The Rookery

by Deborah Hewitt

  ‘Catherine—’ Alice started.

  ‘She changed,’ Marianne said dismissively. ‘Like Helena, she went away to university, and came back with a head full of ridiculous ideas. I was the one who stayed. The most loyal, always.’

  Marianne laughed, and Alice glanced back at the photograph as the older woman flopped lazily into her Queen Anne chair.

  ‘But credit where it’s due,’ said Marianne with a tight smile. ‘Catherine bested me in the end.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘She died,’ said Marianne. ‘So she had the honour of meeting Tuoni first. But then again, I always think first place is overrated – better to save the best for last.’

  Alice clamped her lips. Marianne was wrong, but it wasn’t Alice’s place to put her right. Reid had clearly gone to great lengths to change her identity, and Alice wouldn’t give it up without good reason.

  ‘Now. I think,’ said Marianne, ‘that it’s time to give me the folder under your arm. You wouldn’t have brought it if you weren’t planning to give it to me.’

  Alice glanced down at it and smiled. ‘This old thing?’

  Marianne straightened and gripped the armrests tighter. Alice’s hand slid into her pocket, gently pulling out a small mass of plant growths: creeping rootstalks from a knotweed. She’d kept hold of them from her last test at House Mielikki.

  Alice’s eye was on Marianne’s nightjar. When the bird began to flutter in agitation, she squeezed the rootstalks until her palm tingled with sensitivity. Her muscles tensed.

  Marianne clicked her fingers, and the wall behind Alice crumpled. A waterfall of bricks slammed through the air towards her. But the nightjar’s advance notice had sharpened Alice’s reactions. She didn’t flinch; her hand snapped open and the knotweed roots exploded into the air around her, thrusting their stalks in all directions and smashing the bricks to dust.

  With a frustrated hiss, Marianne made to leap from the chair, intent on reaching Reid’s folder. Alice’s jaw clenched and she slammed her hands on the wooden armrests of her own chair. Her fingers pressed into the grains of wood. Alice’s eyes were fixed on the polished sheen of the Queen Anne, catching the light through the hole in Marianne’s wall.

  ‘You should never have—’ Marianne began, stalking towards Alice. But with a shocked yelp, she was whipped off her feet and snatched backwards into the Queen Anne. The grains shifted, pouring like sand through the armrests. The wood curled around Marianne’s wrists, holding her in place, while knots in the chair legs had sprouted twisting branches that wound around her ankles, pinning her down.

  Marianne’s face was puce with rage. Her eyes bulged and her teeth were bared as Alice approached. The folder was held carelessly in one hand.

  ‘Well that wasn’t very nice,’ said Alice. ‘No wonder all of your friends left you behind.’

  ‘You can’t hold me like this forever,’ hissed Marianne. ‘And when I free myself . . . What Tom did to you is nothing to what I can bring down on your head.’

  Alice’s face grew blank and her eyes cold. She could leave Marianne here, like this. Let her starve to death in this chair. Soil herself. Show her the same mercy she’d shown Crowley’s mum, Helena – none. She watched her struggle for a moment, considering.

  ‘You won’t be freed from this chair unless I allow it,’ said Alice. ‘Haven’t you read the newspapers? House Mielikki is on the rise.’ Her tone was mocking. ‘Our legacies will beat yours every time.’ She paused. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? Because I heard a whisper that this research’ – she twitched the folder – ‘might be connected to the Summer Tree’s growth, and therefore what’s causing the House Mielikki power surges. But if that’s true, why are you so keen to get your hands on it? Do you want our legacies to grow stronger than yours?’ Marianne didn’t respond – Alice didn’t really expect her to. ‘Are you doing something to the Summer Tree?’ she demanded.

  She raised an eyebrow, but Marianne’s lips were clamped shut. There was nothing in her nightjar’s demeanour that indicated whether this was true or false. Alice’s fingers twitched. She wanted to probe her about the comment she’d found in Reid’s notes – Pellervoinen safeguard. Marianne might know more than Crowley. But Marianne wanted the notes, and so Alice couldn’t simply dish out the highlights without knowing if it might be more dangerous to do so.

  Alice studied the older woman and sighed irritably. She almost – almost – had the impression Marianne didn’t know quite as much about the contents of the folder as she’d thought. It was odd, certainly, that Marianne had no idea this was the work of her old childhood friend.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to humiliate you, Marianne. In fact, I want to be reasonable. So how about a bargain?’

  ‘What the fuck do you want?’ Marianne rasped. ‘Spit it out!’

  ‘There was an older woman in the photograph,’ she said. ‘A woman named Tilda. I want to know where she is.’

  Marianne stared at her as if she was deranged, and then she began to laugh – a hoarse, throaty sound.

  ‘You want to know where that judgemental old bitch is?’ she said. ‘What’s it worth?’

  Alice took a deep breath and held up the folder. ‘This.’

  Marianne’s mouth fell open. Then suspicion clouded her face. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Here,’ said Alice, tossing the folder to Bridget. ‘Catch.’

  Bridget made no attempt to reach for it. It thwacked the floor and lay by her knees. Alice moved backwards and retook her seat, allowing Marianne to note the distance between her and the folder.

  ‘Tell me about Tilda,’ she said.

  Marianne blinked and scrutinized Alice more closely. Alice knew she’d thrown all her chips into the pile – Marianne’s curiosity had been sparked and she would certainly follow up on it later – but the gamble was worth the prize. Alice was sure now that she’d made the right decision not to ask after Leda Westergard too.

  ‘Tilda Jarvis,’ said Marianne at last, glancing down at the folder and back over at Alice, ‘squandered the family fortune on charitable ventures. She disappeared for a few years, working in one of the Council’s least glamorous departments, before reappearing as a librarian in the Abbey Library.’

  Alice stared hard at Marianne, her eyes wandering to check her nightjar.

  ‘And where is she now?’ she asked, her heart beginning to race in anticipation.

  Marianne sneered. ‘The last I heard, she was still there. Withered and dried up as her books.’

  Alice glanced back at the photograph, her eyes darting from the young Catherine, Leda and Helena to the older Tilda Jarvis. If she still worked at the Abbey Library, Alice would stake it out until she found her.

  ‘Are we done here?’ snapped Marianne.

  Alice nodded distractedly as she rose. ‘Yes. I think we’re done for good.’

  Marianne smiled and her voice dropped. ‘Mind you don’t give yourself any more paper cuts.’

  Alice ignored her, striding through the hole Marianne had caused in the wall, towards the front door. She paused on the step as she tried to commit her visit and all that Marianne had said to memory. She had to go to the library. She had to find Tilda Jarvis – she needed to know what the old woman knew about her past. The question was, when? Now? Or should she take some time to prepare without charging in? Maybe she should take some proof with her, something to convince the old woman of her identity: Reid’s photograph, maybe.

  Before she stepped out into the garden, she cast one last look behind her. Her bent fingers flexed, and she heard Marianne gasp as the bindings pinning her to the chair suddenly disintegrated. The sounds of Marianne scrambling for Reid’s research folder accompanied Alice out onto the street. She paused – waiting – her fingers tingling.

  There was a scream of rage from within the house, and Alice nodded in satisfaction. The folder of blank paper had rotted and blackened, disintegrating in Marianne’s hands, while Reid’s notes sat safely in Coram House.

  As
Marianne’s frustration echoed down the street, Alice smiled. That one was for Crowley.

  Alice flinched. There were two uniformed Runners leaning against the door to her apartment. She’d grown exhausted on her trek through the campus – it had been a long few days – but her mind raced at the sight of her visitors. She backed down the corridor, towards the end where the stairs lay. Her spine hit the door to the fire escape and she fumbled behind her for the handle.

  ‘Miss Wyndham? Is that you?’

  She froze and squeezed her eyes shut. ‘No’ hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she sighed and pushed away from the door.

  ‘Yes,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Mind if we have a quick word?’

  Yes, she did mind. She wanted to be left alone to think. She didn’t want to wonder what, exactly, they might be here for – a word about Reid’s lab? An account of what she’d witnessed at Crane Park? Or Tom? She snorted bitterly. Pick one.

  Head down, she trudged towards them and made to open her door. It was only when a shaft of dying sunlight illuminated not just one but both Runners that her hand paused on the lock and she froze, her temper sparking instantly.

  Reuben Risdon, commander of the Bow Street Runners. Again. He nodded solemnly at her. Silver-haired, with sharply slanted eyebrows and eyes that appeared grey in the right light, he looked like a man dipped in liquid mercury.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said.

  She clenched her jaw and cut him a dark look.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘We have some enquiries to make about one of your colleagues, Tom Bannister.’

  She tensed and moved to stand in front of her apartment door, barring it from them.

  ‘Oh? What about him?’

  Risdon looked up from his notebook. ‘He’s dead.’

  Alice’s face paled. ‘I’m . . . sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Are you?’ he asked mildly.

  A bloom of pink rushed to her cheeks. What was that supposed to mean? ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

  He held her gaze for a moment and then nodded.

  ‘How did he die?’ she asked.

  ‘A broken neck,’ said Risdon. ‘He fell from a third-floor balcony. We’re trying to establish whether he stepped off or whether he was pushed.’

  Alice licked her lips, trying to figure out how to buy some time. Why had they come to her, and how much did they know?

  ‘We weren’t colleagues,’ she said carefully. Risdon appeared to scribble this down. ‘We worked in different departments.’

  ‘But you knew him?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’d seen him around.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ said Risdon, his gaze flickering over her, coolly assessing.

  There was a pointed pause. Risdon nodded at the other Runner, a young, freckled man with a side-parting and exceptionally shiny shoes. Inexperienced and eager to please the higher-ups, thought Alice.

  ‘Mr Bannister seemed to know you quite well,’ said the young Runner. ‘He had your work schedule pinned up in his kitchen. It seems he’d been making an observation log to keep track of your movements.’

  Alice’s mouth slackened. What the fuck? He’d been logging her whereabouts? It was one thing to imagine him carrying out a few opportunistic attacks, but to find that he’d been following her too? Stalking her all that time he’d been feigning friendship? Her stomach churned in revulsion. She felt violated in a way she hadn’t before.

  ‘We understand this must be quite distressing to hear,’ said the young Runner. The badge on his pocket said Gibson.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she shot back. ‘Not if he’s dead.’

  Two silent faces stared back at her. Risdon had a shrewdly probing look in his eye.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, too tired to hide behind lies, ‘but if he’s been spying on me, then to be honest with you it’s a relief that I don’t need to worry about what he might do next.’

  ‘Oh, I – we completely understand,’ said Gibson, shooting an anxious glance at Risdon. ‘Personal safety is always at the forefront of – of Runner operations and—’

  ‘Mr Bannister’s body was found outside the apartment of your employer, Professor Reid,’ Risdon said smoothly. ‘To your knowledge, were they in a relationship?’

  Alice’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘It might have explained why he was there,’ said Risdon. ‘Particularly as Professor Reid is still in a serious condition in hospital.’

  ‘Oh.’ She nodded.

  ‘Do you know of any other connection between Mr Bannister and Professor Reid?’ asked the young Runner.

  She shook her head. ‘Other than the fact they both worked here and had seen each other around, no.’

  Risdon closed his notebook. ‘We’re investigating whether, given our findings in his apartment, Mr Bannister was, in fact, the individual targeting you. At the moment, the only connection we can find between him and your employer . . . is you.’

  She tilted her chin.

  ‘Could I ask where you were last night?’ he said, his tone light but a faint frown creasing his forehead.

  ‘Sleeping,’ she said tightly. ‘Now if you will excuse me, I have to—’

  ‘We have an officer looking into his last movements, so that we can form a clearer picture about exactly what happened,’ said Risdon conversationally. ‘Eris Mawkin – I think you know of her?’

  Alice’s breathing slowed. The Runners used the necromancer to pick up on signs of a struggle, imprints of distress left by the dead. What would she find?

  ‘Good,’ she said, pushing open her front door. ‘I’m sure you’ll find her very illuminating.’

  ‘If you think of anything that might be useful later,’ said Gibson, ‘please feel free to—’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, closing the door on them.

  Alice waited until their footsteps took them away before shrugging off her jacket and slumping onto the edge of her bed. She leaned over, head in her hands, utterly spent. What was Eris Mawkin going to find? Her stomach churned with the injustice of it; she was the one who Tom had attacked, tricked and made a fool of. He’d killed himself and it was only good fortune he hadn’t killed her too. She was the victim, and yet now she might be the one forced to defend herself from the Runners.

  Flopping back onto the mattress, she threw her hand over her eyes. They were hot and gritty with exhaustion. She crawled up the bed and sank into the pillows. Tomorrow. She’d find Tilda tomorrow, but first she needed to rest.

  Red hair. Always. Jen darted between the black trees, her red hair flying out behind her like a living thing. The crooked trees striped the frosted landscape like iron bars. Alice glanced down at her bare feet as she crunched through the glittering carpet of snow.

  ‘Jen!’

  Alice sped up, her feet burning with cold as she chased shadows through the forest.

  ‘Jen, wait!’

  On and on. Her feet numb. Pounding the snow. Clambering over tree roots, ducking low-hanging branches, weaving between the trees standing sentry.

  And then Jen stopped – so abruptly that Alice skidded to a halt a short distance away, panting and dizzy. Jen turned, and the hair whipped across her face like a spray of blood.

  ‘Alice,’ she said, and her voice was strange – a husky rasp of a voice.

  Jen darted behind the trees, calling out her name, and it seemed to come from every direction. A thousand sing-song voices, taunting her.

  Alice spun around, searching for the lash of red hair. The moors tilted with her, the monochrome frost and black trees morphing into a grey blur strobing around her. Her vision flickered, and then she saw it: the Summer Tree. Here, in this place it didn’t belong, its roots submerged in the glittering snow, its crown a canopy over the whole forest. It towered over the frosted landscape, the tree’s twisted branches blackened just like those of the Arbor Talvi – the winter trees, the trees of death. Alice shuddered at the sight of it: so monstro
us, so magnificent. Her eyes tracked up the crooked trunk, utterly entranced.

  ‘Alice!’

  Her head turned sharply to the noise, but as she looked away from the shadowy Summer Tree she almost missed the flurry of movement from its branches. Her eyes snapped back to the tree as hundreds of nightjars burst out from the leaves, spiralling into the dark skies of the Sulka Moors. She laughed delightedly.

  ‘Alice?’

  The smile froze on her lips.

  ‘Alice!’ Tom’s voice, not Jen’s.

  She tensed and backed away, her heels crunching through the thick frost. Somewhere nearby, Alice’s nightjar shrieked a warning as a root from the Summer Tree untethered itself. The ground rumbled as it shifted and bunched. The contraction sent a wave of compacted soil and snow ploughing towards her, and she stumbled sideways to avoid it.

  Her hair fell across her face and she roughly dashed it away. A shadow loomed over her. Not Jen’s. This one taller, broader, steadier. Tom stood over her. He wore the same shirt he’d died in, his glasses askew and his beard matted with blood. He peered down at her with a cold look in his eye.

  ‘Tom—’ she said.

  He clicked his fingers and another root burst free from the ground. Swaying like a python, it swiped her onto her back and she landed winded, the back of her head smarting. She scrambled onto her elbows but the root slid over her chest, crushing her beneath it, while Tom looked on grimly.

  Alice gasped. The weight on her ribs clamped and tightened, bending her inwards. And the pressure in her head . . . Bright sparks popped across her vision. She was going to pass out. She . . . The weight on her lungs . . .

  ‘Tom, stop,’ she rasped. Stopstopstopstop . . . The echo rolled across the moors, demanding and pleading.

  Alice didn’t have the energy to raise her head. Her cheek was pressed against the snow, raw with cold. Her breaths were shallow. She fought to push the weight off her chest, and failed. She slumped back, her arms splayed out and her head ricocheting off the ground. Her skull rang with the crack. She tried to focus her blurred gaze on the shadow stepping closer with a heavy, deliberate tread. It paused, Tom’s shadow slanting across her body, and she flinched. Fightbackfightback . . .