‘But Lord Axewith is gone –’
‘Axewith left his papers with Bronque. By now Her Majesty has flung those papers in the Colonel’s face and the main goal of our visit is achieved. That Axewith is called to some entirely unrelated crisis only benefits us further. It keeps him from the tragic news at Axewith House, and also from Vandaariff. Now, will you stand?’
Miss Temple nodded and rose. ‘Colonel Bronque is your lover.’
‘Celeste Temple, how did you ever escape strangling?’ The Contessa slipped the paper-knife into her bag and came out with a handkerchief. ‘Yours to destroy.’
Miss Temple wiped her nose and eyes and then dabbed at her fingers, for the lace was too thin for its task. ‘Why do all the Queen’s ladies dislike you?’
‘Why does everyone dislike you?’
‘But – but I am not –’ Miss Temple flushed. ‘I am not beautiful.’
The Contessa’s voice was flat. ‘No. Beauty is more a danger than intelligence or wit. One becomes a living mirror for the inadequacies of others. Without the whip hand, which as a foreigner in the court is denied me, one proceeds in secret. Such constraints are exactly why unexpected encounters, such as Lady Hopton, such as yourself, are so gratifying.’
‘But you have not killed me.’
The Contessa sighed wistfully. ‘O Celeste …’
When she had stepped off the ship into the incomparably more complicated world of the city – a hailstorm of sounds and smells and people – Miss Temple’s reaction, true to her nature, had been to retreat and, from behind a barrier of sceptical politeness, observe. The vectors of her relations were antagonistic, this new home defined by its otherness. When elements of her transplanted life did in time penetrate her reserve – a grudging familiarity with her maids, an appreciation for certain tea shops – the result was an expansion of her private enclosure to include these new pleasures, not a shift from her essential detachment. Now that enclosure, her castle’s keep, housed only mortifying betrayal. Even her hate for the Contessa was blunted, first by the indiscriminate desire that ran in her blood like an infection, and, worse to admit, by Miss Temple’s fear that the Contessa alone understood, however contemptuously, the truth of her polluted soul.
She wondered how many people the Contessa had murdered, and why she had been so many times spared? Certainly the Contessa had tried once or twice in earnest, but on so many other occasions the woman had refrained. Miss Temple believed that once a person was an enemy – horrible Cynthia Hobart, for example, whose plantation lay across the river – one worked against them without end. Moral sophistication – that one would not merely dissemble, biding time for a master stroke, but actually allow one’s feelings to change – laid a chill in the pit of her stomach.
She shook off her thoughts. They had retraced their steps to the hall of mirrors, where they had first entered with Colonel Bronque.
‘At last,’ sighed the Contessa. ‘If we can just find a coach – che cavolo!’
Blocking the way stood four soldiers and an unimpressive man with wire spectacles and a little beard, the tip of which he twirled between two grey-gloved fingers.
‘Mr Schoepfil.’ The Contessa released Miss Temple’s hand. ‘I had wondered if I would have the pleasure.’
‘The pleasure is mine,’ Mr Schoepfil replied. ‘I insist.’
Miss Temple turned and ran, but another line of soldiers barred her way. She was taken to an empty room and left inside without a word.
Miss Temple disliked waiting at the best of times, and to do so without knowing where she was only made her feel more powerless, more like a child. She looked out of the window of the little room, wondering if she might simply smash the glass and climb through, but, while she did not remember having climbed so many stairs, the drop was at least thirty feet to an ugly gravelled courtyard.
She wondered if the Contessa would set the blame for Lady Hopton’s death on her. And who was this Mr Schoepfil – another lover, along with Bronque? She thought of the indifference that ringed her own existence at the Boniface, where she was tolerated but hardly loved. And what of those people she had met in her romance with Roger Bascombe? Not all had been Roger’s direct friends or family; there had been some who might have, had they desired, maintained relations with Miss Temple. Scarcely a single call had come.
Her handbag containing Roger’s notebook had been taken by the soldiers without her ever having read it. Miss Temple wished she’d never seen the thing, hating her curiosity. She put her head in her hands and sighed.
She looked up with a dawning revulsion and walked to a knobbed wall panel. The back of her mouth burnt. Miss Temple pulled the panel wide. In the centre of a bare room stood a table covered with an oilskin sheet. A second, stained square of oilskin protected the floor beneath.
In the Comte’s memories the horrid odour echoed necrotic tissue first encountered in a Parisian atelier, but Miss Temple’s main recognition came from the pollution in her own body, from the tainted book.
She lifted the oilskin sheet. Her stomach seized. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. Saliva filled her mouth and she wheeled, willing herself to vomit, but nothing came. With a punitive determination Miss Temple reached again for the oilskin and, so as not to lose her nerve, flipped it wide. Francesca Trapping lay on the table like a forgotten doll, broken and tattered. The dress had been cut away and so had parts of the corpse, dark cavities opened with an unstinting cruelty. Miss Temple put her fist to her mouth and forced herself to look. She had abandoned the girl. She had triggered the explosion at the Customs House. This was her doing.
She felt her throat catch, aware of a stupidity she could not see past. The gaping holes … missing portions of the child’s body. This was like the victims at Raaxfall, from whose corpses the knots of transformed flesh had been removed … but … but no, it was not the same. Those cavities had been ragged and irregular, formed by blue glass blooming into flesh. These incisions were precise and clean … surgical.
She stared down at the bloodless small hands, the feet turned in to touch at the toes – and realized the clothes had been cut away. The fabric was not torn or burnt, nor was it stained with blood – there was no sign of death by explosion or violence. What was more – she choked as the thought came home – the excavations in Francesca’s body were not from any random blast. Through the Comte’s knowledge of anatomy she saw what had been removed: kidney, spleen, lung, heart, thyroid, even the roof of the girl’s open mouth … Francesca had been dissected as deliberately as a hanged man sold for science. She had not been killed in the Customs House. Francesca had been poisoned by the Comte’s book, her organs wholly consumed with rot.
How soon before Miss Temple succumbed as well?
It was not a generous thought, and she was ashamed. The murdered child lay before her. The small mouth yawned, slate-coloured lips gore-smeared from the extracted palate. How in the world had Francesca Trapping ended up here? Knowledge of the Comte’s alchemy had been confined to an extremely small circle, and most of them lay in the grave. Francesca’s dissection cast this Mr Schoepfil, who held both Miss Temple and Francesca’s body in his custody, in an entirely more terrifying light.
Francesca’s dress hung off the table like discarded wrapping paper. Miss Temple wondered when the dress had been purchased, and by whom, if it was a final memento from the girl’s mother or something the Contessa had purloined for their stay in the tunnels. Sensible cloth, well sewn. Miss Temple cocked her head … several bits seemed of a double thickness.
The first pocket contained a tangled tuft of hair poorly tied with ribbon. Miss Temple recognized its colour. This was Charlotte Trapping’s, not taken from her head, but scavenged by Francesca from her mother’s hairbrush. The child had kept it with her, from Mrs Trapping’s disappearance right to the very end. Miss Temple put it back. The second pocket held a tiny leather sleeve, like a case for the Doctor’s monocle. She prised it open and revealed, snug in an impression of orange felt,
a blue glass key.
Miss Temple tucked the key sleeve in her own pocket and turned at a scuffing from the outer room. A tall man with a starched collar, whose pointed features were undone by coarse tufts of hair in his ears, peered past the panel with disapproval.
‘Who are you?’ Miss Temple demanded, before he could speak.
‘I am Mr Kelling.’
‘Why do you not keep such a door locked, Mr Kelling, instead of allowing innocent women to blunder onto so shocking a sight? It is disgraceful and cruel!’
Kelling studied her shrewdly. ‘You were told to wait.’
‘With that smell? Now I’ve been sickened. Now I just want some air.’
‘Of course. If you would follow me.’
Kelling stepped aside. Under his arm was tucked an oblong box of dark wood. He led her into the corridor and locked the door behind him.
‘Who was that girl?’ asked Miss Temple. ‘And what was that horrid stink?’
‘An unfortunate orphan.’ Kelling’s voice was glazed with apology, like watered honey on a poor-quality gammon. ‘The odour is regrettable.’
‘I did not expect dead orphans in a palace.’
‘One wouldn’t.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘An inevitable question.’
A period of silence made clear it was also a question to which Miss Temple would get no answer. ‘What do you do here, Mr Kelling?’
‘Whatever I am asked.’
‘So you’re someone’s spaniel?’
They reached another door. Kelling waved her through.
‘Mr Schoepfil.’
Miss Temple stopped where she stood. ‘I don’t want to see any Mr Schoepfil.’
‘He insists on seeing you.’
She was offered an upholstered chair. The only other furniture in the room was a little table on wheels, stacked with folders. Kelling gave Schoepfil the oblong box, then made a discreet exit. Schoepfil opened the narrow casket eagerly, pecking at its contents with the tip of one gloved finger, counting to seven. He snapped the box shut and impishly raised his eyebrows, inviting Miss Temple to share his pleasure.
‘Your first audience with the Queen?’ He nodded before she could reply, and rapped the stack of folders with a grey-gloved fist. ‘I offer no refreshment – there is no time – as much as I would enjoy chatting at length with someone who, however inadvertently, might answer so many matters digging at my mind. I believe you even knew my cousin – I expect you saw her die! I imagine the event was spectacular.’ Mr Schoepfil’s hands flapped at either side of his neck and a wretched squawk came from his mouth, enacting – it took Miss Temple a moment to realize – Lydia Vandaariff’s decapitation. ‘Dreadful! Still, a stupid girl, and sacrificed with no more thought than a loaf of stale bread given to pigs. But you – you’re a different fish. One gathers – one sifts – even within the lies! – and the name of Miss Celestial Temple persistently appears.’
He pursed his lips with a lemony expectation.
‘I would like to leave,’ said Miss Temple.
Schoepfil shook his head. ‘No, no, no – think and move on.’
‘What can you want with me?’
‘Less by the second, I assure you.’
‘Where is the Contessa?’
‘Is she your patroness?’
‘She can go hang. Where is Lord Axewith?’
‘Why should a little thing like you care about him?’
‘He was at the baths. His watch stopped working for the steam.’
‘Lord Axewith was called to his wife, who is unwell.’
Miss Temple gazed back, blankly, knowing this was a lie – or, conversely, that it was the truth and Colonel Bronque was the liar.
‘Is not the city on fire?’
‘Yes, sometimes others are kind enough to manage things for you.’ Schoepfil unexpectedly grinned. ‘Most likely you should die here and now! What would you say to that? I am nearly in jest – but not all, because I know – and when one knows, one must always fear. Have you learnt that – learnt it enough? When did you last see the Trapping child alive?’
Miss Temple did not want to answer, but saw no value in the information. ‘At the Customs House, before the explosion.’
‘Ah. As I suspected.’
‘But that’s not where she was killed.’
‘Of course not.’ Schoepfil let out a frustrated huff, his torso compacted in a contemplative hunch. Again Miss Temple attempted to prompt him.
‘Francesca’s sickness –’
‘Too fragile, could have predicted it ten miles away.’ He tapped his thin lips with a thumb. ‘But where does that leave you?’
‘I have killed four men,’ said Miss Temple.
‘I do not doubt it. One’s fingertips tingle. Come!’
He snatched up the oblong box and hauled her to the door, Miss Temple restraining an urge to kick. They passed Kelling in the corridor, and the servant fell in step.
‘You asked to be reminded, sir –’
‘There is no hope, Kelling – they must wait!’ Schoepfil turned with an exasperated smile. ‘Is there an hour in the day that might not be doubled and still found too brief?’
‘Every last one of them,’ she replied, not liking to be pulled.
Mr Schoepfil’s eyes twinkled. ‘You affect to be sour.’
‘You are a ghoul.’
‘The world is ghoulish. I do not see you hiding your head in a rabbit-hole!’ Kelling darted forward to open a door, allowing Schoepfil to sweep through without pause. ‘Figures such as ourselves do not arise without purpose.’
The door closed on Miss Temple’s heel, Kelling outside. Schoepfil approached another table, piled not with papers but, to her dismay, a heap of metal tools.
‘But whose purpose, Miss Temple?’ Schoepfil sorted the tools with an extended finger. ‘We navigate currents of influence as Magellan did the sea, and glean what? The source, if to address it thusly does not impugn the term, of integrity. In your own case, what puppeteer has hung you in my reach?’
‘Since you saw me with the Contessa, I assume you’ve solved that mystery.’
‘And whatever shall I do about it?’
‘What you can get away with. But you had best make sure that woman’s dead.’
Schoepfil gave her an indulgent smile and opened the oblong box. He peered at her above his spectacles. ‘I suppose you know what I have?’
‘Why should I?’ replied Miss Temple. ‘I am a puppet nobody.’
‘O buck up.’
To her surprise Miss Temple bit back a retort that was palpably obscene. Was that next for her disintegrating character, the manners of a fish-wife? She nipped the inside of one cheek between her teeth. Heedless of her silence, Schoepfil again pecked at the contents of the box. Now his counting grew ever more complex, as if Schoepfil were attempting to solve a larger mathematical question. Miss Temple cast a wary eye at the iron tools.
‘Who are you to have the free possession of so many rooms in the Queen’s Palace?’
‘Queer, isn’t it?’
‘Does the Queen even know?’
Schoepfil laughed and rapped the table with his fist, a gesture Miss Temple already found affected and odious. ‘Why should she?’
‘I don’t suppose you slipped in with the tradesmen.’
‘I did not. Those who do not belong here are noticed.’
‘I was not.’
‘Au contraire! Every bit as much as your dynamic companion.’
‘Why would anyone notice me?’
Schoepfil nodded in agreement, a condescending dismissal. ‘The true question was how so disreputable a figure as the Contessa managed an audience? It had to be you, her companion, however unimpressive, who bore some vital news. And then you mentioned Roger Bascombe, which changes everything.’
‘You said I was of no genuine interest.’
‘Was I wrong? You have killed, you say, four men – one of whom, unless I am a fool, was Bascombe himself.’
He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her contradiction. When it did not come, Mr Schoepfil barked with satisfaction. ‘To the business! What say you to these?’
Schoepfil spun the oblong box to her view. It was lined with orange felt, with eight indented slots made to hold glass cards. Seven had been filled, but the glass cards were swirled with different colours, only one of them properly blue. The last slot was empty.
What came to Miss Temple’s mind, for the second time that day, was her former neighbour and rival, Miss Cynthia Hobart, the identification suggested by Schoepfil’s fingers, flitting from square to square like indecisive bees, an exact mirror of Cynthia’s hand above a tray of tea cakes. For years Miss Temple had been daunted by Cynthia in social matters, by the other girl’s ability – no matter what opinion Miss Temple might express – to adopt a contrary and, it was disdainfully implied, superior point of view. Again and again the young Miss Temple had returned from teas or suppers or dances stinging with the hidden weals of Cynthia’s condescension, victories well noted by everyone else in attendance.
But a day had come – brilliant, precious, a pearl. The matter was trivial: a pot of marmalade from the Hobarts’ cook. The fruit had been coarsely cut and stood out by the spoonful in sweet gleaming chunks. At Miss Temple’s demurral Cynthia had loudly announced a preference for firm, palpable fruit in her marmalade, an opinion shared by no less a personage than the Vice-Roy of Jamaica – who, it was implied, ought well to know. But Miss Temple, whose care for pastries and jams ran deep, knew that the finer the cut of the fruit, the more suffused the syrup became with juice. While she allowed, in the abstract, for a variance of taste, she did not consider variety a worthy excuse – and if the Vice-Roy of Jamaica felt otherwise, then he was a leather-tongued scrub. More to the purpose, she knew that Cynthia was wrong, and more – since her positions were only adopted to contradict Miss Temple’s own – that Cynthia had no idea, and never, ever had.
The Chemickal Marriage Page 36