‘It’s me, Gifford,’ she said quietly. ‘It’s only me.’
His vague eyes danced around the moonlit room, then came to rest on her. To her horror, she saw tears.
‘You’re safe,’ he said, breathing out the words with a sigh. ‘You’re a good girl, Connie. A good girl. You look after your poor old dad. You never left me.’
Connie wanted to remain in the past for a while longer. To stay with Cassie. To remember more of their shared life, without giving in to grief. But, as she had done so many times before, she locked her private emotions away the better to tend to her father instead.
‘Can you remember what happened? You went into the storeroom to look for something and perhaps you fell? Hit your head? Do you remember?’
‘Proof,’ he said, tapping the side of his nose. ‘Names, evidence. I kept my word, girl. I didn’t talk.’
‘The Corvidae Club. That’s right, isn’t it? You made a display case. It’s beautiful, I saw it. Is that why you went into the storeroom?’
But Gifford was lost in his own thoughts, not hearing hers. He started to shake his head.
‘Made no difference in the end. She’s dead. All of it for nothing; she died all the same.’ He suddenly raised his head and looked her in the eye. ‘Cassie’s dead, you see.’
She nodded, both of them grieving, finally acknowledging the loss that had kept them separate from one another for ten years.
‘I know, I remember now. I remember her.’
‘All these years.’ He was shaking his head from side to side. ‘All these years, I kept my word. Said nothing. Tried to do right by her. And now?’ He gave a shrug, arms and hands flapping at the air. ‘Dead. They haven’t even told me about the funeral. Why won’t they tell me? Don’t I have the right to know when they’re putting her in the ground?’
Mary suddenly woke up, sitting bolt upright on the hard chair. Davey stirred too. Without speaking, Connie gestured to them both to slip away. Looking anxious, Mary gathered the boy to her and guided him out of the room.
Connie put her hand on Gifford’s arm. ‘Don’t distress yourself.’
‘I thought I saw her. In the churchyard. Her hair, blue coat, thought it was her.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘A ghost.’
He suddenly howled. The sound, so full of pain, chilled Connie to the bone.
‘It wasn’t a ghost,’ she tried to explain. ‘It was a real woman. Vera Barker, she looked like Cassie. At least, I think she did.’
‘Ghost,’ he said. ‘Knew it couldn’t have been. They told me. Wrote to me. Been dead a week.’
‘Cassie’s been dead longer than that, Father,’ she said as gently as she could.
‘April it was, just when we were ready. Prepared.’ Again, in the midst of his muddled ramblings, he suddenly looked Connie clearly in the eye. ‘Influenza, the letter said. Why won’t they tell me when she’s to be buried? I have the right, don’t I, Connie? I’ve got the right to know.’
She could see Gifford was working himself into another state. If that happened, nothing she could say or do would get through to him.
‘Of course you have the right,’ she said, trying to pick her way through his incoherent comments. ‘I’ll tell them.’
He nodded. ‘You do that, you do that. All these years waiting. I paid the bills. Hospital has to tell me. I have a right.’
Connie turned cold. ‘Graylingwell Hospital?’
Gifford suddenly gave a bark of laughter, then put his finger to his lips and shushed. ‘We kept it secret,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘It’s what they had to believe, to keep her safe. We kept it to ourselves.’ He reached across and put his finger on Connie’s lips instead. ‘Not even Jennie knew.’
‘Jennie?’
But his eyes were clouding in confusion. The moment of clarity, of transparency, had gone. He dropped his thin hand on Connie’s shoulder.
‘Had to keep you safe too.’
Chapter 39
North Street
Chichester
Four o’clock.
The rain was drumming on the roofs of the houses in North Street, ricocheting off the red tiles and the grey slate, washing everything clean. The Pallants and Little London, Lion Street and Chapel Street.
Harry couldn’t sleep. For hours, since he returned home, he’d been pacing up and down, listening for the sound of his father’s latch key in the lock. Wondering where he was, if he was all right, what tomorrow might bring. The sight of Lewis’s face when he’d arrived home, the way it seemed to collapse in upon itself when he saw it was only Harry, not the old man, had been heartbreaking in itself. The butler had heard nothing, seen no one. The only thing that had happened was that a personal note for Dr Woolston had been delivered.
Harry lit another cigarette, letting his thoughts return to Connie. It had been awful to leave, though he could hardly have stayed. His presence in the house at night would certainly have attracted comment.
Then to have been obliged to keep up a stilted conversation with Crowther as they rushed along the sodden footpath towards Mill Lane, when all Harry could think about was what had happened to his father. That had been difficult too. A decent man, Crowther – and very charitable of him to send Harry back to Chichester in his own carriage – but at the same time, there was something about him that made Harry think he was always observing from the outside, rather than being part of it.
He stared blankly at the canvas again. Then, unable to face the evidence of his failure any longer, he went to his easel and turned the picture to face the wall. He’d start something new in the morning.
He shook his head.
No, not tomorrow. Today. Today he and Connie would meet and share what new information they had garnered. Harry had nothing to offer, but perhaps she would. He would speak to Pearce. Ask him what the devil he was playing at speaking to Pennicott.
But then, if there was still no sign of his father – of Connie’s, either – they would go to Pennicott themselves. Lay everything before him and ask for his help. Neither he nor Connie wanted to involve the police, but with each hour that passed, the knot of cold fear in his stomach grew stronger.
Harry looked at the rain streaming down the window panes and, in the distance, heard a first rumble of thunder. He wondered what Connie was doing. Was she sleeping? Was she awake and anxious like him?
Would she come? Or in the grey light of day would she think better of it? Would she think his fears were ridiculous? These sorts of things simply didn’t happen in a place like Chichester. It was absurd, all of it. Or would be, except for the fact that two men were missing and a young woman was dead. Murdered, if Connie was right.
Harry poured himself a nightcap. The bells of the cathedral struck the quarter hour. Then, suddenly, he realised what he had to do. There was only one way to fill the hours until Connie arrived at ten o’clock.
He found a blank canvas, about ten inches by eight, and flung the old one on to the armchair. Not even stopping to put on his painting smock, he took a brush from the jar, wiped it on a cloth, then prepared his palette. He didn’t need a sketch, he didn’t need her sitting in front of him. In his mind’s eye, he could picture every inch, every shade of her changing expression, the way she held her head. He closed his eyes, remembering how her brows furrowed when she was thinking, bringing to mind the colour of her hair, the tint of her skin.
Her image clear, he opened his eyes and began to paint.
Little by little, Connie’s features began to emerge. Soon, she was looking straight out of the painting at him, with the jackdaw held gently in her hands.
He [Bécoeur] opened his bird in the usual manner, that is to say by the middle of the belly, he easily took out the body by this opening, without cutting off the extremities, he then removed the flesh by the aid of a scalpel, taking the precaution to preserve all the ligaments; he anointed the skin, and put the skeleton in its place, carefully dispersing the feathers on each side. He ran the head through with an iron wire, in which
he had formed a little ring at nearly the third of its length; the smallest side passed into the rump, in such a manner that the ring of the iron wire united to pass into the little ring; he bent these extremities within, and fixed them with a string to the iron in the middle of the vertebral column. He replaced the flesh by flax or chopped cotton, sewed up the bird, placed it on a foot or support of wood, and gave it a suitable attitude, of which he was always sure, for a bird thus mounted could only bend in its natural position.
TAXIDERMY: OR, THE ART OF COLLECTING, PREPARING,
AND MOUNTING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY
Mrs R. Lee
Longman & Co, Paternoster Row, London, 1820
He was my greatest challenge.
Such a large man, cumbersome, I knew that the only way was for him to come to me of his own volition. That was not difficult. A message too clear to misunderstand, an invitation that he would find impossible to resist.
I killed him alone. Others helped with the purchasing of candles and drapes. The tincture was easy to make, using Birdie’s recipe. She knew every plant, every extract, had laid out everything I might need. I waited for her to come back. I know, now, she is dead. Though I do not know which of them is responsible, I know they murdered her. Vera was simple and kind-hearted, she helped care for me once. Then, I cared for her.
Her death is on my conscience.
*
I am listening for the sound of men’s boots on the path, men’s fists at the door. I do not think I will survive much longer. I feel them circling, like the gulls overhead, closing in on me.
I wanted Brook to know what was happening to him. A man so violent, so cruel. To watch the knife slicing him open, and be unable to stop me. Fair retribution. I wanted him to see the way his fat and flesh fell from the blade. But he was too strong, too hard to restrain, so I knew I could not take the risk.
Belladonna in his drink. A pleasing touch, don’t you think?
I removed his heart first, red and still beating, still pumping. Watching it slow, and slow, stutter and die. Next his lungs and his stomach, the endless grey rope of intestines, the texture of uncooked dough. Peeling back his skin, layer after layer, my hands paddling in his chest.
When the knife was no longer equal to the task, I used the saw stolen from the butcher’s shop. Kneading and scraping out and pressing down, until I’d made a cavity large enough for my purposes. When it does not matter what damage is done, little skill is required.
The rain started to fall harder as I positioned the hooks. Striking off the roof and the paved path leading to the door. Even now, I hear the suck and roar of the sea, pulling at the shingle with the turn of each wave. Higher and higher, until it sounds as if it is lapping against the walls.
I heard the first warning rumbles of thunder out at sea and knew the storm was beginning as I pushed the first of the wires into place. Jabbing under his skin, hardening against my caresses. Forcing the wire into his shoulders and his wrists, into the gaping flesh of his stomach and his neck. Two separate twists of wire on either side.
The candles burnt low, and still I worked.
Next, the wood wool and the feathers, filling out the cavities as if stuffing a mattress with straw. A different sort of life, like one of Madame Tussaud’s waxworks, but better. All around me on the floor, stained strips of bloodied cotton, the coppery smell, both sharp and sweet at the back of my throat.
Finally, I took up the trussing needle, and with fingers sore from the hours of working, I began to sew. Pushing the needle through the cooling flesh and drawing it out again, picking up tattered threads of skin. I always did have a delicate hand for embroidery.
Finally, the moon slipped back to earth and I was done. Exhausted, barely able to stand or to think, but satisfied with my work.
Now morning is here, though the sky remains dark. Great black banks of cloud are rolling up the estuary, bringing with them harder and heavier rain. On an instant, a fork of lightning illuminates the outline of the Old Salt Mill in the centre of the channel, and the houses around the edge of Fishbourne Creek.
I think of both of you. Are you sleeping?
The tide is continuing to rise. I can see the swell crashing against the defences and wonder if the sluice gates will hold for a little while longer. I want to rest, but my thoughts will not let me go.
Soon, now. Soon it will be over.
One more to be brought to account. Then, at last, I shall be at peace.
Chapter 40
Blackthorn House
Fishbourne Marshes
Connie looked out on the drowning world. The purple sky, the black sea, the trees and spartina grasses, the wych elm and the weeping willows: everything seemed to have merged into one. The waves were hitting the sluice gates and throwing angry white foam high up into the air. Even with the windows shut, she could hear the frantic rattling of the wheel in the Old Salt Mill, turning, rumbling, faster and faster.
‘When’s the next high tide?’ she asked, looking out over the marshes. Rain was streaming down the window panes, obscuring the view.
Davey came to stand beside her. ‘Five o’clock, give or take. It’s going out now, though there’s barely any difference between low and high water.’ He paused. ‘Do you think the gates will hold, miss?’
‘The miller will do what’s necessary,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. The boy knew as well as she did that the combination of the full moon, the high spring tides and heavy rain was dangerous. ‘He’ll open the gates. Send the water back out to the sea.’
‘They couldn’t keep back the floods in January,’ Davey said. ‘Water even got as far as the bottom of Salthill Road. Mary said Ma Christie had to rush the little ones upstairs to keep them safe when the water came fossicking in under the door. None of them can swim, not even Jennie. Had to wait for a boat to come and rescue them from the first-floor window.’
‘We’re better prepared this time,’ Connie said only half-believing her own words. ‘We know what to expect. Fishbourne has stood firm against the sea for hundreds, maybe thousands of years. The land is designed to cope with such extremes.’
At the head of the creek, she could see the tide washing against the brick wall of the garden of Salt Mill House. The sea was taking back the land. Already the fields closest to the shore were half submerged. And it would only get worse.
‘Shall I stay here with you, to keep an eye, until Mary comes back?’ Davey asked.
‘Thank you,’ Connie said, realising that the boy was frightened. Something he’d said had lodged itself in her mind, but she couldn’t work out what it was.
‘Blackthorn House survived the storms of March and April,’ she continued. ‘This is no different. We just have to pray the rain doesn’t get heavier.’
‘It’ll be worse later with the next high tide, come what may.’
She feared he was right. Another front was threatening out at sea. And even if the rain stopped now, which it showed no signs of doing, the next few hours were critical.
She glanced over at the day bed, where her father lay sleeping. Their long conversation in the middle of the night had worn him out.
Connie had remained awake, waiting for the dawn. Thinking and wondering and trying to remember.
When Gifford woke again, they would talk more. However painful it might be for her father, the truth had to be acknowledged. There was no other way to bring the story to an end. And to understand what was happening now. Connie didn’t know what she feared, only that she knew in her bones there was something more to come.
She looked, again, at her father. Gifford might sleep for many hours more, long enough to give Connie the chance to get to Chichester and back. Despite the threat of flooding, she was determined to keep to the arrangement she and Harry had made to meet at ten o’clock. She had so much more to tell him now, though she dreaded the hurt it might cause. He clearly loved his father, as she loved Gifford.
She kept telling herself that when she arrived at
the house in North Street, she would discover Dr Woolston was there. That it had all been a misunderstanding. In truth, she knew this was wishful thinking.
She looked at the clock, working out how long she might be gone. The only possible moment to attempt the journey was now, in the brief break in the clouds. The rain had eased a little and the wind, though strong, had softened. There would be a few hours’ respite before the tide turned and the next storm blew in with the rising waters.
Davey could hold the fort until Mary returned. She had sent the girl home at six o’clock. Mrs Christie would have been worried sick when her daughter hadn’t come home last night. Connie wouldn’t be in Chichester for more than an hour or two. Besides, the thought of Harry looking out of the window on North Street, waiting for her and losing heart when he realised she wasn’t coming, was too much to bear.
‘I’m going to have to go to Chichester for a while,’ she said. ‘Can I leave you in charge?’
Davey’s eyes widened with alarm. ‘But the footpath’s all but underwater already, Miss Gifford. Even if you get through, what about if you can’t get home to us?’
‘While I’m gone, can you stack sandbags against the doors,’ she said, touched by the boy referring to Blackthorn House as home. ‘Mary will be back soon, and she should check the pails in the attic straight away. Start with the ice house first, it’s the most vulnerable, then the side door and the back door.’ She looked at him, wondering if he knew the word. ‘That’s to say, the most likely to let the water in.’
‘I know what “vulnerable” means,’ he said proudly. ‘Ma Christie told me.’
Suddenly Connie realised what had snagged her attention. In the January floods, Davey had said, Mrs Christie had had to get the twins upstairs because none of them could swim – ‘not even Jennie’.