Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  Adam had one requirement only, to find Bethany, and so far she had failed. And here she was running up eighteen, no, nearly twenty pounds on expenses, clutching at straws, possibly atoning for the attraction she felt for him by working doubly hard to find his girlfriend?

  She hoped she had enough change, wondered if the driver would accept a cheque, if she had her cheque book with her that was. She opened her shoulder bag, rummaged around inside, couldn’t see much in the poor light. Swain’s Lane was like a road in a country village, spooky, dark and winding, with just a couple of street lamps, no houses, shops or cars. Just the burial ground flanking it.

  ‘Long way to go for a bunch of flowers,’ the driver had joked in broad cockney.

  Now, he reached his arm back, slid the glass partition open, allowing faint strains of country music to waft through.

  ‘You’ll not be able to get in there yet. Too early.’ He threw the words over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the road.

  She realised he was talking about the cemetery, presuming she planned to take flowers to a grave. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

  He glanced at his watch. ‘Nearly eight.’ It was said with a warning note, in case she was putting on the pressure to get her there quickly. ‘This the place?’ he said a few moments later, flashing a look at her in the rear view mirror.

  There was a painted sign. Highgate Florists. ‘Great, thanks.’

  It had a bowed bay window, like an old fashioned sweet shop, filled with baskets and vases of flowers. The lights were on but the sign hanging on the inside of the door was flipped over to ‘closed’.

  She couldn’t find a knocker or bell by the shop door, so rapped her knuckles gently on the bull’s eye glass. She studied the display in the bay window. It was not your typical florists, full of gaudy yellows and reds and bright blues. The muted, tasteful garlands and bouquets on show hinted at the shop’s proximity to the cemetery, flowers for graves and funerals instead of for lovers and wedding bouquets.

  The door was opened by a striking woman who looked to be in her early forties, but could have been older. Tall and broad shouldered with long hair a rich henna auburn, she was dressed in a flowing skirt the colours of the rainbow, and jangly silver earrings and necklaces.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you, but I wondered if I might take a moment of your time,’ Natasha said. ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  The woman smiled. ‘Aren’t we all?’ She stood back to let Natasha in and as she closed the door behind her a tiny wind chime tinkled. The shop was filled with the heady fragrances of a summer garden.

  On the wooden counter, was a little glass jug containing bunches of violets.

  Natasha introduced herself and the woman held out her hand. ‘Rosie,’ she said. ‘Appropriately, but it’s my real name.’ Natasha wondered how many times she’d said that. ‘What can I do for you?’

  Natasha handed over the photograph of Bethany. ‘I wondered if this girl ever worked here?’

  Rosie glanced at the picture briefly, then back at Natasha, her expression suddenly guarded. ‘You’re from the police?’

  It was said as a statement rather than a question. It hadn’t occurred to Natasha that her inquiries might be construed that way. ‘No, no. I’m a genealogist.’

  ‘I see, sorry.’ Rosie looked back at the picture. ‘Bethany,’ she said. ‘She left a month or so ago.’

  Natasha felt her mouth forming a broad smile. Rosie was smiling back, and Natasha realised her own reaction must have given Rosie the impression Bethany was a long lost relative. Which was probably why Rosie’s smile turned to a cautious frown when Natasha asked her next question: ‘Could you tell me her full name?’

  ‘Marshall. Bethany Marshall.’

  So Bethany had lied to her employer too.

  ‘Do you know where she lived?’

  The woman was definitely eyeing her warily now. ‘I’m not sure…’

  ‘It doesn’t seem right to go around giving out a person’s address to anyone who asks. I know.’

  Rosie smiled, disarmed. ‘Well, no.’

  Natasha couldn’t quite understand why simply voicing someone’s inner concerns helped to allay them. But Rosie bent down to a shelf underneath the till and pulled out a thick black book that looked like a ledger. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Her details will be in the wages book. We pay staff at the end of the week, by cheque, or cash in Bethany’s case as I seem to recall; she said she didn’t have a bank account. There should be a phone number. I’ll give it a ring, see if she minds me letting you have it. Here it is.’ Rosie jotted something down on a note pad. ‘Of course, it’s over a month now since she left. She might have moved on. Phone’s in the back. I’ll just be a tick.’

  She closed the book, slipped it back under the counter.

  Amazed that Rosie hadn’t taken it with her, Natasha leant right over and dragged it back onto the counter. She flicked back four weeks, five.

  Bethany Marshall, 14 Chatham Place, London E17.

  Quickly she returned the ledger to its place. She felt an absurd urge to laugh.

  She heard Rosie’s footsteps.

  ‘Sorry. Unobtainable.’

  Surprise, surprise. ‘Thank for trying anyway.’

  Bethany had given a false name, it should have come as no shock that she’d given a false address too. It was as obvious as her choice of surname. She’d part adopted the diary writer’s identity, and for her address – she’d given the flat where Rossetti and Lizzie had lived during their short, ill-fated marriage, the place Lizzie died, the place where Rossetti placed the book of poems in her coffin. Chatham Place, Blackfriars.

  ‘I’m not sure why she left the shop,’ Rosie was saying. ‘She only worked here for about two months, part-time. Just came in and asked for a job one afternoon. I happened to need an extra pair of hands so I took her on to start right away. Then one evening she said she wouldn’t be coming any more. That was that. Still, she did have a long way to come every morning.’

  ‘You knew her well?’

  ‘Not really. I’m not in here that often. She seemed a nice enough girl. A bit strange and dreamy. But she was ever so clever with the flowers, no formal training as far as I could tell, but she had a real artistic flair, an instinctive eye for colour. Katherine, my assistant, would have known her better. She’s the one who generally runs the shop from day to day.’

  ‘Could I speak to her?’

  ‘She’ll be in again on Monday.’

  ‘Is there any way you could put me in touch with her before that?’

  ‘She took a few days’ holiday. That’s why I’m in here covering today,’ Rosie sounded impatient now, feeling she’d done her bit. ‘I think she said she was going away for the weekend, but I suppose I could give her a ring at home, see if she’s still there?’ Without waiting for a reply she disappeared again.

  Natasha took a deep breath.

  A minute later Rosie returned, shaking her head.

  ‘Not having much luck I’m afraid. Just an answering machine. I’ve left a message. The best I can do is if you leave me your number. I’ll get her to call you.’

  ‘Thank you, that would be really kind.’ Natasha handed Rosie a business card, thanked her again and turned to leave. Then, on an impulse, she asked for a bunch of violets.

  ‘I take it you know her boyfriend,’ Rosie said, as if the thought had just come to her. ‘Didn’t care for him much myself, shifty sort of character, and too arrogant by half. Used to come and pick her up from work. He’s been back here a couple of times since she left, asking if I’ve heard anything.’

  Thirty-Two

  NATASHA CLUTCHED THE flowers as she caught the Northern line down to Embankment. She felt adrift, thinking she understood nothing of this world or the people in it, if she could judge characters so badly. Adam and Bethany. She’d been wrong about them both.

  The gusts of stale underground air that blasted through the rattling train were tempered, now and then, by a clean
er fragrance from the flowers. But it only seemed to make her feel worse.

  At least the combined effects of the hangover and rage helped to stop her feeling scared. The lying bastard. Adam had told her that he didn’t know where Bethany worked.

  She changed onto the Circle line. Westbound would have taken her to up to Paddington. There’d be a train leaving for Moreton-in-Marsh in half an hour. But she turned in the opposite direction and headed east.

  She came out of the tube station at Blackfriars into a disorientating labyrinth of poorly lit underpasses, concrete paving slabs and tunnels, graffiti sprawled across the walls. The ground was littered with discarded crisp packets and sweet wrappers, apple cores and crushed soft drink cans.

  She was going against the flow, weaving through waves of City workers with briefcases.

  She came out high above the river and inched forward, looking down, feeling the strange sensation you experienced at the top of high buildings, as if you weren’t quite in control of your own actions.

  Natasha knew this part of London well, yet she couldn’t quite get her bearings now. She checked the A-Z.

  Chatham Place was in incongruous residential oasis hidden in a crowd of commercial properties off New Bridge Road. It was part of a short terrace of four tall, narrow Victorian brick houses. They looked forgotten, left behind by mistake. There was nothing to mark out Number 14, no distinguishing feature, no blue English Heritage plaque.

  Natasha stood back and looked up at its windows. One, at the very top, was illuminated with a faint amber glow and slits of light through drawn curtains. She rang the brass doorbell, heard its muffled chimes, and waited.

  There was a spy glass in the door, an empty milk bottle beside the step.

  She heard the sound a chain being slipped into place and the door opened a few centimetres.

  ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you,’ Natasha said. ‘But I wonder if I could talk to you for a moment?’

  ‘Of course.’ The door closed for a second to release the chain, then opened wide. ‘Come on then, dear, out of the cold.’

  The owner was an old lady. Even so early in the morning, she had a small, beautifully made-up face, pearls in her ears, inquisitive china blue eyes, and a neat, pale blonde bun.

  Natasha was ushered into a narrow tiled hallway filled with pot plants, then up a steep flight of steps. She caught a strong smell, musky and sweet. Furniture polish and pot-pourri.

  ‘I rent out the ground floor,’ the old lady explained as they came into a small, warm, living room on the first floor, decorated with cream satin wallpaper threaded with gold stripes, walnut cabinets displaying sparkling china, glass and silverware. ‘This is the room where she died, you know.’

  Natasha started, turned to the old lady, followed her gaze, and her heart missed a beat.

  Hanging on the wall in the far corner by the large window was one of Rossetti’s portraits of Lizzie Siddal. Its delicate gilt frame blended perfectly with the wallpaper, so for a split second it looked as if Lizzie was standing there, watching.

  ‘Please, do sit down. It’s Marion by the way.’ She indicated a winged chair by an elaborate marble fireplace inlaid with yellow and cobalt blue ceramic tiles. There was no fire, but a large basket of dried flowers in the grate. ‘There’s no need to look so concerned, dear,’ she added, when Natasha didn’t move. ‘I know what you’re thinking. I must be crazy, letting strangers into my home. Well, I probably am. But if you can’t be crazy at my age, when can you be?’ She stood, small and thin, back ramrod straight, her slender stockinged ankles showing beneath a blue silk skirt that matched the scarf around her neck. Her voice trembled a little, as did her hands. ‘It’s far better to be reckless when you’re old I think. Whatever happens, you’ve had your life. I’ve a little rule: after dark I don’t let any boys in.’ She gave an impish grin.

  Natasha found herself smiling too.

  ‘Besides, I’m well armed,’ she brandished a lethal looking hat pin that made Natasha flinch, then laugh as the old lady threaded her weapon back into her scarf, out of sight. ‘My young visitors are the only company I get these days,’ she added, again as if Natasha would know exactly what she was talking about. ‘I wouldn’t miss them for anything.’

  Natasha reminded herself that she’d come to find out if Bethany had ever been here. ‘You said the rooms downstairs are rented?’

  ‘Mr Braithwaite. He’s a banker. With a house and a family in Herefordshire. He arrives on a Monday night and leaves on Friday morning, quiet as a mouse.’

  ‘Has he lived there long?’

  ‘Over two years now.’

  Natasha wasn’t in the least surprised that this had never been Bethany’s home. ‘And apart from him, you’re alone?’

  ‘Ever since my husband passed away. Except for the ghosts that is.’

  Natasha wondered if the ‘visitors’ and the ‘ghosts’ were one and the same. She decided Marion was gloriously batty.

  The old lady was arranging a cushion in the small of her back, plumping it up. She rested against it. ‘I don’t just say that to please you lot, you know.’ She fixed Natasha with her merry blue eyes. ‘You get a definite sense of them sometimes. You can probably feel it too, if you let yourself. It’s never bothered me. In fact it’s the main reason I bought the place. I was fascinated with her myself, you see.’

  ‘Lizzie Siddal?’

  Marion inclined her head.

  ‘And your visitors…?’

  ‘I get all sorts. Painters and art students mainly. Also actresses, musicians. People who are interested in her too. I give them a cup of tea and have a nice chat about poetry and pictures and whatnot. I wanted to be a painter when I was young. But it was frowned on in those days. As it was in hers, of course. But she had the courage to not let that stand in her way. I was too concerned with being respectable. A crippling ambition, which I’m glad to say I’ve now abandoned entirely. Though it’s a case of the heart being willing and the flesh weak I’m afraid.

  Natasha revised her opinion. Marion was maybe one of the sanest people she’d met in a long time.

  The old lady put her finger to her lips, looked Natasha up and down. ‘Let me guess now. You’re an art student too?

  Natasha shook her head.

  ‘A dancer then?’

  ‘I’m a genealogist.’

  ‘How terribly interesting.’ Marion cocked her head to one side. ‘You look rather like an artist.’

  Natasha opened her bag, took out the photograph. ‘Have you ever seen this girl?’

  Marion took the picture, reached over to the bureau behind her chair for a pair of little round glasses, then studied it carefully. ‘It was only taken a couple of months ago,’ Natasha explained, in case the old lady made the same mistake she had and assumed it was much older.

  ‘And is this girl interested in Lizzie?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know, I’m not sure if I have seen her. She seems familiar. But then, as I say, I get so many. Maybe she’s been here. Perhaps she’s just one of those who come to look from the outside. I see them on the pavement, standing there. Some take photographs but others simply stay a while and then walk back the way they came.’ She gave the picture a little tap. ‘Yes, perhaps that’s why I feel I know her from somewhere. She’s a pretty child.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Friend of yours, is she?’

  Natasha looked at Marion’s kind, expectant face. ‘I don’t know who she is.’ The truth of the words sunk in as she spoke them and she felt utterly despondent. She took the photograph back.

  This was a girl who’d in all likelihood given a false name to her lover and a false address to her employers, who’d gone to such lengths to keep her identity a secret. And she’d succeeded.

  The florist had immediately assumed that Natasha was from the police. Was that the conclusion anyone would make, if faced by someone asking if they knew a person in a picture? On reflection, Rosie had seemed oddly unsurprised, as if she’d b
een expecting it. As if there’d been something about Bethany that had made her suspicious, made it seem natural that the police would come looking for her.

  I have a bad heart.

  The Pre-Raphaelites were drawn to the idea of evil women, femme fatales, artists tormented and destroyed by female beauty. Maybe Adam had seen something in Bethany, something dangerous, that had attracted him.

  She glanced up at the old lady who was watching her with interest. Natasha realised how odd her own behaviour must seem, showing a picture of someone she said she didn’t even know. But that was the great thing about people who were a bit loopy, they didn’t notice it in others. Marion seemed accepting and entirely at ease with her.

  ‘Will you have a cup of tea?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d love one.’

  She disappeared, leaving Natasha alone.

  She walked over to the picture that hung on the wall, Lizzie’s face gazing out of the golden frame as if out of a window.

  The open coffin had rested in the window here, her body laid out in it, wraithlike and at peace at last, her pale, beautiful face so little altered from the way it had looked in life. She’d breathed her last breath in this very room, which had seen so much of her sorrows and fleeting joys. It was here that her little dead daughter was born, to this room that Rossetti called Dr Marshall back days after Lizzie herself had died, because he believed she could be revived.

  Natasha moved across to the window, stared out at the vast blackness of the river. A gauzy mist was descending, making nimbuses round the street lamps which had not yet been turned off.

  The view was eerily familiar, as if she herself had stood here before. She realized she was recognizing it from another of the pictures in the book. Lizzie, in the balcony room, standing with her arms resting on the back of a chair, tilting it onto two legs towards her, leaning over to look at a painting propped up on an easel. And behind her, through the window, the Thames and Blackfriars Bridge.