The Specimen (34 page)
Authors: Martha Lea
“You’re not so easy to find, out here on the river, are you?”
As if it was she, and not Mr Scales, he had come to see. “Depends on whether you’re local, sir.”
“Ah. Well, I’m not local.” He sat in the chair and motioned for Susan to sit in the other. She remained as she was. The man swirled the brandy around in the glass and looked
into Susan’s eyes. “You say he’s out for a walk. Does he take a walk every afternoon?”
“And every morning, too, sir. Since he come back, he’s not able to—break the habit.”
“No, I should think it would be hard. Is he well?”
“Very, sir. Thank you.” Susan shifted, left to right and back again. She excused herself, dipping a curtsey, and left the room.
Alone, Gus Pemberton paced a circuit of the room, and stopped at the bookshelves along the back wall. He let his eyes wander along the titles without paying attention to them and then turned to
look back into the room. It seemed dead. He faced the bookshelves again and made a couple more paces. He stopped again at a slim door set into the wall of books. The papers on the desk behind him
rustled as he tried the handle and the door swung open under his fingers with the faintest of clicks. The smell of mothballs and some other kind of clinical taint he’d noticed pervading the
air when he’d stepped into the house was now a suffocating fug of determined preservation. He whipped out a handkerchief.
Here then, were the things he had expected to see. A display cabinet, waist high, half timber, half glazed; it bisected the length of the room.
The walls were lined with cabinets and cupboards. Gus opened a drawer and looked down at the ranks of pinned butterflies: luminous, metallic, unearthly blue, shocking in their vivacity. He
couldn’t remember ever having seen them in flight. He remembered something Gwen had said about Vincent taking her a gift of a pupa. He’d never been much interested in butterflies. He
understood that they were beautiful to look at. And, yes, they were like jewels; but no more or less significant to him than a cranefly or a wasp. In another set of drawers, he found bird skins.
Hyacinthine macaws. Miniscule hummingbirds. Bright green things. More parrots. All the eyes padded out with cotton wool, the empty bodies stuffed so much like feathered lozenges. A milliner’s
wet dream, he thought. He closed the drawers.
Gus paced the room, his fingertips skimming the surface of the central display cabinet. He stopped short. There laid out were Gwen’s belongings. A pair of filthy kid gloves, which he had
never seen on her hands. A pair of combs he had seen her wear on a couple of occasions, which had not suited or complemented her colouring. She’d worn them very deeply, probably aware of this
fact. He remembered her hair had fallen heavily when he’d pulled the things out. A truly ghastly letter knife. Her paint-box, opened; the mixing tray still cupped the dried traces of her last
study done in South America. There, next to it, her paintbrushes laid out in neat ranks like the insect specimens. Gus felt a wave of sickness and pity and guilt wash through his gut and end in his
throat. What could it have been like, to have been Edward Scales? Was this an embodiment of his guilt, his grief? Was it here to ward off madness? Ghosts?
More; and worse. Scraps of paper, scribbled on by Augusta, precocious, of course, with such a talented mother. A tiny smock was laid out, still slightly stained with mud and clay around the hem
and around the neck and down the front; the evidence of some dripping fruit, messily consumed. It was too horrible to contemplate, the care with which these artefacts of loss had been laid out. No
labels, of course. These things were not meant for visitors. Gus felt his neck prickle.
At the far end of the room was a single armchair; an old thing, covered in worn, frayed and light-damaged watered silk with stains snaking here and there. Delicate structure. He went and stood
next to it. He could see that it had once been a good piece. The chair was flanked by a pair of identical cupboards; deep-bodied, they seemed ill-matched to the rest of the room. Gus imagined rails
full of Gwen’s clothes hanging there, falling apart and still musty with the residues of the forest. He turned a key and opened one of the doors. It swung out fast on its hinge and Gus had to
step back. At the same time he caught sight of the contents.
He swore sharply out into the empty room. A crude word to match the raw sight. And then, more softly, “Jesus.” He cleared his throat and peered into the chamber. The specimen jar was
huge. He stood for some moments regarding the thing critically, and then had to look away as he composed himself. He turned again to the body in the jar. It had sunk down to the base, the feet
turned in horribly under itself and one side flattened against the glass. The features of the face looked slightly swollen.
He found the edge of the cupboard door, pushed it home, turned the key. He left the room smartly and pulled the door closed. He wiped his teary hands on his balled handkerchief and his trousers,
and poured himself another drink. The screaming of the swifts sliced the hot air. With the first mouthful of his drink, his pulse began to return to its normal and steady rhythm.
Gus Pemberton closed his eyes. It’s all right, he told himself. It’s all going to be fine now. But he knew that couldn’t be true. All could only become much more complicated.
He still had to speak to Edward Scales. He’d been prepared for it this morning. He wasn’t so sure he was still prepared for it now.
“In a hurry again, Susan?”
“Gent to see you, sir.” She gave him the card, aware that the man could hear her every word.
“He’s not been waiting very long. I gave him a brandy.”
Edward said quietly, “Good Lord, I wonder if it can really be him, after all this time.”
“Madam said I was to give the gent a drink.”
“It’s quite all right, Susan. You did the right thing.”
Susan followed Mr Scales down the hall and, taking her duster from her pocket, began to flick it at the stairs and banisters, climbing up a few steps where she knew the sound of Mr Scales’
voice would still reach her.
“What the devil are you doing here?!” Susan heard Mr Scales kicking the wedge away from the study door. He slammed it shut.
Susan thought how odd it was, that a person could say what he was thinking but cover his meaning up with the way that he said it.
Gus stood up. “Been availing myself of your hospitality again, Scales, as you can see.”
“My God.” Edward shook his hand and clapped him tentatively on the shoulder. “What on earth brings you to Cornwall?”
“You, as a matter of fact. I’ve been sent to see you; I’ve got a bit of news.”
Carrick House. June, 1866.
Edward stared at Gus Pemberton. The sound of his two small boys crashing about in the hall and playroom was muffled; audible, the sound of his wife’s laughter.
Helpless in the face of Augustus Pemberton’s news, he sat quite still. Gus, seeming to have anticipated this confusion, also sat quietly, moving now and then to take a sip of his drink and
to cast a sidelong glance out of the window.
“Where is she? Did she come with you?” Edward pushed himself up from his seat and went over to the window.
Gus turned, half rising, to speak to Edward: “Gwen and the child bide in Richmond. She didn’t want to come here. She and her sister—there are, shall we say
grievances—”
“Does she know? Does she know? Christ.”
“Come and sit down, man.”
Edward’s shoulders drooped, and he stood immobile. Gus got up, led him back to his chair and poured some more brandy into both their glasses.
Edward said, “When I came back to England everything was in turmoil without and within. There had been so much loss, so much death—there was a feeling, a need—in both of us,
Effie and I, to salvage something.” He rushed to qualify. “Of course, my own conscience, but also to do something good for its own sake. At first our own private griefs bound us, but it
is so much more than that; especially, since the twins. My wife—my first wife—had been quite ill. An obstruction of the bowel. A rather twisted turn of events.”
Gus Pemberton said, “Yes, I know. But your deed was an act of chivalry few would contemplate, let alone carry through.”
Edward looked up at Gus questioningly and said, “It was not a simple case of finding comfort in shared grief. Euphemia was on the precipice of madness when I found her at the vicarage.
Amongst so much confusion, the least I could do.”
Edward began to shiver slightly and then his body shook, in quiet convulsions; he hugged himself to try and stop it.
“Have a drink,” Gus said. “It’s the shock, that’s all. I should have written first, if I could have been sure that you’d have received it.”
Gus waited for the shaking to subside, not allowing Edward to speak until he’d downed at least half the brandy in his glass.
“I’ve been alone with it. With how she is—potentially. I’d never, I couldn’t ever have expected anyone else to understand the complicated nature of her. I’ve
felt responsible, at every level. Will she want to, to see me, at all; what does Gwen say? Did she give you a message?”
“I can arrange for a meeting to take place, if that is what you would like.”
“Say nothing of it to Effie. This, it will tip her over. I have to think of the boys. I can’t have them being—” He was going to say “ruined”, but let his
sentence peter out.
“I’ll be discreet.”
THE TIMES
, Friday, October 5, 1866.
MURDER TRIAL AT THE OLD BAILEY.
M
R SHANKS, for the Defence, called the prisoner’s doctor, Dr Rathstone
Q: “You were called to the Pemberton family home on the morning of August 7th, were you not?”
A: “Indeed, that is quite so. I was summoned to the aid of Mrs Pemberton. I put off another call, as this call was urgent, but the nature of the call only became apparent when I examined
the patient, Mrs Pemberton. It was rather a delicate matter. The patient was in a considerable deal of pain, and unable to rise from her bed unassisted. It was immediately apparent that Mrs
Pemberton had suffered injuries to her torso, limbs and to her head and also to her face. There were abrasions and bruises which I tended first. But, as I suspected a broken rib and further
examined the patient, I questioned her in earnest about the nature of her injuries. At first, she was reluctant to reveal how she had sustained the bruising and so forth, but after an hour or
more, I learned that Mrs Pemberton had been beaten severely the night before. Of course, I did not want to press for further details, but Mrs Pemberton was anxious for the reputation of her
husband. She asked me to pass the Good Book, lying at her bedside and told me, with her hand upon it, that her husband had not harmed her. She was most anxious about it. Then she asked me if I
had spoken to her husband. When I told her that I believed he was out of the house, she became very agitated, saying that she thought Mr Pemberton must have gone to see the man about it himself
and that the thought of the two men fighting over it was worse than the injuries. Mrs Pemberton said over and over again that she didn’t want her husband to come home battered or
worse.”
Q: “It was Mrs Pemberton’s impression then, that the person who had harmed her on the night of August 3rd was still alive?”
A: “Without a doubt, sir, indeed it was. She feared for her husband’s life.”
Q: “And she seemed in genuine distress over this last?”
A: “Sir, in my long career, I have seen many women make a sham over some thing or another, but I have known Mrs Pemberton some years now, and no doubt is in my mind that the fear she
felt over her husband’s safety that morning was genuine.”
Q: “Please, Dr Rathstone, if you can, would you tell me what her exact words were?”
A: “She said, ‘He’ll kill my husband, I know he will.’ She said it many, many times until I could persuade her to take a sedative.”
Q: “And did Mrs Pemberton give you the name of the man who had injured her and whom she believed would harm her husband?”
A: “She did not; she was in great distress and would only repeat what I have told you.”
Carrick House. June, 1866.
Euphemia laughed, showing all her teeth. Gus Pemberton smiled, joining his face to her laugh, but he could not meet her gaze. Trout. He attended to the food on his plate. Done
very nicely by Susan, gutted earlier by himself and Edward, Susan quiet by the sink waiting to deal with the guts and cleaned fish. The task of taking the trout from the pool (it was not large
enough to be a lake, not really) could hardly have been less satisfying. As Edward lowered the landing net into the water, Gus had heard the gentle breaking of waves, fifty yards beyond the garden
wall. An unsightly and abrupt end to the amble down the paths. In his mind, he vaulted the mortar and stone, and stood looking out at the scene Gwen had once described to him. The wall must be new.
She had never mentioned a wall. The innards spilled neatly, releasing a muddy taint into the air.
Gus Pemberton found Gwen’s sister charmless. He tried to discover something he could like in Euphemia’s character, so that he would not find himself being false with her. He thought
that if he’d found himself married to such a creature, he would have spent twice as much time out of the house as Edward Scales.