The Taxidermist's Daughter (8 page)

Connie turned to see that the jackdaws had flown from the south garden to the north and were now lined up along the fence, their beaks up and their necks forward. They were calling to one another. A third pair flew down. They were carrion birds, after all.

Where was her father? The worry was there all the time, like a splinter under her skin.

As she hurried to finish the task of removing the garrotte from around the woman’s neck, Connie tried to ignore the clattering, jabbering crescendo of the jackdaws. And she tried not to think about the empty hook on the wall in her father’s workshop where the coil of wire should have been.

Chapter 11

The Old Salt Mill

Fishbourne Creek

Joseph’s feet slipped off the sill. He woke with a jolt as the field glasses crashed to the ground.

‘Let me alone,’ he bellowed, throwing a punch. For a moment, he was back in jail. Taking a beating, never properly sleeping, reaching for the stiletto of glass beneath his mattress. Then the sharp salt of the incoming tide penetrated his consciousness, the harsh shriek of the gulls overhead, and he remembered where he was.

Joseph had got into a brawl outside the Globe in January. Defending a lady’s honour against a man with a foul mouth and a sharp right hook. The law hadn’t seen it that way. Up again before the mayor and the bench, he’d been sentenced to the maximum judgement of three months’ hard labour. Sergeant Pennicott had spoken against him and Joseph had no doubt that that interference had lost him his job at Howards, one of the butchers in Chichester. He wouldn’t forget that in a hurry.

Joseph didn’t want to find himself back in jail. At the same time, he couldn’t deny he’d picked up some interesting information in there, all of which he was making the most of now. A man had to find a way to earn a decent living, if his livelihood was taken away from him.

He bent down and picked up the binoculars. Blackthorn House looked exactly the same, except the Gifford girl was no longer on the terrace. He put the glasses down again and yawned, wondering how late it was and whether anyone would come to relieve him. He could do with a drink.

There was a brisk wind coming off the water. Joseph began to close the window, then something caught his eye. He reached for the binoculars. Was someone on the move? He scanned the horizon, but all he saw was a flock of black birds fly up from the roof of the ice house and float low over the chimneys towards the rear garden.

Joseph stretched, then stood up. In most matters, he was blessed with no conscience, though he prided himself on being honourable in others. He did what he was paid to do, no qualms about it and no questions asked. Within limits. The fact that he was being paid twice, for what was essentially the same thing, or so it seemed, only made the situation sweeter. He didn’t care about the whys and wherefores, so long as the money kept coming.

Woolston didn’t bother him. He was probably doing what he was told, as much as Joseph was. For a moment, Joseph allowed himself to be curious. He wondered who had such a hold over Woolston. He didn’t look as if he could say boo to a goose. But then, the more respectable the man, the more he had to lose.

Joseph might ask. He might as well ask.

He lit another of Woolston’s cigarettes as he stared out at Blackthorn House. Still not a soul in sight. He could hear the water wheel rumbling below, shaking the mill, as the tide came in.

Blackthorn House was completely still and silent.

Joseph started to think he might as well pack it in. Gifford had to be holed up inside. There were no signs of his making an appearance now, not if the day so far was anything to go by. It was possible, he supposed, that he had scarpered in the few minutes Joseph had been resting his eyes. A little longer. No reason to think that was the case. Joseph had been careful that neither the taxidermist nor his daughter should realise they were under surveillance. But if Gifford had, for the sake of argument, left Blackthorn House, the only place he’d be likely to go was the Bull’s Head.

That being the case, Joseph concluded the debate with himself, wouldn’t it make sense for him to go to the inn and check? The more he thought about it, the better an idea it seemed. He would wander over to the Bull’s Head and see what gossip he could pick up. There was always something.

Didn’t know how the world worked, men like Woolston. All that book learning and money, the law on their side, but not an ounce of common sense to rub between them.

Main Road

Fishbourne

‘Mary, is that you?’

Mary hung up her coat and hat in the hall, then went through to the kitchen where her mother was shelling peas. The twins were sitting on the floor under the table. Maisie leapt up to hug her and show her that the peg doll had a new frock. Polly continued to dangle a piece of bacon rind on a string for the kitten to jump up at.

‘You’re early,’ Jennie Christie said, then stopped. ‘What’s the matter, love? You look all somehow.’

Mary took one look at her mother and, despite her intentions, burst into tears. A few minutes later, with the twins dispatched into the garden and a pot of steaming tea on the table, she was telling her mother everything.

‘What a terrible thing. That poor, poor girl. And awful for you, Mary love.’ Jennie put her hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘But at least Miss Gifford didn’t expect you to help bring the wretched soul out.’

‘She sent me to fetch Dr Evershed. He wasn’t there, but there was a gentlemen staying. He came instead. Mr Woolston, he was called.’

The paring knife clattered into the bowl. ‘Woolston, did you say?’

‘That’s what he said. Ever so nicely dressed. Good quality. And such lovely eyes, almost purple they were. Matched his waistcoat and—’

‘How old was this Mr Woolston?’

‘I don’t know. Hard to say.’

‘Try, love.’

‘I don’t know, Ma. Twenty-four or twenty-five, perhaps.’

‘Not older? Not in his fifties?’

‘No.’ Mary paused. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’ Mrs Christie carried on pushing the peas out into the bowl. ‘Is he a friend of Dr Evershed’s?’

‘Must be, why?’

‘It’s not important.’

‘Obviously it is,’ Mary said, ‘or you wouldn’t have asked. Do you think you might know him, Ma?’

‘No.’ Mrs Christie hesitated. ‘At least, that’s to say I did run across a Woolston once, though I can’t see why he—’ She broke off. ‘Anyway, it can’t have been him, not if he’s as young as you say.’

‘I might be wrong.’

‘Did he have grey hair?’

‘No.’

Ma Christie smiled. ‘Well, it can’t be the same person.’ She looked at her daughter. ‘What did Mr Gifford have to say about all this?’

‘He wasn’t there.’

Mrs Christie shook her head. ‘Well, it’s a dreadful shock you had, the pair of you. Good of Miss Gifford to let you off early. Didn’t I tell you she’d be a nice lady to work for?’

Although her mother kept her distance from Blackthorn House, and appeared to disapprove of Mr Gifford, she had been oddly insistent that Mary should accept the position when they moved to Fishbourne after Mr Christie died. It suited Mary, being the only servant in a large house, for all its peculiarities. There was no one to boss her about or tell her she was doing things the wrong way, like in the bigger establishments. She had friends in service at the Rectory and Old Park, so she knew what superior servants could be like. Keeping everyone in their place. Mary could, give or take, please herself.

Mary nodded. ‘I dropped the laundry all in the mud and Miss Gifford didn’t make a thing of that either. I left it with Miss Bailey, but forgot this.’ She looked down at the crumpled handkerchief. ‘Miss Gifford lent it me. I’ll have to do it myself. Have we got any starch, Ma?’

‘She’s got a lovely hand,’ Mrs Christie said, looking at the embroidered initials.

‘Be surprised if Miss Gifford stitched it herself, Ma. I’ve never seen her pick up a needle, all the time I’ve been there. She never stops writing, that’s more her thing.’

‘Always was one for reading and writing,’ Mrs Christie said. She paused. ‘Has she had any more of those turns?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

‘That’s good. And Mr Gifford?’

Mary looked at her mother in surprise at her interest. ‘Same as usual. Don’t run into him much.’

‘Good, that’s good,’ Mrs Christie repeated, running on. ‘Keeping out of that workshop, I trust. Nasty old-fashioned business. Not hygienic.’

‘I heard Mr Gifford was really famous once. Used to have his own museum over Lyminster way. People came from all over and—’

‘That was a long time ago,’ Mrs Christie said sharply. ‘No sense going on about it. All in the past.’

‘Did you go there then, Ma? Birds dressed up in little costumes, Archie said . . .’

Mrs Christie got up and walked to the stove. ‘Can you clear up for me?’

‘. . . all posed in positions,’ Mary carried on, ‘little hymn books and what have you—’

‘That’s enough!’

Mary sat back as if she’d been slapped. Her mother rarely raised her voice, not even when the twins were playing up.

‘I was only saying. There’s no call to get sharp with me.’

Mary started to wrap the empty pods in a sheet of paper. Mrs Christie watched her, clearly already regretting her burst of temper.

‘Here’s a thing,’ she said in an emollient voice. ‘Do you remember Vera Barker? One that used to feed all the birds around Apuldram way?’

Mary shook her head, not willing to let it go straight away.

‘Yes, you do. Tommy Barker’s eldest. Some people called her Birdie. Went a bit funny in the head. Had all that red hair and wore an odd black hat, flat like a pancake, with feathers sticking out around the rim. Gardener at Westfield House was always chasing her off.’

Mary shrugged. ‘I never knew her. She was long gone by the time we came here.’

‘Well, be that as it may, it turns out no one’s seen her for a week. There was all that flooding round Apuldram way and downalong, so nobody was thinking about poor Vera.’

The two women stared at one another, as the same thought occurred to them both.

‘Could it have been Birdie you found in the stream, love?’ Mrs Christie said slowly.

‘I didn’t get a proper look, Ma. I couldn’t bring myself. I suppose so.’

‘Though now I come to think about it, don’t see how it can have been,’ Mrs Christie continued. ‘Tide wouldn’t carry her up from Apuldram. She’d be taken out past Dell Quay.’ She looked down at the newspaper. ‘I might mention it all the same. Police asking folk to help with their enquiries. Someone wrote a letter to Tommy, anonymous, and he took it to the newspaper.’

‘But who’d do that, Ma? Who’d even notice she was missing?’

‘Well, that I don’t know,’ Mrs Christie admitted. ‘They don’t say. But there must have been something in it for them to put it in the paper.’

‘I suppose so.’

Mrs Christie’s expression softened. ‘Anyhow, I’m sorry I snapped at you, love. All this weather, my nerves are in shreds. Why don’t you hang up your things and call the girls in? Be nice to have you eating tea with us for a change.’

Mary started to untie her apron, then her hand went to her pocket.

‘Oh.’

‘What is it, love?’

Mary pulled out an envelope and put it on the table. ‘This was on the back mat. I picked it up, meaning to take it through to the hall, then forgot all about it. I had so much washing, making the most of the dry weather, wanting to get it pegged out.’

The two women stared at the cream envelope with the black cursive lettering:
MISS
C.
GIFFORD
.

‘Delivered to the back door, you say?’

‘I thought that was odd too,’ Mary said. ‘What do you think I should do, Ma? Should I take it back now?’

‘I wouldn’t, if I were you.’

‘Lovely script, isn’t it? Really pretty.’

Mrs Christie took the letter and put it behind the carriage clock.

‘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 one 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.