The Taxidermist's Daughter (25 page)

Chapter 41

Mill Lane

Fishbourne

Connie walked as fast as she dared, her boots sliding in the mud. Despite what she’d said to Davey, she couldn’t remember conditions as terrible as this. Water was lapping over the first of the bridges across the creek. It was impossible to know if it was the sheer volume of fresh water making its way from the chalk Downs to the sea, or the powerful tides forcing salt water up and over the land.

The stream where Vera’s body had been found was now a river, swollen by the overnight rain and the surge of the neap tide. Only the tops of the reedmace were visible; the rest was hidden beneath the angry surface of the sea. With each pulse of the current, more of the brackish, swirling water came up over the banks and on to the grass.

The wooden handrail on the second of the bridges was slippery, green beneath her glove, and Connie almost fell, but she held firm and carefully made her way over. The third bridge was covered by leaves and broken branches.

Water was roaring through the sluice gate by Fishbourne Mill. The driveway to Salt Mill House was already under an inch of water. It wouldn’t take much for Slay Lodge to flood too. She looked at Pendrills, where yesterday she had seen the magpies. Today, the roof was empty. The birds had taken shelter.

For the third time, Connie stopped and looked back in the direction she’d come. Should she turn back? If Blackthorn House was cut off, what would happen to Gifford in his fragile condition? Then she strengthened her resolve once more. She hoped she could trust Davey. She wasn’t going to be long, after all. This was her only chance, before the next high tide.

She peered through the mist and rain and thought of Harry, waiting for her. She had to tell him what she had found out.

Slay Lodge

Fishbourne

From an upstairs window in Slay Lodge, Charles Crowther caught a glimpse of Connie Gifford’s back, before she turned the corner on to the main road and disappeared from view.

He was worried about the young woman. She was carrying a great deal on her shoulders, and he wondered what could possibly have brought her out in such dreadful conditions. News about her father?

Crowther went quickly downstairs and followed her out into Mill Lane, holding his mackintosh over his bare head.

‘Miss Gifford,’ he shouted, but his voice was lost in the cracking of the wind.

West Street

Chichester

The bells of the cathedral were striking eight as Sutton fumbled with the keys, struggling to open the front door. Rain dripped down the inside of his collar, and his fingers were cold and stiff.

He stumbled into the entrance hall. He stamped his feet on the mat, turned his umbrella into West Street before propping it open to dry. The same familiar sinking feeling came over him at the thought of another day’s work. Being shouted at, menaced, pushed and prodded, made to feel foolish.

Hanging his sodden coat on the hat stand, hoping it wouldn’t drip too badly – Mr Brook wouldn’t take kindly to that – he picked up a crumpled ball of waste paper from the floor. He wondered how he’d missed it when he’d gone home last evening.

He opened the glass doors and walked into the vestibule. He wrinkled his nose, detecting whisky and cigar smoke, and his heart sank further. The smell, held in the damp air, gave away the fact that Mr Brook had returned to the office from Goodwood. Sutton had left at his usual time, not a minute before, but Brook nonetheless would have been furious to find the office unattended.

Sutton sighed. The best he could hope for was that Harold Woolston took it upon himself to turn up today. If he did, having been absent for two days without permission, then Mr Brook might take his anger out on Woolston instead and leave his clerk alone.

He dropped the screwed-up letter in the rubbish bin, got out the appointments diary and ledger and arranged his pen, ink and pencils. Whatever time Mr Brook did arrive, he wanted to be ready and waiting.

Main Road

Fishbourne

‘I don’t need you to come with me, Ma,’ Mary argued. ‘I only nipped back to let you know I was all right. What will Miss Gifford think if I turn up with my mother in tow? It makes me look half-witted.’

‘No it doesn’t,’ Mrs Christie said. ‘And if even part of what you tell me happened last night is true, then Miss Gifford will be glad to see me. I should have gone yesterday, but I let myself be talked out of it.’ She shrugged her arms into her coat. ‘As for him, someone’s got to take him in hand.’

‘Him?’ Mary stared at her mother in disbelief. ‘But you don’t hold with Mr Gifford. Neither use nor ornament, that’s what you said.’

‘And I’m sure it’s not right for me to turn my back on a fellow Christian in time of need,’ she said tartly, adjusting her hat in the mirror. ‘Well, are you coming, or am I to go on my own?’

‘What about the twins?’ Mary said, making a last-ditch attempt to stop her. ‘You can’t leave them on their own.’

‘Kate Boys is going to mind them.’ Mrs Christie pushed a hatpin through her hair. ‘There. Now, are you ready?’

‘Ready,’ Mary conceded defeat.

The truth of the matter was, for all her complaining, she was glad of her mother’s company. After the events of last night, Mary was nervous about what else might have happened at Blackthorn House in the hours she’d been gone, and what she might find when she returned.

Chapter 42

South Street

Chichester

Connie rushed out of Chichester railway station.

Because of the atrocious weather, there were only a couple of hansom cabs waiting at the Dunnaways rank. The horses were restless, jittery in the wind.

‘Taxi, miss?’

‘Reasonable rate,’ said the next. ‘Anywhere you want to go. Save your boots.’

Connie shook her head. ‘I’m not going far.’

Only nine o’clock, but there was already a handful of men outside the Globe Inn, huddled tight against the wall, sheltering from the squall. It seemed quiet, though every week in the local newspaper a list was published of men up before the bench for brawling and bound over to keep the peace. If Davey was right, this was where Gregory Joseph had got caught up in the fight that had seen him sent to prison. Defending a lady, Davey had added with a touch of admiration. Got sent away for three months all the same.

Connie hurried by, ignoring the mumbled compliments or insults – they sounded the same – and up into South Street. Past the Regnum Club and the main post office, the tobacconist and fishmonger. All familiar landmarks but she barely noticed them.

A flower seller and Joe Faro, nursing his pie oven, sheltered from the rain under the Market Cross. One or two black-suited juniors from Chichester businesses – law firms, doctors, property managers – who met each morning under the clock to exchange letters by hand. She knew Sergeant Pennicott often stationed himself there, hoping to pick up gossip.

Not today.

She glanced up at the clock and saw she was early, though she didn’t think Harry would mind. And the sooner they talked and decided what to do for the best, the sooner Connie could be on her way back to Fishbourne and her father. Away from Blackthorn House, her sense of foreboding had grown stronger. More than ever, she regretted not seeing last night’s conversation through to its conclusion. But her father had been so confused and exhausted, she couldn’t possibly have bullied him.

She arrived at the Georgian house at the top of North Street. She was cold and very wet, yet she felt her pulse accelerate.

A tall, grey-haired servant answered the door and stood back to let her step under the porch and out of the rain. He looked worn, tired.

‘I’m Constantia Gifford,’ she said. ‘Could you tell Mr Woolston I am here.’

‘He is expecting you, miss,’ he said. ‘Mr Woolston has gone out, but asked if you might wait.’

Connie looked back down the street. ‘I don’t suppose you know where he has gone . . .’ She broke off. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.’

‘Lewis, miss. Mr Woolston didn’t say. Only that he would be back soon.’

It obviously made sense to wait. They had an arrangement for ten o’clock. Of course, Harry would keep to it. Perhaps he’d decided to go to Graylingwell to see what he could find out.

‘Has there been any news, Lewis? About Dr Woolston?’

She saw the old servant’s expression waver. ‘No, miss, I regret to say there has not.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

Connie looked down at the rain running off her coat on to the floor and, suddenly, was overcome with fatigue. The succession of revelations, her recovered memories, the lack of sleep – she felt it had stripped every bit of flesh from her bones. She was completely exhausted.

The butler gestured to the drawing room. ‘If you would like to make yourself at home, Miss Gifford, I could bring you a tray of coffee?’

She pulled herself together. She couldn’t allow her resolve to fail now.

‘Thank you, Lewis,’ she said, handing him her hat and coat. ‘I will wait.’

Blackthorn House

Fishbourne Marshes

Gifford was turning his bedroom inside out. Checking everything, his hands pulling at his bed sheets, shaking out every book, searching the pockets of his clothes in the wardrobe.

Someone – Connie most likely – had tidied the room, he could see that. All the bottles had gone and the ashtrays emptied. But she wouldn’t have taken the letter, would she? He stamped from one side of the room to the other. Despite his ordeal, he was steady on his feet. The letter had to be somewhere. He needed to check exactly what it said. The postmark and the address, all the details he’d barely registered before.

He forced himself to stand still. For a moment, all he heard was the howling of the wind down the chimney. It was so dark, though it was past nine o’clock in the morning. He checked his trouser pockets again, trying to piece together the sequence of events.

Where had he put it?

The letter from the asylum had arrived in April. A Wednesday. Was that right? Who had brought it? He couldn’t recall that either. Only that from the second he had read the words on the page, he’d felt as if his chest had been sliced open and his heart torn out.

Then what? Drinking. Attempting to drown his grief, a grief he could share with no one. Not even his daughter.

Gifford paused. Jennie would have understood. For a moment, he allowed himself to remember the woman of whom he’d been so fond, then he shook his head and continued to search.

The remainder of April, drinking to forget, drinking until he couldn’t remember who he was or what he had become. The pain came crawling back in the end, every time. Whisky, ale, brandy, nothing strong enough to obliterate the bleak fact that Cassie was dead.

A week later, another note. Block capitals. Unsigned. Inviting him – ordering him – to the graveyard on the Eve of St Mark. Horrified to see them – three of them, at least – there as well. Distressed by the death of all the tiny birds, battered against the tombstones and trampled underfoot.

And seeing her.

A ghost, he’d thought then. Wearing Cassie’s blue coat. Later, looking out of his bedroom window and seeing her sepulchral image in the stream as well. Everywhere Gifford looked, he saw visions of Cassie. A spirit, an echo. But last night, Connie had said she was a real person. A girl called Vera. And during the night, as the dark gave way to the dawn, he had remembered that Cassie had known a girl called Vera in Graylingwell. A girl with the same colour hair.

Who else – other than Cassie – could have given Vera the coat?

What if the letter hadn’t come from the asylum at all?

Gifford lifted the mattress, hunting between the cracks of the bed frame and the floorboards. Had it been written on the usual headed notepaper?

If Cassie had died three weeks ago – influenza, the letter had said – why hadn’t they told him about the funeral yet? Once a month, Gifford collected mail from the
poste restante
at the main post office in Chichester and settled the monthly account with the hospital. Connie didn’t know. No one knew. Could information about the burial be waiting for him there instead?

He had to find the letter. Find the envelope. Had to be sure.

Gifford lifted the glass ashtray. Then, in a rush, he remembered. He had burnt the letter. He pictured himself, standing in the middle of the room, his shaking hands struggling to light a match. Holding it to the corner of the paper and watching the words go up in smoke.

He walked to the window, hardly daring to trust the direction his thoughts were taking. He knew how remorse and grief played tricks on a man. How the mind would protect itself from truths too painful to accept. He rubbed the damp from the glass with his sleeve.

Out in the creek, the wind was whipping the water ever higher, ever more fiercely against the foundations of the Old Salt Mill. The black clouds were so low, separating Fishbourne from Apuldram, that Gifford couldn’t see across to the far side of the estuary.

He couldn’t see the cottage.

But he knew it was there. And if he was right – he prayed that he was right and Cassie was not dead – where else would she go but there?

North Street

Chichester

Connie stood in front of the portrait.

Light-headed from lack of sleep, she felt as if she was looking at herself in a mirror. She recognised herself in the direct stare and the tilt of her head. She wondered when Harry had painted it.

‘Here you are,’ said Lewis, appearing in the doorway carrying a tray.

‘I found I couldn’t sit still. Since the door was ajar, I came in here. I don’t think Mr Woolston will mind.’

‘No, miss.’ Lewis glanced at the easel. ‘If I might make so bold as to say, it is a good likeness.’

Connie smiled. ‘It is. I don’t know much about art, but I think he has a real eye. For what matters.’

Lewis nodded. ‘Dr Woolston is proud of him,’ he said, ‘even though—’

The butler stopped, clearly horrified to have forgotten himself so far as to express an opinion.

‘I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting Dr Woolston.’ Connie paused. ‘I assume there is still no word from Mr Woolston?’

Lewis shook his head. Connie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece, then towards the window.

‘The weather is getting worse,’ she said, looking at the rain. ‘I’d hoped it might ease.’

If the storm came in quicker than predicted, she ran the risk of not being able to get to the village, let alone Blackthorn House.

‘Mr Woolston was very insistent that I should impress upon you how much he hoped you would wait until he returned, Miss Gifford.’

Connie nodded. She heard another rumble of thunder, still some way off. She would give him another half an hour. But if he hadn’t arrived by ten thirty, however desperate she was to see him – and she was, even more so now she’d seen the painting – she would have no choice but to leave.

The butler put down the tray on a side table and left her alone.

‘Come on, Harry,’ she murmured, looking again at the hands of the clock. ‘Hurry up, come on.’