The Taxidermist's Daughter (4 page)

A girl with a yellow ribbon in her hair.

Réaumur received birds from all parts, in spirits of wine, according to the instructions he had given; he contented himself by taking them from this liquor, and introducing two ends of an iron wire into the body behind the thighs; he then fastened the wire to the claws, the ends, which passed below, served to fix them to a small board; he put two black glass beads in the place of eyes, and called it a stuffed bird.

T
AXIDERMY: OR, THE ART OF COLLECTING, PREPARING,

AND MOUNTING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY

Mrs R. Lee

Longman & Co, Paternoster Row, London, 1820

I am watching you.

You sense this, I think. Somewhere in the depths of knowledge and emotion, you know. Somewhere, buried deep in the thoughts you think you have lost, you know and you remember. Memory is a shifting, dishonest and false friend in any case. We cherish what does us good and bury the rest. This is how we keep ourselves safe. How we make it possible to carry on in this decaying, corrupting world.

Blood will have blood.

The time of reckoning is coming, getting closer with each sunrise and sunset. But it is their own deeds that will be the cause of their undoing, not mine. I did offer them a chance. They did not take it. Even as I imagine the misery that will follow these revelations, I have the consolation that you will read these words and know the truth. You will understand.

What, then, can be said without dispute?

That the spring of nineteen hundred and twelve has been the wettest on record. That the horse chestnuts are late in leaf. That the waters rose higher and higher, and are rising still.

And the birds. The white birds and the grey and the black. Feathers of ink-blue and purple and iridescent green. The jabbering, cawing and threatening of jackdaw, magpie, rook and crow. For all those years I was away, I heard them in my dreams, calling from the trees.

I am watching you.

So here I set down my testimony. Black words on cream paper. It is not a story of revenge, though it will be seen as that. Dismissed as that.

But no, not revenge.

This is a story of justice.

Chapter 4

The Old Salt Mill

Fishbourne Creek

Dr John Woolston stood in the tiny attic room in the Old Salt Mill in the centre of Fishbourne Creek and looked across the water to Blackthorn House.

‘Any sign of Gifford?’

Joseph shook his head. ‘No.’

Woolston gestured impatiently for the field glasses.

‘You can’t possibly see,’ he said irritably, wiping them with his pocket handkerchief. ‘The lens is filthy.’

He put the cream envelope Joseph had handed him on to the chair, removed his spectacles and raised the binoculars to his eyes. He adjusted the focus until he had Blackthorn House in his sights. It sat on a substantial plot of land, surrounded by open fields. Woolston shifted his gaze. The only access, so far as he could see, was a narrow footpath accessed on the north-east side of the property.

He returned his scrutiny to the house itself. There was an attic – he observed the steep pitch of the roof – and a peculiar rectangular structure with a dome in the south-facing garden. An ice house, he assumed, though that was unusual for a property so close to the water.

‘Just sitting on the terrace.’

‘What?’ he said, startled to find Joseph standing so close.

‘The Gifford girl. Came out after lunch. Barely moved.’

Woolston lowered the field glasses and handed them back to Joseph.

‘You’re absolutely certain there’s been so sign of Gifford?’

Joseph shrugged. ‘As I said, I’ve not seen him.’

‘There’s no possibility he might have left without your noticing?’

‘Not since it got light. Can’t answer for before that.’

Woolston stared at the litter of spent matches and cigarette ends on the floor. He had no way of knowing if Joseph was telling the truth and had been at his post all the time. He hadn’t engaged the man, though after the events in Fishbourne churchyard a week ago, he had agreed they had no choice.

‘What about visitors?’

‘Maid arrived at seven,’ Joseph replied. ‘Brought a table and chair out to the terrace about one, give or take. No one else gone in or out.’

‘Deliveries?’

‘Nutbeem’s doesn’t come out this far.’

‘Door-to-doors?’

‘I’m telling you, nothing.’

Woolston looked back through the window, across the creek and the mill pond, to where Blackthorn House stood, peaceful in the sunshine.

‘You are . . . prepared?’ he said, then immediately regretted asking.

‘Ready and—’

‘Not that there is likely to be any need,’ Woolston cut across him.

‘Waiting,’ Joseph finished, patting his pocket.

Woolston disliked the man’s attitude, but Brook assured him that Joseph knew the village like the back of his hand and was the best man for the job. Did what he was told, no questions asked. Woolston hoped Brook’s confidence was not misplaced. He thought it a mistake to put their trust in such an individual, but it had not been his choice to make.

He put his hand in his pocket and handed over a plain cotton bag.

‘Thanking you,’ Joseph said, then tipped the bag upside down.

‘It’s all there,’ Woolston snapped. ‘The sum we agreed.’

‘Best to be sure, sir. Saves any unpleasantness later.’

Woolston was forced to watch as Joseph counted the coins, one by one, before slipping them into his pocket.

‘A couple of smokes to keep me going? Manage that?’

Woolston hesitated, then handed over two cigarettes with barely concealed anger.

‘Your instructions are to stay here.’

‘It’s what you and your colleagues are paying me for, isn’t it?’

Provoked beyond endurance, Woolston stepped forward. ‘Don’t make a mess of it, Joseph. This isn’t a game. If you do, I will break every bone in your body. Is that clear?’

A slow, contemptuous smile appeared on his face.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something,’ he said, picking up the envelope and holding it in front of Woolston’s face. ‘Sir.’

*

Joseph listened to the doctor’s angry footsteps on the narrow wooden stairs. He waited until he heard the latch of the door at the bottom of the mill click shut, then made an obscene gesture with his fist.

As if he’d be intimidated by so feeble a specimen as Woolston. Or even by the men behind him. Scared of his own shadow. He’d met plenty like him before, men who never got their hands dirty. Pillars of the community, so called. He’d had to bow his head to enough of them, up before the City Bench. Yet the instant there was trouble, they came knocking same as anyone else. Brothers under the skin.

He cleared his throat, spitting the filaments of loose tobacco out of his mouth, then took one of Woolston’s cigarettes from behind his ear and lit it. Joseph didn’t care why he was being paid to spy on a wreck of a man and his daughter. Not his business. He turned the coins over in his pocket. He couldn’t deny the money was good.

He smiled. It paid to listen.

He blew a ring of smoke up into the air, pierced it with his finger, then blew another. Joseph made it his business to notice things. So he knew about the maid, Mary Christie, what time she arrived each day, what time she returned to the modest row of cottages nearby the pumping station where she lived with her widowed mother and kid sisters. That they were stalwart members of the congregation of St Peter & St Mary. He knew that Archie Lintott waited for the girl at the end of the lane every Saturday afternoon.

He knew Gifford by sight from the Bull’s Head. He could have told Woolston where the man could be found most afternoons, between four and ten, slumped at the table in the corner. No need to set up surveillance on the house. But no one had asked him. And why do himself out of easy earnings?

Joseph heard rumours about Blackthorn House, same as everyone. Stories of the stink of rotting flesh when the wind was in the wrong direction. How the workshop was filled floor to ceiling with stuffed birds and moth-eaten foxes, skeletons. Monstrosities. A two-headed kitten in a glass jar, stolen from some museum over Brighton way. An unborn lamb suspended in liquor. Then, last week, Reedman’s lad claimed he’d heard unnatural sounds coming from inside the house. Joseph grimaced. Everyone knew Davey Reedman would make up any kind of wild story to talk his way out of a hiding. Been out poaching likely as not.

‘And what of it?’ he muttered. God helps those who help themselves, wasn’t that what old Reverend Huxtable used to preach from the pulpit? Same sermon every Sunday, rain or shine. The new Rector had a bit more variety, or so they said.

Joseph smoked his cigarette down to the end, sending a final ring of smoke into the air, then opened the window and flicked the stub out and down on to the exposed mudflats. He wondered if the tide would take it, then shrugged. Not his problem.

He pulled the chair back into position at the window, propped his muddy boots up on the sill and raised the glasses to his face. No sign of Gifford, but the girl was still sitting out on the terrace.

Motes of dust floated suspended in the lazy air; the warm afternoon sun filtered in through the window. Over the creek, the gulls continued to wheel and cry overhead. The lethargy of the afternoon pressed down upon him. As his eyes closed, Joseph was imagining the first mouthful of ale hitting the back of his throat.

*

Woolston stood outside the door, feeling every one of his fifty-eight years. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to threaten the man. He’d never laid a finger on another living creature, not even bare-knuckle fighting in his school days. He was rattled, that was it. His visitor this afternoon, the menace. The idea that someone knew what he’d done. Had the others had a similar visit?

He was losing his sense of judgement.

Woolston took a deep breath, then looked down at the envelope in his hand. He also couldn’t imagine why Brook had chosen to communicate with him via Gregory Joseph, rather than simply sending his clerk across West Street to deliver the letter in person. Were they not due to meet tomorrow anyway? Perhaps Brook had decided it was better to meet away from West Street, careful for once. Woolston supposed he should be grateful for that.

He read the brief note once, frowned, then read it again to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood. All these contradictory instructions and changes of plan seemed needlessly complicated.

Folding the letter and putting it in his pocket, Woolston looked out over the estuary. The short stretch of open footpath leading to the Old Salt Mill was exposed, but he could see no one in the fields or footpaths on either side of the creek who might notice or remark on his presence. Just above the waterline, a flock of gulls swooped and skimmed, then soared up again into the sky. He hated all birds, but gulls were particularly aggressive. Hadn’t he read in the newspaper last week that a boy fishing off the pier at Bognor had been attacked?

Woolston pulled his hat low over his brow and walked as quickly as his knee would allow him along the uneven foreshore. Back into Mill Lane and up to the Woolpack Inn, where the carriage and pair was waiting. He climbed in, pushed himself back into the seat and gave a deep sigh of relief.

One mistake. August 1902. His brigade recently returned from the Transvaal. All the flags out along the Broyle Road and girls cheering to welcome home the Royal Sussex Regiment. A funfair on the Militia Field.

How flattered he had been to be invited. Asked to make up a four at cards. He’d been looking forward to a rubber of bridge or two. Fine cigars and brandy. Feathers. Men, as he’d thought, with similar experiences. The promise of some special entertainment, not in the usual round of things; Woolston hadn’t paused to consider what that might mean.

He hadn’t done anything, but he had been there. He had been drunk. He’d done what he could to put it right. But in the end, he hadn’t stopped them, and he had held his tongue.

‘Where to, guv’nor?’

Woolston was pulled back to the present. He thought of the letter in his pocket.

‘Graylingwell Hospital,’ he said.

The driver clicked his tongue and the horse pulled off in a rattle of clinker and bridle. It was slow going to start with. The road was claggy with mud and deeply rutted from the endless rain, though they picked up speed as they drew closer to Chichester.

It was a damnable business. More than anything he wished he could put the clock back. He put his hand to his breast pocket, where his old Boer War pistol was wrapped in a handkerchief. When he’d asked Joseph if he was prepared, it wouldn’t have taken a psychiatrist to realise he actually had been thinking of himself.

Woolston shut his eyes and thought of his son.