The Taxidermist's Daughter (15 page)

Chapter 24

Blackthorn House

Fishbourne Marshes

Connie adjusted the field glasses.

‘It stinks in here.’

‘If you can’t be quiet, Davey, I’ll send you away.’

‘It does, though,’ the boy said, ostentatiously holding his nose. ‘Awful it is.’

Connie continued to train her gaze out of her father’s bedroom window at the policeman who was methodically working his way through the reedmace beds that stretched all the way from the stream at the end of their garden to the backs of the houses on the main road. From time to time, he’d bob down out of sight, his black cape flapping in the gusty wind like the sail of a little dinghy, then reappear a few feet further along the bank.

‘What’s he looking for, miss, d’you reckon? Do you think there’s another girl got drowned?’

Connie didn’t answer. If Nutbeem had been right that Vera’s body was being released to her father for a Saturday funeral, wasn’t it rather odd that the police were sniffing around now?

‘Or maybe she was done in and he’s looking for clues?’

‘Sssh,’ she said sharply.

‘He can’t hear us all the way up here,’ Davey said.

‘That’s true, but Mary can.’

The boy shrugged. ‘So what? You can do what you want in your own house, can’t you?’

Connie couldn’t decide. If she went out and spoke to the policeman, would that look suspicious? He wasn’t on their property, after all. Or would it seem more peculiar if she
didn’t
go out? She handed the binoculars to the boy. ‘Do you recognise him?’

‘Why should I?’ he said belligerently, confirming her suspicion that he’d run into trouble with a fair few of the local officers in his short life.

‘Do you?’

Davey made a show of looking. ‘Reckon it’s Pennicott. Sergeant Pennicott, to give him his proper name.’ He handed the glasses back. ‘Yes, reckon it is. Fancies himself a detective.’

‘What do you know about him?’

The boy shoved his hands into his pockets. ‘Why should I know anything about him?’

‘You are, as you told me yourself, a noticing sort of a boy. I don’t imagine you miss much.’

The boy pulled himself up. ‘Fair point. Pennicott’s the one what testified against Gregory Joseph. Pennicott’s fault he was sent down for three months, so he says.’

Connie thought back to the way Joseph had stared at her in the garden. His calculating eyes and the determined way he had searched Vera’s pockets as she lay on the damp grass. She wasn’t the least bit surprised to know he’d been in prison.

‘When was he released?’

‘Few weeks back.’

‘When we were talking just now, you said you weren’t like him, Davey. What did you mean?’

The boy scuffed the floor with the toe of his unlaced boot.

‘I never.’

‘Yes you did. You said you weren’t like him, then crossed your heart.’

Davey flushed. ‘He’s always listening. He knows stuff, holds stuff over people, though he’s all right in his way. Not so free with his hands as some.’

‘What else?’

‘He’s signed the pledge. Won’t let a drop of alcohol pass his lips. Looks hard down on any who does.’

‘Gregory Joseph?’ she said in surprise.

Davey laughed. ‘Thought you wanted to know about Pennicott. No, Joseph spends almost as much time in the Bull’s Head as your old man.’

Connie gave him a stern look.

‘Sorry, miss,’ the boy said quickly. ‘Didn’t mean to be disrespectful. Always let my tongue run away with me. Old Ma Christie pulls me up for it. She says it’ll be the undoing of me.’

Connie smiled. ‘You know Mrs Christie well, do you?’

‘She’s kind. You know how it is, if I’m passing and there’s something needing doing, she’ll give me a hot oatcake or a glass of milk. Now and then, nothing regular.’

Connie looked at the scrawny, determined boy and realised that, though she was accustomed to seeing him about, she knew nothing about his life. Where he lived, who looked after him. If anyone did.

‘And she fixed these for me,’ he said, pulling at his tattered short trousers. ‘Split all up the back last week.’ He sighed. ‘Yes, she’s all right, Mrs Christie.’

‘I thought the same,’ Connie said, putting her hand on his shoulder and noticing how thin he was. ‘Before you leave, Davey, we’ll go to the kitchen and ask Mary to give you something to set you on your way. We have some Shippam’s meat paste, if you like that.’

For a moment their eyes met. Connie saw the wariness fade for a moment. He nodded, then his gaze sharpened and he went back to his cheerful, guarded self.

‘That would be mighty decent of you,’ he said, in his strange formal way. ‘A little bread and paste would do me the world of good.’

Connie held out the binoculars. ‘Where did you get these?’

It was obvious they were far too good to be his. She could feel him struggling to tell the truth, rather than lie, and it suddenly came to her how much he and her father would enjoy one another’s company.

‘As a matter of fact, they’re not mine as such.’

‘They’re not?’

‘I didn’t nick them. I found them.’

‘Found them?’

‘Honest, I did. Over in the Old Salt Mill, there’s a little room up the top, above the wheel. They were on the windowsill, looking out. Facing this way, pretty good view of this house, as it happens.’

They were far too good to be left lying about. It was probably someone birdwatching, but Connie remembered the glint she’d noticed near the Old Salt Mill yesterday, and wondered.

‘Do you ever talk to my father, Davey, when you’re out and about on the marshes?’

‘From time to time, miss.’

‘What about yesterday? Today, even?’

The boy shook his head. ‘Last few days, been noticeable by his absence, so to speak. Pennicott’s coming this way now, miss.’

Connie raised the glasses again, then caught her breath. Not because Sergeant Pennicott was opening the black wrought-iron gate and walking along the path towards the front door, but rather because there was someone else half-hidden on the path behind him.

Three loud raps of the door knocker echoed through the house.

‘The copper’s here,’ Davey said unnecessarily. ‘I might make myself scarce, miss, if it’s all the same to you.’

Chapter 25

Themis Cottage

Apuldram

On the eastern side of the creek, a little way outside the cluster of houses that made up the hamlet of Apuldram, a small cottage stood on its own patch of land beside the water.

Gerald White knocked on a door, then stepped back to wait.

The cottage was pleasant enough, he supposed. A squat red-brick building, thatched roof, the paintwork in need of a little attention. It was not to his taste – he thought it rather a desolate spot, stuck out here, miles from anywhere, nothing but sea all around – but he accepted that some people preferred solitude. He noticed a new sign above the door:
THEMIS
COTTAGE
. An odd name, but clients often had the strangest ways of putting their stamp on a property. He made a note to tell the office to change it on the lettings agreement.

White looked down the side of the cottage to the garden. The tide was lapping over the edge of the grass. It would only need one more cloudburst or a particularly high spring tide, and the lawn would be underwater.

After leaving Brook’s offices, he’d visited one of the firm’s other properties, then had a pleasant lunch in the Anchor Bleu in Bosham, leaving him with the right amount of time to be in Apuldram for three o’clock. It was days like these that reminded him what a good decision he’d made moving from Croydon to Chichester ten years ago.

Over coffee in the inn, White had gone over the discussion in Brook’s offices earlier. They’d found themselves in complete agreement that it boded badly that Woolston had flunked the meeting. He wondered if Woolston had panicked after that business in the graveyard. Was he losing his nerve? If so, what were they going to do about it?

The only point of difference between them was the source of the blackmail. Brook was certain it was Gifford. White wasn’t sure. He couldn’t see why the man would suddenly turn on them, having held his peace for so long. He also couldn’t see him arranging or pulling off the ridiculous stunt with the birds. The man was a drunk.

White knocked again.

Two eyes peered through the narrow gap. ‘Yes?’

‘Gerald White,’ he said, passing his card through the crack between the door and the frame. ‘I am expected.’

The door closed. He waited, half amused and half put out by the caution. His firm had a department that dealt with the appointment of domestic and outdoors staff. He might suggest to his client that they could help in that area too. A little more commission, nothing significant. A moment or two later, the rattle of the chain being slipped and he was admitted.

‘Wait here.’

The man vanished, without taking his hat and coat. White hesitated, then hung his bowler on the stand, shook out his umbrella and stood it against the wall. He had been fortunate to pick up a hansom on the corner of Tower Street immediately after he came out of Brook’s office, otherwise he would have been soaked.

He brushed the few drips of rain from his collar and sleeves, then looked around the hall. The property had been on their books for many years, long before he’d joined the firm. The owner had never lived in it, and it had been rented out for most of the time. It was the first occasion White had visited, but as he looked around, he was pleased to see that the description on the particulars seemed accurately to represent the cottage.

A red-tiled entrance hall, a low ceiling, and a narrow flight of stairs immediately ahead leading to two upstairs bedrooms. Two wooden latched doors opened off to left and right, the parlour and the drawing room, if he remembered rightly. A door at the end of the corridor led to the kitchen. A little damp, but a perfectly-sized property.

He had never met the owner and had no idea why they suddenly wanted to take back possession of the cottage now. All business was conducted by letter, so White had no clue to the sort of person he was expecting to meet, other than that they knew their mind and there was clearly no shortage of funds. When the client had said there had been a change of circumstances, there was already a tenant in the cottage. But White had found a loophole in the original tenancy agreement and, though it had taken a certain amount of doing, had managed to have the tenant evicted.

He put his hand into his inside breast pocket and pulled out the cream envelope. Elegant handwriting, italic letters and good-quality black ink. He didn’t even know if his client was a man or a woman, though the writing suggested the distaff side.

A long-case clock marked time.

In any other circumstances, White would have postponed such an appointment as this and accepted Brook’s invitation – he always enjoyed an afternoon’s shoot at the Goodwood Estate, even out of Season – but he was intrigued to meet this client.

He could always join Brook later. From past experience, things would go on well into the early hours.

White glanced at the clock again. Almost three o’clock. Perhaps he would be invited to stay for tea. He was looking forward to the next hour or two. He checked his collar and cuffs, picked a speck of dust from his sleeve and continued to wait.

*

Joseph stared at the visitor through the bowed wooden jamb of the kitchen door. Having brought news of Vera Barker’s death and seen the reaction, Joseph had found his curiosity piqued. So he’d asked what this man – and what Dr Woolston before him – had done, and been told.

The answer had sickened him.

Joseph had been told to leave White standing for fifteen minutes and watch to see what he did. Then, to teach him a lesson. Nothing too much, but enough. After that, it wasn’t his business. He cracked his fingers, thinking how he’d kill for a cigarette, if only to help the next quarter of an hour pass more quickly. He wasn’t complaining. The whole set-up was odd, no doubt about it, but he’d done well out of it so far. And men like Woolston, like White, deserved everything coming to them.

He picked at his teeth with a broad thumbnail, then pressed his eye to the door again and continued to watch until the hands of the clock had marked their fifteen minutes. Without making a sound, he pushed the door open and slipped out into the hall.

‘I was starting to think you’d forgotten about me,’ White began, then stopped when he saw it was only the hired man. His face hardened. ‘Am I to be kept waiting much longer?’ he demanded.

‘This way, sir.’

White walked past him, confirmed in his resolution to offer help with the appointment of appropriate domestic staff. The man stood back to let him go through the door first.

At the last moment, something caught White’s attention and he turned, just in time to see the blur of the man’s fist. The side of his head seemed to explode in pain. He staggered sideways. He heard the sound of the hand breaking the air again, connecting with the back of his skull, then a deep burrowing sensation at the nape of his neck. Stunned, he felt himself grabbed by the collar. His forehead smashed into the sharp, pointed edge of the wooden door frame, sending shock waves through his entire body.

The world turned red.

White slumped to the ground. He didn’t understand what was happening, or why, only that he had to get away. He tried to struggle up on to all fours, but his hands slipped in the blood on the ground and he couldn’t find purchase. The toe of a heavy boot crashed into his side.

He heard one of his ribs snap, and he passed out.