Chapter 54 - Dead Man Walking:
"He's ….dead," was all he could say.
With the words ringing in her ears, Charlotte felt the blood on her hand spot onto the flagstone floor. He's dead? No he can't be dead? Can he?
"Charlotte?" Thomas got up and came over to her. His heart was thumping in distress as he saw the state she was in. She was still trembling with fear, her Gibson tuck styled hair almost completely dishevelled and her eyes welling with tears.
"I, I, I just wanted him to stop," she felt her eyes fill with hot stinging tears, "I just wanted him to stop." In that moment the floodgates opened and a torrent of tears began to stream down her face.
"Come on, let's get thee out of t'room," Thomas' voice was soft and he gently guided her shaking frame out of the laundry room and closed the door. He sat her down at the kitchen table and Charlotte tried hard not to wince from the pain of her hidden injuries. The last thing she wanted him to know was that she had been violated in the worst possible way.
"Wait here," Thomas mumbled and dashed out of the kitchen. He came back a few moments later with a crystal decanter and two tumblers.
"No Thomas! That's the Porters' best whiskey," Charlotte gasped as she recognised the ornate decanter. "Carson will sack you if we drink it!"
"Sod Carson!" Thomas retorted sharply, "We need it far more than t'Porters ever will! Drink up." He poured her a generous dram and slid the tumbler across the table to her.
Charlotte picked it up apprehensively; cradling the tumbler in both hands for a second or two before downing the amber brown liquid. Immediately, she coughed and spluttered as the peaty, smoky whiskey scorched and almost stripped her throat. Thomas downed his as if it were merely water and immediately poured them both another generous dram. Charlotte downed it again, coughing less this time and found that it eased the pain in her face and the shaking in her body.
"This is all my fault," Thomas eventually said, "I should have never left thee alone. I failed to protect thee, it's all my fault."
"No it is not your fault," Charlotte insisted. She knew that Bran would never have entered the house if Thomas were there. He must have been watching the house to ensure that she was alone and defenceless.
"Let me look at thee," Thomas came over and held an oil lamp near her face. "Jesus Christ! We should get you a doctor!" He gasped as he noticed her right eye and cheek swelling and turning purple from Bran's powerful punch.
"No! It's fine," she insisted desperately. "I will just say that I was accosted on the way home from a poetry meeting. Please Thomas don't get a doctor!"
"But it might be broken-"
"I said I am fine!" she snapped loudly. The last thing she wanted was a doctor examining her and discovering her other, far more shameful injuries. A moment or so passed in silence and the tension in the room was sharper than a knife's edge.
"So what are we going to do?" Thomas eventually asked as Charlotte stared numbly into her tumbler, the last dregs of whiskey hanging out in the bottom of the glass. Her mind played over and over again Bran's last words and his eyes wide in shock as she smashed the iron into his head.
"I, I, don't know," was all she could say. It was true; she had absolutely no idea of what to do next. How on earth was she going to deal with the dead body lying in the next room? How was she going to be able to work in the house where she had killed him? How was she ever able to go home again with the mother of all secrets on her conscience?
"I should have never left thee alone," Thomas repeated, almost as if he were a gramophone struck on a record. "I should have never left thee alone."
"It's not your fault Thomas. Bran would have waited until you left anyway and he's an expert at unpicking locks." Maybe it was the whiskey that had loosened her tongue and as soon as she saw Thomas' eyes widen in shock, she knew that she had said far too much.
"Bran? You, you knew him?!" Thomas was incredulous, "I thought he was someone pretending to be a salesman so that he could rob thee and t'house! Charlotte, what the hell is going on? Who is this Bran!"
"I, I, I," Charlotte stammered, scrambling to cover her tracks as Thomas strode over to her. "He was my, my, my… fiancé."
"Fiancé?" Thomas was absolutely taken aback by this admission. He had no idea or any reason before to think that Charlotte was promised to another man.
"Former fiancé," Charlotte added, trying to ignore the ball of bile building up in her stomach. "He was a son of a mutual friend of my father. It arranged pretty quickly and we only courted a few times with a chaperone before he proposed marriage. I decided to call off the engagement as I wanted to keep my independence and I would have lost my chance to teach if I got married, especially to a man that I didn't love.
Bran didn't take it well. His ego was severely bruised by my rejection. He has, sorry, had been harassing me ever since." Charlotte felt herself fill with sheer self-disgust at these appalling lies but she had to, she had no choice. Thomas would never look at her again if he knew the truth.
"And that's why thou do nut visit yer family," Thomas said out aloud. "Because thee were in t'same social circles as 'im."
"Yes, I felt that it would be for the best not just for me but for everyone to get a governess position away from Oxford. I thought that time would heal his pride but he followed me to London."
Thomas paced up and down the kitchen, trying to think of what to do. They had to do something before the Porters and the rest of the servants came back. Getting the police involved didn't seem to be an option either. The last thing he wanted was for Charlotte to be arrested and sentenced for murder, even though it was in clearly self-defence. Although it was unlikely, he couldn't risk the chance of her facing the hangman's noose.
"I'll deal with it," he said finally, "I will deal t'body."
Charlotte looked at him, her pale blue eyes wide in disbelief. She knew that Thomas cared for her, but she had no idea that he would go to these lengths to help her, to protect her.
"Thom, Thomas," she stuttered, "what are you going to do with him?"
"Best thee do nut know," Thomas replied, "I'll take care of it Charlotte."
"Thank you Thomas."
"Go upstairs and rest. I'll be back soon, I promise."
Charlotte nodded and after she left the kitchen, Thomas went back into the laundry room. He stared at the body for a moment or so before getting down to business. He grabbed a couple of bed-sheets from the dirty laundry basket and wrapped Bran up in them like a mummy.
He lifted the body over his shoulder and placed it on the large wooden barrow and then covered the corpse with many heavy sacks. Making sure that he was well wrapped up against the cold and with his tweed cap pulled low over his eyes, Thomas together with the body headed out into the foreboding night.
He trekked with the body in the barrow for what seemed like forever, not daring to stop even though the weight of the barrow made his arms hurt. He didn't know what to do with the body. He didn't bring a shovel with him so he couldn't bury it and burning it would be too risky.
Thomas walked and walked until he felt as if his feet were going to fall off when he then realised that he walked into the dark, foreboding slums of the city. He looked around and saw that a grotty, run down pub called The Swan was just down the street. When he arrived at it, Thomas saw an alleyway and after checking that no one was around, dragged the corpse into the dark, smelly alleyway.
Thomas unwrapped the body and laid out Bran on the ground. He then found an empty beer bottle and smashed it over the dead man's head, splattering shards of glass everywhere. He then delved into Bran's cape and jacket and pulled out his wallet and pocket watch. He wanted it to look as if it was a robbery of a drunken man gone wrong. He tossed the money over the cobbles and smashed the glass of the pocket watch before adjusting Bran's arms and legs to look as if the blow from the bottle had caused him to collapse.
Thomas stood over the body for a moment, his breathing heavy in contempt. He hated him; he hated the man that dared lift a finger to Charlotte. "I hope thou burn in hell!" he cursed at the corpse when a sound of people coming out of the pub made him scarper, pushing the barrow as fast as he could.
It took him ages to get back to the house. He felt so exhausted but he went back into the laundry room and got on his hands and knees and scrubbed up all of the blood off the floor. He rearranged everything so no one would even suspect of anything untoward had happened.
He slowly walked up the stairs to the attic, feeling as if he had aged a hundred years and knocked on Charlotte's bedroom door. "Charlotte, it's Thomas," he said when the door didn't open. "It's done. I have taken care of it." There was a long pause and Thomas started to panic at possibility of her doing something to herself whilst he was out.
"Thank you Thomas," he eventually heard her meek voice through the door.
"I will be in my room," Thomas replied, feeling utterly hopeless. "He's gone Charlotte. He can nut hurt thee no more."
No answer. Thomas walked away from the door and went into his own room. He immediately lit a cigarette and inhaled the smoke with some desperation. Never in his life had he felt so wretched, he never thought that he, a simple, green farmer's son would be disposing of a dead body in the dirty slums of London. All he knew in that moment that he wasn't going to sleep tonight and probably not for a long time.