Dennis gave him a long look. “You do that.”
31
Hedwig returned to the butcher’s at the agreed date; and obliged him by entering by the front door. He nodded as she joined the queue. When her turn came, he left the counter without being asked, flipped the sign to closed, and walked into the back room. He returned a few minutes later with a branded box.
“Five hundred pounds,” he said. “For the extras.”
“I’m going to take a look at the goods, if I may.” She raised the lid. The doll was an excellent likeness. Hedwig couldn’t tell her from real. For now the hex on her scalp would be missing – Briar’s imprint was yet to be made; but in every other respect she was perfect. Her dress was peppered with moth holes. The slippers were faded at the toes. The face was crackled as if she had been made two hundred years ago and not this very week.
“Does she meet your satisfaction?” the butcher asked, heavily sarcastic.
“I couldn’t be happier.” Hedwig replaced the lid, and took the cash from her purse. The butcher reached out to take it, but she pulled it back. “Just know I’ll be back if we find any problem with it.”
He grinned. She gave him the money, and the doll was hers.
*
At home, she laid the fraudulent ransom note on the desk, and telephoned Conrad’s mobile number – which went straight to voicemail – then the hotel in Fiji. It would be eight o’clock in the morning there, so Conrad might still be in bed. But the receptionist said there was no response to the call to his room.
“It’s a matter of urgency – regarding an ongoing police investigation.”
“You’re the police?”
“No, I’m Conrad’s housekeeper, but I have important information for him.”
The receptionist offered to page the communal areas of the hotel, and Hedwig agreed to hold.
Conrad was summoned from the veranda in ill-temper.
“I am in retreat from the world,” he said. “Must you disturb me with your petty concerns? Surely the Inspector would impart anything of import.”
“I’ve received a ransom note for the Paid Mourner,” Hedwig said, before Conrad could get into full flow. “It was waiting on the doorstep for me this morning. And Conrad… It’s signed the Thief on the Winged Horse.”
Despite the poor line, Hedwig heard an intake of breath. “But I left an offering! Another doll, a beautiful one! And he didn’t take it!”
“Perhaps she wasn’t of equivalent worth. He’s been specific about what he will accept in exchange.”
“Hurry up and read it.”
Hedwig read aloud the letter – the letter she had written – with an acute sense that she might, at any second, be seen through. Conrad had no reason to think Hedwig would fake such a thing, and for now, at least, he seemed to take it at face value. She made it to the end, finishing with the revelation of the doll’s enchantment.
His reaction was gratifying.
“Preserve us, Hedwig!” he gasped. “That’s her enchantment. Make no mistake! Whoever wrote the letter must have the doll. How else could they know such a thing?”
“At least we have reason to hope for the best now,” Hedwig said. “Will you obtain the gold?”
The Paid Mourner replica was seated next to the phone. She eyed Hedwig with disappointment. Hedwig turned her to face the other way, and gave Conrad a moment to think.
“I believe I will,” Conrad deliberated. “Do you think that’s for the best?”
Hedwig felt a spreading glow of satisfaction. Conrad was asking her opinion. Already, the possibility of regaining the Paid Mourner was making Conrad better disposed towards her.
“I do,” Hedwig reassured him. “And I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardise the doll’s return to you, Conrad. You can be sure of that.”
Hedwig hung up, after a promise to arrange Conrad’s flights home. He would speak to his accountant as soon as he arrived.
32
Mrs Mayhew was intrigued by the trip Larkin had planned to Queen Mary’s dolls’ house. So intrigued that she invited herself – though much to Persephone’s relief, on the morning of the trip Cosima the barmaid rang in sick, making it impossible for Mrs Mayhew to leave the Tavern.
“What a crying shame,” she complained, while Larkin and Persephone put on their coats.
“Sorry, Margot,” Larkin said. “The tickets aren’t transferable, sadly.”
“You can always go by yourself on another day,” Persephone supplied. Mystifyingly, Larkin shook his head at her, but she couldn’t believe he wanted Mrs Mayhew’s company either. They couldn’t talk about craft or sorcery or anything important with Mrs Mayhew around.
“Your broderie anglaise is hanging by a thread, dear,” Mrs Mayhew said to Persephone. “I’ll sew it on for you before you go.”
“Be quick,” Larkin said, stepping outside, for a smoke, probably. “We want to be on the road before the traffic gets too bad.”
Mrs Mayhew led Persephone back upstairs to the kitchen and made her wait while she searched for the sewing kit in the cupboard above the kettle. Persephone hoped this wasn’t a spiteful gesture – an attempt to delay their journey, now she could no longer attend.
“I’ll sew the trim on when I come back,” Persephone insisted. “For fuck’s sake, Mrs Mayhew, I make all my own clothes, why do you think a few stitches are beyond me?”
“It’s all right, I’ve got it.” Mrs Mayhew knelt on the floor, with the sewing kit, to get at Persephone’s coat. “Larkin’s very kind, isn’t he?”
“Yes?”
“Good of him to take you out.”
Was this Mrs Mayhew sifting if they were on a date? Surely she wouldn’t have tried to come along if she thought so?
“We get on.” Persephone winced as Mrs Mayhew’s needle jabbed her shin.
“He talks about you so fondly. Getting to be like a sister, he says.” Mrs Mayhew bit off the end of thread and patted Persephone’s coat. “All done.”
“Thanks.”
Mrs Mayhew beamed. “You’ve got such a pretty face, haven’t you, Seph? You’d be a little smasher if you lost some weight. I have some diet recipes if you’d like them.”
“I am never going on a diet,” Persephone said emphatically.
“Aren’t you ready yet?” Larkin called up the stairs.
Persephone gladly took the cue to exit.
*
They caught the Oxford Tube, with the intention of getting the train from London to Windsor at the other end. Larkin was taciturn initially, and then slept for a while.
When he awoke, he asked: “What was Mrs Mayhew bending your ear about?”
“She thinks I should lose weight.”
Annoyance passed over Larkin’s face. “She shouldn’t be so rude.”
“People say I’m rude.”
“You’re not. Well, you are, but you’re not mean. You’re just grumpy. That’s a different thing altogether.”
“I don’t want to talk about Mrs Mayhew. Are you looking forward to seeing the house?”
“I am. Since our palace conversation I’ve been giving house design considerable thought. If I were to design one, I think I’d work with wood, and carve it as intricately as possible, inside and out. The carvings would draw from nature – the flowers of the eyot, the river, the butterflies and bees. And I would paint it polychromatically. The furnishings would be handwoven to my own design.”
“You and Ruskin, ignoring the abyss.”
“Well what would you do, pour some concrete?”
“I don’t care about style. I’d build a house several rooms deep.”
“That would be your primary goal? What an odd place to start. People wouldn’t be able to see the inner rooms.”
“Good. I’d make it hard to see the outer rooms, too. I’d furnish them all, and wire them for lighting. But the shell of the house would have no opening section. I’d fit stained glass windows thick enough to obscure your vision. It would all be perfectly rendered wit
hin and completely hidden.”
“You might as well only build the outer shell! What would be the point of all that inner splendour? It would be wasted. It could have no impact on the person considering the house.”
“There would be an impact,” Persephone insisted. “The person couldn’t observe without growing conscious of their own intrusion. To gain knowledge of the interior they would have to become stalker or thief – their only means of access would be to break the window, or prise open a door. Even then their chief means of sensing the interior would be by feel, rather than sight. A doll’s house that is hard to penetrate is, in its own way, confrontational.”
“You’re the most perverse girl I ever knew.”
“Not perverse. Didactic, maybe.”
“So you want to school people in the error of their ways? An error you have forced them to make?”
“I wouldn’t be forcing them,” she corrected. “It would be their choice to gain entry, or to walk away.”
“But why create something that they would want to see badly enough to break the windows and doors? You would be provoking them to damage.”
“It wouldn’t be created for their pleasure.”
“Then it’s pointless.”
“I would know what was there. And that’s enough.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Do you have a person in mind when you imagine who your dolls’ house would affect?”
Larkin was quiet. Persephone wondered who he was thinking of, and why he should grow reticent about them.
“A future daughter?” she prompted. “That’s who men make dolls’ houses for, unless they’re making them for money.”
“I don’t imagine having children. If they were dull-witted I’d be disappointed and if they were clever I’d be jealous. As clever as me, but no cleverer. Can you see me as a father? Don’t answer that.”
“I don’t think I want children either.” Persephone enjoyed the children of the eyot; and was drawn to babies, who with their wordless demands appealed to her more than the company of her fellow adults. But babies grew up, and they were damaged en route to adulthood. People replicated the parenting mistakes of their childhood. She might turn out like Briar, one day. And if she already had children it would be too late. You couldn’t melt them down and start again if you made an error, the way you could with wax dolls.
Larkin again seemed pensive. It turned out he was still thinking about dolls’ house making, not families.
“Queen Mary’s dolls’ house is a gentleman’s residence. But Kendricks mainly makes suburban homes. Or cottages. And shops; we haven’t talked about shops. They appeal to the specialist, don’t they? They’re a good place to showcase a variety of examples in a given category – dresses, or baked goods – when you might only have one on show in a house.”
“I don’t want to make a shop,” Persephone said with certainty. “I spend all day in one.”
“But that gives you an advantage,” Larkin said. “You would be drawing from a deeper knowledge.”
“There’s nothing deep about it.”
“You discount the knowledge you’ve acquired working there, because it’s familiar to you. But other people who have worked in shops would recognise the truth of your creation, and it would appeal to them. And the people who have never worked in a shop – they would find your knowledge novel.”
“Shops are familiar to everyone who’s ever bought a packet of teabags. Nobody cares how they look from the assistant’s perspective.”
“They are intriguing places. I’m amazed you don’t see that. Didn’t you ever, when you were a child, daydream about being trapped in a shop overnight? Playing with all the toys and sleeping in the beds?”
In fact Persephone had. If people only wanted the products, that would be one thing, but they wanted her time, and her placation. They wanted a particular emotional performance. “I’m not making a shop,” she repeated.
Larkin laughed. “A pity. I’d love to see a tiny version of Kendricks, with a grumpy serving woman behind the counter.”
*
After their arrival in London, they took the train to Windsor, and reached the castle at noon. Once inside they followed the arrows towards the dolls’ house. It was stored in a dimly lit room, behind a barrier. They took in the miniature rooms: a chequered entranceway with a tiny coat of armour and a sweeping flight of marble stairs; the bedroom with its lilac taffeta; the nursery equipped with thimble-sized toys. The detail was exquisite. And yet Persephone felt subdued by the house. She wondered if Larkin was feeling equally underwhelmed.
“Have you ever seen the baby houses in Amsterdam?” he asked.
“I’ve never been abroad, remember?”
“They have a naïve charm.”
“This isn’t naïve.”
“No. It’s very functional,” Larkin remarked. “Mod cons. Running taps. Real books in the library. Cars in the garage that run.”
“Electricity and lifts,” Persephone said.
They took in the details for a few minutes.
“I find it sterile,” Larkin said.
“No, it’s not that,” Persephone said. “It has a sense of humour. Toilets that flush! But when you are used to Rieko’s storytelling – that triad of the room and the doll and you – it feels like something’s missing from displays like this. It’s like a documentary, a history documentary. This is a version of how things were, if you were rich, in the nineteen twenties. There isn’t any conflict or drama.”
“Documentaries have conflict and drama, if they’re any good.”
Persephone thought how she might document her life in miniature. A Persephone doll that evoked dislike; a Briar doll that evoked pity. The little terraced cottage on the eyot, with a soap dish for the Belfast sink and framed postage stamps on the walls. Waxen figurines, carved from birthday candles, on a desk in the bedroom. And all over the house, concealed behind cushions and under floorboards, real whisky miniatures. That would be where the conflict came in, between the hidden and the visible, though the viewer would have to uncover it – to move objects around – they couldn’t simply observe as they would one of Rieko’s photographs. Persephone would give it more thought.
“What would you document?” she asked Larkin. “If you made a house as documentary?”
“An incident from my childhood,” Larkin said.
“You don’t know which?”
“A very specific incident, concerning a boy from school. He was a troubled sort. His mother kept house for the local priest and there were rumours that he was the priest’s son.”
“A Catholic priest?”
“Yes. Anyway, this boy took to leaving his bedroom in the night. He would spend the dark hours at the cemetery, digging, until he had reached the coffin. Then he’d search the remains.”
“The remains? What the hell was the matter with him?”
“I don’t think he knew. He was looking for something, and couldn’t tell you what. The first time he was caught he was still a minor, but he could have been charged with desecration of a grave.”
“They didn’t charge him?”
“The priest never called the police. He had divided loyalties, didn’t he? If he was the boy’s father. I expect the priest felt he was partly to blame and covered up any further incidents.”
“Would you make a doll of the boy? Or the priest?”
“The corpse, I think. I’d use fragments of real bone – there must be an animal bone suitable for carving. With an enchantment of Belonging.”
“Would you use the grave as the setting?”
“No, I think I’d put the corpse in the boy’s bed. I can remember his room clearly.”
“Lots of people have absent or useless parents. They don’t all vandalise graves. I didn’t.”
“Yes. You think it’s unforgivable behaviour?”
Persephone didn’t believe for a minute the vandal existed. The story reminded her of tales about the Thief; true in some way, but not fa
ctual. Larkin was explicating his own past with the symbols of skeletons in closets, and uncovering buried secrets, and he wasn’t asking her to forgive a boy she’d never met for ransacking a grave. He was asking whether she accepted him, when his parents had not.
“Sometimes,” she replied, “caring about someone means holding them to account, not forgiving them. What happened to the boy?”
“He left the area, cut his ties completely with his mother and the priest. Everybody expected him to be in prison by thirty, I think. Or in the madhouse.” His attention was caught by a man in the doorway. She watched Larkin’s face illuminate, the seriousness of their conversation drawn to an immediate close; and he walked past her to greet the newcomer.
“Professor,” he said. “How lovely to see you.”
They clasped hands. The Professor resembled a Victorian magician. He had a black goatee and a sharp, neat face. His eyebrows were a mite too high, which Persephone had initially taken for surprise at seeing Larkin, but she subsequently gathered that was his perpetual expression.
“This is Persephone Kendrick,” Larkin said. “Persephone, Professor Madoc.”
The Professor’s eyes swivelled towards her like he’d spied prey.
“Delighted to meet you.” He inclined his head. “I’m a regular patron of your store.”
“We’ve talked on the phone,” Persephone said. “I’m the one who dispatches your dolls. How did you two come to know one another?”
“Larkin was my star pupil,” the Professor said.
“In which subject?”
“Miniature oils. Portraiture on the smallest scale.”
Perhaps that had contributed to Larkin’s ability with dolls’ faces. He had said he was a self-taught doll maker, but she wondered for the first time how many of his skills might rest on a foundation built by teachers and collaborators, with Larkin retrospectively claiming such knowledge as his own, spontaneous discovery. But facing his old teacher, Larkin was apparently moved to credit him now, and said: “Without the Professor’s guidance I think I would have been lost as a young man.”
The Thief on the Winged Horse Page 18