by Alex Grecian
“Good Lord.”
“By that point, death must have been a mercy.”
“You can tell all that?”
“I can. Their blood continued to flow as the night wore on. It must have taken hours.”
“And you’re saying there was no hate involved in a thing like that?”
“I don’t think so. I think he was molding them. Or trying to.”
“Molding them as what?”
“Perhaps he’s an artist.”
“I’m not interested in art,” Tiffany said. “I’m interested in catching this bastard.”
“Ah,” Kingsley said. “Then I’ll get back to it.”
8
Fiona Kingsley climbed the steps at 184 Regent’s Park Road and stood, hesitating, before the blue door. An older man stood at attention there. He glanced at her and nodded a greeting. She nodded back, then turned and looked down the street toward the park, but it was out of sight around the bend. She sat down on the top step and opened her bag, took out a large sketch pad and, after another minute of rummaging, found a thick pencil. She looked up again at the guard on the door, but he wasn’t paying attention to her. Fiona took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and when she opened them again she focused on a tree across the road. She found a blank page in her pad and held her pencil loose, barely touched it to the paper as she set down guidelines for her drawing. She didn’t hear the door open behind her.
“I didn’t hear you knock.”
Fiona jumped and dropped her pencil. She turned and goggled at Claire, who stood just inside the open doorway.
“I startled you,” Claire said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s not your fault,” Fiona said. “I was lost in thought.”
“That tree must be very interesting.”
“I like trees. I tend to trust them more than I do people.”
“Oh.”
“Well, except for you,” Fiona said. “And a few others.”
The guard raised his eyebrows. “A sensible attitude to take, young lady.”
Claire smiled. “Thank you, Inspector. Fiona, are you going to come inside?”
Fiona nodded and picked up her pencil, tucked the sketch pad under her arm, and stood. She hoisted her bag, ducked her head as she passed the guard, and followed Claire into the front room. Claire gestured toward a daybed that was angled in the far corner of the room beneath a small, framed portrait of the twin babies, and Fiona perched on the edge of the bed. She set her bag next to her and folded her hands atop the sketch pad on her lap. Claire sat opposite her in a comfortable chair before the fireplace and arranged her skirts so that they wouldn’t bunch under her.
“I hope I didn’t leave you out there for a very long time,” Claire said.
“Oh, not at all,” Fiona said. “I never even knocked.”
“Then I couldn’t possibly have known you were there.”
“Of course not. I wanted to see the children, but then I realized I had no idea what your new nanny’s name is and I got confused and sat down and decided to draw a tree rather than bother anyone.”
“But you’re never a bother,” Claire said. “I do miss having you here. All these strangers about . . . I much prefer my friend’s company.”
“Me, too.” Fiona grinned and looked away at the floor. Her gaze traveled around the room, along the skirting boards. “It seems . . . It looks very clean in here. I mean, after . . .”
“I so rarely come in here anymore. I thought I might brave it today, with you here to keep me company.”
“Did you ever actually see . . .”
“The body? No, thank goodness.”
Fiona had briefly seen both the corpses that had been left in the Days’ home and she had not been able to forget them. One of the victims had been opened up and displayed like a trophy in the front room. The other, young Constable Rupert Winthrop, who had been assigned to protect Claire, had been left in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor. Commissioner of Police Sir Edward Bradford had personally overseen the removal of both bodies and had paid to have the rooms cleaned and redecorated, but their invisible influence remained.
“And what of Constable Winthrop?” Fiona kept her eyes down, examining the tops of the new patent leather shoes she had changed into. “Did you see him? His body?”
“I never did. But knowing he died in that room . . . Well, I don’t enter the kitchen anymore, either.”
“That’s two rooms you don’t use.” Fiona tried a timid smile. “You should find a tenant and get some use out of them.”
Claire smiled back at her. “I suppose there will come a day when I won’t let past events bother me so much, but quite honestly I’d simply rather move away.”
“I can’t blame you one bit. Are you able?”
“My parents insist on it, but you know Walter can’t afford a place big enough and he wouldn’t care to impose on my father again. For now, we have a guard on the door, that nice Inspector McKraken, and a houseful of new people, all of which makes me feel the slightest bit more secure until we decide what we can do.”
Claire sighed, then sat up straighter and clapped her hands together as if the noise would dispel the ghosts they both felt there. “On a happier note, the babies are doing splendidly.”
Fiona perked up. “I’d love to see them.”
“They’re sleeping.” Claire put a finger to her lips. “Nanny will be cross if we wake them just now.”
“Oh.”
“But do stay until they wake. Keep me company.”
“Of course. I’d be glad to. Father’s out examining a crime scene. The Harvest Man has killed again, only Father won’t allow me to sketch anything. He’s changed his mind about my being there and seeing the bodies. Thinks it’s somehow improper.” In fact, Fiona still woke every night screaming, the image of Constable Winthrop’s body vivid in her mind. Dr Kingsley had told her he feared for her sanity and could no longer allow her to be exposed to the consequences of evil deeds.
“I can’t say that I disagree with him. It all sounds perfectly horrible,” Claire said.
“It is, but when I sketch the bodies for him it feels important to me. It takes on a different aspect. A body becomes a part of a task, rather than a dead person, if that makes any sense at all.”
Claire started to nod, but grimaced and raised her eyebrows. “No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. I thought it might, but it doesn’t.”
“Well, at any rate, I’m out of a job and I’m not needed here with you any longer and I find myself completely irrelevant in every way.”
“I’m in a similar predicament. All I do is make up awful rhymes to read to the babies. They seem to like it, but Walter barely listens when I read to him.”
“I’m sure he . . . Oh, wait, I almost forgot!” She bent and opened the top of her bag and pulled out a small bound volume, which she handed over to Claire. “I brought this for you. Well, for you and the babies.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“It’s Robert Louis Stevenson. He often writes about the strangest things, but these are lovely.”
“A Child’s Garden of Verses,” Claire said, reading from the spine of the book.
“Very much like the things you write.”
“Not at all like my humble rhymes, I’m sure.”
“I thought they might inspire you.”
“Oh, thank you so much. You’re too kind, really.”
“There’s one I particularly like about shadows.”
“I wrote one about shadows, too,” Claire said.
“Did you? I want to read one of yours.”
“I couldn’t let you.”
“You most certainly could.”
“Well, if you insist.”
Claire jumped up and scurried from the room. Fiona waited a moment, tapped her finger against the c
over of her pad, and opened it to the page where she had drawn the faint beginnings of a tree. She pressed her pencil hard against the paper and drew the outline of the tree, then moved her hand up and down, drawing long irregular lines from top to bottom. Later, she would scribble short horizontal lines between the verticals to indicate bark. She liked to give a thing as much texture as she could, liked to imagine she might actually be able to reach out and touch the image, as if it were real. She stuck the tip of her tongue out against her upper teeth and frowned. What shape to make the leaves?
“Here’s one I just finished this morning.”
Fiona looked up as Claire entered the room carrying a piece of paper with a jagged edge, as if she’d recently torn it out of a book or diary. She handed it over to Fiona, but turned and left the room the moment she let go of the paper. Fiona read out loud.
She has a little curl in the middle of her head,
And she has a string of pearls in a darling shade of red.
The smallest silken stockings to adorn her little feet,
But her eyes: so wide and merry for a creature so petite!
Tiny hat and tiny dress and tiny woolen bib.
How like a little girl she seems within her little crib!
“It’s a doll,” Fiona said. “It’s a child’s doll.”
Claire stuck her head back into the room, grinned, and nodded; she had been waiting just around the corner in the hallway. “It’s exactly the doll that my mother gave the girls. But I can’t give it to them yet, because I worry they might choke on the pearls.”
“Does it really have a pearl necklace? It sounds terribly expensive.”
“Oh, it must have been. Entirely inappropriate, really. Here, I’ll show you.” Claire bustled out of the room. Fiona opened her tablet again and turned to a new page. She pursed her lips and loosely sketched an image from her head, got the basic shapes down on the page and built them up into the form of a baby doll, added features and hair and outlined the sketch so that it was fully formed. It was the work of perhaps five minutes, and she stopped when she heard footsteps approaching.
Claire entered the room, carrying a miniature bassinet with a lace ruffle around it, and set it down at Fiona’s side. Fiona peered into the top and saw a wee baby girl made of wood with a horsehair wig, and painted eyes and lips, and a tiny wardrobe that was better than anything she had ever owned for herself.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It’s too much,” Claire said.
“Well, maybe that, too. But it inspired your poem.”
“For what that’s worth, I suppose. Only doggerel, after all.”
“Oh, but I like it. And I think girls like to read about this sort of thing. It’s smaller than they are, you know. Children like things that are smaller than they are.”
“Well, then, you’re right. This poem is a very small thing indeed.”
“That’s not what I meant at all. But your inspiration became my inspiration.”
“What do you have there?”
“It’s nothing. I just wanted to draw what you described. And I do think it’s close, don’t you?”
Claire took the sketch pad and looked at the new drawing on the topmost page. “Why, that’s it exactly.”
“The face is not the same. But you didn’t describe the face. And, of course, it needs more details. I just barely started drawing it.”
“I like it.”
“A thought has occurred to me,” Fiona said. “You should publish your nursery rhymes so other children can see them.”
Claire paused, then laughed, a single sharp bark that shattered the stillness.
“But I’m serious,” Fiona said. “You really should consider publishing these, Claire.”
“They’re just for the girls. Only they don’t understand them, of course.”
“You’ll think about it, though? I think it’s a marvelous idea. And then I’d be able to point to a book of your rhymes and say, ‘I knew her before she was a beloved children’s author.’”
Claire laughed. “Oh, I’ve missed having you here, Fiona. You will stay for dinner, won’t you?”
“If you’ll have me. I don’t know what else to do with myself today.”
“Wonderful. Let me tell Cook. Oh, come with me. I should introduce you to the nanny so you’ll remember her name and not sit on our porch the next time you visit.”
9
Bishop’s Road was busy. Vendors packed the pavement with carts and boys ran up and down crying their wares. Carriages threaded the narrow avenue between pedestrians, who strolled about, window-shopping and haggling with the vendors. The Harvest Man stayed close to the buildings on the south side of the road and kept his eyes fixed on the family across the street. The sun on his face was warm and the air stirred with life and movement. He felt nervous. He stepped from shadow to shadow and dodged the shoppers crowding the path.
The family was in no hurry. They ambled along, making it difficult for the Harvest Man to watch them without seeming conspicuous. The woman carried a big wicker basket over one arm, her other hand in the crook of her husband’s elbow. The children, one boy and one girl, were obedient. They stayed near their parents, only occasionally darting off to look at some vendor’s display of penny toys or fresh fruit. The Harvest Man took no notice of them. He stared intently at the mother and father, tried to gauge the shapes of their skulls beneath the masks they wore. It was hard to see clearly at such a distance, but the masks didn’t fool him. He could distinguish the woman’s lovely cheekbones even from yards away, and the man’s wide forehead, his strong jaw. Those were features they couldn’t hope to hide from him. He had chosen the right people this time, his own parents, spotted amongst the teeming masses. He was nearly sure of it.
The mother moved away from her husband, walking carefully in the street in her pattens, the children close behind her, while the man stopped to relight his pipe. He stretched and glanced up and down the thoroughfare and looked directly at the Harvest Man, but then away again, apparently without noticing the strange spindly creature in the shadows. He ambled along after his family and nodded politely whenever his wife held up some new item for his appraisal, but he didn’t seem interested in shopping.
At four o’clock, the mother and two children left the father and entered a tea shop. The father took out his watch and checked the time, then tucked it back in his waistcoat and hurried away. The Harvest Man had to choose quickly. He decided the mother would be some time in the tea shop. She would have to get the children settled and find something for them to eat before she could enjoy her tea. So he followed the father, kept well back, and skittered along in the man’s wake until they reached a pub. The father went inside and the Harvest Man followed him only as far as the main entrance. He glanced in at the door and turned and trotted back the way he had come. The pub was no place for a child to be.
Back at the tea shop, he took up a post behind a vendor selling ladies’ dresses, simple handmade cotton things in several sizes, all hanging loose from a makeshift awning. The Harvest Man’s stomach rumbled, but he ignored it. He hardly ever paid attention to things like hunger or weariness. He knew that he would eventually find his way into an attic where there would be all manner of things to catch and eat, and a cozy corner in which to doze while he waited for the night.
The foot traffic had begun to thin by the time the woman and her children emerged from the tea shop. She led them along the street, picking up a spool of thread from this stall and a tin of beef from that. She went inside Arthur Burgess and Sons, taking the children with her, and didn’t emerge for more than half an hour. She wasn’t carrying anything new and the Harvest Man assumed she had ordered grocery items to be delivered to the home the next morning. He made a mental note to be sure to finish his work long before the delivery boy arrived.
After that, the day’s shopping was done. Father
reappeared, walking along in their direction, and after many glad greetings and kisses all round, the little family made their way to the end of the street and turned the corner. The Harvest Man shadowed them, easier to do now that the sun had begun to set. He was eager to finally see their house, hoped he might remember once living there with them. No house had triggered a memory yet, but he knew it would eventually happen, he would one day see the home he had spent so many happy childhood years in, and on that day his long ordeal would be over. He would strip the masks from his parents’ faces and their drawn-out game of hide-and-seek would be ended at last. There would be shrieks of joy and he would be welcomed back into his family’s embrace. He would never let them leave him again. This game was not so much fun anymore.
The family, and their bizarre tagalong, walked for a quarter of a mile in a southerly direction. The little girl skipped ahead and the boy amused himself by picking up a stick from the ground and dragging it along the path behind him, making a clattering sound against the stones. The Harvest Man longed to snatch it away from him and strike him with it, teach him that silence should be a virtue among children (only look at his own example), but he didn’t. He remained far behind them and carefully out of sight.
They turned another corner, and another, and walked on until the Harvest Man felt quite lost. Finally they stopped in front of a tidy blue cottage with white trim and a little fence. An ideal home, exactly proportioned for a family of four. The father unlatched the gate and the mother swung her basket as she stepped through and up the steps to the white door. She opened it and ushered the children inside. The father came after her and held the door for her and hesitated on the threshold, peering about him into the descending gloom as if he sensed the trespasser in his neighborhood. The Harvest Man was nearly invisible behind shrubbery and the father’s glance swept right past him. The man lit his pipe again and took a deep breath and picked tobacco from his upper lip. Then he turned and went inside the house and closed the door behind him.
The Harvest Man put his hand on the shrubbery and pushed at it as he emerged. He stood in the street for a long moment, staring up at the house. He then turned and walked away without a backward glance. This was not his home. And this was not his family. He knew because the house had no attic.