The Shape of Darkness

by Laura Purcell

  Simon shakes his head. ‘You said it was a drop-in appointment, unrecorded—’

  ‘Unless he already gave the shade to his grandmother?’

  ‘I doubt that is the case.’

  She takes a shuddering breath. ‘It was … some of my best work, Simon. I was so proud of it. And now …’

  He places a hand on her shoulder and lets her cry.

  ‘You must believe me now,’ she sniffs. ‘You must see.’

  ‘See?’

  ‘Three people, Simon. Three people have died after sitting for my art.’

  Simon appears at a loss for words. He brings his watch out of his waistcoat pocket, puts it back again.

  ‘It is … true that three gentlemen have died,’ he reasons. ‘But I believe it was a mere coincidence that you happened to cut their profiles. Consider. How would this murderer have known about you? What motive would he have to interfere with your livelihood?’

  She looks at her hands, swollen and arthritic around the cup. ‘I cannot explain it, Simon. I feel somehow responsible. As if my gaze has cast a shadow over them.’

  People did say, when photographs first appeared, that there was danger in having your image captured. Part of your soul would remain forever imprisoned in that glass lens. Sit for too many and you might be … depleted. More alive in the photograph than in real life.

  She never suspected the same could be true with art, until now. For isn’t that what she has been trying to do: reduce someone to their essence, and capture it?

  But Simon is staring at her with utter dismay. She has never seen him look so wretched, and she feels like a simpleton.

  ‘Oh dear. I can see from your expression that it is Kingsdown Lunatic Asylum for me.’

  ‘That is beneath you, Miss Darken.’

  He did commit a patient to a madhouse once. A lady. He will not speak of it, he only tells her, darkly, never again. Whatever happened to her must have been terrible.

  ‘Simon,’ she says slowly. ‘If you truly will not consider me mad … Can you tell me what you think of Mesmerism?’

  He blinks. ‘Mesmerism? Why?’

  ‘Is there a science to it?’

  He wets his lips, seems to think. ‘Yes, I believe there may be. Not that it has been conclusively proven. They theorise that a vapour flows from every living thing, which a trained operator can manipulate. If he does so correctly, he may exert the power of his mind over another person’s body. I have seen a mesmerist put a patient into a trance and tell them that they will feel no pain. The patient then underwent a surgical procedure without making a sound of protest. Before we had ether and chloroform, it could be useful. Not that I ever practised it myself.’ A cloud passes over his face. ‘It struck me as distasteful to see a patient under the power of a stranger’s will. Entered and dominated, as if by a parasite …’ His gaze sharpens. ‘Have you been mesmerised, Miss Darken? Is that why you are asking me this?’ He leans down towards her so quickly that it startles her. ‘Is that what has happened? Tell me.’

  ‘No! It was only a question, and I do not know why you should be so nettled by it.’ She pulls away from him to the other side of the bed, spilling some of the flip. ‘I saw an advertisement in someone’s window, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, I’ – he tries to gather himself – ‘I am sorry. I spoke hastily. But you must understand that there are charlatans about. People who meddle with forces they should not. In the mesmeric trance, a person is subject to a lower and more automatic level of functioning. They are permitted – nay, encouraged – to renounce their consciousness and let their usual personality fade away. The brain is a powerful organ, Miss Darken, but delicate. One should not … tamper.’

  ‘And I expect you feel the same about Spiritualism?’

  ‘Good God! Is it possible you have been bitten by that nonsense?’

  It is a relief to feel annoyed with him. Anger is something she can grip onto. ‘Nothing has bitten me, Simon. I am considering possibilities, asking questions. If you cannot help me understand what happened to these men, I must find someone who will.’

  He puts a hand to his forehead. ‘Forgive me, forgive me. I shall help you. Only do not visit a spirit medium. I beg of you.’

  ‘Well, perhaps I shan’t. It is bad enough with the police coming here. I do not want you calling the alienists in on me, too.’

  Simon flinches, turns from her. ‘Do not try to provoke me. That was your sister’s trick.’

  ‘Simon …’ She was only being flippant, she did not mean it, but it is clear she has wounded him. ‘I apologise.’

  Without answering, he leaves the room.

  She hears him plod downstairs. Morpheus thumps after him.

  She casts the mug of flip aside and falls against her pillow, miserable. She has ruined everything, but it is not her fault, she is not well. The shock … Her temples pound so fiercely she thinks that they will crack.

  The bells chime again.

  When their peal dies out, the hinges of her chamber door creak open. ‘You mustn’t worry, Aunt Aggie.’

  Cedric stands at the threshold, watching her. He is the only person whose presence can bring her comfort. She opens her arms to him.

  He trots over and pulls his gangly legs up on the bed. He is still wearing his shoes, but she does not scold; it’s rare that she gets to cuddle him like this nowadays.

  ‘My father’s just scared,’ he explains. ‘People get cross when they’re scared.’

  ‘Really? And what makes a grown man like Simon afraid?’

  ‘Spirit mediums,’ Cedric replies simply. He raises his chin to look up at her. ‘He never liked reading me ghost stories.’

  ‘I daresay he didn’t.’ She winks at him. ‘Penny Dreadfuls are our little indulgence, are they not?’

  He chuckles. ‘You read them much better, anyway. But do you know … When we lived with Papa in Alfred Street, I found these great big hooks he kept in a box. They were really heavy. I couldn’t lift even one of them.’

  She is thrown by how suddenly he shifts topic. ‘What – Cedric, I do not understand how hooks relate to spirit mediums …’

  ‘Listen! I’ll explain. Papa told me he’d used the hooks when he was studying medicine in Edinburgh. He went fishing.’

  ‘Again, how do fish have any bearing on—’

  ‘Not for real fish!’ he laughs. ‘That’s just what they called it. The medical students used to go fishing for coffins.’

  She starts. ‘Coffins?’

  ‘They dug the earth at the head end. Then they inserted the hooks, you see, under the lid. Tied them to big ropes and hauled them up through the soil. They needed the bodies. You know, like Tidkins in The Mysteries of London.’

  She never equated Simon with this diabolical practice. In a story, bodysnatching is horridly entertaining, but in real life … She can only hope this is an exaggeration Simon employed to quench the boy’s thirst for gruesome tales.

  ‘Papa didn’t have a fresh supply of bodies for his anatomy classes, like students do today. He said everyone was forced to do it. He looked so sad when he told me. Poor Papa. He hated the time he spent away studying. That’s why he didn’t want me to learn to be a doctor too.’

  Well, that was possibly one reason. Heaven knew the young Simon who went off to Scotland was a very different creature to the one who returned to find his entire family either dead or dying of cholera.

  ‘He’s scared,’ Cedric repeats. ‘Because he dug up dead people. So he doesn’t want to believe they could come back and haunt him.’

  How did this sweet, perceptive boy come from Constance? Agnes had been so afraid that the apple would not fall far from the tree. But Constance’s vindictiveness has not been passed on. Her son has inherited nothing except her taste for the macabre.

  ‘You are very wise, you know, Ced.’

  He grins. ‘I know. I’ll probably be prime minister one day.’

  She plants her lips on the top of his sandy head, wishing she could gi
ve him that chance.

  CHAPTER 13

  Pearl cries deep into her pillow. She’s exhausted and would rather save her breath, but she can’t seem to help the sobs. Myrtle’s words go round in her head. You’re a spirit medium. What did you expect?

  She only knows what she didn’t expect. She never bargained on feeling this ill. Being in pain every day is wearing her down, like the seams on the easy chair in the parlour. And what has it got her? She still hasn’t met her mother, still hasn’t been able to discover who is killing people around Bath.

  They call what she has a gift, but Pearl doesn’t want it any more. She doesn’t want it at all.

  Beneath her quiet snuffles, she can hear Father in his room, fighting for breath. Shame fills her to the brim. How dare she lie here thinking these selfish thoughts? Using the Power was never about her. It was about making money, so that Myrtle could concentrate on her Mesmerism and heal Father.

  All her family want her to do is sit still in a dark room and give up control. It isn’t so much to ask.

  Except it is.

  Some days it feels as if it’s sapping her very soul.

  She needs guidance. It’s times like these that she really wishes Mother hadn’t died. In stories, the mother characters are always kind, with words of wisdom to bestow. Myrtle’s not like that much. She can be wise, but she has a limited supply of pity, and most of it is used up on the mourners.

  As for Father … She misses the sound of his voice. They hardly communicate now, and while his presence still brings some comfort, it’s also harrowing to look upon his face. Or what’s left of it.

  She scrubs the tears angrily from her eyes. She should look at his face, and remind herself why she’s doing this. Her pain is bad, but it must be nothing compared to his.

  Pearl stands up, opens her door and stumbles out, past Myrtle’s room and towards the sick chamber. Already the stink is bubbling. She takes a deep breath and forces down her biliousness.

  It’s far too bright inside. Pearl yelps. ‘Myrtle!’

  Myrtle’s sitting at his bedside, reading penny papers by the light of an open window.

  ‘I was taking a rest,’ she says defensively, clearing the papers away. ‘See that water he’s just drunk? I magnetised that.’

  Pearl doesn’t answer, just pulls at the curtains.

  ‘Does him good to get some daylight. We don’t all want to be shut up in the dark like you.’

  In deference to her sister, Pearl only closes the curtains partially, leaving a sliver of burning sun. It doesn’t look like it’s done Father any good.

  The hinge of the jaw is fully exposed, all gristle and string, but she takes care not to dwell upon that. She just kneels down on the opposite side of the bed from Myrtle and takes his hand in her own.

  She must help him. She must.

  ‘Don’t look so glum,’ Myrtle cajoles. ‘We’ll have punters knocking down our door for séances soon. They’ve just found another body.’

  Pearl holds her tongue. She yearns to ask how, where, if it had anything to do with her uncontrollable shivering, but she remembers their previous argument.

  Besides, the murderer doesn’t seem important any more when she’s kneeling here, listening to Father’s struggling, gummy breath.

  ‘When will you treat him again?’ she asks.

  ‘In a minute. With a new technique. I was just reading over it. Business has been that good, I’ve been buying The Zoist.’ Myrtle flourishes one of the rustling sheets in her direction. ‘I’ll be a proper expert soon.’

  ‘But …’ Pearl glances down, unwilling to meet her sister’s eye. ‘Will it work? Promise me it’ll cure him.’

  Myrtle tuts. ‘Of course it will! Look at this. If Mesmerism weren’t real, would they have opened a special hospital for it? The London Mesmeric Infirmary. Says right here. And the women, Pearl.’ Her voice climbs a notch in excitement. ‘They’ve got women mesmerists. Working right alongside the other doctors. Like equals. That’ll be me, one day.’

  Pearl can see it. She’s never been in a hospital, but she can imagine a lot of beds lined up with people like Father in them, and Myrtle striding confidently down the aisle between them, waving her pretty hands.

  The only problem is, there’s no room for Pearl in this dream.

  ‘You wouldn’t just … leave me alone here, would you?’

  Myrtle laughs. ‘Don’t be daft. When your dad’s better, he’ll look after you, won’t he? Then I can go off and do what I want to do. That’ll make a change!’

  Father’s hand squeezes Pearl’s. She glances up and shrinks from the expression in his tortured eyes.

  She wants to believe Myrtle. She does believe. Her sister can do anything.

  But she knows that Father isn’t so sure.

  Father thinks he’s going to die.

  CHAPTER 14

  Agnes makes the practice cuts in waves: peaks and troughs that roll smoothly like a black ocean. Papa and Montague would have seen the sea at night many a time during their travels – she wonders if it looked anything like this. They were brave men; Agnes would find such pitch-darkness utterly terrifying. It is true that she likes shadows – but even shadows need light to exist.

  Today’s light is sodden and pale. It seems to hesitate at the window, irresolute.

  Her studio, on the top floor of the house, is not in the direct eyeline of any other residence, yet as she sits curving the sable paper with her second-best pair of scissors, she has the uncanny feeling of being watched. It is as if her work and her person are under scrutiny – and both have been found wanting.

  She pauses, flexes her fingers. She is not used to feeling this way inside her studio, her refuge. Perhaps it is a magpie observing her from the window. The birds have been clattering away on the roof all morning; she dare not imagine how much of the property is infested with their nests.

  She starts to cut again. None of her usual joy sparks. It must be these scissors – they are of no use. How did she manage to make Ned’s hollow-cut with such a clumsy instrument? Poor, poor Ned. She sighs, shakes her aching hand. After all that has happened, maybe it is time she stuck to painted shades instead.

  She is an accomplished painter: that is a fact, not a boast, but it was always the papercuts that were her real talent, even from a child. Must she relinquish them now? The stubborn part of her refuses; she expects that when her hands have given up entirely and she is physically unable to make a single snip, that portion of herself will still be there, clamouring to get out.

  She puts the inferior scissors down, defeated by the burning in her fingers.

  The woman she knew as Agnes is fading day by day. Determined to remember there is something of her left, she crosses the landing to her bedchamber, retrieves the shade of Constance from beside her dressing-table mirror and brings it back to the studio.

  Yes, she captured it well: the curious way her sister’s head sat upon her shoulders. You can see, even without bronzing, where the ears and eyes should be.

  It would be wrong to consign such a good piece to the back of the duplicate book – although she could swear she had done so previously. Agnes opens it again, at the front this time, where her collection of earlier Constances live. Page by page they grow, become taller, the lines of their faces more defined.

  Looking back, she realises how often Constance offered herself as a model. Was it a kindness, or was she just trying to keep Agnes’s focus trained upon her? Constance never could endure competition for Agnes’s attention; even her papercuts were viewed as rivals.

  Perhaps she is judging too harshly. Constance could be agreeable at times, only … there was an uncomfortable intensity to it. She was too nice, a person playing at being nice.

  Then came the betrayal. It was hard to believe any good of her after that.

  Agnes is still at a loss to say exactly why Constance did it. Was it spite, jealousy – or just to prove that she could? Somehow she would feel better if love were involved in the matter, b
ut evidently it was not. The whole affair was about power, manipulation, ownership.

  There is no use going over it again. Constance is dead now, and a dead person cannot control her any longer.

  She slots the paper Constance amidst her twins and lets the book fall open to its wonted page.

  Montague’s shade faces to the right. Symbolically, this means he is looking forward to the future – and that was apt for the man – but now she wishes she had cut it facing the other way. Because the future, when it came, held only sorrow for them.

  Montague is the one full-length in her collection with added colours. When he made first lieutenant, he showed her his uniform, and she recreated it from memory: a bold, blue coat with white breeches. Only the face remains shadowy and inscrutable. Agnes runs the tip of her finger over it.

  ‘Where are you? Do you think of me?’ she asks.

  Forcing herself to turn the pages, Agnes leafs to the forlorn little physiognotrace Ned was so impressed by. Her throat tightens. Mr Boyle’s death saddened her, but Ned’s seems even worse: a boy full of promise, cut off in the bloom of his youth. She remembers thinking that Cedric might resemble him in another five years. Who could want to hurt such a nice young man?

  Outside the abbey bells toll.

  ‘Agnes!’

  Mamma’s usual screech. She closes the book gently and puts it away.

  In the parlour, the grandfather clock falters on. It needs winding. She forgot to lay the fire too, but somehow Mamma has found a way. Agnes frowns at the blaze as she steps inside. It is sweltering, extravagant. All that precious, expensive coal …

  ‘There you are!’ Mamma’s cheeks are alarmingly red above her newspaper. ‘When were you going to tell me about the scrapes you’ve been getting yourself into?’

  ‘I do not—’

  ‘Right here!’ Her eyes seem to bulge behind her spectacles. ‘A body, Agnes? You found a corpse?’

  ‘What is that? What are you reading?’

  She wrests half the paper from her mother’s grip.

  There it is in black and white: every self-respecting lady’s nightmare. Simon said he would keep her name out of print and make them use his instead, but evidently there is one reporter who has given both.