‘Somebody wants me dead.’
It feels strange to say it out loud, as though I’m calling fate down upon myself, but if I’m to survive until this evening, I’ll need to face down this fear. I refuse to spend any more time cowering in my bedroom. Not while there are so many questions to answer.
I’m walking back to the house, scouring the trees for any sign of danger, my mind running back and forth across the morning’s events. Over and over again I wonder about the slashes on my arm and the man in the plague doctor costume, the footman and this mysterious Anna, who now appears to be alive and well, and leaving enigmatic notes for me to find.
How did she survive in the forest?
I suppose she could have written the note earlier this morning, before she was attacked, but then how did she know I’d be in that cottage, drying my gloves over the fire? I didn’t tell anybody about my plans. Did I speak out loud? Could she have been watching?
Shaking my head, I take a step away from that particular rabbit hole.
I’m looking too far forward, when I need to be looking back. Michael told me that a maid delivered a note to the dinner table last night, and that was the last he saw of me.
Everything started with that.
You need to find the servant who brought the note.
I’m barely through Blackheath’s doors when voices pull me towards the drawing room, which is empty aside from a couple of young maids clearing the lunchtime detritus onto two huge trays. They work side by side, heads bowed in hushed gossip, oblivious to my presence at the door.
‘... Henrietta said she’d gone mad,’ says one girl, brown curls tumbling free of her white cap.
‘It’s not right to say that about Lady Helena, Beth,’ scolds the older girl. ‘She’s always been good to us, treated us fair, hasn’t she?’
Beth weighs this fact against the wealth of her gossip.
‘Henrietta told me she was raving,’ she continues. ‘Screaming at Lord Peter. Said it was probably on account of being back in Blackheath after what happened to Master Thomas. Does funny things to a person, she said.’
‘She says a lot of things does Henrietta, I’d put them out of your mind. Not like we haven’t heard them fighting before, is it? Besides, if it were serious Lady Helena would tell Mrs Drudge, wouldn’t she? Always does.’
‘Mrs Drudge can’t find her,’ says Beth triumphantly, the case against Lady Helena well and truly proven. ‘Hasn’t seen her all morning, but—’
My entrance slaps the words out of the air, the maids attempting startled curtsies that swiftly devolve into a tangle of arms, legs and blushes. Waving away their confusion, I ask after the servants who served dinner last night, prompting only blank stares and mumbled apologies. I’m on the verge of giving up, when Beth ventures that Evelyn Hardcastle is entertaining the ladies in the Sun Room towards the rear of the house and would certainly know more.
After a brief exchange, one of them leads me through a communicating door into the study where I met Daniel and Michael this morning. There’s a library beyond it, which we cross briskly, exiting the room into a dim connecting passage. Darkness stirs to greet us, a black cat drifting out from beneath a small telephone table, its tail dusting the wooden floor. On silent feet, it pads up the corridor, slipping through a door left slightly ajar at the far end. A warm orange light is seeping through the gap, voices and music on the other side.
‘Miss Evelyn’s in there, sir,’ says the maid.
Her tone succinctly describes both the room and Evelyn Hardcastle, neither of which she seems to hold in particularly high regard.
Brushing off her scorn, I open the door, the heat of the room hitting me full in the face. The air is heavy, sweet with perfume, stirred only by a scratchy music that soars and glides and stuns itself against the walls. Large leaded windows look out over the garden at the rear of the house, grey clouds piling up beyond a cupola. Chairs and chaise longues have been gathered around the fire, young women draped over them like wilted orchids, smoking cigarettes and clinging to their drinks. The mood in the room is one of restless agitation rather than celebration. About the only sign of life comes from an oil painting on the far wall, where an old woman with coals for eyes sits in judgement of the room, her expression rather eloquently conveying her distaste for this gathering.
‘My grandmother, Heather Hardcastle,’ says a woman from behind me. ‘It’s not a flattering picture, but then she wasn’t a flattering woman by all accounts.’
I turn to meet the voice, reddening as a dozen faces swim up through their boredom to inspect me. My name runs laps of the room, a sudden excited buzz chasing it like a swarm of bees.
Sitting either side of a chess table are a woman I must assume to be Evelyn Hardcastle and an elderly, extremely fat man wearing a suit that’s a size too small for him. They’re an odd couple. Evelyn’s in her late twenties, and rather resembles a shard of glass with her thin, angular body and high cheekbones, her blonde hair tied up away from her face. She’s wearing a green dress, fashionably tailored and belted at the waist, its sharp lines mirroring the severe expression on her face.
As for the fat man, he can’t be less than sixty-five, and I can only imagine what contortions must have been necessary to persuade his enormous bulk behind the table. His chair’s too small for him, too stiff. He’s a martyr to it. Sweat is gleaming on his forehead, the soaking wet handkerchief clutched in his hand testifying to the duration of his suffering. He’s looking at me queerly, an expression somewhere between curiosity and gratitude.
‘My apologies,’ I say. ‘I was—’
Evelyn slides a pawn forward without looking up from the board. The fat man returns his attention to the game, engulfing his knight with a fleshy fingertip.
I surprise myself by groaning at his mistake.
‘You know chess?’ Evelyn asks me, her eyes still fixed on the board.
‘It appears so,’ I say.
‘Then perhaps you would play after Lord Ravencourt?’
Ignorant of my warning, Ravencourt’s knight swaggers into Evelyn’s trap, only to be cut down by a lurking rook. Panic takes hold of his play as Evelyn urges her pieces forward, hurrying him when he should be patient. The game’s over in four moves.
‘Thank you for the diversion, Lord Ravencourt,’ says Evelyn, as he topples his king. ‘Now, I believe you had somewhere else to be.’
It’s a curt dismissal and with an awkward bow, Ravencourt disentangles himself from the table and limps out of the room, offering me the slightest of nods on the way.
Evelyn’s distaste chases him through the door, but it evaporates as she gestures to the seat opposite.
‘Please,’ she says.
‘I’m afraid I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m looking for a maid who brought me a message at the dinner table last night, but I know nothing more of her. I was hoping you could help.’
‘Our butler could,’ she says, restoring the pieces of her bedraggled army to their line. Each is placed precisely at the centre of a square, its face turned towards the enemy. Clearly, there’s no place for cowards on this board.
‘Mr Collins knows every step every servant takes in this house, or so he leads them to believe,’ she says. ‘Unfortunately, he was assaulted this morning. Doctor Dickie had him moved to the gatehouse so he could rest more comfortably. I’ve actually been meaning to look in on him myself, perhaps I could escort you.’
I momentarily hesitate, weighing the danger. One can only assume that if Evelyn Hardcastle intended me harm, she wouldn’t announce our intention to go off together in front of an entire room of witnesses.
‘That would be very kind,’ I respond, earning a flicker of a smile.
Evelyn stands, either not noticing or pretending not to notice the curious glances nudging us. There are French doors onto the gardens, but we forgo them, departing instead from the entrance hall, so we might collect our coats and hats from our bedrooms first. Evelyn’s still tugging hers on as we step out of Blackheath into the blustery, cold afternoon.
‘May I ask what happened to Mr Collins?’ I say, wondering if perhaps his assault might be linked to my own last night.
‘Apparently he was set upon by one of our guests, an artist named Gregory Gold,’ she says, knotting her thick scarf. ‘It was an unprovoked attack by all accounts, and Gold managed to thrash him pretty soundly before somebody intervened. I should warn you, Doctor, Mr Collins has been heavily sedated, so I’m not sure how helpful he’ll be.’
We’re following the gravel driveway that leads to the village and, once again, I’m struck by the peculiarity of my condition. At some point in the last few days, I must have arrived along this very road, happy and excited, or perhaps annoyed at the distance and isolation. Did I understand the danger I was in, or did it come later during my stay? So much of me is lost, memories simply blown aside like the leaves on the ground, and yet here I stand, remade. I wonder if Sebastian Bell would approve of this man I’ve become. If we’d even get along?
Without a word, Evelyn links an arm through my own, a warm smile transforming her face. It’s as though a fire has been kindled within, her eyes sparkling with life, banishing the shrouded woman of earlier.
‘It’s so good to be out of that house,’ she cries, tipping her face to meet the rain. ‘Thank goodness you came along when you did, Doctor. Honestly, a minute later and you’d have found me with my head in the grate.’
‘Lucky I stopped by then,’ I say, somewhat startled by her change in mood. Sensing my confusion, Evelyn laughs lightly.
‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ she says. ‘I loathe getting to know people, so whenever I meet somebody I like, I just assume a friendship immediately. It saves a great deal of time in the long run.’
‘I can see the appeal,’ I say. ‘May I ask what I did to earn a favourable impression?’
‘Only if you allow me to be frank in my answer.’
‘You’re not being frank now?’
‘I was trying to be polite, but, you’re right, I never seem to land on the right side of the fence,’ she says with mock regret. ‘Well, to be frank, I like your pensiveness, Doctor. You strike me as a man who’d much rather be somewhere else, a feeling I can wholeheartedly sympathise with.’
‘Am I to assume you’re not enjoying your homecoming?’
‘Oh, this hasn’t been my home in a very long time,’ she says, skipping over a large puddle. ‘I’ve lived in Paris for the last nineteen years, ever since my brother was killed.’
‘What about the women I saw you with in the Sun Room, are they not your friends?’
‘They arrived this morning and, truth be told, I didn’t recognise a single one of them. The children I knew have shed their skins and slithered into society. I’m as much a stranger here as yourself.’
‘At least you’re not a stranger to yourself, Miss Hardcastle,’ I say. ‘Surely you can take some solace in that?’
‘Quite the contrary,’ she says, looking at me. ‘I imagine it would be rather splendid to wander away from myself for a little while. I envy you.’
‘Envy?’
‘Why not?’ she says, wiping the rain from her face. ‘You’re a soul stripped bare, Doctor. No regrets, no wounds, none of the lies we tell ourselves so we can look in the mirror each morning. You’re –’ she bites her lip, searching for the word – ‘honest.’
‘Another word for that is “exposed”,’ I say.
‘Am I to take it you’re not enjoying your homecoming?’
There’s a crook in her smile, a slight twist of the lips that could easily be damning, yet somehow comes across as conspiratorial.
‘I’m not the man I’d hoped to be,’ I say quietly, surprised by my own candour. Something about this woman puts me at ease, though for the life of me I can’t tell what it is.
‘How so?’ she asks.
‘I’m a coward, Miss Hardcastle,’ I sigh. ‘Forty years of memories wiped away and that’s what I find lurking beneath it all. That’s what remains to me.’
‘Oh, do call me Evie, that way I can call you Sebastian and tell you not to fret about your flaws. We all have them, and if I were newly born into this world, I might be cautious too,’ she says, squeezing my arm.
‘You’re very kind, but this is something deeper, instinctive.’
‘Well, so what if you are?’ she asks. ‘There are worse things to be. At least you’re not mean-spirited or cruel. And now you get to choose, don’t you? Instead of assembling yourself in the dark like the rest of us – so that you wake up one day with no idea of how you became this person – you can look at the world, at the people around you, and choose the parts of your character you want. You can say, “I’ll have that man’s honesty, that woman’s optimism”, as if you’re shopping for a suit on Saville Row.’
‘You’ve made my condition into a gift,’ I say, feeling my spirits lift.
‘Well, what else would you call a second chance?’ she asks. ‘You don’t like the man you were, very well, be somebody else. There’s nothing stopping you, not any more. As I said, I envy you. The rest of us are stuck with our mistakes.’
I have no response to that, though one is not immediately required. We’ve arrived upon two giant fence posts, fractured angels blaring their noiseless horns on top. The gatehouse is set back among the trees on our left, splashes of its red-tile roof showing through the dense canopy. A path leads towards a peeling green door, which is swollen with age and riddled with cracks. Ignoring it, Evelyn pulls me by the fingers towards the back of the house, pushing through branches so overgrown they’re touching the crumbling brickwork.
The back door is held fast with a simple latch, and undoing it, she lets us into a dank kitchen, a layer of dust coating the countertops, the copper pans still out on the hob. Once inside, she pauses, listening intently.
‘Evelyn?’ I say.
Motioning for quiet, she takes a step closer to the corridor. Unsettled by this sudden caution, my body tenses, but she breaks the spell with laughter.
‘I’m sorry, Sebastian, I was listening out for my father.’
‘Your father?’ I say, puzzled.
‘He’s staying here,’ she says. ‘He’s supposed to be out hunting, but I didn’t want to risk bumping into him if he was running late. I’m afraid we don’t like each other terribly much.’
Before I have the chance to ask any more questions, she beckons me into a tiled hallway and up a narrow staircase, the bare wooden steps shrieking beneath our feet. I keep to her heels, snatching backward glances every few steps. The gatehouse is narrow and crooked, doors set into the walls at odd angles like teeth grown wild in a mouth. Wind whistles through the windows carrying with it the smell of the rain, the entire place seeming to rattle on its foundations. Everything about this house seems designed to unseat the nerves.
‘Why put the butler all the way out here?’ I ask Evelyn, who’s trying to choose between the doors either side of us. ‘There must have been somewhere more comfortable.’
‘All the rooms in the main house are full, and Doctor Dickie ordered peace and quiet, and a good fire. Believe it or not, this might be the best place for him. Come on, let’s try this one,’ she says, rapping lightly on a door to our left, pushing it open when there’s no response.
A tall fellow in a charcoal-stained shirt is bound by his wrists and dangling from a hook on the ceiling, his feet only barely touching the floor. He’s unconscious, a head full of dark curly hair slumped against his chest, blood speckling his face.
‘Nope, must be the other side,’ says Evelyn, her voice bland and unconcerned.
‘What the devil?’ I say, taking a step back in alarm. ‘Who is this man, Evelyn?’
‘This is Gregory Gold, the fellow who assaulted our butler,’ says Evelyn, eyeing him as one would a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. ‘The butler was my father’s batman during the war. Seems Father’s taken the assault rather personally.’
‘Personally?’ I say. ‘Evie, he’s been strung up like a pig!’
‘Father’s never been a subtle man, or a particularly clever one,’ she shrugs. ‘I suspect the two things go hand in hand.’
For the first time since I awoke, my blood is boiling. Whatever this man’s crimes, justice can’t be served by a length of rope in a locked room.
‘We can’t leave him like this,’ I protest. ‘It’s inhuman.’
‘What he did was inhuman,’ says Evelyn, her chill touching me for the first time. ‘Mother commissioned Gold to tidy up a few of the family portraits, nothing more. He didn’t even know the butler and yet this morning he took after him with a poker and beat him half to death. Believe me, Sebastian, he deserves worse than what’s happening to him here.’
‘What’s to become of him?’ I ask.
‘A constable is coming from the village,’ says Evelyn, ushering me out of the small room, and closing the door behind us, her mood brightening immediately. ‘Father wants to let Gold know of his displeasure in the meantime, that’s all. Ah, this must be the one we wanted.’
She opens another door on the opposite side of the hall, and we enter a small room with whitewashed walls and a single window blinded by dirt. Unlike the rest of the house, there’s no draught in here and a good fire’s burning in the grate, plenty of wood stacked nearby to feed it. There’s an iron bed in the corner, the butler shapeless beneath a grey blanket. I recognise this chap. It’s the burnt man who let me in this morning.
Evelyn was right, he’s been cruelly treated. His face is hideously bruised and livid with cuts, dried blood staining the pillowcase. I might have mistaken him for dead if it weren’t for his constant murmuring, distress poisoning his sleep.
A maid is sitting beside him in a wooden chair, a large book open in her lap. She can’t be more than twenty-three, small enough to tuck into a pocket, with blonde hair spilling from beneath her cap. She looks up as we enter, slamming the book closed and leaping to her feet when she realises who we are, hastily smoothing out her white apron.
‘Miss Evelyn,’ she stammers, eyes on the floor. ‘I didn’t know you’d be visiting.’
‘My friend here needed to see Mr Collins,’ says Evelyn.
The maid’s brown eyes flick towards me, before pinning themselves to the ground once more.
‘I’m sorry, miss, he hasn’t stirred all morning,’ says the maid. ‘The doctor gave him some tablets to help him sleep.’
‘And he can’t be woken?’
‘Haven’t tried, miss, but you made an awful racket coming up them stairs and he didn’t bat an eyelid. Don’t know what else would do it, if that didn’t. Dead to the world, he is.’
The maid’s eyes find me once again, lingering long enough to suggest some sort of familiarity, before resuming their former contemplation of the floor.
‘I’m sorry, but do we know each other?’ I ask.
‘No, sir, not really, it’s just... I served you at dinner last night.’
‘Did you bring me a note?’ I ask excitedly.
‘Not me, sir, it was Madeline.’
‘Madeline?’
‘My lady’s maid,’ interrupts Evelyn. ‘The house was short-staffed so I sent her down to the kitchen to help out. Well, that’s fortunate’ – she checks her wristwatch – ‘she’s taking refreshments out to the hunters, but she’ll be back around three p.m. We can question her together when she returns.’
I turn my attention back to the maid.
‘Do you know anything more about the note?’ I ask. ‘Its contents, perhaps?’
The maid shakes her head, wringing her hands. The poor creature looks quite on the spot, and, taking pity on her, I offer my thanks and leave.