The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘However, the biggest problem . . .’ Clay faltered to a halt, and gave Faith an uncertain glance.

  Myrtle read his hesitation and turned promptly to Faith. ‘Faith – perhaps you would like to look at some of Mr Clay’s photographs?’

  ‘Indeed!’ Clay leaped at the suggestion. ‘Paul will show you around.’

  Faith let herself be led to the far end of the room by a woodenly polite Paul. On the shelves and mantelpiece clustered framed, stiffly posed pictures, most no bigger than a hand’s palm.

  ‘This one is a trick photograph.’ Paul pointed out an image where two men faced each other, one seated playing a cello, and the other standing dressed as a conductor, baton raised. At a second glance, Faith saw that the men were identical, like twins. ‘The same man was photographed twice. You cannot even see the seam where the images were joined.’

  Another caught Faith’s eye. In the foreground sat a little boy about two years old, but looming behind him was a human shape shrouded in a dark cloth, so that it was almost invisible against the dark background.

  ‘Sometimes the little children squirm or cry if we sit them down alone, and that blurs the picture.’ Paul pointed to the dark shape. ‘So we seat the mother behind them to comfort them, but hide her under a cloth.’

  Glancing towards the other side of the room, Faith saw Clay hand Myrtle a newspaper, and point out a particular headline. Myrtle read and read. The paper trembled in her hands.

  The Intelligencer. In truth, Faith had already guessed what must have changed everything. The scandal surrounding her father had arrived on Vane, formally and in print.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to look in here.’ Paul’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He was gesturing towards a small wooden box with binocular-like eyepieces. Faith recognized it immediately as a stereoscope, a clever device that showed each eye a slightly different photograph, so that the view seemed to be in three dimensions. Reflexively, she raised it to her eyes and peered in.

  As the picture swam into focus, she felt sheer shock, like a jolt in her chest. It was a murder scene in an alley, the culprit brandishing a blade over the prone red-daubed body of a woman. There was a long wound visible from her solar plexus down her belly.

  Faith lowered the stereoscope slowly, feeling a little shaky. Until now, the stereoscope images she had seen had been exotic landscapes, or whimsical images such as fairies pouring sweet dreams into the heads of sleeping children. This gruesome image was not one that ought to be shown to ‘ladies’.

  Paul met her eye a little too steadily and coldly. He was angry, Faith was sure of that now, angry with her whole family on his injured friend’s behalf. So he had decided to vent his feelings by scaring the easiest mark – the dull, prim, shy Sunderly daughter. It was a reckless, stupid piece of malice, and he knew he would get into trouble. His eyes dared her to get him into trouble.

  Suddenly Faith was angry too – wildly angry with Vane, with the stupidity of the gin-trap, with her mother, with snubs and snickers and whispers and secrets and lies. What made her most angry was knowing that if she gasped, or stormed off, or made a fuss to get Paul into trouble, then in some way he would have won. She would have proven that he was right – that she really was just the dull, prim, shy Sunderly daughter, and nothing more.

  And so she did none of these things. Instead she smiled.

  ‘I once helped my father with the taxidermy of an iguana,’ she said quietly. ‘We had to make a cut just like that before we pulled out the innards.’ The passing seconds became dangerous and spacious. The rules tinkled silently as they broke.

  It was hard to tell whether Paul was taken aback by her response. Certainly he did not speak for a few moments.

  ‘I am accustomed to handling something a mite bigger than a lizard,’ he said at last. He moved to another shelf, and Faith followed.

  The first card on the shelf caught her attention. It displayed two photos, both showing the same pretty young girl, her hair carefully combed. One showed her with her eyes closed, under a label ‘Fast Asleep’. The other was marked ‘Wide Awake’, and showed her gazing out of the photograph.

  ‘My father paints in the eyes,’ said Paul, ‘if the family wants them to look natural.’ It took Faith a second or two to process his words and realize what she was looking at.

  The little girl in the picture was dead and had been photographed as a memento. She had been carefully positioned by her loving relatives to look as if she were just resting.

  The other pictures on that shelf were of the same breed, Faith realized, now that she knew what to look for. Many of them were family groupings, where one member lolled a little more than the rest, or had to be propped with cushions, chair backs or supporting arms.

  No such photographs had been taken of Faith’s little departed brothers. They were remembered through other mementos, their baby bottles carefully preserved, or their hair sewn into samplers. However, she had seen a memorial picture of this type once, of a woman apparently sleeping peacefully in a chair, a book on her knee.

  ‘I help position them,’ said Paul. ‘You have to pick the right time – when they are not too stiff.’ Again his expression was blandly courteous. Your turn, said his eyes.

  ‘How did you position that one?’ Faith pointed to a little picture of a small boy sitting alone and unsupported in a playroom, a toy soldier in one hand.

  ‘That picture is different.’ Paul hesitated. ‘My father photographed that little boy . . . then cut out the head, really careful, and glued it on to an old photograph of me. He has always taken lots of pictures of me, so that he can turn them into portraits of dead customers when he needs them.’

  ‘Do you have your own copies of the original photographs?’ asked Faith.

  ‘Of course not.’ Paul gave a short shrug. ‘Why waste albumen paper if it isn’t for a customer?’

  ‘How does it feel,’ whispered Faith, ‘to come back to your memories and find yourself missing and a dead person in your place? I would feel as if I were disappearing. I would wonder if my father wanted to remember me at all. Do you ever have nightmares where you wake up and find that there is nothing of you left, just a dead person sitting up and wearing somebody else’s face?’

  She saw Paul flinch. She had touched a nerve, and that knowledge made her fiercely happy.

  CHAPTER 8:

  A STAINED CHARACTER

  In silence, Myrtle and Faith rode back to Bull Cove. As they alighted from the dog-cart, both noticed a solitary figure standing by the corner of the house, sheltered from the wind. It was Uncle Miles, his brow creased and his pipe protectively cupped in one hand. He gestured to gain their attention, then beckoned with furtive eagerness.

  ‘Miles!’ exclaimed Myrtle, as she approached him. ‘I thought that you would be at the excavation by now! Did my husband leave without you?’

  ‘Oh no, we have been to the site already, more’s the pity.’ Uncle Miles spoke in hushed tones. ‘I thought I should try to catch you before you trotted into the house. There has been the deuce of a row, and now we are all treading on eggshells.’ He raised his eyebrows in a meaningful way. ‘Certain people came back from the dig in a foul temper, and heaven help the rest of us if we think too loudly.’

  Faith felt her neck and shoulders tense. When her father was in his darker moods, his path needed to be smoothed with the greatest care. He was not a violent man, but if he made a decision in a cold rage, he would keep to it ever after.

  Myrtle stepped forward and took her brother’s arm.

  ‘Let us take a little turn in the grounds, Miles,’ she murmured.

  Faith followed her uncle and mother on to the lawns, remaining just close enough to overhear and just far enough that they might assume that she could not. The trio promenaded away from the house.

  ‘Myrtle, old girl,’ Uncle Miles said at last. ‘I think most people would say that I am a patient man. But today has truly tried my patience. Our dear Reverend has tried me to the fraying point.’ />
  ‘What happened at the excavation? Why are you both back so early?’ Myrtle’s tone was a little flat, as if she already guessed at the answer.

  ‘No carriage came for us this morning. In the end we had to pay some fellow to give us a ride in his cart. And when we arrived, nobody would allow us on the site! After all their letters declaring that they must have the great Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, they turned us away from their precious excavation! Worse, our path was blocked by a line of hired hands and the foreman, Crock. Lambent did not even come down to talk to us.’

  ‘Could it have been a misunderstanding?’ asked Myrtle, without much air of hope.

  ‘Well, that is what I tried to suggest, but the Reverend was having none of it. At the excavation site he was given a letter, and after he read it there was no reasoning with him. He insisted on marching up to the Paints, knocking a dent into their door and then leaving a message so curt it would not surprise me if Lambent set a lawyer on him for defamation. Myrtle, you know that I always do my best, but every time I find some oil for troubled waters, your husband snatches it from me and uses it to burn a bridge.’

  Following silently behind, Faith burned with rage at the way her father had been treated. One day a guest of honour, lionized and courted. The next day, barred from the grounds like a disreputable tinker.

  ‘There are copies of the Intelligencer on the island,’ Myrtle murmured.

  ‘That explains it.’ Uncle Miles sighed. ‘Still, to pass judgement on a fellow without hearing his side of the story . . .’ He shook his head. ‘You had better tell Erasmus about the Intelligencer – at the moment he has it in his head that the story got out through the servants snooping and gossiping. How many people have heard about it?’

  ‘Everyone.’ Myrtle’s voice trembled slightly. ‘This morning we were snubbed all over town.’

  ‘It would have been a hundred times worse in Kent,’ Uncle Miles insisted, a little defensively. ‘Your husband does not see it that way, of course. I have done my best to help your family escape your woes, Myrtle, but to hear Erasmus talk, you would think that I had lured you to this island with malicious intent.’

  ‘He does not mean it,’ Myrtle said quickly.

  ‘Erasmus never says anything he does not mean,’ Uncle Miles retorted. He sounded genuinely annoyed. Unlike his sister, he was not prone to flashes and fizzes of ill humour. Most of the time his easy-going nature acted as a sort of padding and offence simply bounced off. When a barb did penetrate, however, it remained there forever.

  ‘We need to leave Vane, Miles.’ Myrtle adjusted her white scarf to protect her throat. ‘Go further afield – the Continent, if necessary. I need you to help me persuade him.’

  ‘Sorry, Myrtle, but right now I feel a need for some sort of apology from that husband of yours,’ her brother answered stiffly, ‘and I would bet ten guineas that he has no intention of giving it. Until he does . . .’ Uncle Miles sighed and lifted his shoulders in a shrug, then lowered them again, letting responsibility slide off them.

  Even without Uncle Miles’s warning, Faith would have known that a storm was breaking as soon as she entered the house. Quiet people often have a weather sense that loud people lack. They feel the wind-changes of conversations, and shiver in the chill of unspoken resentments.

  It was Mrs Vellet, not Jeanne, who came to claim their bonnets and capes.

  ‘Mrs Sunderly, I wonder if I might have the privilege of a word?’ The housekeeper’s voice was carefully hushed but huskily emphatic. ‘Forgive me, ma’am, but this is an important matter.’

  ‘Oh.’ Myrtle let out a breath and smoothed her hair. ‘Very well, but first have tea brought to us in the parlour. There is only so much importance I can tolerate right now without refreshment.’

  Although it evidently took an effort of will, Mrs Vellet held her tongue until Faith and Myrtle were installed in the parlour with a tea set between them. Then, at last, she received a nod from Myrtle.

  ‘Madam, Jeanne Bissette is a good girl – a decent, hard worker. She may be a little pert and silly at times like all girls her age, but she has been serving in this household since she was thirteen, and there has never been a word spoken about her honesty Madam, she freely admits that the newspaper was in her possession, but surely that is not a crime—’

  ‘Mrs Vellet!’ interrupted Myrtle, eyes widening. ‘What in the world are you talking about? Has Jeanne been complaining of her treatment here?’

  Mrs Vellet took a breath, folded her hands and composed herself with visible effort.

  ‘Madam . . . your husband believes that somebody has been searching through his papers. One of his letters is a little smudged . . .’ She gave a small impatient shake of the head. ‘To me it looks as though a drop of water has fallen on it, but the Reverend is very certain that it has been smeared by a wet finger.’

  A wave of heat rushed through Faith. She had let herself hope that the smudge would go undetected. But, no, her father had noticed it. She was sure that she must be glowing a guilty scarlet.

  ‘He insisted that all the servants should be made to show their hands. Jeanne was found scrubbing hers under the pump behind the house, so she fell under suspicion.’

  The first rush of panic ebbed. Faith’s heart slowed enough for her to think clearly and understand the housekeeper’s words. She herself was not suspected. Her father had found the evidence of her crime, but had not traced it to her.

  ‘And . . . was there ink on her hands?’ asked Myrtle.

  ‘Yes, miss – but not pen ink. Printer’s ink from a newspaper.’ Mrs Vellet dropped her gaze and stirred a little uncomfortably. ‘When she was asked about it, she turned out her pocket and handed over the newspaper straight away. She says she found it in town – she knows she should have left it where it lay, but she was curious and hoped to read it after she had finished her work.’

  There was a short expressive silence, in which Mrs Vellet did not mention why Jeanne had been curious, and Myrtle did not ask. Faith had no difficulty reading between the lines, or guessing which newspaper it had been.

  ‘Who has the paper now?’ asked Myrtle.

  ‘Your husband confiscated it,’ answered the housekeeper.

  ‘I will bear your character references in mind,’ declared Myrtle a little wearily, ‘but I think I must speak to Jeanne myself, so that I can decide what is to be done. Send her to me, as soon as she can be spared from her work.’

  ‘Her work? Madam, your husband has dismissed her! She is packing her belongings, and has been told that she must leave this house first thing in the morning.’

  Only Faith, who knew her mother very well, saw Myrtle stiffen slightly and try not to react. Running the household and managing the staff was Myrtle’s domain. The Reverend expected his wife to carry out his wishes, but never before had he bypassed her completely.

  Faith’s hands were shaking. The blame that should have landed on her head had missed her, and struck somebody else to the ground. She set her cup on its saucer lopsidedly and it tipped, spilling hot tea over her wrist and down her dress.

  ‘Oh . . . Faith.’ Myrtle sounded utterly exasperated. ‘You stupid, clumsy girl. Go and change your clothes, and then . . . oh, read your catechism.’

  Faith came downstairs for dinner in her freshly laundered blue dress. Its cleanness made her feel worse, like a poison pen letter in a crisp new envelope.

  The thought of telling her father the truth filled her with utter panic. If her father shut her out, the sun would go dark and her dreams would fall to dust. She needed that little hope of winning his regard, respect and love. She could not bear the thought of losing it forever.

  And Jeanne can always find another place, murmured a desperate voice in her head. I cannot find another father.

  It soon became clear that dinner would be a subdued affair. Uncle Miles had consented to come back indoors, but had asked that his food be brought to his room on a tray.

  Faith’s father was late to dinner, stalki
ng in steel-eyed and taciturn. He was not, however, nearly as late as the dinner. The family had been sitting for half an hour before the first dish arrived.

  It was carried in by a frightened-looking young girl Faith had never seen before. The new girl seemed half dazzled by her task. She spilt soup on to the tablecloth every time she tried to use the ladle. When her skirts brushed Myrtle’s spoon off the table so that it hit the floor with a clang, she started so badly that she knocked over the cream jug. The Reverend was forced to pull back his chair to escape the advancing tide.

  ‘This is insupportable!’ His voice was not loud, but icy enough to slice through all other sounds. ‘Is this child a local imbecile, or has someone dragged a donkey on to its hind legs and wrapped an apron around it?’

  The girl’s eyes were brimming as she attempted to mop up the worst of the cream with her apron.

  ‘Enough – you are making it worse.’ Myrtle’s voice was a little impatient, but less sharp. ‘Go and change your apron, and have Mrs Vellet fetch a fresh tablecloth.’ The girl seized the chance to flee the room.

  ‘She is quite hopeless,’ Myrtle declared, with a fragile lightness of tone, ‘but she was all that could be found at short notice. I wonder . . .’ She paused, and Faith saw her neat lace collar bob slightly as if she had swallowed. ‘I wonder if perhaps it might be worth keeping Jeanne on a little longer, just to spare ourselves such trials.’

  ‘She leaves in the morning,’ the Reverend stated flatly.

  ‘Nonetheless I wish . . . I do wish, my dear, that you had given me the chance to talk to the girl, and perhaps handle this my own way—’

  Faith’s father abruptly slammed both knife and fork down beside his plate, and fixed his wife with a glare. ‘I might have done so, had I seen any evidence of your competence to deal with the matter! I had thought that you were equal to the task of managing this household, but it seems I gave you far too much credit.

  ‘A man’s home should be his refuge, the one place where he can be master without being embattled. Is that too much to ask? Instead, I am served chill offal at the dinner table by ill-washed servants who slouch, spill, slam doors and show not the slightest respect. The maids make free with my private papers, and half the household turns a blind eye to poachers and vagrants stamping across the grounds. I am plagued and thwarted in the very place where my wishes should be law.’