The Taxidermist's Daughter

  I lined up the scalpel, put the weight of my body behind the blade, and pushed. At first, nothing. A moment of suspension. Then the tip pierced the skin. A hiss of air and a sigh as the flesh unfolded, as if Jackdaw too was relieved the waiting was over. A leaking of liquid and the distinctive coppery smell of souring blood. Then, with my knife and untutored fingers, I began to peel the skin back from his shattered bones.

  It was difficult work, dirty. I felt the struggle of it in my shoulders and in my hands, the handle cutting into my palm. I laboured for hours, finishing only as the night had robbed the sky of all colour and the light returned.

  When it was finished, I thought again of you.

  Then of the next destined to die.

  PART II

  Thursday

  Chapter 16

  Blackthorn House

  Fishbourne Marshes

  Thursday 2nd May

  Connie was woken by the harsh chattering of a bird. She lifted her head from the glass of the window with a jolt, and looked out into a grey dawn.

  A single magpie sat on the gate at the end of the path. Pica pica. Glossy black and white. Wing feathers of purple blue, the long green sheen of his tail. Connie saluted.

  ‘One for sorrow.’

  Her neck was stiff and she was cold, exhausted as much by relief that the night had passed without incident as by her lack of sleep. The anxiety that had led her to spend the midnight hours watching from the stairs had faded with the coming of the day, damp and miserable as it was.

  Outside the window, the marshes were calm and flat in the strengthening morning light. Further out, the surface of the mill pond was choppy. Connie opened the window and smelt the rain in the air, felt the wind on her face.

  She folded the tartan blanket and stretched. A sleeping house and an empty house had different atmospheres, in the quality of silence and stillness. Though she knew in her bones her father had not come back, she went to check all the same.

  She unlocked his bedroom and went inside. The same undercurrent of despair hung in the stale air. This morning, she noticed a glass she’d missed on his bedside table, a hardened sediment at the bottom. She sniffed it. Brandy and ash. Her eyes flickered around the room, just in case she had overlooked a note or some other clue, but there was nothing remarkable. She wondered where her father had spent the night, and if he was all right.

  The truth was, Gifford often took himself off without explanation or warning. No mystery to it, only a dark and self-destructive impulse that led him to drink until he had blotted out all the black thoughts in his head. It had scared her when she was younger. Now, more than anything, she hated how helpless she was to prevent it from happening.

  The magpie continued to rattle its warning from the gate. Connie lingered a little longer in the room, hearing a faint echo of Gifford’s voice in her head.

  *

  A new memory. Or, rather, an old memory retrieved.

  Once, her father had conjured such clever stories. He’d been a salesman, as well as a skilled stuffer, and his business thrived because of the way he could talk and talk. A showman. Connie could see him now, standing at the counter of a large, well-appointed workshop – not here at Blackthorn House, but before – so proud of a piece he had created. A magpie mounted in a wooden box, the sky a painted forget-me-not blue. Its tail touching the sides of the glass. Her father’s card affixed to the back: PRESERVED BY MR CROWLEY GIFFORD – STUFFER OF BIRDS.

  There had been a customer, and Connie had been listening from behind the door that led from the workshop into the museum. The colour of the magpie, her father was saying, was symbolic of creation. The void, the mystery of that which had not yet taken form. Black and white, he said. Presence and absence.

  The woman was hanging on his every word, and Connie felt pride at that. Watching the client trying to resist his patter, but being drawn in all the same. Of course, the magpie’s a trickster too, he was saying, and the woman was nodding with his description of the bird, the powdered face and wide eyes just visible beneath the brim of her wide summer hat. Grey gloves stained black at the seams, brought to mind with complete clarity. The smart clothes and careful manner, but gloves that had not been washed.

  The woman did not know Gifford was playing her. Connie remembered seeing his expression, as he turned around for a moment: a mixture of avarice and cunning. Then, for an instant, realising how others might consider her father a charlatan. A spinner of tales.

  Such a very watchful bird, the magpie, he carried on, fearless and manipulative. An excellent piece for a domestic setting, a sentinel to guard the house. It died naturally, madam, yes, of course. Struck by a hansom cab. Shame to waste such a beautiful specimen. When there was a group of them, it was called a tiding. A tiding of magpies, wasn’t that something?

  All the time he was talking, her father was rubbing a soft cloth over the surface of the glass. He made the woman feel a sadness for the bird. Connie remembered how she had dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  Connie tried to change the view, to see herself rather than the scene, but found she could not. She remembered how her father had called to her to fetch brown paper and string, to wrap the magpie. She carried it out to a landau waiting at the kerb. A pair and two, a chestnut and a bay.

  She frowned, trying to work out how old she might have been. Old enough to bear the weight of the case, or had someone helped her? Four hands on the box, not two.

  She remembered how proud she had been to be asked to write out the rhyme affixed to the back of the case. Small, neat letters.

  One for sorrow, two for joy.

  Three for girl, four for a boy.

  Five for silver, six for gold . . .

  She had admired her father once. Been proud of him.

  When had that changed?

  *

  A knocking brought Connie back to the present. She went to the window and looked down to see Mary waiting patiently at the kitchen door.

  For a moment, Connie did not move. She was becalmed, like a boat out on the creek with no wind. Caught halfway between remembering it all and forgetting.

  With a great effort of will, she tore herself away from her father’s room, and her memories and his secrets, and went to let Mary in. The words of the child’s rhyme continued to go round and around in her head.

  ‘Seven for a secret never to be told.’

  Chapter 17

  North Street

  Chichester

  ‘You’re certain his bed hasn’t been slept in, Lewis?’

  ‘Quite certain, sir.’

  Harry threw The Times on to the breakfast table. ‘And he didn’t return home for dinner?’

  ‘As I said, sir,’ the butler replied in his toneless voice, ‘he did not.’

  Harry glanced at Lewis, but his face gave nothing away. The whole conversation had been a struggle, and his headache was getting worse. ‘And no message?’

  ‘No, sir. No message.’

  Harry waved a hand to encourage the butler to go on.

  ‘At nine thirty, when neither Dr Woolston nor yourself had returned,’ Lewis continued, ‘Mrs Lewis and I cleared the dining room and prepared a cold supper instead.’ He paused. ‘I trust you found it satisfactory, sir?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Harry said uncomfortably. For the second night in a row, he had been glad of the plate of food when he staggered home in the small hours having missed dinner.

  Rattled by his experiences at Blackthorn House, the maelstrom of conflicting emotions, Harry had walked back to Chichester from Fishbourne to clear his head. The familiar lights of the Castle Inn in West Street were hard to resist, so he had gone in, intending to have a shot of gin, a glass of Dutch courage to prepare himself for the conversation with his father. He’d somehow persuaded himself by then that not only would the old man be waiting at home as usual – with a perfectly ordinary, dull explanation for his unscheduled visit to Fishbourne – but also that he would prove sympathetic to Harry’s desire to c
huck in working for Brook and dedicate himself to a career in art instead. Even his father could see that he had no commercial skill for selling or brokering deals.

  In truth, Harry was struggling to forget the face of the drowned woman. The pallor of her skin. As the hours had passed, he’d found himself more shaken by what he’d witnessed rather than less.

  One glass became two, became three. Harry grew boisterous. The regulars were a welcoming crowd, lots of them stuck in the same dead-end situations as he was. After sharing horror stories about fathers who were holding them back, who didn’t understand the new generation, and several more rounds of drinks, the talk had turned to the ghosts supposed to haunt the inn. A Roman centurion had been sighted several times, not surprising given its position backing on to the old flint walls of the city. Harry wondered if there was a tavern in Chichester without one.

  All thoughts of tackling his father slipped into the background. And, finally, so did the horror of the swollen face and hands, the memory of dragging the corpse across the tide and on to the bank.

  By the time Harry left the Castle Inn, it was after midnight. The night air, far from sobering him up, seemed to do the opposite. He found it a challenge to put one foot in front of the other. Staggering past the cathedral green, clinging to the railings to keep his balance, he saw Sergeant Pennicott standing at the Market Cross. He’d run into him once before. The sergeant was a teetotaller and took a dim view of public insobriety. Harry had also discovered, to his embarrassment, that he was incorruptible. It was only thanks to his father that he had been let off with a caution.

  To avoid the policeman, Harry ducked into the Rifleman for a nightcap, the only place in Chichester that stayed open into the small hours. All in all, having taken a roundabout route – by mistake rather than design – he hadn’t made it home until well after one o’clock. His concern, then, was not to wake his father up.

  Stumbling up the stairs, he dropped his Oxfords outside his bedroom door to be cleaned, then fell fully clothed into bed and slept until five, dreaming of Connie sitting in his studio, inspiring him to paint the most astonishing portrait of his career. Raging thirst had woken him and driven him to the kitchen, where he found the plate of cut meats. He wolfed it down with what seemed like a gallon of water, then returned to bed to try to beat his hangover – without success.

  ‘And no word from my father this morning, Lewis? A telegram? Message from his office?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  It was extraordinary. Even if there had been some sort of accident, his father would have found a way of letting him know. Of letting Lewis know, at least. He didn’t like the servants to be inconvenienced.

  Harry frowned, set a new wave of pain rolling around in his head. He wondered if a mustard poultice might help. He couldn’t remember ever feeling quite so dreadful. Not since coming down from Oxford. End of Trinity Term, 1907. That had been an evening to remember, up all night after the Coronation Ball. Champagne and dancing in the streets. He’d kissed that pretty brown-haired sister of the chap on the staircase next to his.

  Not a patch on Miss Gifford – Connie. He wondered how she was this morning, and if she was recovered from their shared ordeal yesterday. On reflection, he was sure she would be fine. She had backbone.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying, sir,’ Lewis added, cutting into Harry’s reflections, ‘I am certain there will be a rational explanation for Dr Woolston’s absence.’

  Harry looked up, disconcerted by the fact that the old servant was trying to reassure him. It somehow made the situation more alarming.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said, injecting confidence into his voice. ‘Some miscommunication or other, I’m sure. In fact, I’ll go to his consulting rooms now, to see how things stand. See what Pearce has to say.’

  Lewis cleared his throat. ‘Or . . . and forgive me for suggesting it, sir, but perhaps also a visit to the West Sussex County Asylum? Dr Woolston’s colleagues there might be expecting him.’

  Harry nodded, then regretted it. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘Will you be home for lunch as usual, sir?’

  Harry dropped his napkin on the table and pushed his chair back. If he had no luck in finding out where his father was in Chichester, he was thinking he might go back to Fishbourne. Not least, he could call on Connie at Blackthorn House to see how she was. No one, not even his father, could consider that inappropriate. He could introduce himself to her father at the same time. He was rather interested to know what kind of man he was.

  He stood up. ‘No, I’ll be out all day.’

  *

  Harry walked down North Street.

  After the brief promise of summer yesterday, the weather had sunk back into another damp, grey spring morning. Harry was glad of his Mackintosh and boots. The cool air was helping his hangover and he was starting to feel rather less ill.

  The glazier was replacing the glass in the butcher’s window. Harry tried to remember if he’d passed this way on his way home last night. Inside, he could see people moving about, including Pennicott, so he increased his pace.

  He turned right at the Market Cross into West Street. Was he making too much of his father’s absence? There was bound to be some dull-as-ditchwater explanation. On the other hand, even though Lewis was unaware of the scene in his father’s consulting rooms, and his father’s dash out of town, he was also worried.

  Harry hesitated outside for a moment, then, telling himself everything was bound to be back to normal, he pushed open the door.

  Today, his father’s assistant was sitting behind his leather-topped writing desk as usual. Every pen, his blotter, each sheet of paper in perfect and symmetrical order. Harry gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘Morning, Pearce,’ he said. ‘Another glorious day.’

  Pearce looked at him over the top of his spectacles. ‘Do you think so?’ he said. ‘I thought it rather overcast.’

  Harry stared at him. ‘It was a joke.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Is the old man in?’

  Pearce frowned. ‘As a matter of fact, he is not.’

  Harry felt his stomach lurch. ‘But you are expecting him?’

  ‘When I arrived this morning, I found the door unlocked. Most irregular. I assumed that Dr Woolston had been called away and, though this is most unlike him, had omitted to secure the building.’

  Harry frowned. ‘He didn’t leave a note, I suppose, saying where he was going?’

  ‘He did not.’ Pearce sniffed, dabbing at his red nose with a handkerchief. ‘Which is most unusual. Whenever Dr Woolston is intending to be away from the office, he makes sure I am aware of it. Very methodical.’

  ‘Have you checked his appointments diary? Perhaps that will give some clue as to where he is?’

  Pearce looked scandalised. ‘I couldn’t possibly do that without Dr Woolston’s express permission. It’s private.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t object to me having a look,’ Harry said, bounding up the stairs two at a time.

  ‘I don’t advise—’

  ‘Tell him I bullied you into it, Pearce.’

  *

  Harry’s unease deepened when he saw the chair on its side.

  He bent down and picked it up, then cast an eye around to see if anything else struck a false note. He glanced out of the high Georgian window, which looked out over rooftops to St Peter’s Church, then back to the room. His father’s desk was not untidy, but it was not in the pristine state Harry knew the old man left things in at the end of each working day. It was evident his father had not come back after the quarrel Harry had overheard. He glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. Each evening, before he left the office, his father wound it. It was already running slow.

  Harry checked the desk diary, scrupulously maintained in his father’s neat handwriting. An hour-by-hour record of meetings and commitments. It was entirely free of appointments yesterday and today.

  He felt shabby going through his father’s private possessions, b
ut opened the desk drawer all the same. There was nothing unusual, except for a small silver snuff box. Harry smiled, feeling rather touched at this sign of a normal – though unexpected – human vice. A second glass of claret at dinner was the closest to indulgence he had known his father to get.

  ‘Is there anything noted in the diary?’ Pearce said.

  Harry turned round to see the clerk standing in the doorway.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said, closing the drawer. ‘You haven’t been in here this morning, Pearce?’

  ‘Of course not.’ The clerk was shocked. ‘I never come into Dr Woolston’s rooms without invitation.’

  ‘I dare say,’ Harry muttered. ‘As it happens, I popped in yesterday lunchtime, but I didn’t see you. Were you here in the afternoon?’

  ‘The exceptional warm weather yesterday brought on, I regret to say, a disabling attack of hay fever. Dr Woolston was quite concerned and suggested I should go home. I demurred, of course, but your father insisted upon it.’

  Harry thought for a moment, then fell back on the same reassurance that Lewis had tried to give him.

  ‘I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for my father’s absence,’ he said. ‘All the same, would you send a telegram to the chap at the asylum. What’s the fellow’s name?’

  ‘Dr Kidd.’

  ‘Kidd, that’s right. Ask him . . .’ He stopped. What, in fact, was he asking? ‘If there was perhaps an emergency meeting called of the committee yesterday afternoon, a last-minute arrangement. You know better than me the sort of thing that goes on up there, Pearce, you decide what to put. But don’t break the bank.’

  Harry walked past the clerk and down the stairs. ‘Oh, and while you’re at it, would you mind popping across the road and explaining that I was called away on family business yesterday afternoon. Won’t make it in today, either.’