The Taxidermist''s Daughter

  ‘I dare say it’ll keep until tomorrow. Probably nothing important,’ she said, though her expression gave the lie to her words. ‘Be one of those door-to-door insurance salesmen, likely as not.’

  Mary didn’t notice that her mother’s hand was shaking.

  Chapter 12

  The Bull’s Head

  Main Road

  Fishbourne

  Harry took out a cigarette to steady his nerves.

  Above his head, the painted sign – THE BULL’S HEAD – creaked and swayed in the wind. His hands were shaking so much, it took several strikes before he got a light.

  He couldn’t get the image of the dead woman out of his mind: the bubbles at the corners of her mouth. Her puffy, swollen face. He’d never seen a dead body before. When his mother died, quickly and without warning when he was seven, he’d been away at school. Both sets of grandparents had passed away before he’d been born.

  Harry drew breath deeply, letting the smoke settle in his chest. He felt he’d got himself into a devil of a mess. Somehow he had to organise a cart to go out to retrieve the body, as he’d promised, but not get drawn any further in himself. And he still had no idea what had happened to his father. Home, probably, by now.

  ‘What a bloody awful business.’ He muttered.

  He could hardly just walk up to Arthur Evershed’s front door. The irony was not lost on him that one of the leading local artists – and a man who’d had a celebrated and distinguished medical career as well – lived in Fishbourne. In any other circumstance, Harry would jump at the chance to introduce himself. But if he hadn’t actually lied to Connie, he certainly hadn’t admitted that his presence outside what turned out to be Dr Evershed’s house was only a coincidence. When the maid had come flying around the corner, Harry had found himself somehow swept along by it. He felt he was rising to a challenge.

  Ridiculous, though he couldn’t say he regretted it.

  Could he get away with going to Dr Evershed and explaining the situation without giving his name? He thought for a moment, then dismissed the idea with great regret. It would be peculiar, and when Evershed spoke to Connie, it would still come out that Harry had been economical with the truth. The thought of her thinking badly of him made him sick to his boots.

  Harry paused. She had taken the whole ghastly business in her stride. No fuss, a far stronger stomach than his. Formidable, though she hadn’t been one of those hard girls. Such a striking profile; he’d love to paint her. Her pale skin and brown hair, those thinking eyes. She would be the most remarkable sitter, he knew it.

  He ground his cigarette under his heel, dragging his thoughts back to the problem in question. The only option, so far as he could see, was to seek assistance from the landlord of the Bull’s Head. It looked more respectable than the Woolpack and, given its position so close to the estuary, it was likely that they would have been called upon to perform this kind of task before now.

  Such wonderful brown hair. Like Millais’ muse and wife, Effie Gray. She sat for Thomas Richmond too, he remembered. Then the unwelcome recollection of a different image – Ophelia drowned – came into his mind.

  Now he knew. In real life, there was no beauty in such a death.

  *

  The Bull’s Head was an old building, with a bar on either side of the front door and a flight of stairs directly ahead.

  Harry tried the private saloon first. An open-faced brick and timber-beamed wall, a fire smoking in the grate. It was a little too early for the end-of-day rush. Husbands who worked in the banks and legal offices in Chichester coming in for a quick drink and a game of cards before returning home. Young professional men. Men like him, forced by their fathers to suffocate in shipping agencies and accountancy firms and property management.

  Only two tables were occupied. At the first, three clerks in black suits sat playing cards. At the other, an older, prosperous-looking gentleman was smoking and reading the local newspaper. Aware of Harry’s scrutiny, he looked up.

  Harry nodded a greeting.

  ‘If you’re hoping for service, best go through,’ he said. ‘More custom this time of day in the other bar.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr . . .’

  ‘Crowther,’ the man replied. ‘Charles Crowther.’

  *

  The public bar was a mirror image of the private, except, as Crowther said, it was busier and louder.

  Most tables were occupied, and customers were two or three deep at the counter. Labourers, farm workers, shoeblacks, tanners, the working men of the village. One or two with the grime and dirt of the tannery or the forge on their hands. The air was thick with smoke, tobacco mixed with the damp scent of the applewood fire.

  Everyone stared as he came in, taking in his appearance, then went back to their conversations.

  Harry walked to the counter. ‘Is the landlord about?’

  The barman put down the glass he was polishing. ‘Think you’d be more comfortable in the private bar, sir.’

  ‘I’m not here for a drink,’ Harry said, keeping his voice low. ‘There’s a matter needing—’

  ‘Not drinking?’ laughed a man in a filthy long coat, tied around the waist with string, propped up at the end of the bar. ‘Not much point coming in here then.’

  ‘That’ll do,’ growled the barman.

  ‘Not everyone’s like you, Diddy,’ one of the labourers shouted from a table near the door. ‘Drowning your sorrows, is that it? Slow day?’

  ‘Celebration more like,’ the man laughed again, holding up his sack. ‘Good haul.’

  Harry saw that the hessian seam was stained with blood.

  ‘Two moles, a couple of rats,’ Diddy was saying. ‘Not bad for an afternoon’s work, all told.’ He waved his empty glass. ‘In fact, I might drink to that.’

  Realising he was getting nowhere, Harry fished a coin out of his pocket and slid it across the bar.

  ‘Is the landlord about?’ he asked again.

  ‘And your name, sir?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what my name is’ he said impatiently. ‘There’s been an accident, house out on the marshes. Someone’s in the water. Drowned.’

  ‘All right, sir, no need to take on.’

  Harry pushed another coin across the polished counter.

  ‘There’s a woman on her own out there. Someone needs to send a cart, a trap. Something. The path’s narrow.’

  ‘Who is on her own, sir?’

  ‘Miss Gifford. I don’t know the name of the house.’

  Harry felt the atmosphere change. He glanced over his shoulder. No one seemed to be paying particular attention.

  ‘Look, can you help or not?’

  The barman held his gaze for a moment, then flicked his cloth across his shoulder. ‘Wait here.’

  Harry needed a drink. The shock was hitting home. He reached for another Dunhill. The packet slipped from his fingers, spilling the cigarettes over the floor.

  ‘Let me, sir.’

  Harry looked up. ‘I can manage,’ he said.

  ‘It’s no bother,’ the man said, handing him the packet, holding on to it a fraction too long. ‘You said there’d been an accident at Blackthorn House?’

  Harry stared blankly.

  ‘The Gifford place.’

  ‘I don’t know if I ought . . .’

  The man smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Didn’t you say you needed help? Wasn’t that what you were saying?’

  Harry flushed. ‘Well, yes. But it’s in hand.’

  ‘You got a connection with the Giffords, have you, sir?’

  ‘I can’t see what the Devil it has to do with you,’ Harry said sharply.

  ‘Good Samaritan, then?’

  Harry met his gaze. ‘Something of the kind.’

  For a moment, the two men stared at one another. Harry was painfully aware that, even though the noise level hadn’t appreciably dropped, every last man in the bar was listening to their conversation.

  ‘You wouldn’t happen to have on
e going spare, would you?’

  Harry offered the packet. The man took two cigarettes, leaning forward for a light, then putting the other behind his ear.

  ‘Odd place, Blackthorn House,’ he said, blowing a ring of smoke into the air.

  ‘Odd?’ Harry lit another cigarette for himself, appalled to see that his hands were still shaking.

  ‘All sorts of things go on out there, so they say.’

  Harry looked to the door, willing the barman to return. What was taking so long? He’d given Connie his word; he wasn’t prepared to leave until he was sure the matter was in hand. Still the man was hanging around.

  ‘You’re not from round here?’

  ‘Fishbourne?’ Harry leant across the bar, trying to see into the back. ‘No.’

  ‘Chichester? It’s just you remind me of someone. Older fellow. Similar features,’ the man continued, tracing a circle around his own face with his finger. ‘Same colour eyes as you, though he wore spectacles. Short-sighted.’

  Harry spun round. ‘Today?’

  The man gave a lazy shrug. ‘Might have been. Can’t say I rightly remember.’

  ‘I would be grateful if you could try.’

  The coin was in the man’s pocket before Harry had even seen his hand come out to take it.

  ‘Today, I think it was. Two, two thirty, thereabouts.’

  That would fit, Harry thought. ‘And where did you see him?’

  ‘Mill Lane, maybe it was. Or, on second thoughts, out on the marshes. Towards Blackthorn House, it might have been.’

  Harry turned cold. ‘Are you certain?’

  ‘I don’t forget a face.’

  To his intense frustration, the barman chose that moment to reappear.

  ‘The guv’nor says you can leave it with him.’

  ‘What? Thank you,’ Harry said, then turned back to the man. He had rejoined his companions at the far end of the bar. ‘Damn,’ he muttered.

  He considered going over, but decided against it. It was more than six hours since he’d overhead his father quarrelling. Four hours since this fellow claimed to have seen a man resembling his father on the marshes.

  He’d put things in hand, as Connie had asked him to do. There was no reason to hang about. The need for adventure that had set him hurtling after his father to Fishbourne, then offering himself as a knight in shining armour, had drained away. He felt foolish, and rather sick. Besides, wasn’t it most likely that he’d arrive home and find his father there? Everything the same as usual.

  He put his hat back on and headed for the door.

  ‘Good evening to you, Mr Woolston,’ the man called after him.

  Harry stopped mid stride, then carried on. The man’s laughter followed him out into the street.

  Chapter 13

  Blackthorn House

  Fishbourne Marshes

  Connie pulled her cardigan tight around her shoulders.

  An early-evening breeze was blowing off the water, damp, suggesting that the wet and windy weather would be back tomorrow. She could hear the whispering of the wind through the delicate tops of the reeds, like tiny fluttering silver flags, setting the long, thin stalks rattling and murmuring. She shivered, but she did not feel it would be right to go in and leave the body unattended.

  As the light faded from the sky, more jackdaws had come. Their pale eyes and grey hooded heads, sentries keeping watch from the fence. Twenty of them, more. The noise they made was aggressive, threatening.

  How long before someone arrived to take the body away? She’d had no idea Dr Evershed was an artist of such repute. Harry clearly greatly admired his work. She’d noticed a smear of red oil paint on his shoe. Perhaps he was an artist too, given his interest in Arthur Evershed?

  Connie glanced to the footpath.

  Since she was the person who’d found her, on the edge of their property, might the coroner let her know in time what had happened to the woman?

  Connie pulled herself up. Why should he? She had to keep telling herself it was nothing to do with her, nothing to do with her father, just a terrible accident of geography. If it ever came to it, she could honestly say it would have been simple enough for anyone to get into the workshop and steal the mounting wire. More than once she’d found little Davey Reedman skulking around and chased him off.

  But with each passing hour, her concern for her father deepened. Her hand slipped again to her pocket, turning the fragment of burnt paper over between her fingers.

  She wished she knew the dead woman’s name. She wished she knew who had given her the beautiful coat, and why. She glanced over to the shrouded body on the ground, then away again. She had laid a blanket over the sheet. In part, it was to restore to her some kind of dignity; the thin cotton clung too closely to the damp contours. It was also, she realised, to protect the cold flesh from the birds.

  The sky turned from a pale blue to white.

  Connie became increasingly aware of the dark corridors of Blackthorn House stretching out behind her. All those echoing and empty rooms. She had told the truth when she said she wasn’t scared of being left with the body. But at the same time, she did not want to be here alone when darkness finally fell.

  ‘The sleeping and the dead are but as pictures.’

  Again, that same soft voice from the past, speaking lines from a play, this time, not a poem.

  Connie held her hands out in front of her, like her father had done earlier on the terrace. There were traces of blood still under her fingernails, from the business of removing the wire embedded deep in the woman’s neck. She’d scrubbed and scrubbed with carbolic soap, but blood was the hardest stain to shift.

  Shakespeare, of course. Lady Macbeth. A young woman’s voice, reading aloud. Connie suddenly saw her younger self, her memory clear for once. A hot summer’s day, elbows on the table, hair loose over her shoulders, listening. Captivated by the story.

  By the voice.

  Chapter 14

  The West Sussex County Asylum

  Chichester

  Dr John Woolston leaned forward and tapped the cab driver on the arm.

  ‘This will do,’ he said. ‘I can walk from here.’

  The Dunnaways man pulled up his horses, then turned round on his seat. ‘Are you sure, guv’nor? It’s ever so dirty underfoot after all the rain.’

  ‘Quite sure,’ Woolston said. He fished a note from his pocket book, paid the agreed fare and added a generous tip.

  There was no reason for Brook to drag him all the way up to Graylingwell, given that they were due to meet tomorrow morning anyway. Only the thought of his son kept Woolston going. He was worried for Harold’s future and didn’t want him to lose his position, even though he was well aware the boy hated the work and despised Brook. Rightly so, as it turned out, though Woolston couldn’t tell him that. More than anything, he did not want Harold to find out his father was not the man he believed him to be. He did not want to lose his son’s respect.

  The sun grazed the tops of the trees in the parkland, the beauty of the afternoon at odds with Dr Woolston’s state of mind. He stood at the boundary of the West Sussex County Asylum, and for one glorious moment toyed with the idea of not going in.

  Woolston served on the Committee of Visitors, a group of gentlemen responsible for visiting all such establishments throughout the county to ensure they were being run properly. He never met the patients or came into contact with any but the most senior of the medical staff. The committee’s job was to inspect the records and verify that each patient was receiving the treatment appropriate to their condition. Even so, Woolston was particularly proud of what was being pioneered at Graylingwell, and his small contribution to it. No forbidding walls, no iron gates to keep the patients in, no use of restraints. They treated all forms of mental illness – acute mania, melancholia, epilepsy, hereditary feeble-mindedness and genetic alcoholism – in modern, humane ways. There were some patients who would never leave, but many would, in time, be relieved of their symptoms and returne
d to their families. From time to time he would stroll through the grounds and wonder about the lives that the patients led. More often, when walking up North Street or through the Pallants, he wondered if any of the people he encountered had ever passed through his hands as names on a piece of paper.

  Now, because of this damnable business, all this was at risk. It had robbed him of any pride or pleasure in what he had achieved. His entire world had been stripped back to that one night ten years ago.

  Woolston took a deep breath and walked in through the gates. The distinctive outline of the water tower loomed ahead of him, constructed like most of the buildings in a warm red brick. The hospital was almost entirely self-sufficient, with two working farms, substantial vegetable gardens and a meat herd. There were separate wards for men and women, as well as accommodation for private patients and an isolation hospital. At the heart of the site were the administration buildings and a theatre, which was where Brook’s instructions said he was to go.

  Woolston followed the gravelled path beneath the chestnut trees with their pink and white blossom. Wednesday afternoon was visiting time and, due to the clement weather, there were several patients walking in the grounds with their families or sitting in one of the pleasant wooden shelters in the airing courts. At a discreet distance, attendants and nurse probationers kept a close eye on their charges.

  It was rare for a patient to escape, though just before Easter a private patient had managed to slip into the gardens and make their way out of the grounds. Even though the fee-paying inmates stayed in what had been the Graylingwell farmhouse, away from the public wards, the security was as stringent there as in the rest of the hospital. It was clear that someone must have helped them. The nurse on duty had denied any complicity, but she’d been dismissed all the same.

  There were regulations governing everything. All patients, having been certified as insane, were committed to the asylum in the first instance by a justice of the peace and could only be released on the order of a doctor. However, if someone did escape, and succeeded in remaining at large for the statutory period of fourteen days, it was considered evidence enough that they were capable of surviving outside of the hospital. Woolston didn’t know the precise details of the recent case, but so far as he was aware, the patient had not been apprehended.