The Taxidermist's Daughter

by Kate Mosse

  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.’

  Chapter 43

  Blackthorn House

  Fishbourne Marshes

  ‘Davey,’ said Mary, ‘what are you playing at?’ She shook his shoulder. ‘Wake up.’

  The boy was awake and up on his feet, fists in front of him, before Mary had the chance to shake him again.

  ‘It’s all right, boy,’ Mrs Christie said softly. ‘Nothing to be scared of.’

  Davey looked at her, then at Mary, with bleary eyes. He remembered where he was and lowered his hands.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Christie. For a moment . . .’

  She put her arm around him. ‘I know, lad. No one’s going to hurt you here.’

  Davey put his hands in his pockets. ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly ten o’clock,’ Mary replied, ‘though you wouldn’t think it. It’s as black as pitch outside.’

  ‘Ten!’ he said. ‘Miss Gifford told me to put out the sandbags, but I must’ve nodded off. And she wanted me to tell you to check the pails in the attic.’

  Mary raised her eyebrows. ‘And since when do I take my orders from you? I’ll wait until Miss Gifford tells me herself.’

  ‘It’s good she’s still asleep. It’ll do her the world of good.’

  Davey shook his head. ‘She’s not sleeping, Mrs Christie. She went to town.’

  ‘What in the name of heaven possessed her to do that?’

  Davey glanced at Mary, not sure how much she might have told her mother about what had taken place at Blackthorn House. He had a healthy suspicion of all adults, but Mary was half-and-half.

  ‘I told Ma about what happened last night,’ Mary said.

  ‘All of it?’ Davey asked.

  ‘Most of it.’

  ‘What didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Nothing, Ma.’

  Mrs Christie looked from one to the other.

  ‘Honest,’ Davey said, crossing his fingers over his chest.

  ‘Why’s she gone out in this weather? Something her father said?’

  Davey shook his head. ‘None of what he was saying made sense.’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Mary scolded.

  ‘I’m just saying it as it is.’

  ‘Why has Miss Gifford gone to Chichester?’ Mrs Christie repeated.

  ‘She arranged it before. To meet Harry.’

  Mrs Christie was silent for a moment, then she looked at the rumpled day bed. ‘And what about Gifford? Is he all right?’

  ‘Seems to be,’ Davey said. ‘Took himself upstairs a couple of hours ago. He woke up about eight, give or take. Asked where Miss Gifford was. I told him. Then he wanted to know if anyone had come to the house. I said they hadn’t, except for Mr Crowther, who came to enquire after Miss Gifford first thing. That was that. The master went back upstairs. Haven’t seen hide nor hair since.’

  ‘I wonder if I should take him up a tray,’ Mary said.

  ‘I wouldn’t if I were you, love,’ Mrs Christie said quietly.

  Mary folded her arms. ‘You’ve got an opinion on everything now, Ma.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something else for nothing,’ Davey said, turning to Mrs Christie. ‘Miss Gifford made quite a palaver about your name.’

  ‘Oh? And why might my name be of the slightest interest to anyone?’

  Her voice was calm, but Davey and Mary both heard the strain in it.


  ‘Don’t ask me,’ Davey said. ‘I was talking about the floods back in January and said your Christian name – I didn’t mean any disrespect by it – and Miss Gifford got all somehow. Wanted to know who “Jennie” was, and when I told her, she went all quiet. I think Mr Gifford mentioned someone called Jennie earlier, so I reckon it struck a chord.’

  ‘Did he now?’ Mrs Christie said softly.

  ‘And it’s funny,’ said Davey, running on, ‘because before – not that I was listening, mind – he came out with a different name when he was talking to Miss Gifford.’ He frowned. ‘Cassie, I think it was.’

  Mrs Christie turned white. ‘I knew it.’

  To her daughter’s astonishment, she sank down in one of the armchairs.

  ‘Ma,’ Mary said urgently. ‘Get up! What if the master comes down?’

  ‘Let him,’ she said. ‘It’s high time. By the sounds of things, he won’t be surprised to see me.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Mrs Christie gave a deep sigh, then pulled up another chair and patted the seat. Mary glanced at Davey, and sat down beside her mother.

  ‘Me and Crowley Gifford go way back,’ Mrs Christie said.

  ‘He’s never said so,’ Mary said, looking even more confused.

  ‘No reason for him to know,’ said her mother, half smiling. ‘It was a long time ago. I was Jennie Wickens then.’

  Davey sat down cross-legged on the floor to listen too, the sandbags quite forgotten.

  North Street

  Chichester

  A loud crack of thunder overhead shook the cup and coffee pot on the tray.

  It was ten forty-five. Harry still wasn’t back. Connie went out into the hall again, hoping to find Lewis, but the butler was nowhere to be seen.

  In her sleep-starved state, she felt as though time and space, all the hours and minutes, were rolling into one continuous present. Now that the wall in her mind had been breached – the wall that for ten years had divided her present from her past – reminiscences, scenes from her childhood, sights and sounds and smells were coming back to her.

  Most of all, Connie remembered Cassie.

  She had arrived at the age of twelve, when Connie was four. Cassie had been brought up by an aunt, then come to Lyminster when her aunt died. Bright and spirited, everyone loved her. Connie’s father had employed Cassie as a tutor, a big sister manquée, a friend to look after Connie while Gifford worked in the museum.

  It was Cassie who taught her to write and read, to quote poems and learn plays off by heart. Cassie who told her about how swans mated for life, she remembered now, and Cassie who’d tied a yellow ribbon around the neck of the preserved cob in the entrance hall of the Museum to show Connie how pretty it was, not frightening at all. Was it the same yellow ribbon Gifford had been hiding in the ice house all these years?

  She saw flickering images of the years passing, as they both grew up. Cassie wearing a smart ruffled shirt and a long black skirt, her hair pinned up. They were happy then. Her father, for all his salesman’s patter, his charlatan ways and lapses of judgement, had been a good man. He was going to pay for Cassie to train to be a teacher, as soon as Connie was grown up enough to manage without her.

  The smile faded from Connie’s face. She didn’t believe Gifford would have harmed a hair on Cassie’s head. But if her recollection of the night in the museum was accurate, then at the very least, he had colluded in covering up her death?

  Would he have done that?

  Connie didn’t think so. He would have done anything in his power to bring her attackers to justice.

  Piecing together her father’s comments, his terrible collapse over the past few weeks, and the ways in which secrets were leaking out now, though he’d held his peace for all of these years, it all pointed to the same conclusion.

  The bells of the cathedral started to chime eleven.

  Connie rushed through to Harry’s studio. She scribbled a brief message on a scrap of rough paper, asking him to join her at Blackthorn House as soon as possible, then charged back into the hall. She feared for Dr Woolston and she feared for Harry. Most of all, she felt sick with fear for her father.

  ‘Lewis?’

  The butler still did not appear. Connie dropped the note on to the salver on the hall table, grabbed her hat and coat from the stand and rushed out into the storm.

  The rain was flooding in torrents down North Street. Men were hauling sandbags and propping pieces of timber and board in front of the doorways. Even so, the rainwater was sweeping up against the stone steps of the Georgian houses and over the lower thresholds of the shops and hotels. She hoped Davey had done what she’d asked of him.

  Was her father’s life in danger? If he saw no reason to keep quiet any longer, then what was to stop them silencing him? Someone had killed Vera Barker and covered up her death. Connie was certain it was a member – members – of the Corvidae Club. The four preserved birds, each seemingly representing the men there that night. They were murderers. Witnesses to a murder.

  She started to run, not caring who saw her.

  Chapter 44

  The West Sussex County Asylum

  Chichester

  ‘I told you,’ the cleaning woman repeated. ‘Dr Woolston came in when I was cleaning the theatre. Said he had an appointment with a gentleman at six o’clock. “Room’s not in use,” I told him. He went up the steps, through the curtain on to the stage. That was the last I saw of him. I don’t know nothing more.’

  Pennicott wrote another methodical note in his pad. Harry looked from the policeman to the medical superintendent and back again. He wished he could ask his own questions, but the superintendent had only agreed to allow him to be present at the interview on the understanding that he did not speak or interfere in any way.

  ‘When you say “gentleman”,’ Pennicott said carefully, ‘did Dr Woolston say as much?’

  ‘Not in so many words,’ she admitted.

  ‘So he could have been meeting a man or a woman?’

  She shrugged. ‘Could’ve been.’

  ‘And he gave no indication as to whether this person was a patient or a visitor?’

  ‘It don’t matter how many times you keep on at me, I’ve told you all I know already.’

  ‘No need to take that tone,’ Dr Kidd said.

  ‘It’s as wise to be clear.’ Pennicott looked back to his notes. ‘So Dr Woolston went on to the backstage area, and you left the theatre and began work in the corridor. Is that correct?’

  ‘Correct,’ she said sullenly.

  ‘You heard nothing more?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And you did not see Dr Woolston come out again?’

  ‘No.’ She turned to the medical superintendent. ‘Can I get off now, sir? Some of us have got work to do.’

  ‘Sergeant?’ Kidd asked.

  Pennicott nodded. ‘You can go. Thank you.’

  He returned to his notes. Dr Kidd waited patiently.

  Harry was impressed with how helpful the medical superintendent was being. Having received the telegram Pearce had sent on Harry’s behalf asking if Dr Woolston had been summoned to the hospital on Wednesday, Kidd had already made discreet enquiries, so he had been able to answer many of their questions.

  Because of the fine weather, he explained, more patients and visitors had been in the grounds during Wednesday afternoon than usual. One of the senior attendants, who knew Dr Woolston by sight, had noticed him heading towards the administration buildings. Further enquiries revealed that the cleaners had been working in the theatre at about the same time. So far, though, no one had seen him leave the premises.

  Pennicott turned to a fresh page.

  ‘You’ve examined the backstage area?’ Kidd asked.

  The policeman nodded. ‘We did.’

  Harry had searched everywhere. Costumes and painted flats, a few loose feathers from a headdress, but nothing to suggest his father had been there.

  There was a knock at the door.


  ‘Come in,’ Kidd called.

  A servant handed him a piece of paper, and withdrew. The doctor quickly scanned the page.

  ‘You were right, Pennicott,’ Kidd said. ‘Vera Barker was here, some years ago. During that time, she made the acquaintance of one of our private patients, though I can’t imagine how. The fee-paying patients are housed separately, well away from the main women’s wards. The lady in question was one of our longer-term patients. Very charming, but delusional. Unable to separate truth from falsehood. The kind who makes all kinds of accusations.’

  ‘What kind of accusations?’

  Kidd waved his hand. ‘I’m afraid that is confidential information, Sergeant.’

  ‘May I have her name, sir?’

  Kidd looked back to the note. ‘Miss Cassandra Crowley.’

  ‘Crowley,’ Pennicott muttered. Harry glanced at him, but his face gave nothing away. ‘Might it be possible to talk to her? Or does her . . . illness make that difficult?’

  Harry noticed Dr Kidd’s expression alter.

  ‘I’m afraid to report that Miss Crowley is one of our rare escapees, Sergeant,’ he said.

  Harry couldn’t help himself. ‘She got away?’

  ‘That is not how we care to think of it, Mr Woolston,’ Kidd reproved him. ‘This is a not a prison facility.’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. But she’s no longer here?’

  ‘She is not.’ Dr Kidd looked down at the piece of paper. ‘I wanted to be sure of the details before I spoke to you. Miss Crowley came here ten years ago. Admitted having made an attempt on her own life, she was diagnosed with general delusional mania. Her health is good and she is – was – popular with the other patients.’

  ‘Who pays the bills?’ Harry asked.

  Dr Kidd checked his notes again. ‘An anonymous benefactor.’

  ‘Is that usual?’ Harry put in again.

  ‘It’s not unusual,’ Kidd replied carefully. ‘Even these days, there is a stigma attached to having an association here. Some, therefore, choose to conceal their involvement. In this case, in fact, there is no family. To my knowledge, she never had any visitors.’