The Taxidermist's Daughter (6 page)

Mauduyt, however, did not point out any means of preservation. Sulphurous fumigations appeared to him the
nec plus ultra
for killing destructive insects. Sulphur does still more, it destroys the skins themselves . . . their upper parts were burned; the sulphurous vapour had changed the red into a dirty yellow, faded the yellow, blackened the blue, soiled the cases, and even the glasses which enclosed them.

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

AND MOUNTING OBJECTS OF NATURAL HISTORY

Mrs R. Lee

Longman & Co, Paternoster Row, London, 1820

It has been hard not to reveal myself these past weeks, almost the hardest thing in this long and terrible business. There was a time when a different story might yet have been told. But I lacked the courage and the moment slipped away.

Dead for all these long and many years. The smell of sulphur and the grave. The smell of rotting and unpreserved flesh. The darkening glass. They sullied the beauty of the place. Destroyed all that was wonderful and made it dark.

Old sins have long shadows.

I am embarked now on this road, and now there is no choice but to follow it to the end. It is a tale that begins, as it will end, in a graveyard where the bones and the spiders and the worms inhabit the cold earth. I give each a chance to do what is right. A chance to make reparation.

I do not believe they will listen.

I make no plea for exoneration or sympathy. This is not an attempt to soften your attitude to me in the name of pity or sorrow or remorse. They will choose their fates and I do not expect them to choose well.

I am watching you.

Chapter 7

Blackthorn House

Fishbourne Marshes

The scream shattered the peace of the workshop.

Connie dropped the forceps. Another scream and she was on her feet. Her first thought was fear for her father, then she realised the sound was coming from outside. Mary, not Gifford.

Throwing a sheet of newspaper over the jackdaw, she picked up her skirts and ran. Out through the scullery and into the kitchen garden.

‘What on earth is the matter?’

Mary was hunched over by the washing line, her hands clutched across her chest. The pegs were scattered over the ground and a basket of clean linen was half upturned. The best linen tablecloth, two handkerchiefs with
CG
embroidered in blue, the tea towel with green trim – all lay in the mud.

Connie dashed towards her. The girl was still screaming, but her voice was oddly rhythmic, like single, shrill repeated blasts of a whistle. There was no one else there and Connie couldn’t see anything that might have terrified her to such an extent. She put her hands on Mary’s shoulders.

‘What on earth is the matter? Are you hurt?’

The maid stared at her with wide, unseeing eyes, but her mouth fell thankfully silent.

‘What happened to send you into such a state? Tell me.’

Mary gulped at the air, half sobbing.

‘You won’t be in any trouble,’ Connie said, feeling the girl’s whole body shaking. ‘Tell me.’

Connie felt the maid wriggle out of her grasp, heard her take a deep breath. A few moments more, then Mary turned and pointed to the small stream that ran along the northern boundary of the garden. One of the many tributaries leading away into the creek.

Surely it wasn’t possible she’d been frightened half to death by a water rat? Or one of the thick black eels that lived along the riverbank? Davey Reedman was always out there, fishing with his home-made rod. They were revolting, and there were a great many more of them this spring than usual, but they were harmless.

‘Show me,’ she said. After the incident with her father, she had no patience left for melodramatics.

‘No . . .’ The girl backed away, shaking her head. ‘I can’t. It . . . Down there.’

Connie took a handkerchief from her cardigan pocket and held it out. ‘Wipe your eyes. Whatever it is, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think.’

*

At first Connie saw nothing out of the ordinary.

Then, her eyes fixed on a flash of colour in the middle of the reeds. Cloth. A blue doubled-seamed woollen coat, floating in the brackish water. Visible beneath, a plain green skirt swaying lightly in the current.

Connie took a deep breath. ‘Go quickly to Slay Lodge,’ she said, thinking of the nearest house. ‘Find Mr Crowther. Inform him . . . Explain that we need—’ She broke off, feeling a wave of nausea rising in her throat. She swallowed hard. ‘In fact, no. Go into the village and fetch Dr Evershed. Tell him what’s happened. Ask him to come. Quick as you can.’

‘Is she not . . . dead, then?’

Connie faltered. She looked with sympathy at the girl. Mary was shaking, her arms wrapped tight around herself. She’d only just turned sixteen. Connie couldn’t be sure she’d even heard her instructions, let alone taken them in.

‘Mary,’ she said sharply. ‘Go to Eversfield and ask if the doctor is at home. The white house, you know it?’

This time, the girl nodded.

‘Of course you do. Good girl. Fetch Dr Evershed. He will know what to do.’ She gave her a gentle push. ‘Now.’

Mary’s eyes held Connie’s gaze for a moment or two, then without another word, she ran, out through the gate and on to the footpath.

‘Don’t fall,’ Connie called after her, knowing the wooden bridges were slippery from the endless rain. But the girl was already out of earshot.

*

Connie steadied herself, then walked back to the swollen stream. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe it was merely a mistake. That all she had seen – all Mary had seen – was a coat trapped in the reeds, and imagination had done the rest.

She looked into the water. The body was still there, face down, arms being swayed this way and that in the current, its position leaving no possibility that the woman could be alive. Connie forced herself not to look away. A cloud of chestnut hair, come loose from its pins. The blue coat, bright and waterlogged against the pale stalks of the reedmace.

Bare hands, bare head.

Connie stepped back from the water’s edge. She glanced up at her father’s bedroom window. It was shut and the curtains drawn, but surely he could not have failed to hear the commotion? Mary had screamed so very loudly. Already regretting having sent the girl straight away to fetch help, Connie realised she had to talk to Gifford before anyone came. She didn’t want him, in his inebriated state, to say anything foolish or humiliate himself, do something that might be misinterpreted by Dr Evershed or even by Mary. Not that she thought he was involved, of course she didn’t, but his earlier words had been wild and distraught. She would blame herself for not warning him.

At the same time, Connie couldn’t shake from her mind the image of her father staggering out from the church a week ago, his hands naked and raw. Gifford, the last to leave, tramping down the path through the broken bodies of the songbirds.

Had he seen the woman in the churchyard too? Had he also seen the woman watching the house?

Connie ran back inside and upstairs to the first floor.

‘Father?’ she said, knocking on his closed door. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I must talk to you.’

There was no sound from inside the room.

‘Father?’

She banged harder and rattled at the handle, unwilling to accept that he could have fallen into so deep a sleep in the short time since they had parted company. To her surprise, the door opened.

‘May I come in?’

Inside, the atmosphere was even worse than she’d anticipated. A sweat of stale beer and tobacco and spent matches washed over her. And something else.

Despair. The smell of despair.

‘Father, before anyone comes, I must talk to you.’

As Connie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, she picked out a lumpen shape in the bed. Quickly, she crossed the room and drew the curtains, unlatching the window at the same time to let in some air.

‘Wake up,’ she said, her voice now sharp with anxiety.

She reached out her right hand, hovering it over the bed for an instant, then let it drop on to her father’s shoulders. Soft, not hard. She threw back the covers to see an old pillow and her father’s mothballed frock coat rolled up in the centre of the mattress.

For a moment, Connie stared at the bed, unable to accept the evidence of her own eyes. Then she ran back to the window and looked out, her sharp gaze scanning the landscape for as far as she could see. A shaming image of him staggering into the Bull’s Head, drunk and unkempt, came into her mind, quickly crushed. He couldn’t have gone on to the footpath without her noticing. She and Mary had been in the back garden the whole time. They would have seen him leave. The only way he could have gone was to the south, or to the open sea, or the fields to the west towards the large estate of Old Park. And why would he?

Connie took a deep breath. She couldn’t lose her head. There was no question of going to look for him, when Mary could arrive with Dr Evershed at any moment. Besides, where would she start? Another unwanted picture of her father, stumbling into the marsh, his nose and mouth filled with choking black mud. She pushed this image away too. It was broad daylight, the sun was shining. Even in his inebriated state, there was no reason why he should fall.

Trying to persuade herself that it was, in fact, fortunate he would not be here when the doctor came, Connie cast her eyes around the squalid room for clues as to why he had left so abruptly. Was it their conversation that had caused him to bolt? Or had the same secret distress that had led him to take refuge in his bedroom now driven him to leave it?

Her sense of dread grew stronger. Had Gifford looked out and, in the rising tide, also noticed that same blue coat floating in the water? Or even worse to contemplate – and she felt disloyal for allowing the thought to come into her mind – had he known all along that the body was there?

With a knot in the pit of her stomach, Connie shook out the bedclothes. She returned the frock coat to the wardrobe, noticing that his daytime coat was not on its usual hanger. The floor was littered with empty beer bottles and broken glass. There was nothing large enough in which to carry all the detritus downstairs, so she pushed it under the bed with the tip of her boot. She would return later to clear it up properly. There was nothing to be done about the smell – the whole room needed a thorough airing – but she emptied the ash and spent matches into a brown paper bag and stacked the dirty saucers ready to take back to the scullery.

Then, she stopped.

She put her hand back into the bag and fished out the fragment from the remains of the cigarettes and matches. Plain cream writing paper, of adequate quality, nothing distinctive about it. Black cursive letters.

Holding the remains between her thumb and forefinger, she blew off the warm ash. She could make out only six letters:
d r a c r o
. There was no way of knowing if it was a name or part of the address, or what came before or after. There appeared to be a small space between the third and fourth letters, but she couldn’t be sure.

The only word that was clear, at the top right-hand corner of the piece of paper, was
ASYLUM
. Had the letter come from Graylingwell? If so, from whom? He had no contact with the place, so far as Connie knew. She had never once heard him mention it.

Time seemed to slow. The familiar sense of everything darkening, fading to black. Connie fought it. She would not let herself be pulled under. She would not let her father down; whatever he had done or wherever he was, she had to keep her head.

She sat heavily down on the bed and tried to focus on the scrap of paper.

Chapter 8

Gifford raised his head from the ground, tasting dirt, straw and blood in his mouth. He felt like he’d gone fifteen rounds with Jack Johnson. His knuckles were cracked, his lips too. When he tried to blink, he realised his left eye was swollen shut.

A few moments passed, then, gingerly, he tried to push himself up into a sitting position. He managed it, but the effort left him gasping for breath. He slumped back against the wall, his chest tight and his ribs sore.

After a few moments, he got himself more comfortable on the tiles, legs straight out in front of him, and tried to remember what had happened. For years, he had been waiting, one day knowing he would be called to account. Finally, that day had come.

His sins had caught up with him.

At first, he’d stayed in his room to avoid Connie, not wanting to lie to her. Trying not to drink, failing. Knowing that his loosened tongue was dangerous. Connie always could see through him in any case, sharp as a tack, even when she was little. Used to call him Gifford from time to time, made the customers laugh. And hadn’t he noticed in the last few days the different way she looked at him, when she thought he wasn’t watching? He knew she was trying to remember. He wished he could tell her why it was safest to forget.

It was the one thing he feared more than anything. Because then, like a crack in the sea wall, once her memories came flooding back, who could say where it would end?

What had he given away earlier in the afternoon? In his drunken meanderings? They had talked, that he remembered. But as to what had been said, it was a blank. She had made him talk and say things he should not have said. He felt cold with fear. What secrets had he betrayed?

He felt bad, bruised from top to toe. He should have stayed in his room, only he hadn’t been able to bear it any longer, cooped up with only his accusing thoughts for company, and his grieving heart.

Ten years. He’d been living with the consequences ever since. No harm in it, so he’d thought. Four fine gentlemen looking for a special night. A night to remember.

Gifford covered his face with his hands.

All these years and he hadn’t talked. All these years, he’d taken their money and used it well. Used it right. They had no cause to come after him, had they? He stopped, the effort of remembering making his head throb.

That glimpse of chestnut hair in the water.

Not possible. In the churchyard, not possible. She was dead. He’d had a letter telling him so.

The Eve of St Mark, a night of ghosts.

*

Gifford didn’t know how long he drifted in and out of consciousness; he wasn’t certain. Only that when he next woke, his senses were a little sharper. A smell of damp bricks and dust. Feathers. He ran his fingers over his chin, feeling the scratch of several days’ stubble. He wondered what had happened to his hat. He was wearing his coat.

Filled with a sudden panic, he struggled to stand. Willing strength into his legs, pushing his shoulders into the bricks to lever himself up. He put his hand out and felt the cool dome of glass. His brief moment of courage died. Now he remembered.

Burning the letter in a panic, then staggering back downstairs. Taking the key off the hook and coming here. Hidden amongst the bell jars and treasures of his past. And the one newer glass case. The one piece of evidence he had of that night.

Gifford felt a moment of hope, then the spark died, to be replaced by terror. Remembering how he had stumbled on the steps and fallen down, down in the dark, hitting his head at the bottom.

In the depths of his deadened, drink-ruined mind, he realised he’d left Connie alone. No one was there to protect her if they came.
When
they came.

With a howl, he again tried to struggle upright, but he couldn’t find the strength. He started to crawl towards where he thought the steps were. Slowly, closer to the door. To the light.

Pushing against it, except it wouldn’t open.

Why wouldn’t it open? He hadn’t locked it after him, had he?

The door was a close fit to keep the exhibits at a steady temperature. No light or warmth from outside got in. Gifford pushed with his shoulder, using what little strength he had, and this time heard the padlock rattle over the latch.

Still, it refused to give. He was trapped.

Gifford shook his head, setting the world spinning. If they’d wanted rid of him, they’d have done it by now. They had no scruples. There were plenty of names carved in stone in the graveyard of those who’d been claimed by the treacherous mudflats. Easy to add one more to their number. No one any the wiser.

‘But I told no one,’ he muttered into the darkness. ‘I kept my word . . .’