I felt a familiar tightening in my chest. I knew it was pointless to protest or even to express my penitence. Nothing would stop what now must be done.

Mrs Dempster gestured with the horsewhip.

I assumed the position, bending over the bed as I had done so many times before.

‘Pull up your dress,’ Mrs Dempster commanded. ‘I have guests coming and I do not wish to leave a mark.’

On the fabric, she meant.

It was a fiercer thrashing than I had endured in some years. The earliest ones had been the worst. ‘Like breaking in a horse,’ Mrs Dempster had said.

On this occasion, there seemed to be real fury in the strokes and in the duration. She only desisted when blood was drawn, and even then, I suspect, only because it might seep through and become visible. Appearances had to be preserved, after all, because within a half hour I was to be downstairs, pretending all was well.

I played the part that was expected of me: smiling, content and grateful before the guests. Having learned to mask my suffering, I was dry-eyed, giving no indication of pain or injury.

As it happened, there were tears shed at the end of that day, though they were not mine.

One of the dogs became ill sometime in the evening, writhing and squealing on the floor of the kitchen. The creature’s agony would not pass, and it was in a state of such conspicuous distress that in the end Mr Dempster had to despatch it. I heard the awful keening and yelping suddenly silenced, though it was soon to be replaced by Martha’s own howling lamentation.

‘She must have eaten something she shouldn’t,’ Mr Dempster opined, commencing an enquiry as to precisely what and how, in case any of the others might soon fall victim to the same affliction.

He discovered that the pantry door had been left unlatched, and in its hungry curiosity, the animal had dislodged some items from the only shelf it could reach. One of those was a basket of stale crusts, which it had upended. Unfortunately, another of the things it had toppled was a paper bag of arsenic, purchased the previous year when Mrs Dempster spied a rat in the pantry. The contents of the bag had partly spilled among the crusts, and it appeared the poor dog had poisoned itself.

Mrs Dempster had not seemed particularly moved by the loss of the dog, but she did appear stricken at the sight of her daughter’s distress, and her inability to assuage it.

For my part, I observed the reactions of both with a detached fascination, the appeal of which I could not at first apprehend. But as I watched Martha’s tears and the helplessness of a mother unable to comfort her daughter, I came to understand the effect it was having upon me.

I found their anguish nourishing.

FORTY