by Kate Mosse
Blood will have blood.
Cassie’s death left Gifford devastated, but Connie destroyed the pages in her journal and spared him from knowing the worst. All through the summer and autumn, they talked late into the night. Sometimes with Harry too. Until finally, as another new year dawned, they had reconciled their memories.
At last, Cassie could rest in peace.
*
‘According to the laws of the state and the ordinances of the church of Christ . . .’
The Rector’s voice brings Connie back. She sighs. This is a day for happiness and new beginnings, not remembering the darkness.
‘I now pronounce you, Crowley and Jennifer, husband and wife, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. What therefore God has joined together let not anyone put asunder. Henceforth you go down life’s pathway together, and may the Father of all mercies, who of his grace has called you to this holy state of marriage, bind you together in true love and faithfulness and grant you his blessing.’
As Connie looks at her father’s shining face, his pride in his new bride on his arm, she feels tears come to her eyes.
‘May they live together many years, and in the hour of death may they part in the blessed hope of celebrating forever with all the saints of God the marriage of Christ and the church he loved.’
The congregation stands as the new Mr and Mrs Gifford walk down the aisle and out into the afternoon sunshine. The choir begins to sing, their enthusiasm making up for their lack of practice.
Connie turns round and sees, framed in the doorway of the church, a shower of white rice and pink confetti as the bells begin to ring.
*
Finally, the congregation is outside, the churchyard filled with well-wishers.
Connie looks to her father. There is one last surprise he has arranged for his new bride. She glances towards Davey, and gives him a sign. The boy disappears around the corner of the church, then comes sauntering back and puts his thumb up.
Two white birds are set free from the porch. Everyone claps and cheers, and Mrs Christie – Jennie, as Connie must try to call her – blushes with pleasure. Maisie and Polly shriek and let their flower baskets fall. This time, even Mary laughs.
Connie watches as the doves soar above the poplar trees, then higher into the air until they are out of sight. She feels Harry lift her hand to his lips and kiss it.
‘Shall we go home?’ he says.
She looks across the marshes. The spiked Star of Bethlehem is flowering early in the meadows this year. The hedgerows are filled with purple-eyed speedwell and bluebells. On the far side of Fishbourne Creek, Blackthorn House is magnificent in the sunshine.
Connie can think of no place in the world she would rather be.
Acknowledgements
This is a work of fiction. There was no sequence of grisly murders in 1912; Fishbourne has never flooded; and the sea wall (built later) never gave way. Blackthorn House, Slay Lodge, Themis Cottage and Apuldram Woods are all imaginary. Residents past and present will, I hope, forgive me for taking liberties with geography, topography and occasionally wildlife!
All errors and mistakes are mine.
There are, however, very many people who have given support and encouragement, and have helped in making this novel what it is.
At LAW, agents Araminta Whitley, Alice Saunders and agent-editor supremo Mark Lucas. Tireless and enthusiastic, you give tip-top and immediate support, and I appreciate everything you do for me (and all your other authors too).
At Orion, Susan Lamb (and in memory of those Tappit Hen days), Mark Rusher, Gaby Young, Sophie Painter; my publisher Jon Wood and editor Genevieve Pegg, for their superb, clever editing; Laura Gerrard; my copy-editor Jane Selley; Lucie Stericker, Sinem Erkas, Marissa Hussey (for transforming my digital world), Hannah Atkinson, Malcolm Edwards, David Young, Dallas Manderson and Jo Carpenter; and Preena Gadher, Anwen Hoosen, Lauren Ace and the fab Riot Team.
The novel was inspired by my long-term fascination with taxidermy, which started when I fell in love with Walter Potter’s Museum of Curiosities in Arundel in the 1970s. I am very grateful to taxidermist Jazmine Miles-Long and artist in taxidermy Rose Robson, both of whom let me pick their brains and answered my questions patiently – and Rose taught me how to skin a crow (and took over when I made a mess of things); the Guild of Taxidermists, who were kind in answering my rookie questions; John Cooper and the staff at the wonderful Booth Museum in Brighton, where we filmed, as well as the Horniman Museum in London.
I’d like to thank everyone at the West Sussex Record Office, not least of all Amanda Dalus and Corinne Burnand, but especially Katherine Slay, an invaluable – and always cheerful – guide to the archives, who found anything at a second’s notice and was extremely generous with her time. Several books were invaluable, most particularly Pat Morris’s A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science and Bad Taste, and Walter Potter and his Museum of Curiosities; also, local reference books including The Fishbourne Book, edited by Mary Hand, Chichester Harbour by Liz Sagues, Fishbourne: A Village History by Rita Blakeney, and Phil Hewitt’s Chichester Miscellany.
Novelists are terrible friends (either too much there or vanishing towards the end of a book), and I am grateful to have such supportive friends and neighbours: in particular Jon Evans, Rachel Holmes, Peter Clayton, Tessa Ross, Clare Parsons, Tony Langham, Lucinda Montefiore, Robert Dye, Bob Pulley, Maria Pulley, Anthony Horowitz, Jill Green, Sandi Toksvig, Debbie Toksvig, Shami Chakrabati, Julie Pembery, Cath O’Hanlon, Patrick O’Hanlon, Lydia Conway, Paul Arnott, Alan Finch, Alison Finch, Dale Rooks, Jenny Ramsay, Janet Sandys-Renton, Mike Harrington, Harriet Hastings, Marzena Baran, Phil Hewitt, Amanda Ross. Thanks, too, to my parents’ old Fishbourne gang from the 1960s and 1970s, especially Jean and Ian Graham-Jones, Kate and Barry Goodchild, Helen and William Knott, Derek and Ann Annals.
For The Taxidermist’s Daughter, we auctioned a ‘goodie’ and a ‘baddie’ name in aid of the St Peter Project, to contribute towards the building of a new church hall in Fishbourne. A huge thank you to Jennie Christie and Greg Slay for their generosity, and to everyone who came to the charity event; especially Helen Frost, Alan Frost and Nik Westacott. Thanks, also, to the Reverend Moira Wickens, Rector of St Peter & St Mary, Fishbourne, for allowing me to play fast and loose with her graveyard.
Finally, my love and thanks to my family: my wonderful mother, Barbara Mosse – and my much-missed father, Richard Mosse – for creating such a wonderful home and always being so proud of us all; my sisters Beth Huxley and Caroline Matthews, who share the memories that inspired the novel – and also, Carrie, for the brilliant book with press-button bird song (invaluable) and advice on birdseed; my brothers and sisters-in-law, including Benjamin Graham, Mish Graham, Rachie Dunk, Mark Huxley and Chris Grainge. To my fabulous mother-in-law, Rosie, for the knitted crows and five o’clock restoratives; and massive thanks to artist Jack Penny, not only for his beautiful illustration, but also for the bird table that made the jackdaws, magpies, rooks and crows flock to our garden (sorry about that, Ma!).
In the end, though, I could do none of this without my beloved husband Greg – my first reader, my first editor, my first (and last) love – and our amazing grown-up children Martha and Felix: your enthusiasm, your help, your cooking, your support and tolerance of all the bird talk for months on end (not to mention help with #taxidermyselfies) make me the proudest – and luckiest – mother in the world.
Without you three, there’d be no point to any of it.
Kate Mosse
Chichester
May 2014
About the Author
Kate Mosse is an international bestselling author with sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages. Her fiction includes the novels Labyrinth, Sepulchre, The Winter Ghosts, and Citadel, as well as an acclaimed collection of short stories, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales, three works of non-fiction and three plays.
Kate is the Co-Founder and Chair o
f the Board of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Prize) and in June 2013, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature. She lives in Sussex.
www.katemosse.co.uk
KateMosseAuthor
@katemosse
Also by Kate Mosse
The Languedoc Novels
Labyrinth
Sepulchre
Citadel
Gothic Fiction
The Winter Ghosts
The Mistletoe Bride
& Other Haunting Tales
Non-Fiction
Becoming a Mother
The House: Behind the Scenes at the
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
Chichester Festival Theatre at Fifty
Plays
Syrinx
Endpapers
Dodger
Copyright
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Orion Books
This eBook first published in 2014 by Orion Books
Copyright © Mosse Associates Ltd 2014
The right of Kate Mosse to be identified as the author
of this work has been asserted in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted
in any form or by any means, without the prior permission
in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated
in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published without a similar condition, including this condition,
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All the characters in this book are fictitious,
and any resemblance to actual persons living
or dead is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 5378 8
Illustration © Jack Penny 2014
Map © 2014
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
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