The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

by Stuart Turton

  I dig through my memories, searching for the pieces of the future I’ve glimpsed, but not yet lived. I still need to know what the “all of them” message Cunningham delivers to Derby means, and why he tells him he’s gathered some people together. I don’t know why Evelyn takes the silver pistol from Derby when she already has the black revolver from her mother’s room, or why he ends up guarding a rock while she takes her own life.

  It’s frustrating. I can see the breadcrumbs laid out ahead of me, but for all I know, they’re leading me toward a cliff edge.

  Unfortunately, there’s no other path to follow.

  45

  Freed of Edward Dance’s advanced years, I’d also hoped to shed his niggling pains, but my night in the cupboard has wrapped my bones in brambles. Every stretch, every bend and twist brings a jolt of pain and a wince, piling some new complaint atop the mound. The journey to my bedroom has proven unexpectedly taxing. Evidently, Rashton made quite an impression last night, because my passage through the house is punctuated by hearty handshakes and backslaps. Greetings lie scattered in my wake like tossed rocks, their goodwill bringing me out in bruises.

  Upon reaching my bedroom, I throw off my forced smile. There’s a white envelope on the floor, something bulky sealed inside. Somebody must have slipped it under my door. Tearing it open, I look up and down the corridor for any sign of the person who left it.

  You left it

  begins the note inside, which is wrapped around a chess piece that’s almost identical to the one Anna carries around with her.

  Take amyl nitrite, sodium nitrite, and sodium thiosulfate. KEEP HOLD OF THEM.

  GG

  “Gregory Gold.” I sigh, reading the initials.

  He must have left it before attacking the butler.

  Now I know how Anna feels. The instructions are barely legible, and incomprehensible even once I’m able to untangle his terrible handwriting.

  Throwing the note and chess piece on the sideboard, I lock my door and bar it with a chair. Normally I’d go immediately to Rashton’s possessions or a mirror to inspect this new face, but I already know what’s in his drawers and how he looks. I need only stretch my thought toward a question to find its answer, which is why I know a set of brass knuckles is hidden in the sock drawer. He confiscated them from a brawler a few years back, and they’ve come in handy more than once. I slip them on, thinking only of the footman and how he lowered his face to mine, breathing in my last breath, and sighing with pleasure as he added me to some private tally.

  My hands are shaking, but Rashton isn’t Bell. Fear motivates, rather than cripples. He wants to seek the footman out and put an end to him, to take back whatever dignity was lost in our previous confrontation. Looking back at our fight this morning, I’m certain it was Rashton who sent me down the stairs and into the corridor. That was his anger, his pride. He had control, and I didn’t even notice.

  It can’t happen again.

  Taking off the brass knuckles, I fill the sink and begin washing in front of the mirror.

  Rashton’s a young man—though not quite as young as he pictures himself—tall, strong, and remarkably handsome. Freckles are splashed across his nose, honey-colored eyes and short blond hair suggesting a face spun out of sunlight. About the only note of imperfection is an old bullet scar on his shoulder, the ragged line long faded. The memory would give itself to me if I asked, but I’ve enough pain without inviting another man’s misery into my mind.

  I’m wiping my chest when the door handle rattles.

  “Jim, are you in there? Somebody’s locked the door.”

  It’s a woman’s voice, husky and dry.

  Putting on a fresh shirt, I pull away the chair and unlock the door to find a confused-looking young woman on the other side, her fist raised for another knock. Blue eyes peer at me from beneath long eyelashes, a dash of red lipstick the only color on a glacial face. She’s in her early twenties with thick black hair tumbling over a crisp white shirt tucked into jodhpurs, her presence immediately setting Rashton’s blood racing.

  “Grace…” My host shoves the name onto my tongue, and plenty more besides. I’m boiling in a stew of adoration, elation, arousal, and inadequacy.

  “Have you heard what that damn fool brother of mine has done?” she says, barging past me.

  “I suspect I’m about to.”

  “He borrowed one of the cars last night,” she says, flinging herself onto the bed. “Woke the stable master at two in the morning dressed like a rainbow and took off for the village.”

  She’s got it all wrong, but I have no way of salvaging her brother’s good name. It was my decision to take the car, to flee the house, and make for the village. At this moment, poor Donald Davies is asleep on a dirt road where I abandoned him, and my host is trying to drag me out the door after him.

  His loyalty is almost overpowering, and searching for a reason, I’m immediately beset by horrors. Rashton’s affection for Donald Davies was molded amid the mud and blood of the trenches. They went to war as fools and came back brothers, each of them broken in places only the other could see.

  I can feel his anger at my treatment of his friend.

  Or perhaps I’m just angry at myself.

  We’re so jumbled together, I can no longer tell.

  “It’s my fault,” says Grace, crestfallen. “He was going to buy more of that poison from Bell, so I threatened to tell Daddy. I knew he was angry with me, but I didn’t think he’d run off.” She sighs helplessly. “You don’t think he’s done something foolish, do you?”

  “He’s fine,” I say reassuringly, sitting down next to her. “He’s got the wind up, that’s all.”

  “I wish we’d never met that damn doctor,” she says, smoothing the creases from my shirt with the flat of her hand. “Donald hasn’t been the same since Bell turned up with his trunk of tricks. It’s that damnable laudanum; it’s got hold of him. I can barely talk to him anymore. I wish there was something we could…”

  Her words run smack bang into an idea. I can see her standing back from it wide-eyed, following it from start to finish like a horse she’s backed in the derby.

  “I need to go see Charles about something,” she says abruptly, kissing me on the lips before darting into the corridor.

  She’s gone before I can respond, the door hanging open in her wake.

  I stand up to close it, hot, bothered, and not a little confused. On the whole, things were simpler when I was in that cupboard.

  46

  Step by slow step, I proceed down the corridor, poking my head into every empty bedroom before allowing myself to walk past it. I’m wearing the brass knuckles and jumping at every noise and shadow, wary of the assault I’m certain is coming, knowing I can’t beat the footman should he catch me unawares.

  Pushing aside the velvet curtain blocking the corridor, I pass into Blackheath’s abandoned east wing, a sharp wind stirring drapes that slap the wall like slabs of meat hitting a butcher’s counter.

  I don’t stop until I reach the nursery.

  Derby’s unconscious body isn’t immediately obvious, as it’s been dragged into the corner of the room, out of sight of the door and behind the rocking horse. His head is a mess of congealed blood and broken pottery, but he’s alive and well hidden. Considering he was attacked coming out of Stanwin’s bedroom, whoever was responsible obviously had enough of a conscience to keep the blackmailer from finding and killing him, but not enough time for anything more thorough.

  I quickly rifle through his pockets, but everything he took from Stanwin has been stolen. I didn’t expect otherwise, but as the architect of so many of the house’s mysteries, it was worth a try.

  Leaving him sleeping, I continue on to Stanwin’s rooms at the end of the passage. Surely only fear could have pushed him into this misbegotten corner of the house, so far from the meager comforts afforded by t
he rest of Blackheath. By that criteria, though, he’s chosen well. The floorboards are his spies, screaming my approach with every step, and the long corridor offers only one way in and out. The blackmailer clearly believes himself surrounded by enemies, a fact which I may be able to exploit.

  Passing through the reception room, I knock on Stanwin’s bedroom door. A strange silence greets me, the din of somebody trying to be quiet.

  “It’s Constable Jim Rashton,” I call through the wood, putting the brass knuckles away. “I need to speak with you.”

  The declaration is met with a flurry of sounds. Steps go lightly across the room, a drawer scrapes, something is lifted and moved, before finally a voice creeps around the doorframe.

  “Come in,” says Ted Stanwin.

  He’s sitting on a chair, a hand stuck inside his left boot, which he’s polishing with a soldier’s vigor. I shiver a little, rocked by a powerful sense of the uncanny. The last time I saw this man, he was dead on a forest floor and I was going through his pockets. Blackheath’s picked him up and dusted him off, winding his key so he can do it all again. If this isn’t hell, the devil is surely taking notes.

  I look past him. His bodyguard is sleeping deeply on the bed, breathing nosily through his bandaged nose. I’m surprised Stanwin hasn’t moved him, and more surprised to see how the blackmailer’s angled his chair to face the bed, much as Anna has done with the butler. Clearly, Stanwin feels some affection for this chap.

  I wonder how he’d react knowing Derby’s been next door this whole time.

  “Ah, the man at the center of it all,” says Stanwin, the brush pausing while he regards me.

  “I’m afraid you have me at a loss,” I say, confused.

  “I wouldn’t be a very good blackmailer if I didn’t,” he says, gesturing toward a rickety wooden chair by the fire. Accepting his invitation, I drag the chair closer to the bed, making sure to avoid the dirty newspaper and boot polish strewn on the floor.

  Stanwin’s wearing a rich man’s approximation of a stable hand’s livery, which is to say the white cotton shirt is pressed and the black trousers are spotless. Looking at him now, dressed plainly, scrubbing his own boots, and squatting in a crumbling corner of a once-grand house, I fail to see what nineteen years of blackmail have bought him. Burst blood vessels riddle his cheeks and nose, while sunken eyes, red raw and hungry for sleep, keep watch for the monsters at his door.

  Monsters he invited there.

  Behind all his bluster is a cowering soul, the fire that once drove him long extinguished. These are the ragged edges of a man defeated, his secrets the only warmth left to him. At this point, he’s as much afraid of his victims as they are of him.

  Pity pricks me. Something about Stanwin’s situation feels terribly familiar, and deep down, beneath my hosts, where the real Aiden Bishop resides, I can feel a memory stirring. I came here because of a woman. I wanted to save her, and I couldn’t. Blackheath was my chance to... What? Try again?

  What did I come here to do?

  Leave it alone.

  “Let’s state facts plainly,” says Stanwin, looking at me steadily. “You’re in league with Cecil Ravencourt, Charles Cunningham, Daniel Coleridge, and a few others; the lot of you fishing around a murder that happened nineteen years ago.”

  My prior thoughts scatter.

  “Oh, don’t look so shocked,” he says, inspecting a dull spot on his boot. “Cunningham came asking questions early this morning on behalf of that fat master of his, and Daniel Coleridge was sniffing around a few minutes after that. Both of them wanted to know about the man I shot when I chased Master Hardcastle’s murderer off. Now here you are. Too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence, I reckon. Ain’t hard to see what you’re up to, not if you’ve two eyes and a brain behind them.”

  He glances at me, the facade of nonchalance slipping to reveal the calculation at its foundation. Aware of his eyes upon me, I dig for the right words, anything to repudiate his suspicion, but the silence stretches, growing taut.

  “Wondered how you’d take it,” grunts Stanwin, putting his boot down on the newspaper and wiping his hands clean with a rag.

  When he speaks again, it’s low and soft, the voice of somebody telling stories. “Seems to me this sudden lust for justice probably has one of two causes,” he says, digging at the dirt beneath his fingernails with a penknife. “Either Ravencourt’s caught the whiff of scandal and he’s paying you to look into it for him, or you think there’s a big case waiting to be solved that will put you in the papers and make your name.”

  He sneers at my silence.

  “Look, Rashton, you don’t know me or my business, but it knows men like you. You’re a working-class plod walking out with a rich woman you can’t afford. Nothing wrong with climbing, done it myself, but you’re going to need money to get on the ladder and I can help. Information is valuable, which means we can help each other.”

  He’s holding my gaze, but not comfortably. A pulse throbs violently in his neck, sweat gathering on his forehead. There’s danger in this approach, and he knows it. Even so, I can feel the lure of his offer. Rashton would love nothing more than to pay his way with Grace. He’d like to buy finer clothes and pay for dinner more than once a month.

  Thing is, he loves being a copper more.

  “How many people know that Lucy Harper is your daughter?” I say blandly.

  Now it’s my turn to watch his face fall.

  My suspicions were raised when I watched him bully Lucy at the lunch table, all because she had the temerity to use his first name when asking him to move out of the way. I didn’t think much of it when I saw it through Bell’s eyes. Stanwin is a brute and a blackmailer, so it seemed only natural. It was only when I witnessed it again as Dance that I caught the affection in Lucy’s voice, and the fear on his face. A roomful of men who’d happily stick a knife in his ribs and there she is, all but telling them that she cares about him. She might as well have painted a target on her back. No wonder he lashed out. He needed her out of that room as quickly as possible.

  “Lucy who?” he says, the rag twisting tight in his hands.

  “Don’t insult me by denying it, Stanwin,” I interrupt. “She has your red hair and you keep a locket with her picture in your jacket, along with a codebook detailing your blackmailing business. Odd things to keep together, except they’re the only things you care about. You should have heard how she defended you to Ravencourt.”

  Each fact out of my mouth is a hammer blow.

  “It isn’t hard to figure out,” I say. “Not for a man with two eyes and a brain behind them.”

  “What do you want?” he asks quietly.

  “I need to know what really happened the morning Thomas Hardcastle was murdered.”

  His tongue roams his lips as his mind gets to work, cogs and gears lubricated by lies.

  “Charlie Carver and another man took Thomas out to the lake, then stabbed him to death,” he says, picking up the boot once again. “I stopped Carver, but the other one got away. Any other old stories you want to hear?”

  “If I was interested in lies, I’d have asked Helena Hardcastle,” I say, leaning forward with my hands clasped between my knees. “She was there, wasn’t she? Like Alf Miller said. Everybody believes the family gave you a plantation for trying to save the little boy, but I know that’s not what happened. You’ve been blackmailing Helena Hardcastle for nineteen years, ever since the boy died. You saw something that morning, something you’ve held over her all this time. She told her husband the money was to keep Cunningham’s real parentage secret, but that’s not it, is it? It’s something bigger.”

  “And if I don’t tell you what I saw, what then?” he snarls, throwing the boot aside. “You spread word that Lucy Harper’s old man is the infamous Ted Stanwin and wait to see who kills her first?”

  I open my mouth to respond, only to be
confounded when no words come out. Of course that was my plan, but sitting here, I’m reminded of that moment on the staircase when Lucy led a confused butler back into the kitchen, so he wouldn’t get into trouble. Unlike her father, she’s got a good heart, knotted with tenderness and doubt—perfect for men like me to step on. No wonder Stanwin stayed out of sight, letting her mother raise her. He probably funneled his family a little money over the years, intending to make them comfortable until he could put them permanently beyond the reach of his powerful enemies.

  “No,” I say, as much to myself as Stanwin. “Lucy was kind to me when I needed kindness. I won’t put her in danger, even for this.”

  He surprises me with a smile, and the regret lurking behind it.

  “You won’t get far in this house with sentiment,” he says.

  “Then what about common sense?” I ask. “Evelyn Hardcastle is going to be murdered tonight, and I think it’s because of something that happened nineteen years ago. Seems to me it’s in your interest to keep Evelyn alive so she can marry Ravencourt, and you can keep getting paid.”

  He whistles. “If that’s true, there’s better coin to be made in knowing who was responsible, but you’re coming at this crooked,” he says emphatically. “I don’t need to keep getting paid. This is it for me. I’ve got a big payout coming, then I’m selling the business and getting out. That’s why I came to Blackheath in the first place, to pick up Lucy and finish the deal. She’s coming with me.”

  “Who are you selling it to?”

  “Daniel Coleridge.”

  “Coleridge is planning to murder you during the hunt in a few hours. How much information is that worth?”

  Stanwin looks at me with a bright suspicion.

  “Murder me?” he says. “We’ve got a square deal, him and me. We’re going to finish our business out in the forest.”