The Taxidermist's Daughter

by Kate Mosse

  He pulled the chair back into position at the window, propped his muddy boots up on the sill and raised the glasses to his face. No sign of Gifford, but the girl was still sitting out on the terrace.

  Motes of dust floated suspended in the lazy air; the warm afternoon sun filtered in through the window. Over the creek, the gulls continued to wheel and cry overhead. The lethargy of the afternoon pressed down upon him. As his eyes closed, Joseph was imagining the first mouthful of ale hitting the back of his throat.

  *

  Woolston stood outside the door, feeling every one of his fifty-eight years. He couldn’t imagine what had possessed him to threaten the man. He’d never laid a finger on another living creature, not even bare-knuckle fighting in his school days. He was rattled, that was it. His visitor this afternoon, the menace. The idea that someone knew what he’d done. Had the others had a similar visit?

  He was losing his sense of judgement.

  Woolston took a deep breath, then looked down at the envelope in his hand. He also couldn’t imagine why Brook had chosen to communicate with him via Gregory Joseph, rather than simply sending his clerk across West Street to deliver the letter in person. Were they not due to meet tomorrow anyway? Perhaps Brook had decided it was better to meet away from West Street, careful for once. Woolston supposed he should be grateful for that.

  He read the brief note once, frowned, then read it again to make sure he hadn’t misunderstood. All these contradictory instructions and changes of plan seemed needlessly complicated.

  Folding the letter and putting it in his pocket, Woolston looked out over the estuary. The short stretch of open footpath leading to the Old Salt Mill was exposed, but he could see no one in the fields or footpaths on either side of the creek who might notice or remark on his presence. Just above the waterline, a flock of gulls swooped and skimmed, then soared up again into the sky. He hated all birds, but gulls were particularly aggressive. Hadn’t he read in the newspaper last week that a boy fishing off the pier at Bognor had been attacked?

  Woolston pulled his hat low over his brow and walked as quickly as his knee would allow him along the uneven foreshore. Back into Mill Lane and up to the Woolpack Inn, where the carriage and pair was waiting. He climbed in, pushed himself back into the seat and gave a deep sigh of relief.

  One mistake. August 1902. His brigade recently returned from the Transvaal. All the flags out along the Broyle Road and girls cheering to welcome home the Royal Sussex Regiment. A funfair on the Militia Field.

  How flattered he had been to be invited. Asked to make up a four at cards. He’d been looking forward to a rubber of bridge or two. Fine cigars and brandy. Feathers. Men, as he’d thought, with similar experiences. The promise of some special entertainment, not in the usual round of things; Woolston hadn’t paused to consider what that might mean.

  He hadn’t done anything, but he had been there. He had been drunk. He’d done what he could to put it right. But in the end, he hadn’t stopped them, and he had held his tongue.

  ‘Where to, guv’nor?’

  Woolston was pulled back to the present. He thought of the letter in his pocket.

  ‘Graylingwell Hospital,’ he said.

  The driver clicked his tongue and the horse pulled off in a rattle of clinker and bridle. It was slow going to start with. The road was claggy with mud and deeply rutted from the endless rain, though they picked up speed as they drew closer to Chichester.

  It was a damnable business. More than anything he wished he could put the clock back. He put his hand to his breast pocket, where his old Boer War pistol was wrapped in a handkerchief. When he’d asked Joseph if he was prepared, it wouldn’t have taken a psychiatrist to realise he actually had been thinking of himself.

  Woolston shut his eyes and thought of his son.

  Chapter 5

  Blackthorn House

  Fishbourne Marshes

  ‘Is that you, girl?’

  Connie jumped. She turned round to see her father standing in the open French doors. He was unsteady on his feet and, even a yard or so away, she could smell the sour ale on his breath and the tobacco sweating through his skin. Her heart contracted first in despair, then pity.

  ‘Cassie?’ he said, peering at her through sore, milky eyes.

  ‘It’s me. Connie.’

  He often woke from a drunken sleep confused or calling her by the wrong name, but he usually came back to his senses soon enough.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said gently, as if talking to a child. She pulled the chair from under the table. ‘The sun’s come out for a change. It will do you good to be in the fresh air.’

  She could see beads of sweat on his forehead and temples and realised that he was still very drunk. She saw the effort it was taking to stop himself from pitching forward on the uneven stone paving of the terrace. Six days of stubble on his lined face and smudges on his cheeks, as if he had been crying.

  ‘Come and sit down,’ she said again, worried that he might fall and hit his head. He was still wearing his boots, she noticed, thick with mud from a week ago. Had he changed his clothes at all?

  She stood still, knowing the pattern things would take. No sense rushing him, it only made it worse. Sometimes he lashed out when he became frightened about not knowing where he was.

  He rubbed the flat of his broad red hand across his face, almost, Connie thought, as if he was trying to erase his own features. Then he held both hands out, turning them over and back again, peering at the dirty skin.

  ‘Come,’ she said, dropping her voice even further. ‘Sit here.’

  He was still in the grip of whatever nightmare had woken him and driven him downstairs. Without warning, he jerked his head up and stared directly at her.

  ‘Work . . .’

  The word exploded out of him. Connie had no idea what he meant.

  ‘Dress,’ he said, half pointing at her clothes.

  She looked down at her plain black skirt, her white collared blouse and black tie, trying to work out what he was seeing. Who he was seeing. Then she realised that her sleeves were still folded up from being in the workshop earlier.

  ‘I found a jackdaw—’ she began, but he cut across her.

  ‘Schoolroom . . . go on with your lessons and your . . .’

  Connie knew there was no point trying to understand what he was saying or follow his train of thought when he was in this state. Words would fall from his mouth, without order or meaning, like notes played out of sequence. Other times he might come up with snatches of ragged philosophy or theology. His mood could vary too. Sometimes he woke from his drinking sleeps full of self-pity, others times shaking with rage, storming against those who had stolen his livelihood from him. Very occasionally, he woke angry. Then there was little she could do except stay out of his way.

  He started to laugh. A racked sound, no mirth or joy in it.

  ‘Please,’ Connie said sadly, ‘come and sit with me here.’

  ‘Blue . . . thought it was her, but ghost . . .’ He stumbled. ‘Got a letter telling me. How can she be dead? Don’t understand. After all the waiting, not right . . .’

  His balance was deteriorating. Now he was paddling from foot to foot, an uneven march to try to keep upright, before staggering over the threshold and on to the terrace. Connie leapt forward, ready to catch him if he fell.

  ‘Blood . . .’

  Connie’s eyes widened, watching in horrified fascination as her father waved his hand, then let a finger come to rest on her sleeve. When she looked down, she saw that the cuff of her shirt was stained.

  ‘Remember, I found a jackdaw,’ she said patiently. ‘Beautiful. Not a mark on him. I’ve been in the workshop. You see?’

  She managed to take his hand and half lead him, half pull him to the garden chair. The wicker complained under the sudden weight, but he settled himself back and sat still.

  ‘There,’ she said with a sigh of relief. ‘Now, I’ll fetch us some tea. Stay here. Don’t worry about a thing.’ />
  She didn’t want the maid to see him like this. Mary wasn’t a fool; she knew perfectly well what was wrong with Gifford, but Connie didn’t want him to be humiliated. She had to find a way of giving him something settling to drink, and perhaps some toasted bread and butter. She also had to get him out of his unwashed clothes. She couldn’t make him bathe, though if she could persuade him to rest for a while in the drawing room later, she could at least get into his room and clean it. She shuddered to imagine the kind of state it would be in after seven days.

  ‘. . . all that old traditions tell,’ he muttered, a sound something between a growl and a song, ‘I tremblingly believe . . .’

  Connie pulled herself up. He was quoting the same verses that had slipped into her mind in the wet, dark churchyard. She crouched down by his chair. ‘Where did you hear that, Father?’ she said, trying to keep her voice calm. The half-remembered classroom, the voice reading out loud. She clutched his arm. ‘Can you tell me?’

  ‘Schoolroom, all those lessons, good for nothing in the end.’ He gave a long sigh. ‘That’s it, that’s it. Chalk. Back to the classroom. Not in with the birds, not until after lessons . . .’

  His eyes were starting to close. Connie shook him. She couldn’t let him stop now he was actually talking. About the vanished days, telling her something whilst forgetting she did not know.

  ‘Two little dickie birds, sitting on a wall . . . no, that’s not right. Younger before.’ He flapped his hands in the air in front of him. ‘Fly away, Peter, fly away, Paul.’

  Connie repeated the lines, hoping to return him to his original spiral of thought.

  ‘’Tis now, replied the village belle,’ she quoted. ‘Isn’t that how it starts? Do you remember?’

  ‘Can’t remember,’ he mumbled. ‘Village belle, yes.’

  ‘Remind me,’ she said softly, keeping the desperation out of her voice for fear of jolting him back to the present. ‘Remind me how it goes.’

  If he knew the same poem, then the vanished days might not be completely lost. If there was one shared memory, why not others? But he was sitting silently now, his face slack.

  She closed her eyes, trying to drag out of her locked memory, like Ariadne’s thread, the words she once must have known well. Steeled herself to remember an older girl’s voice, and her own, child’s hand shaping the letters on the page to better learn the lines.

  ‘’Tis now, replied the village belle, St Mark’s mysterious eve . . .’ She squeezed his arm. ‘Your turn.’

  ‘How . . . how when the midnight . . .’ His words were halting and indistinct, running one into the other, but Connie knew they were right. ‘Green,’ he murmured.

  Connie took up the next couplet, then Gifford the next, each remembering a word, prompting a line, until they had recited the poem between them.

  ‘Amid the silence drear. There,’ she said. ‘That was good.’

  Gifford nodded. ‘Very good.’ He gave a small, soft laugh. ‘Top marks.’

  Connie drew in her breath, knowing this was the moment, but fearing that if she said the wrong thing, or even the right thing but in the wrong way, the spell would be broken and Gifford would come to his senses.

  ‘How wonderful that we can remember after so long,’ she said, keeping her voice as light and level as she could. ‘We did well, didn’t we?’

  She saw that the fight and confusion had left him. His shoulders were relaxed and his dirty hands resting, still, on his lap. His eyes were closed.

  ‘After all these years,’ she said, desperate not to let him drift into sleep.

  He laughed again, this time with warmth.

  ‘She made you say it over and over again,’ he said. ‘Verses, poetry, rhymes, very keen on all of that. “A good mental exercise”, that’s what she always said.’

  Connie could barely speak. Her heart beat harder. ‘Who said?’

  ‘Could always hear you. From the museum, I could hear you. Doing your lessons. Windows open. “A good mental exercise, Gifford.” Like a sister to you.’

  ‘Who?’ she said again.

  But he was smiling now, his eyes firmly closed. Connie knew he was lost in the gentle arms of the past, safe from everything that troubled and tortured him. She felt cruel trying to bring him back, but she had to know. Carefully keeping her voice low and quiet, she asked the question in another way.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  For a moment, she didn’t think he’d heard. Then the colour seemed to drain from his face and his expression folded in on itself. Haunted.

  ‘Gone. Got a letter. Dead, so they say. All for nothing.’

  ‘Who’s dead, Father?’

  A terrible wail escaped from his lips. As if he’d been struck, Gifford suddenly lurched up out of the chair, flapping hands by his sides. Connie sprang back in alarm.

  ‘Is she here?’ he cried, his eyes wide with terror. ‘Is she?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ she said urgently, as he struck at the air with his raised fists. ‘There’s no one else here. Just us.’ She managed to catch his wrists in her hands. ‘It’s just us, like always.’

  For a sudden, clear, lucid moment, Gifford met her gaze. Seeing her as she was, not through a haze of drink or as someone else. Her, Connie. Then his eyes clouded over. Grief, guilt, a pain so deep that it would never leave him.

  ‘Who is she?’ Connie asked. ‘Please, Father. Please tell me.’

  ‘Don’t remember,’ he shouted.

  Before she could stop him, Gifford was blundering over the step and into the drawing room, lurching from piano to armchair to banister, then the sound of his bedroom door slamming.

  Connie sank down on to the low stone wall that divided the terrace from the garden and put her hands on her knees. She hated these scenes. She was desperately sorry for him, but also angry that he let himself get into such a state.

  But this time, her dominant emotion was relief. Her instincts were right. Whatever had happened in the churchyard had affected him profoundly.

  ‘Is she here?’

  The same, whispered question she’d overheard at midnight in the graveyard. And a new name. Her father had got Connie’s name wrong many times before, when he was overcome by drink, but she didn’t think she’d heard the name Cassie before. And spoken so clearly, without hesitation.

  A strong memory of being loved, of being cared for. Not by her poor unknown mother, but by someone who had taught her things and who’d cherished her like a sister.

  Connie looked back into the dark drawing room, through the French windows. She wanted to go after him, but she knew there was no point. He would either fall deeply asleep, waking later without the slightest recollection of what he’d done or said. Or else – and she hoped this wasn’t the case – he would seek solace in his brandy and try to drown the darkness inside him. If that happened, her chances of learning more were reduced to nothing.

  Connie stood up, smoothed down her skirts, picked up her coffee cup and saucer. The afternoon was moving on. If she didn’t go back into the workshop soon, the jackdaw would be ruined.

  Her father’s last words before he’d staggered out of the room, were they an apology or an instruction?

  ‘Don’t remember.’

  Chapter 6

  Salthill Road

  Fishbourne

  Harry Woolston was the only person to alight at Fishbourne Halt. The tiny station was simply two narrow strips of platform. Set in the middle of fields, it was flanked by trees filled with nesting black birds. Rooks, were they? Barely a mile and a half from Chichester, and he was in the heart of the countryside.

  The driver blew his whistle. A belch of smoke. The fireman, standing on the plate, raised his hat to Harry as the motor steam engine pulled away. The rails began to hum.

  Harry was already regretting the impulse that had made him come chasing out here. It was early afternoon, and here he was, in the middle of nowhere. He looked around for a porter or anyone from whom to get directions, but there wasn’t a
soul about.

  He made his way along the platform. As he reached the road, the door of the keeper’s cottage opened and a rickety old man in the uniform of the South Coast Railway limped out and began to open the crossing gates. One by one, by one by one. It was a slow business.

  ‘I’m after the Woolpack Inn,’ Harry said.

  ‘Straight down,’ the keeper said, pointing south. ‘All the way to the bottom of Salthill Road.’

  ‘This being Salthill Road?’

  The keeper nodded. ‘When you reach the main road, turn left. Five minutes’ walk, young man like you, give or take. Two minutes. First tavern’s the Bull’s Head, that’s not the one you want. Keep following the road round, past the Methodist chapel, and you’ll see the post office. Woolpack’s next to it on far side of the road. You can’t miss it.’

  *

  Harry set off down the lane. The ground was soft underfoot, after the endless rain, but the hedgerows were full and it was pleasant.

  Cow parsley as high as his shoulder. Nature didn’t interest him – he was a portrait painter rather than a landscape artist – but he appreciated the colours. Deep moss greens to filigree silver leaves, yellow buttercups and celandine. From time to time, the palette was broken by a tree with magnificent purple leaves, the colour of claret. He thought back to the painting on its easel in his studio, to the woman frozen lifeless in time, and realised it was the colour of her skin he’d got wrong. Too pink, no hollows and shadows. No life in it.

  Harry kept walking, still thinking about his failed portrait. Past a small white cottage and a flint-faced building at the junction with the main road. A laundry by the looks of it. Billows of steam and the smell of hot, starched linen. That was another thing. The woman’s bonnet was drawing the attention away from her expression. She seemed like a mannequin, rather than a representation of a real person. Perhaps if he muted down the colour, a pale blue or green, that would shift the focus of the painting?