1.3 Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa

In which Mrs Sinclair pours away the evidence.

Mrs Sinclair stepped through the adjoining door to her own bedroom and sat down at her dressing table. Her mahogany toilet mirror with its delicate turned finials winked at her in the low autumn sun. She thought absently that while she ought not to buy any fripperies for some time, she was glad that she had this. It had been a wedding present, and showed her reflection clearly: a pale face, strained and sorrowful. Her black hair was fastened tightly and unbecomingly in the fusty style Mr Sinclair approved. It made her look years older than she really was. She pulled her brown woollen shawl closer around the low neckline of her faded black morning dress.

She mended her pen carefully, drew the sheet of plain white notepaper towards her and composed a note to Mr Haraldsen. She regretted that she would have to wait until Monday before Oliphant could collect the correct black-bordered notepaper from Lerwick. She should write a note for the stationer as well. She remembered then that she had to write to Mr Borthwick to tell him of Mr Sinclair’s death, and to ask about that strange payment. She must also write to the minister, and to Mr Sinclair’s widowed cousin-in-law who lived in the north mainland. And to the lawyer! Her tasks seemed unending. But only then she could write to her own friends. The thought gave her some relief. With them she could speak more freely, but what a tedious farce all these polite notifications were.

She sealed Mr Haraldsen’s note and handed it to Jessie.

‘I have other letters to write that Oliphant must take. Ask him to wait. He can deliver them all on his way to Lerwick.’

While Jessie’s footsteps pattered briskly along the landing and down the stairs, Mrs Sinclair closed her bedroom door quietly, and leaned against it. She gazed at her neatly-made white bed, and smiled.

No-one would disturb her.

No-one would shout for her, or storm into her room with accusations of ingratitude and wasteful conduct.

No-one would insist on forcing his way into her bed every night, muttering darkly that her failure to give him a son was nothing but witchcraft.

It had not been. She would have liked a son, but there was nothing to be done when a man’s seed was incapable of producing one. She had not mentioned this to her husband. In thirteen years she had held her tongue and endured him. She did not know why. Stupefaction, perhaps. Or exhaustion. Fear of being beaten. Of bruises, of being stared at by the servants, having to face her husband’s drinking friends with the mark of his riding-crop on her face. Hiding the wounds from her daughters until they healed. There was much she could and did endure, but she would not endure that. His storming rages were enough to make her submit. She had not been a brave woman, she knew. But now things were different.

A small thing had been the turning point, a word said as an aside, with a glance and a familiar expression on his thin, tight face. Those had finally given her the resolution to recall the combination of drugs that she would use, and the courage to rise from her bed before dawn to kill him while the drugs kept him asleep. But she had rid him from her life, at last. Her gladness was a warm, beating hope giving colour and light to her future, and to the lives of her daughters. She had done her duty for as long as she could. She had not been able to thole it for longer; no woman could.

She went through to the dressing-room and closed its door to the landing. She opened the lid of the medicine chest on the chest of drawers, a relic from Mr Sinclair’s soldiering youth. She untwisted the silver caps from each glass bottle, and poured their contents into the slop bowl. The last bottle’s liquid began to crystallise into tears of muddy blood, and she stared at it with some concern. Had the formulation been too strong? No matter. It had helped to kill him.

She looked about for something to disguise the mixture, and took up the hearth shovel. When the liquids had been absorbed by the cold ashes and she had smothered the tiny red crystals, she rang the bell.

Betsy, the housemaid, arrived panting from running up the back stairs.

‘Take this mess and bury it in the midden, Betsy,’ her mistress instructed her. ‘I do not want the children to play with their father’s medicines, so I have emptied them, and will wash the bottles out myself.’

Betsy looked dubiously at the sodden grey mass in the china bowl.

‘It’s just ashes,’ Mrs Sinclair said briskly, ‘Ash neutralises noxious compounds. Mr Sinclair was an enthusiast for nostrums and remedies. But I do not want his daughters to drink them too.’ She dabbed dampness away from the corner of her eye with her handkerchief.

Betsy stared at her.

When Mrs Sinclair descended the stairs an hour later, holding her sheaf of sealed letters, she heard the doctor’s voice. He was talking to Jessie and to Anderson, and he turned to bow to her.

She handed the letters to Jessie. ‘Give these to Oliphant to deliver, please. Be sure that he has food and drink for the journey.’

She turned to Dr McKay, feeling as if she were on display in a witness-box. He was thirty years older than she was, still wearing the old-fashioned bag-wig that he had worn when he had greeted her on her marriage. He wore his fusty green shooting coat all year round and it stank of horses. A more observant man she had not yet met.

Episode 1.4 will follow.

Mrs Sinclair and the Feather Haa © Kate Macdonald 2024.

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