The Taxidermist's Daughter (9 page)

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 returned 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.

*

Woolston reached the administration buildings without meeting anyone he knew. With relief, he stepped into the corridor and walked quickly to the entrance to the theatre and through the double doors.

The auditorium was empty. For a moment, he stood still in the shadow of the overhang of the gallery. The dominant colours in the room were cream and beige. Everything was designed to be soothing to troubled spirits. A pleasing repeat-pattern wallpaper, brown and cream, below the dado rail. Small pillars set on pale painted plinths supported the balcony. It was modern and clean and light. Dr Woolston admired the interior of Blomfield’s design as much as the exterior. He had once nursed similar ambitions, and had it not been for his father’s insistence that he should follow in his footsteps as an army doctor, he might have trained as an architect. Harold had inherited his artistic inclinations, though he too had been forced to accept a position with good financial prospects. If he was serious about painting, he would keep it up all the same. That chap in Fishbourne – Arthur Evershed – managed it, after all.

Woolston became aware of a knocking sound, like the branch of a tree tapping on a window. He looked up to the high mullioned windows, but could see nothing. Then he realised it was coming from the far end of the room, close to the stage. The stage itself, was hidden by the heavy curtains, which were closed.

He walked out from under the balcony into the open space of the auditorium at the same time as a grey-haired woman in cap and apron appeared from behind the stage. The char put down her pail, dipped her mop into the water, tapped the wood on the edge to shake off the excess, then continued her cleaning.

‘Room’s not in use,’ she said when he drew level.

‘I see that.’ He paused. ‘I have an appointment. I’m meeting someone here at six o’clock.’

‘Gentleman?’

He hesitated. He assumed so, since the note had come from Brook, though it was true it hadn’t said as much. He asked a question instead.

‘Has anybody come in while you’ve been working?’

‘Room’s not in use,’ she repeated.

The woman clearly knew nothing about the matter. Woolston suddenly felt oddly hopeful. He had followed the instructions to the letter. If Brook had changed his mind, although it was a nuisance and a waste of his time, then he was off the hook. He looked at his pocket watch. It was already ten past six. He could be home by six thirty, enjoying his whisky and soda. His hand went to his breast pocket. No need for heroics. He would take a quick look backstage, to be sure, then call it a day.

‘I’ll have a look around all the same.’

The woman shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

Woolston walked to the stage and slowly climbed the steps, the sound of his shoes echoing through the auditorium. His hand fumbled blindly, until he found the gap in the curtains, and he stepped carefully through on to the hushed stage.

‘Brook?’

The smell of sawdust and mothballs. All the theatre paraphernalia; a rail of costumes, still holding the imprint of the last person to wear the skirts and jackets. He looked up into the flies, the ropes hanging down, a chandelier suspended high above. On a wooden table in the prompt corner was a precarious stack of straw boaters. Fans and headdresses. Feathers.

Black feathers, lots of them, scattered over everything. Always reminding him, always taking him back.

Woolston felt his legs turn to water. Purple-black, ink-blue feathers, the scene returning as clear as day. The cases, the candlelight reflected in the domes of glass, the shock of the moment. The blood.

Then from the wings, a voice. ‘Hello, Jack.’

It wasn’t possible. Woolston recognised the soft tones that haunted his nightmares, getting fainter with each year that passed, but always there. Suddenly he realised that it was one of the things that had most upset him about the man who’d come to his consulting rooms earlier. The man who seemed to know everything about that night ten years ago. His voice had reminded Woolston of hers, although he knew it couldn’t be. The girl had had no family, they’d made sure of that.

‘Or do you go by the name of John these days? I think I might, were I in your shoes. So much more respectable.’

Woolston spun round, almost losing his balance, but was unable to work out where the sound was coming from. The light was extinguished and he found himself instantly disorientated on the bare stage. He took a few blind steps towards the prompt corner, reaching out his hand but finding nothing but air.

‘Who are you?’ he shouted. ‘What do you want?’

He heard the intake of breath.

‘Jack,’ she said, gently coaxing. ‘I gave you a chance. Don’t pretend you can’t remember . . .’

Woolston panicked. He turned on his heel and tried to run, but pain exploded in the side of his head. The ground rushed up to meet him. His ribs cracked as they hit the wooden surround of the trapdoor, then he dropped, like a stone, down through the stage to the cellar fourteen feet below.