined was most certainly a servant, Mrs Gilver. Her hair, her hands… Go and hold your own pretty hand next to one of the kitchen maids’ downstairs and you will soon see how impossible it would be to make a mistake like that. This child’s hands were quite raw, you know, bits of pot scourer under her nails. And I’m afraid there was no mistaking what she had done to herself. It was the typical silly nonsense that only a very ignorant girl would believe in. And only such a creature wouldn’t see that she was just as likely to die from it as to miscarry. Does that put your mind at rest?’
It did and I smiled at him with unfeigned relief, prompting him to begin to work off some of the considerable annoyance that he was much too polite to let out in any other way. After all, I had made a pretty monstrous suggestion about his professional integrity.
‘We doctors don’t just glance at a corpse and sign our names, you know. I only wish we did. I made a very thorough examination of the poor creature and there was no doubt at all that this was a female of the servant classes, whose body bore the unmistakable marks of pregnancy. And I assure you, Mrs Gilver, it’s as easy for a medical man to tell such things as whether or not a female has borne a child as it would be for you to tell a man from a woman. I can’t put it any plainer than that.’
I was beginning to have had enough and, before the good doctor could go into any more revolting detail, I rose and held out my hand to him.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘And please, if I could presume on your kindness even further, please don’t tell my husband about this. He thinks I’m silly enough as it is. Now, a-hunting I shall go,’ I finished, picking up the bottle of calamine lotion and brandishing it before me. I was halfway to my bathroom before I remembered that the flea was not real.
Sickened and fearing nightmares for real unless I turned my attention to gayer things, I busied myself in the nursery wing for the rest of the day, where I rather thought I should do a little redecorating before the boys came for the summer. I should shed a tear at the passing of the blue curtains with ducks on them, but they would be most gratified to find manly stripes instead, and so I threw myself into it and grew quite cheerful. Successful as this was for the hours of daylight, however, it was destined not to last.
At a little after nine that evening when my supper had been cleared and I was tucked up on a sofa with Mr Pickwick to jolly me along until bedtime, Alec appeared with a soft knock and slithered almost furtively into my room.
‘Hugh’s taking a contingent to look out of a telescope and I’ve peeled off,’ he said.
‘Quite right, too,’ I said, putting my feet to the floor and closing my book. ‘The tower room will be freezing.’
‘Aren’t you feeling well?’ Alec asked. ‘Are you just off to bed? I don’t want to disturb you.’
‘It’s a smoking suit,’ I said, trying for haughtiness. ‘Right. Report from Dr Milne. Has he said anything, by the way, to the rest of you, about my mental state? He thinks I’m slightly mad after this morning.’ I told Alec with as few grisly embellishments as I thought I could get away with, just what Dr Milne had told me: that he had never met either this child or Cara but that given the thoroughness of his examination there was no doubt about the creature’s class nor her condition.
‘That’s that then,’ said Alec, when I was finished. ‘I still can’t believe it though. A theft, a suicide or whatever you want to call it, and a fire all happening to the same family in such quick succession and none of them connected to any of the others?’
‘Well, in my version,’ I said, ‘the theft and the fire are connected, and it’s just the poor maid that’s the unforeseen catastrophe. And I still think there’s something fishy about that. Why on earth would they take a kitchen maid away with them in the first place? I mean to say, the rough work of the kitchen is the one thing they could be sure to have done daily by some local woman. A lady’s maid, I should have thought.’
‘Who said she was a kitchen maid?’ asked Alec.
‘Good point,’ I said. ‘It was Dr Milne, and I don’t suppose he really knew, just placed the poor creature as low as he could on the scale to match his distaste for what she had done. You should have heard him this morning, Alec. Nothing but disdain for the type of “creature” who would do such a thing. I wish we knew her name. It’s hateful to keep calling her a creature. It makes me no better than he is.’