Bushes rustle, twigs cracking underfoot. Daniel’s moving through the forest quickly, making no attempt at stealth. He has no need. My other hosts are all occupied, and nearly everybody else is either on the hunt, or in the Sun Room.
My heart is racing. He slipped out of the house after speaking with Bell and Michael in the study, and I’ve been following him for the last fifteen minutes, picking my way silently through the trees. I remember him missing the start of the hunt and having to catch up with Dance, and I’m curious what kept him. Hopefully, this errand will shed more light on his plans.
The trees break suddenly, giving way to an ugly clearing. We’re not far from the lake, and I can just about see the water away to my right. The footman’s pacing in circles like a caged animal, and I have to duck behind a bush to keep from being seen.
‘Make it quick,’ says Daniel, approaching him.
The footman punches him on the chin.
Staggering backwards, Daniel straightens, inviting a second blow with a nod of his head. This one crunches into his stomach, and is followed by a cross that knocks him to the ground.
‘More?’ asks the footman, looming over him.
‘That’s enough,’ says Daniel, dabbing his split lip. ‘Dance needs to believe we fought, not that you nearly killed me.’
They’re working together.
‘Can you catch them?’ says the footman, helping Daniel off the ground. ‘The hunters have a good head start.’
‘Lot of old legs. They won’t have gone far. Any luck snatching Anna?’
‘Not yet, I’ve been busy.’
‘Well hurry up, our friend’s getting impatient.’
So that’s what this was all about. They want Anna.
That’s why Daniel told me to find her when I was Ravencourt, and why he asked Derby to bring her to the library, when he laid out his plan to trap the footman. I was supposed to deliver her. A lamb to slaughter.
My head spinning, I watch them exchange a few final words, before the footman makes for the house. Daniel’s wiping the blood from his face, but he doesn’t move, and a second later I see why. The Plague Doctor’s entering the clearing. This must be the ‘friend’ Daniel mentioned.
It’s as I feared. They’re working together. Daniel’s formed a partnership with the footman, and they’re hunting Anna on the Plague Doctor’s behalf. I can’t imagine what’s fuelling this enmity, but it explains why the Plague Doctor’s spent the day trying to turn me against her.
Placing a hand on Daniel’s shoulder, he leads him into the trees, beyond my sight. The intimacy of this gesture throws me. I can’t recall a single time when the Plague Doctor has touched me, or even come close enough for that to happen.
Keeping low, I hurry after them, stopping at the treeline to listen for their voices, but I can’t hear anything. Cursing, I press deeper into the forest, stopping periodically, hoping to catch some sign of them. It’s no use. They’re gone.
Feeling like a man in a dream, I return the way I came.
Everything I saw that day, how much of it was real? Was anybody who they claimed to be? I believed Daniel and Evelyn were my friends, the Plague Doctor was a madman, and that I was a doctor called Sebastian Bell, whose biggest problem was memory loss. How could I know those were merely starting positions in a race nobody had told me I was running?
It’s the finishing line you should be concerned with.
‘The graveyard,’ I say out loud.
Daniel believes he’ll capture Anna there, and I have no doubt he’ll have the footman with him when he tries. That’s where this will end, and I need to be ready.
I’ve arrived at the wishing well, where Evelyn received the note from Felicity that first morning. I’m eager to put my plan into action, but instead of heading for the house, I instead turn left, towards the lake. This is Rashton’s doing. It’s instinct. A copper’s instinct. He wants to see the scene of the crime while Stanwin’s testimony is still fresh in my mind.
The trail is overgrown, trees leaning in on either side, their roots writhing up through the ground. Brambles snag my trench coat, rain spilling off leaves, until finally I emerge on the lake’s muddy banks.
I’ve only ever seen it at a distance, but it’s much bigger up close, with water the colour of mossy stone, and a couple of skeletal rowing boats tethered to a boathouse that’s crumbling to firewood on the far-right bank. A bandstand sits on an island at the centre, the peeling turquoise roof and wooden frame battered by the wind and rain.
No wonder the Hardcastles chose to leave Blackheath. Something evil happened here and it haunts the lake still. Such is my unease I almost turn on my heel, but a greater part of me needs to make sense of what happened here nineteen years ago, and so I walk the length of the lake, circling it twice, much as a coroner might circle a body on his slab.
An hour passes. My eyes are busy, but they stick to nothing.
Stanwin’s story seems cut and dried, but it doesn’t explain why the past is reaching up to claim another Hardcastle child. It doesn’t explain who’s behind it, or what they hope to gain. I thought coming here would bring some clarity, but whatever the lake remembers, it has little interest in sharing. Unlike Stanwin it cannot be bartered with and unlike the stablemaster it cannot be bullied.
Cold and wet, I might be tempted to give up, but Rashton is already tugging me towards the reflecting pool. The policeman’s eyes aren’t soft like my other hosts. They seek the edges, the absences. My memories of this place aren’t enough for him; he needs to see it all afresh. And so, hands deep in my pockets, I arrange myself at the edge of the water, which is high enough to touch the bottom of my shoes. A light rain is rippling the surface, plinking against thick patches of floating moss.
At least the rain is constant. It’s tapping Bell’s face as he walks with Evelyn, and the windows of the gatehouse where the butler sleeps and Gold is strung up. Ravencourt’s listening to it in his parlour, wondering where Cunningham has got to, and Derby... well, Derby’s still unconscious, which is the best thing for him. Davies is collapsed on the road, or maybe walking back. Either way, he’s getting wet. As is Dance, who’s traipsing through the forest, a shotgun slung over his arm, wishing he was anywhere else.
As for me, I’m standing exactly where Evelyn will stand tonight, where she’ll press a silver pistol to her stomach and pull the trigger.
I’m seeing what she’ll see.
Trying to understand.
The murderer found a way to force Evelyn to commit suicide, but why not have her shoot herself in her bedroom out of sight? Why bring her out here during the middle of the party?
So everybody would see.
‘Then why not the middle of the dance floor, or the stage?’ I mutter.
All this, it’s too theatrical.
Rashton’s worked on dozens of murders. They aren’t stage-managed, they’re immediate, impulsive acts. Men crawl into their cups after a hard day’s work, stirring the bitterness settled at the bottom. Fights break out, wives grow tired of their black eyes and pick up the nearest kitchen knife. Death happens in alleys and quiet rooms with doilies on the tables. Trees fall, people are crushed, tools slip. People die the way they’ve always died, quickly, impatiently or unluckily; not here, not in front of a hundred people in ball gowns and dinner jackets.
What kind of mind makes theatre of murder?
Turning back towards the house, I try to recall Evelyn’s route to the reflecting pool, remembering how she drifted from flame to darkness, wobbling as if drunk. I remember the silver pistol glinting in her hand, the shot, the silence and then the fireworks as she tumbled into the water.
Why take two guns when one will do?
A murder that doesn’t look like a murder.
That’s how the Plague Doctor described it... but what if... my mind gropes at the edges of a thought, teasing it forward out of the dimness. An idea emerges, the queerest of ideas.
The only one that makes sense.
I’m startled by a tap on my shoulder, almost sending me stumbling into the reflecting pool. Thankfully, Grace catches hold of me, pulling me back into her arms. It’s not, I must admit, an unpleasant predicament, especially when I turn around to meet those blue eyes, looking up at me with a mixture of love and bemusement.
‘What on earth are you doing out here?’ she asks. ‘I’ve been searching for you all over. You missed lunch.’
There’s concern in her voice. She holds my gaze, searching my eyes, though I have no idea what she’s looking for.
‘I came for a walk,’ I say, trying to slip free of her worry. ‘And I started imagining what this place must have been like in its pomp.’
Doubt flickers on her face, but it vanishes in a blink of her glorious eyes as she slips an arm through mine, the heat of her body warming me up.
‘It’s difficult to remember now,’ she says. ‘Every memory I have of this place, even the happy ones, are stained by what happened to Thomas.’
‘Were you here when it happened?’
‘Have I never told you this?’ she says, resting her head on my shoulder. ‘I suppose I wouldn’t have, I was only young. Yes, I was here, nearly everybody here today was.’
‘Did you see it?’
‘Thank heavens, no,’ she says, aghast. ‘Evelyn had arranged a treasure hunt for the children. I can’t have been more than seven, same for Thomas. Evelyn was ten. She was all grown up, so we were her responsibility for the day.’
She grows distant, distracted by a memory taking flight.
‘Of course, now I know she just wanted to go riding and not have to look after us, but at the time we thought her terribly kind. We were having a jolly time chasing each other through the forest looking for clues, when all of a sudden Thomas bolted off. We never saw him again.’
‘Bolted? Did he say why he was leaving, or where he was going?’
‘You sound like the policeman who questioned me,’ she says, hugging me closer. ‘No, he didn’t hang around for questions. He asked after the time and left.’
‘He asked the time?’
‘Yes, it was like he had somewhere to be.’
‘And he didn’t tell you where he was going?’
‘No.’
‘Was he acting strangely, did he say anything odd?’
‘Actually, we could barely get a word out of him,’ she says. ‘He’d been in a strange mood all week come to think of it, withdrawn, sulky, not like him at all.’
‘What was he normally like?’
She shrugs. ‘A pest most of the time. He was at that age. He liked to tug our ponytails, and scare us. He’d follow us through the woods, then jump out when we least expected it.’
‘But he’d been acting strangely for a week?’ I say. ‘Are you certain that’s how long it had been?’
‘Well, that’s how long we were at Blackheath before the party, so yes.’ She’s shivering now, peering up at me. ‘What’s that mind of yours got hold of, Mr Rashton?’ she asks.
‘Got hold of?’
‘I can see the little crease’ – she taps the spot between my eyebrows – ‘you get when something’s bothering you.’
‘I’m not sure yet.’
‘Well, try not to do it when you meet grandmother.’
‘Crease my forehead?’
‘Think, silly.’
‘Why the heavens not?’
‘She doesn’t take kindly to young men who think too much. She believes it’s a sign of idleness.’
The temperature is dropping quickly. What little colour was left to the day is fleeing the dark storm clouds bullying the sky.
‘Shall we go back to the house?’ says Grace, stamping her feet to warm up. ‘I dislike Blackheath as much as the next girl, but not so much that I’m willing to freeze to death to avoid going back inside it.’
I glance at the reflecting pool a little forlornly, but I can’t press my idea without speaking to Evelyn first, and she’s out walking with Bell. Whatever my mind’s got hold of – to use Grace’s phrase – it’ll have to keep until she returns in a couple of hours. Besides, the idea of spending time with somebody who isn’t mired in today’s many tragedies is appealing.
Our shoulders pressed together, we make our way back to the house, arriving in the entrance hall in time to see Charles Cunningham trotting down the steps. He’s frowning, lost in thought.
‘Are you quite all right, Charles?’ says Grace, drawing his attention. ‘Honestly, what is it with the men in this house, today? You’re all on a cloud.’
A grin cracks his face, his joy at seeing us quite at odds with the seriousness with which he normally greets me.
‘Ah, my two favourite people,’ he says grandly, leaping from the third step to clap us both on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, I was miles away.’
Affection draws a huge smile on my face.
Until now the valet was simply somebody who flitted in and out of my day, occasionally helpful, but always pursuing some purpose of his own, making him impossible to trust. Seeing him through Rashton’s eyes is like watching a charcoal outline get coloured in.
Grace and Donald Davies summered at Blackheath, growing up side by side with Michael, Evelyn, Thomas and Cunningham. Despite being raised by the cook, Mrs Drudge, everybody believed he was Peter Hardcastle’s son by birth, and this elevated him beyond the kitchen. Encouraging this perception, Helena Hardcastle instructed the governess to educate Cunningham with the Hardcastle children. He may have become a servant, but neither Grace nor Donald would ever see him as such, no matter what their parents might say. The three of them are practically family, which is why Cunningham was one of the first people Donald Davies introduced Rashton to when they returned from the war. The three of them are as close as brothers.
‘Is Ravencourt being a nuisance?’ asks Grace. ‘You didn’t forget his second helping of eggs again, did you? You know how disagreeable that makes him.’
‘No, no, it’s not that.’ Cunningham shakes his head thoughtfully. ‘You know how sometimes your day starts as one thing, and then, just like that, it’s something else? Ravencourt told me something rather startling, and, to tell you the truth, I still haven’t wrapped my head around it.’
‘What did he say?’ asks Grace, cocking her head.
‘That he’s not...’ he trails off, pinching his nose. Thinking better of it, he sighs, dismissing the entire line of conversation. ‘Best I tell you this evening over a brandy, when everything’s shaken out. Not sure I have the words just yet.’
‘It’s always the same with you, Charles,’ she says, stamping her foot. ‘You enjoy starting juicy stories but you never finish them.’
‘Well, maybe this will improve your mood.’
From his pocket he produces a silver key, a cardboard tag identifying it as Sebastian Bell’s. The last time I saw that key it was in the vile Derby’s pocket, shortly before somebody coshed him over the head outside Stanwin’s bedroom and stole it.
I can feel myself being slotted into place, a cog in a massive ticking clock, propelling a mechanism I’m too small to understand.
‘You found it for me?’ says Grace, clapping her hands together.
He beams at me. ‘Grace asked me snatch a spare key to Bell’s bedroom from the kitchen so we could steal his drugs,’ he says, dangling the key from his finger. ‘I went one better, and found the key to his trunk.’
‘It’s childish, but I want Bell to suffer the way Donald is suffering,’ she says, her eyes glittering viciously.
‘And how did you come by the key?’ I ask Cunningham.
‘In the course of my duties,’ he says a little uneasily. ‘I’ve got his bedroom key in my pocket. All those little vials dropped in the lake, can you imagine?’
‘Not the lake,’ says Grace, making a face. ‘It’s bad enough coming back to Blackheath, but I won’t go anywhere near that awful place.’
‘There’s the well,’ I say, ‘out by the gatehouse. It’s old and deep. If we drop the drugs down there, nobody will ever find them.’
‘Perfect,’ says Cunningham, rubbing his hands together gleefully. ‘Well, the good doctor has gone for a walk with Miss Hardcastle, so I should say this is as good a time as any. Who’s up for a little daylight robbery?’