The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Listen, my dear. There is not a man, woman or child on this island that I have not known for years. Oh, we have our share of the “criminal classes” . . . but no murderers. Trust me. I would know them by the slope of their foreheads.’ The doctor turned away from the cliff with an air of finality. ‘There now, you can set aside your monstrous imaginings. Have I put your mind at rest?’

  ‘I see how it is,’ was all Faith could say.

  ‘I will not mention these notions of yours to anybody,’ Dr Jacklers remarked graciously. ‘And I urge you not to do so either.’

  I see how it is. I will have no help from the law. If I want the killer found, I will have to do it myself.

  Back at the house, the doctor was welcomed and shown into Myrtle’s presence. Faith slipped upstairs, simmering with frustration. By the door she found a discreet corked pot, which proved to contain a dead mouse. Evidently Mrs Vellet was willing to supply deceased rodents on demand, but preferred to avoid discussing it.

  Faith carried it into her room. She felt some of the tense coils in her stomach loosen as she watched the snake pour like oil out of its cage. Its jaws gracefully gaped and enclosed the furred dollop, head first. The mouse disappeared inside the snake’s lacquered body, and Faith let the reptile slide up her arm and around her neck.

  At that very moment, she heard a sound out on the landing. Somebody was stealthily and carefully turning a door handle. Having recently turned that very handle herself, she recognized the pattern of tiny creaks. It was the door to her father’s room.

  Faith burst from her room and came to a halt on the landing. The snake tensed into angles, disturbed by the sudden motion.

  Paul Clay was standing in the doorway of the Reverend’s room.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Faith demanded.

  Paul stared at her aghast, his gaze dropping to the snake around her neck.

  ‘It was a dare . . .’ he began, stepping back out on to the landing.

  ‘You thief!’ hissed Faith. ‘What did you steal?’

  ‘Nothing!’ He glanced down at the scissors in his hand. ‘I just wanted . . . some hair. They dared me to bring back some hair. But I didn’t want to prise open the coffin, and then Dr Jacklers took it away for coroner business. I thought there might be some in his room . . .’

  ‘How dare you!’ Faith felt so angry that it would not have surprised her if big, black wings had burst from her shoulders. A lock of hair was the most personal gift or memento. Nobody but a close loved one should have such a treasure, and certainly not every trespassing gawper with scissors. ‘He is dead, and graveless. Is that not enough? Do you people have to cut him apart as well?’

  Paul flinched, and glanced towards the stairway with a look of panic. As he did so, Faith realized that she could hear steps ascending. The moment the other person came into view, Paul would be discovered, a trespasser among the family’s rooms. One little scream would seal his fate, and assert Faith’s own innocence.

  But Faith did not scream. Instead she found herself seizing Paul’s sleeve and towing him at speed down the landing and into her own room. He gave a gasp when he realized that they were in her chamber, but she did not give him time to speak, dragging him out through the second door on to the roof garden.

  She quickly lowered herself to sit on the little wooden stool.

  ‘Sit down,’ she hissed, ‘or they can see you from below!’

  Paul obeyed, settling himself on the opposite side of the roof garden, looking at her with a slow, wary incredulity.

  What had she done? Faith was alone with a strange man. Not a doctor, relation or close friend of the family. She had been told, over and over, that a woman was her reputation. She was a bubble that could be burst with closeness. On the landing she had been a black pillar of power and rage. Out here, she suddenly felt appallingly fragile.

  She realized that her back was pressed against the trellis, as though her reputation could yet be saved if she maintained the maximum distance possible. In Paul’s eyes she saw the same creeping panic. He had flattened himself against the opposite wall.

  ‘Why did you do that?’ he whispered.

  ‘Why did you let me?’ she retaliated.

  There was a long silence. Neither of them had answers.

  She was intensely aware of Paul’s otherness, as if they were warriors from rival tribes meeting in the hinterlands.

  And yet here she was.

  ‘Who dared you?’ Faith asked at last, a belligerent edge in her voice.

  ‘Some friends.’ Paul’s tone was non-committal, but Faith was learning to see through that. ‘People are saying your father’s spirit is walking—’

  ‘Who?’ demanded Faith. ‘Who says that?’

  ‘Everybody, all over the island.’

  All over the island. Faith’s falsehood had spread more quickly than she could have dreamed.

  ‘They knew I helped move his body for the photograph,’ Paul went on, ‘but they wagered I wouldn’t come back and touch him again, with his ghost hanging over, watching. The hair was supposed to be proof.’

  ‘What were the flowers supposed to prove?’ asked Faith, recalling the abandoned bunches in the conservatory.

  Paul took a moment studying his knuckles, and Faith had the feeling he was embarrassed.

  ‘My father sent them,’ he said. ‘He thought that you might need some . . . to freshen the house.’

  The gesture was almost reasonable, Faith had to admit. However, Clay was still sending flowers to a new widow, and the pink and yellow blooms had not looked particularly funereal. She wondered whether Clay’s wife was a jealous sort.

  ‘I did not see your mother at the funeral,’ she said, following the thought.

  ‘She stopped coming to them after her own,’ Paul answered simply.

  Faith could not say anything kind or bland to him. It would have sounded false and wrong. The pair of them were beyond such things. She said nothing instead.

  ‘What was the doctor doing here?’ asked Paul in his turn.

  ‘He is the coroner. He came to investigate my father’s death.’

  Paul allowed himself to look actually interested.

  ‘Did you tell him what you tried to tell me? Did you tell him that you think somebody murdered—’

  Do you mean my fantasies and phantasms?’ Faith retorted. ‘My overheated imaginings brought on by too many novels?’

  ‘You did tell him!’ Paul’s eyes widened, and Faith could not be sure whether he was impressed or incredulous. ‘You believe it.’

  ‘And you do not,’ Faith said bitterly.

  ‘Nobody liked him, but it was not a killing business.’ Paul narrowed his eyes. ‘He nearly lamed my friend, and acted curmudgeonly to everyone, and then turned out to be a cheat and a hypocrite to boot. But you do not kill a man for that.’

  Faith gritted her teeth against this description of her father, but she was still seething with the explanation the doctor had refused to hear. She could not hold it in. There was a dangerous joy in talking, even with this enemy. It made Faith realize how she had been trapped in her own head. Trapped in the house. Trapped in the Sunderly family.

  ‘Well, somebody murdered him for some reason,’ she snapped. ‘The morning before he died, someone handed him an unsigned letter. It upset him. He would not talk about it. He burned it. Then in the middle of the night he went out into the darkness. I think he went to meet somebody. I think the letter forced him to do it.

  ‘His pistol is missing. He did not shoot himself, so if he took it with him when he went out, it must have been for protection.’

  ‘If somebody attacked him, why didn’t he shoot them?’ asked Paul. He was staring at her again, the cold, ruthless, speculative gaze she had first seen on his face.

  ‘I do not know,’ Faith admitted reluctantly. ‘But he had wounds to the back of his head as well as the front. I think he was struck from behind.’

  ‘Did anybody hear a carriage or a horse come by that night?�
�� asked Paul thoughtfully.

  ‘No.’ Faith thought back. ‘The wind was loud though.’

  ‘And they might have stopped at a distance, then walked. Or maybe they came by boat or on foot.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This house is miles from anywhere. Anyone who came out here would have been missing from their home for an hour or two, in the middle of the night. Unless they were in your house already, of course.’

  Faith nodded slowly, taking his words on board. The biggest shock, however, was hearing somebody answer her as if her thoughts were not absurd. Just for a moment, she wished that she did not hate Paul Clay.

  Her next words surprised her.

  ‘I want you to help me,’ she said.

  ‘Help you?’ Paul gave a huff of a laugh. ‘Why would I?’

  ‘We cannot leave the island until my father is buried properly,’ Faith declared coldly. ‘Your father is sending my mother flowers. The longer we stay, the closer they become. Do you want me for a sister?’

  Paul glared daggers at her, and for a moment Faith thought he would leap to his feet and leave.

  ‘I would rather be skinned alive,’ he said.

  ‘Then help me find my father’s killer,’ said Faith, ‘and you need never see me again. You know the island. You can talk to people. You can find out whether anybody was out that night for no good reason. You can go where you please—’

  ‘I have studies!’ protested Paul. ‘I have work, helping my father—’

  ‘Nobody shuts you in a room with your catechism, or expects to know where you are every moment of the day,’ persisted Faith. ‘You can go for a walk by yourself, or talk to people in the street. It is not the same.’

  Paul’s stare was maddeningly hard to read. He was like his father’s camera, she decided. He barely blinked, and took in every detail without mercy.

  ‘What do I gain from it?’ he asked after a long pause.

  Faith hesitated, then slowly took out her locket. A lock of her father’s distinctive dark auburn hair was curled inside, cut during the wake. It pained her deeply to think of disturbing it, but she needed an ally.

  ‘What will your “friends” do if you come back without some of my father’s hair?’ she asked. ‘Will they tease you? Call you a coward?’

  Paul reddened, and Faith knew that her barb had struck home. She carefully pulled the little tress free, then prised it in two. One half she tucked back into the locket. The other she held out between finger and thumb.

  ‘Come and take it,’ she said.

  Paul looked at the hair, then at Faith, clearly conflicted. The sacred, inviolable distance still stretched between them. Then he rose to his feet, nervously stooped so that he could not be seen from the grounds. The movement disturbed the snake, which drew itself into a muscular zigzag with a faint hiss. Paul flinched and drew back a step, and the sight filled Faith with the same wild malice she had felt during their first conversation.

  ‘If you like dares so much, Paul Clay,’ she said, ‘then come. I dare you.’

  Paul seemed hypnotized by the slow ooze of the snake’s ebony-and-gold body.

  ‘Don’t look so scared,’ Faith whispered. ‘This breed of snake does not bite.’ She saw one of Paul’s hands twitch, as if he was considering reaching out. ‘It strangles,’ she added helpfully, and saw his recoil with satisfaction. ‘You don’t dare, do you?’

  He edged his way forward, and then lunged and snatched the hair from between her fingers. As he did so, she grabbed his sleeve, holding it fast.

  ‘If you tell anybody the secrets I have told you today,’ she whispered fiercely, ‘then I will tell everyone that you were too frightened to cut the hair yourself. I have the other half of the lock, and I know which part of his head it was cut from, and you do not.’

  The snake slithered down past her wrist, its head gliding against the back of Paul’s hand. He yanked himself free and withdrew a few steps, rubbing his hand with his other palm, clearly mortified and angry.

  ‘Do you take dares?’ he retaliated. ‘There is a ratting at the lookout hut on the coast road every Monday night. Come and find me there – we can talk about your precious murder.’

  Faith had heard of ratting, a ‘sport’ for tavern cellars. Terriers were dropped into a pit of rats and commanded to kill them as quickly as possible. Paul knew she could not be seen at something of that sort. He was raising the stakes again.

  ‘Will I see you there then?’ he asked, with a very slight smile. ‘No, I thought not.’

  A gust of wind stirred the leaves, making them both jump.

  ‘I ought to go,’ Paul said, in a quieter, less combative tone. He nodded towards the grounds. ‘Is the coast clear?’

  Faith turned to peer out through the mesh of leaves and trellis. There was nobody in sight. She looked back at him and nodded.

  Paul trotted across to the creeper-covered gate and vaulted neatly over it, disappearing from her view. She heard a faint patter as he descended the steps.

  Faith sat and listened. There was no outcry. He had not been discovered. They had not been discovered.

  She could not believe that she had held a clandestine conversation alone with a young man. Paul was about her own age, but that was old enough for scandal purposes. Faith felt scalded, sick and unclean. Her clothes felt itchy. If she looked in the mirror, she feared she might see something broken and used.

  Why had she brought this about? What was it about Paul Clay that made her do and say mad, savage things?

  At the same time she felt painfully awake, and as if a weight had been taken from her. She had thrown her dice wildly, but perhaps she had an ally now. Not a friend, but it was better than nothing.

  Faith kept remembering Paul floating neatly over the gate. It had looked so easy. It had looked like flying. She wondered how it felt.

  Only later did it cross her mind that Paul had been very quick to trust her word that the coast was clear. After all, she could have sent him right into the arms of capture, then fled into her room and feigned ignorance of his trespass. Strangely it had not occurred to her to do so, not for one moment.

  CHAPTER 20:

  A SMILER IN THE WOOD

  Paul Clay was not a friend. He had, however, given Faith a precious glimpse of the rest of the island, and one important fact. Her lie was taking hold.

  Even now, everybody on Vane was talking of the Reverend’s ghost. Was this enough? Could a fruit be swelling on the Lie Tree? Faith needed to visit the sea cave again. She needed to see the Tree, to know whether she was wasting her time.

  This time, however, she would prepare properly.

  Secluding herself in her room on pretence of faintness, Faith returned to her father’s notes to study them in more detail. When she recalled her first encounter with the plant, Faith felt a little embarrassed. She had approached it like an altar and whispered to it like a confidante. Her actions had all been shockingly bereft of scientific method.

  She was a scientist, she reminded herself. Scientists did not give in to awe and superstition. Scientists asked questions, and answered them through observation and logic.

  The plant had no ears. How could it know when it had been told a lie? It had no brain. How could it know the secrets of the world? It hailed from exotic climes, so how could it understand the Queen’s English? How could secrets be contained within a fruit, and how could knowledge be eaten?

  If her father was wrong about the Lie Tree, she needed to know. If he was right, then these questions needed answers. ‘Magic’ was not an answer; it was an excuse to avoid looking for one.

  Faith leafed through the crammed journal pages, deciphering her father’s notes and comments.

  A great puzzle – the plant’s ability to live, grow and purify the air without the benign radiance of the sun. Energy must be acquired from another source in order to enact its necessary chemical processes.

  Warmth absorbed from the air? Improbable, since the plant appears to thrive in cold, damp environments. Insectivorous like
the sundews? If plant is cave-dwelling, powerful wintry scent may convince lost creatures that an opening to the outside is nearby. No such predation observed, though prey may be imperceptibly small and borne in by air currents. Could glutinous sap entrap them?

  Faith recalled the sticky moistness that had covered her fingers when she touched the plant and felt a sudden desire to wash her hands.

  A new theory: the plant may be a symbiote. It remains dormant until it establishes a psychical connection with an intelligent member of another species, after which is able to sustain itself through the flow of invisible energies not unlike those described in the now derided theories of Animal Magnetism. Could lies transmit nourishment through ripples in the Magnetic Fluid? Could consumption of the fruit strengthen the connection, triggering a Crisis and an incidence of Unobstructed Vision?

  Faith vaguely remembered reading about ‘animal magnetism’ in her father’s library back at the rectory. It was an old theory that everything and everyone existed in a sort of invisible spirit soup, with currents running to, from and through every animal and person. Blockages in the flow made you ill. If you learned to channel and direct it, you could affect other beings, sometimes heal them. If all your blockages were destroyed, you went into a trance called ‘the crisis’, where it was said that sometimes you could see right through solid objects. Faith had never heard of plants generating ‘animal magnetism’, but the Tree was no ordinary plant.

  It may be that I reach in vain for rational explanations. I have wondered whether the Tree may date from the Earliest Days, its lightless leaves, useless flowers and seedless fruit souvenirs of a more Fortunate Age, now lost.

  The last words made Faith uncomfortable. They hinted at the inexplicable and brought back the memory of the whispering cave. She felt a lurking fear that her bridge of science might fail her and come to an uncanny halt, leaving only a drop to dark and secret waters . . .

  She would not succumb to superstition. She would be governed by her mind, not her fears.