The Dollmaker

by Nina Allan

  “Were you not getting on with Lola?” Dad asked me at once. I was surprised that we had come to the point so soon. I had expected more prevarication, more dancing around the point like nervous teenagers on a first date.

  He’d made the first move. I owed it to him – to both of us – not to play dumb.

  “We’ve not spoken since I moved out,” I said. I could hear him at the other end, breathing slowly in and out and waiting to hear what I would say next. “Dad, how do you feel about Lola? I mean really?”

  By that point I was expecting an outpouring, a series of anecdotes about how Lola had bullied him senseless when they were kids, how she’d always managed to get her own way, how she would exert a terrible punishment if he tried to cross her.

  Once again, I was wrong.

  “Keep out of her way, Sonia. Whatever happened, it’s best to leave it. Just get on with your life.”

  “I thought you were close, though.” And now I was prevaricating, but the baldness of his response had caught me off balance. That feeling you get when you’re afraid to tell someone something in case they think you’re crazy, or lying, only to have them turn round and tell you no, you were right all along.

  I should have been pumping my fist in triumph, but what I actually felt right then was frightened.

  “I was close to my sister,” he said slowly. What I noticed most of all was the way he stressed the word “sister,” instead of “was.” An odd way of putting it, I thought, and one I picked up on immediately because of the way our line coaches were always banging on about the importance of emphasis, the way a sentence’s meaning could be changed entirely simply by laying the stress on one word instead of another. “Lola was…my inspiration. I adored her. The night she went missing was one of the worst times of my life. Of all our lives.”

  “What do you mean, went missing?”

  “She was on her way to visit a friend, just down the road, but she never arrived. I was six at the time, Lola was nine. Our parents never worried about us running around by ourselves. It was a small town, everyone knew everyone, it was perfectly safe. But Lola just vanished. My father went door to door, looking for her, but no one had seen her. He and some of our neighbors were just getting a search party together to scour the patch of woodland us kids called the Spook when Lola reappeared. Her skirt was all torn and there were scratch marks on her arms from brambles but she kept saying she was all right and she didn’t seem upset at all, so the fuss soon died down. Everyone assumed she’d wandered off and lost track of time. The Lola who came back wasn’t my sister, though, that’s all I can say. It’s something I’ve never talked about, not to anyone, but I know it’s true.”

  “What do you mean, Dad, not your sister?”

  “I don’t want you digging into this, Sonia, I don’t like it. Just promise me you’ll keep away from her. Promise?”

  I promised, though I mentally reserved the right to go back on my word, should it become necessary. I needed time to think.

  “Did she ever say where she’d been?” I asked.

  “Only that she’d gone looking for fairy gold and got lost in the woods.”

  “But you didn’t believe her?”

  “Yes, I believed her.”

  I let him go after that. I could tell how much it cost him, to tell me even that much, and I felt concerned about my mother coming home suddenly and interrogating him over what we’d been talking about.

  I understood what Dad was saying, in any case: he believed Aunt Lola was a changeling. You read of such things in the tabloids sometimes, though I’d never known anyone it happened to personally.

  I remembered all those times when I was a kid, me saying to Aunt Lola that she was my elf queen and I her loyal subject.

  She always smiled so sweetly when I said that. How foolish she must have thought me, even then.

  * * *

  —

  How do you go about killing a fairy queen? There are no books on the subject – I know, I searched – and ironically I found myself falling back on Lola’s own. After largely ignoring Lola’s oeuvre for most of my life, I now devoured it eagerly, reading all of her books in sequence right through from her debut – Cousins – to her most recent novel The City Gates, which had been published to ecstatic reviews just six months before.

  I found her plots as opaque and dull as ever, but one potentially useful discovery I made, and made quickly, was that Lola was obsessed by detail. Not just the forensic details that were central to solving crimes, but the practical and other mundane details of how they were committed. Toxicology was a favorite subject of hers, as was ballistics. In one novel – End of Service – she even had an excruciating five pages describing the commonest materials for making an effective garrotte, and where best to source them.

  I wondered how she knew all this stuff, how much of it was true. I couldn’t see myself wielding a gun, much less a garrotte, because I knew I was almost certain to make a hash of things. If I didn’t get killed myself, I’d almost certainly be caught, and then I’d be sent to prison for life, with the entire courtroom believing I killed my poor disabled aunt because she stole my boyfriend.

  It would have to be poison. Aunt Lola’s books furnished me with enough information to begin hatching a plan, but that still left me with the problem that had been bothering me from the start: Did what worked for humans also work for the small folk? Would arsenic kill an elf queen, or would she wolf it down like sherbet, and lick her lips afterwards?

  I had no idea.

  * * *

  —

  Aunt Lola made the procurement of deadly chemicals sound like the least of a would-be murderer’s difficulties, and she turned out to be right. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, and a city this size boasts more establishments selling under-the-counter merchandise than you might imagine. Poky little shops in the factory district, hole-in-the-wall outlets down every proverbial back alley, all seeking to do business and all without attracting the kind of attention that might prove harmful to trade.

  You would be surprised, how many substances are listed under the general designation of rat poison. Anyone would think it was the fifteenth century, the amount of rat poison that gets sold nowadays. There was a place I found, a grubby emporium advertising itself as Warbinski’s Ironmongery and General Stores, where the proprietor would weigh out bismuth and antimony by the ounce, using the old-fashioned kind of brass-levered weighing scales you find in every grandmother’s kitchen.

  “And you don’t mind working with this stuff?” I asked him, a red-nosed, runny-eyed gnome of a man I presumed must be Mr. Warbinski. I wasn’t buying anything that day. I had decided to use Warbinski’s as a testing ground, to see what kind of reaction I might get when I started asking the kind of questions I needed to ask.

  I posed as a radio journalist, of all things. I told him I was researching a program on old family businesses.

  Warbinski shook his head. “Used to it,” he said. “None of these materials are dangerous, so long as they’re treated with appropriate respect. Don’t want strychnine ending up in the sugar bowl now, do we?”

  He laughed uproariously, his nostrils flaring wide. I managed a smirk because I knew it was expected but it was difficult for me not to imagine that his supposed joke had been at my expense. When he offered me a cup of tea I quickly refused.

  “Just one more thing,” I said, as I was leaving. “Do you sell anything for fairy infestations?”

  “Good Lord,” Warbinski said. He was doing his best to look outraged but I could tell it was a put-up job by the way his gaze was momentarily diverted towards the back of his shop, as if he were suddenly afraid I might be a decoy, and that even now a team of detectives were trashing his storeroom in search of blacklisted substances. “We don’t go in for that kind of thing here, indeed no. The materials you are referring to are only available under spec
ial license. Costs an absolute bomb and definitely not worth the blowback if some idiot gets their sums wrong, indeed no.”

  I decided I would have to take a chance. I took out my wallet and placed a note of a painfully large denomination on the counter. I made a real meal of it, too, licking my fingertips and staring into his eyes as if we were both actors in some low-rent spy movie. “I’m sure you know where such materials might be available, though,” I said, deliberately. “What with your family ties to this part of the city being so extensive?”

  He hesitated for less than a second before grabbing the note. “Zivorski’ll set you right,” he said. “Under the bridge and then right into Gagarin Street. Only I would strongly advise you against. Not to be messed with, those fae buggers. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “This is just research,” I reminded him. “My inquiry was strictly theoretical.”

  “Right you are, then,” said Warbinski, brightening up again. I knew he didn’t believe me for a second, but by his reckoning he’d done his moral duty and that would have to be enough.

  * * *

  —

  Zivorski’s turned out to be a jeweler’s, and judging by the stones on display in the window, quite an expensive one – not what I had expected at all. I peered in through the bowed, nicotine-stained glass, trying to work out if Warbinski had been taking me for a ride after all.

  In the end I decided to chance it and went inside, pushing at the peeling door in its warped frame until a bell sounded, summoning the eponymous Zivorski. I was surprised by her youth, I suppose because the shop itself was so decrepit.

  What surprised me even more was that she was a dwarf. A human dwarf, I assumed, rather than fae, although the shock of seeing her, given the reason I was there in the first place, almost made me turn around and leave before I got in any deeper.

  I remembered Warbinski’s words: I advise you strongly against.

  What did I think I was doing in this part of town, anyway? My mother would have a fit.

  “Good afternoon,” said Zivorski. “How can I help?”

  She spoke quietly but firmly, without that edge of deference adopted by most service personnel. Her dress – a gray silk shift – was obviously expensive but without looking flashy.

  She knew how to play down her disadvantages, that was for sure.

  “Warbinski sent me,” I said. That at least was the unvarnished truth.

  “Leon? What’s he been up to?” Her guard seemed to drop at the mention of Warbinski’s name. The two were genuinely acquainted then, which at least was something.

  “I only met him today,” I said. I was about to launch into my radio journalist spiel but something in this woman’s expression gave me to understand that we were beyond that. “I went to his shop because…I have a problem. Warbinski said you might be able to help.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re intending to kill someone? There are easier ways of solving problems, believe me.”

  “She’s fae,” I said quickly, my trump card, although I had an idea this Zivorski would have worked that out already. Why come to her otherwise? For executions of the common or garden variety, Warbinski’s stock of pathogens would be more than adequate.

  “I’m sure Leon will already have told you this isn’t a good idea,” she said at once. “So let’s skip that. It won’t be cheap.” The figure she quoted was indeed the better part of two months’ wages. Something of my dismay must have shown in my expression because she gave a wry smile. “These family feuds are best forgotten, you know. What was it your father said? Get on with your life?”

  I felt the blood drain from my face. “Come on,” Zivorski said. “That’s just ground-level telepathy. It’s perfectly harmless. The things your aunt could do to you are a hundred times worse. If she finds out, I mean. Have you thought about that?”

  “That’s why I need her gone.” My voice sounded dry as a rusty hinge. “I can’t go on like this. Always wondering what she might do, what she might be thinking. It’s driving me mad.”

  “Well, it’s your funeral.” Zivorski sighed in a way that suggested she dealt with fools like me every day of the week and was getting tired of it. She came out from behind the counter and I had the chance to observe how oddly shaped she was, the trim elegance of her upper body contrasting dramatically with the squat pelvis, the plump bowed legs, the unnaturally tiny feet. There was something powerful about her though, a decisiveness in her movements that said she didn’t care how she might be perceived, her body was splendid to her and she wouldn’t change it even if she could.

  I couldn’t help noticing how beautifully she did her makeup: flawless lips in deep magenta, navy eyeliner, an almost-nude luminescent powder that made her spotless complexion gleam like pearls.

  Expensive, like her dress. She bent slightly to unlock the back panel of the window display then reached inside, drawing forth a tray of gemstone rings. She placed the tray on the counter before selecting one, an incredible square-cut topaz set in gold. The stone seemed to wink at me as if it knew something. I shivered. The topaz looked unnervingly like my aunt’s single, all-seeing eye.

  “There’s a tiny catch just under the stone, here.” Zivorski pressed lightly against the metal with the ball of her thumb. The topaz sprung open like a miniature door, revealing a tiny golden cavity beneath. Inside the cavity lay a spherical tablet, or capsule. It had the sheen of nacre.

  “This will dissolve in any liquid, alcoholic or otherwise. It runs through your victim’s system much like human tetanus, but at a hundred miles an hour. She will curl and shrivel before your eyes. It can be distressing to watch, I warn you, especially as she’ll probably be conscious until the very end.” She paused. “I might be able to give you something back on the ring afterwards, if that’s any help.”

  * * *

  —

  I left Zivorski’s with the ring in a leather casket and my bank account more or less empty. I walked back towards the center of town, navigating the refuse-smelling backstreets and questionable retail outlets as if I’d lived in the slums of the factory district all my life.

  And it may well come to that, I thought, if any single part of this goes wrong. I wondered if it would really be so bad. No one knew me here and rents were bound to be dirt cheap. I could set up a beauty parlor. I’d have clients coming out of my ears in no time at all. I was surprised and a little appalled by how appealing it seemed, the idea of sliding out of one life and into another. I couldn’t help thinking about what Aunt Lola had said when I first went to live with her, about anyone being capable of murder, given the right circumstances.

  Did I truly mean to go through with this? I clasped my satchel to my chest, the trick ring inside. Zivorski had told me the poison in the capsule would only work on fair folk.

  “Which gives the product an inbuilt advantage, you know, if you happen to have made a mistake,” she added, leaning heavily upon the last word as if she were offering me one last chance to resolve my predicament in a less radical way, and save myself some money into the bargain.

  The problem was that I didn’t want to save the money, not anymore. I had even lost some of my hunger to see Lola dead. At some point during the planning process, my anger and hatred had reshaped themselves into something less visceral and more chilling: curiosity. I had become like one of Lola’s protagonists: secretive and introverted, obsessed with minutiae.

  It sounds incredible I know, but what I wanted most was to discover if I could get away with it.

  Like Ernst Meier in The White Castle, I had come to think of myself and Lola as natural adversaries: two evenly matched opponents in a struggle carried out in silence but that was nonetheless a fight to the death.

  * * *

  —

  I waited three days, just to steady myself, then gave Aunt Lola a call. She sounded delighted to hear from me, her voice trembling with emotion. Or was that
simply the result of a bad telephone connection?

  “Sonia, dearest. I’ve been longing to talk to you. It’s been so difficult to know what to say.”

  “I should have called sooner,” I said. My heart was pounding. I couldn’t remember ever having been in a situation where what I was saying felt so violently at odds with the thoughts in my head. The feeling was exhilarating, a sense of being ahead of the game, of knowing something my enemy – for was she not my enemy? – could never have guessed at. It was easy to see how this kind of power might become addictive. “I hate us not speaking. Can we meet?”

  “That would make me very happy. Oh my dear, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to hear your voice.”

  She asked if I would prefer to meet up in town – neutral ground was what she meant – but I said no, I would come to the flat, the flat would be fine.

  I hadn’t been near the apartment since the day I found Lola in bed with Wil and the thought of going there now made me sick to my stomach. Nonetheless, we agreed that I would call round at three o’clock the following day. I would be on set all morning, but one of our key actors was filming a TV commercial in the afternoon, and we’d be clocking off early.

  I rode up in the lift as normal, the rusty chugging sound so comforting in its familiarity that I could almost imagine another version of myself – the Sonia-before – calling off the murder plan and agreeing to move back in here, to let bygones be bygones.

  Then I remembered the crucial element that had been missing from our phone conversation: Lola hadn’t mentioned Wil, not once, which must surely mean the two of them were still together. If they’d split up she would surely have told me, or at least dropped a hint.

  It suddenly occurred to me that Wil might even be living with her now. I’d glimpsed Wil around the studio from time to time but I’d deliberately avoided him as much as possible and those friends of mine who were also friends of Wil’s kept a diplomatic silence. I had no idea how he was or what he was doing, which suited me fine. But this did also mean I’d left myself open to nasty surprises.