The Taxidermist's Daughter

by Kate Mosse

  ‘The trap must have gone over,’ Davey said, thinking aloud. He looked at Joseph. ‘Was it you who slung me in here?’

  ‘Course not. I’d hardly be letting you out if I had.’

  Davey thought and decided that made sense. ‘Who was it then?’

  For a moment, their eyes met, and Davey remembered. ‘Vera’s hat,’ he said. ‘I found it in Crowther’s carriage.’

  *

  Connie couldn’t take in what she was seeing. Not at first.

  The room was dark, with the exception of three candles burning behind three chairs, which threw the shadows forward to meet her. She waited. Allowed her eyes to adjust to the semi-light. She looked again.

  Three life-sized mannequins had been positioned in Louis Quatorze chairs. Like Pierrots, though wearing black robes instead of white, and decorated with different embroidered patterns. Each wore a beautiful mask in the shape of a bird’s head: a jackdaw, with its silky grey hood; a magpie with the glinting purple-and-green of its tail feathers; the third with the woody beak and sooty black feathers of a rook.

  It was a macabre re-creation of the display case her father had made and hidden in the ice house: jackdaw, magpie, rook. The fourth space was unoccupied.

  Crow was missing.

  Connie weakened, as she started to realise what she was actually seeing. She refused to let herself look away. She had to learn the truth. She took shallow breaths, trying not to let the overheated, sickly air of the room get into her nose and throat, waiting for her pulse to steady. Finally, the last missing memories of the night Cassie died came back to her.

  *

  Four men sitting in the museum on chairs that, to her child’s eyes, seemed like thrones. Peering down into the room from above, hiding behind the wooden banisters on the first-floor landing.

  The candles and the smoke, the feathers. Noise, men’s voices.

  Her father and Cassie arguing in the hall. Was that what had woken her? Gifford pleading with Cassie to keep the visitors well oiled while he went into the village to see what was keeping them.

  Cassie folding her arms. ‘Them?’

  ‘A bit of dancing,’ he said, looking away. Not able to meet her eye. ‘Professional entertainment, no harm in it. He gave me his word.’

  ‘Dancing!’ she said contemptuously. ‘Working girls, more like. Shame on you, Gifford, with your daughter in the house.’

  ‘All above board, he gave me his word as a gentleman,’ he said. ‘I’ll only be five minutes, Cassie. He arranged it all, only they should have been here by now. I’ve got to go and check where they are. Lost their way, near as like. I’m only asking you to hold the fort for five minutes. Keep their glasses topped up. That’s all.’

  Connie watching and waiting, then Cassie nodding. ‘Five minutes. No longer.’

  The sound of the side door closing.

  Connie pushing herself back into the shadows, knowing that she would be in trouble if Cassie knew she was out of bed. Hearing the voices of the men getting louder and more impatient. Listening for the sound of her father coming back, but he didn’t return.

  Cassie pausing in the hall, holding a tray of drinks. She looked cross, not worried. Then she fixed a smile on her face and walked into the room. The door stayed open. Connie clutched at the spindles, pressing her cheeks against the wood to see.

  Cassie still smiling, trying to keep smiling as hands pulled at her. Pushing her and pulling at her clothes, and Connie realising Cassie was angry.

  Then frightened.

  Glass breaking. Dropping the tray. The smell of brandy and whisky. The noise getting louder, and the shouting. One of the largest display cases tipped over and shattered, the songbirds thrown out, as if they had come back to life. All the tiny birds, the brambling and chaffinch, the siskin, greenfinch, linnet, her father’s beautiful handiwork trampled underfoot.

  Black feathers of the masks. Four men in masks.

  One of them telling Cassie not to be a silly girl, not to make a fuss. It was just a bit of fun. He seemed to think it was funny when she struck him. Made him pull at her skirts more, roughly now. Holding her wrists now, trying to kiss her.

  Cassie tried to get away. The man in the jackdaw mask took no part, but he didn’t stop them. She ran for the door, but the man in the magpie mask blocked her way and put his hand on her throat. The sound of material and a flash of bare skin. Cassie fighting, trying to twist away, then the man in the rook mask hit her and she fell down, screaming now, as he hit her again. And him lying over her and doing something that made her shout, anger and then pain. Hurting her. Cursing her. Blood on Cassie’s face.

  But she didn’t stop fighting, kept screaming.

  The man in the crow mask had watched, his arms folded, but finally he stepped forward and grabbed Cassie by the hair. He dragged the yellow ribbon, turned it in his hands, then crouched down and pulled. Pulled again.

  Connie didn’t understand what they were doing or why, didn’t know why her father hadn’t come back.

  Then, abruptly, there was silence.

  Cassie wasn’t screaming any more. She wasn’t making a sound. She was lying on the floor.

  White face, blue lips.

  ‘Pity,’ said the man with the crow mask, standing looking down at her with the length of yellow ribbon in his hand. ‘Get rid of her.’

  Connie caught her breath at the sharp stab of memory. Dust on bare floorboards, feathers.

  Cassie was dead. She had seen her die.

  And Connie not understanding, except she knew it was wrong. That it was bad. And not caring if her father told her off, or if Cassie told her off, but she couldn’t stay silent any more. Shouting at the top of her lungs, hurling herself down the stairs to try to get to Cassie.

  Flying through the air. Falling, her shoulders and elbows and arms hitting the wall, the tread of the stairs, her head striking the stone floor at the bottom. The cold of the night air on her face, the sensation of being carried in someone’s arms.

  She had never seen Cassie again.

  Chapter 49

  Connie put her hands up to her face and realised she was weeping. Her mind was retreating from what she’d witnessed in the past, preparing her to face the terrible present.

  She heard a clock ticking, keeping pace with the beating of her heart. Gradually she found herself back in the airless cottage room and forced herself to look again at the macabre tableau. At the chairs, and the mannequins posed on each, the decorated robes and the masks.

  Jackdaw, magpie, rook. The empty fourth chair.

  The pattern on the first costume was the plainest. Black and grey feathers, but no jewels or glass. The second piece was more elaborate. An exquisite fan of black-and-white plumes, iridescent magpie tail feathers, long and exotic, sewn into the fabric. The third was the most extravagant of all: a riot of feathers of all colours, red and white, black, grey, brown, all exploding out of the centre of the mannequin’s costume like a firework.

  Finally, Connie’s conscious mind forced her to accept what her unconscious mind had known all along. She had identified the smell the second she stepped into the cottage, but tried to pretend it wasn’t there. The sickly-sweet smell of flesh beginning to rot.

  These were not mannequins. They were not intended for another kind of life. The process of decay, in the airless room, had already begun.

  Not mannequins, but men.

  Not exquisitely decorated costumes, but rather feathers stuffed into the chest cavities, between the bones, under the skin. Their eye sockets, visible through the slits in the velvet, not encrusted with rubies or jet. Rather, dried seams of blood around sockets filled now with glass and enamel.

  She clamped her hand over her mouth as the floor seemed to lurch and slide. She refused to let herself fall. Not this time. Not ever again. She feared that if she slipped out of time now, she might find herself trapped in the horror for ever.

  She stepped forward and removed the mask from the first man’s face: Jackdaw. His skin wa
s grey. She closed his eyes. Even in death, she could see the likeness between his features and Harry’s.

  Her hand shaking, she took the mask from the second man: Magpie. Shiny black hair. His eyelids had been sewn shut, the blood encrusting his lids. Ugly black stitching pinched his nostrils together. She did not know him.

  She recognised the bulk and size of the man in the third seat from the graveyard. Frederick Brook, Harry’s employer. Slowly, she removed his mask.

  Brook’s mouth was sewn shut and he had black marbles in the bloodied eye sockets. A piece of carved wood, like the semblance of a rook’s beak, had been forced into the space where his nose should have been. It was congealed with blood. And protruding from his neck and his throat were twists of wire, holding him upright against the back of the chair. He, too, had been stuffed with feathers, but unlike Magpie, Connie could see that his torso had been gutted, the ribs sawn away.

  The Corvidae Club. The noms de guerre of the members, nicknames chosen to represent each. Jack, a common abbreviation for John, the name of Harry’s father; Magpie, she didn’t know; Brook was obvious, the name of the bird contained within his surname. For a brief moment, Connie thought of Harry and how she would do anything to spare him this sight. But how could she? His world was about to come crashing down and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent that.

  She forced Harry out of her mind and thought, instead, about the fourth man. A crow mask was ready, waiting on the last chair. The man who had watched while two men attacked a defenceless young woman, the man who had put a ribbon around her neck and choked the life out of her to stop her screaming, dispassionate and indifferent. The murderer’s seat was empty.

  Connie’s thoughts slipped from Harry’s father to her own. She shuddered, her belief in his innocence challenged once more. Crowley.

  She shook her head. Gifford had not been there when Cassie was murdered. Connie had heard him leave the museum and he had not come back. But had she remembered everything? What remained lost to her, suppressed by shock and fear? Her unconscious mind had blocked out so much. This too?

  Finally, she felt her knees buckle. She staggered back, suddenly unable to remain for a second longer in this living tomb. She ran to the door. Her hands were shaking and she couldn’t catch hold of the handle to get free.

  To her horror, she heard a noise in the hall outside. She looked around desperately for somewhere to conceal herself, somewhere the bloodied and sewn eyes of the dead men would not be looking at her, but there was nowhere.

  The footsteps came closer. She stepped back behind the door. If he walked far enough into the room – perhaps bringing a fourth victim with him – might she be able to run round and out before he caught her?

  He? Who was she expecting to see?

  She heard the sound of her own blood pulsing in her ears.

  The footsteps stopped short.

  Connie stared at the handle, willing it not to turn, but it did. The door began to open. Then she heard with relief a voice she recognised, whispering through the gap.

  *

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ Davey demanded.

  ‘Shut your trap,’ Joseph hissed. ‘Do you want him to hear us?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who do you think?’ Joseph said, trying to hold the door ajar in the gale. ‘I thought it was Gifford who put Vera up to it, then killed her to stop her talking.’

  Davey stared. ‘Mr Gifford kill Vera? Don’t be daft.’

  ‘What do you know? I thought he was blackmailing the rest of them, that’s what I was told. It made sense. He had to be part of it.’

  ‘Blackmail?’

  Joseph wasn’t listening. Just carried on as if Davey hadn’t spoken.

  ‘Of course, I realise now he did for Vera, then put her body near Blackthorn House to throw suspicion back on Mr Gifford. Been looking at it upside down all along.’

  ‘I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Didn’t she take on when I told her,’ Joseph said. ‘Kept saying she had innocent blood on her hands. How it wasn’t meant to happen.’

  ‘But Miss Gifford didn’t even know Birdie,’ Davey interrupted. ‘How was it anything to do with her?’

  ‘I’m not talking about Miss Gifford.’

  ‘Then what the heck?’

  ‘Quiet!’ Joseph hissed, dropping a warning hand on Davey’s shoulder. ‘Someone’s out there.’

  Davey tried to peer through the gap in the wooded slats, but the rain blotted out anything beyond a few feet away. Joseph shoved him out of the way.

  ‘Did you see where Mr Gifford went? Did he go in the house?’

  ‘I don’t even know if he’s here or not,’ Davey shot back. He came to a halt. ‘Hang about, how come you’re here so quick? I saw you in Mill Lane before.’

  Joseph spun round and Davey instinctively nipped back, out of harm’s reach.

  ‘Stop asking stupid questions and do as you’re told.’

  Davey frowned. He’d always been scared of Joseph. Had taken care to stay out of his way. But now? He didn’t know. He seemed different.

  ‘You been down this way before, Joseph?’ he said slowly. ‘That how you knew where to come?’

  Joseph hesitated, then nodded.

  Davey held his gaze. ‘D’you know who lives here?’

  ‘A lady,’ he said finally. ‘Not been here long. She’s suffered, if you know what I mean. I’ve helped her a bit, here and there.’

  Davey didn’t know what to think, only that this was a side of Gregory Joseph he’d never seen.

  ‘What about Mr Gifford? He been here before?’

  ‘Not so far as I know.’

  ‘But he’s here now.’

  Joseph nodded. ‘I got him wrong. I don’t deny it. Want to put it right. Are you going to help or not?’

  Davey hesitated a moment longer, then spat in his hand and held it out to Joseph. He saw temper flare briefly in Joseph’s eyes, but he thought better of it.

  ‘All right,’ he said, shaking Davey’s hand.

  Davey nodded. ‘What d’you want me to do?’

  *

  ‘Harry,’ she said, slipping into the hall and closing the door behind her.

  ‘Connie, my God.’

  She saw shock and delight, confusion, relief all rush across his face, before his violet eyes darkened with concern.

  She put her finger to her lips. ‘Sssh.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Harry said, dropping his voice to a whisper. ‘You shouldn’t be here, it’s not safe. How do you come to be here? Is it your father?’

  ‘We found Gifford last night. He’d been trapped in the storeroom, an accident all along. Nothing to do with . . .’ She broke off. ‘I don’t know why he left Blackthorn House to come here. I saw him across the water meadows and followed him, but I can’t find him anywhere.’

  Connie saw the light go out of his eyes. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I’m afraid, that . . .’ He stopped, clearly reconsidering what he was going to say. ‘Have you seen Sergeant Pennicott?’

  Connie frowned. ‘No.’

  ‘This address came up in connection with Brook and a man called Gerald White.’

  ‘White,’ she repeated. ‘Of course.’

  The occupant of the second chair, the combination of his surname and his glossy black hair earning him the nickname Magpie. Connie forced herself not to let her eyes go to the door behind her. She was certain Harry would notice and want to go in.

  Harry was looking puzzled. ‘I only heard about White today,’ he said. ‘Do you know the name?’

  Connie flushed. ‘Perhaps Sergeant Pennicott mentioned him.’

  ‘Pennicott didn’t want me to come. He tried to put me off. I thought he was worried I’d be in the way, official business and all that, though he let me tag along to Graylingwell this morning.’

  Connie grew still. ‘What did you find out?’

  ‘That my father did go to the asylum on Wednesday afternoon, af
ter he’d been to Fishbourne. There was no meeting, but he was seen going into the theatre. No one saw him leave.’

  ‘To meet someone?’

  Harry nodded. ‘Yes, though we don’t know if the meeting took place or not. Or with whom. The medical superintendent was very helpful. He thinks a great deal of my father, he made that clear. Kidd also told us of a private patient who had been friends with Vera when they were there together. No family, all bills paid by an anonymous fund.’

  ‘Harry,’ Connie interrupted, raising her voice over the howling of the wind. She was desperate to get him to move away from the room. ‘Will you help me look for Gifford? I’ve searched downstairs, but don’t want to go up alone.’

  Harry stared at her. ‘What’s wrong?’ he said. ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘I’m worried about my father,’ she said quickly. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Of course, but there’s something else. I can see it in your eyes.’ He looked over her shoulder at the closed door. ‘What’s through there?’

  Connie felt the colour drain from her face and knew he’d noticed. And all the time they were talking, the likelihood of the owner of the cottage coming back – of someone coming back – grew stronger.

  ‘Please, don’t.’

  He gently removed her hand from his arm. ‘Have you looked in here?’ He stepped round her.

  ‘You mustn’t go in there.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s best that you don’t,’ she said, her voice rising in desperation.

  ‘Is my father in there, Connie?’ He looked so very pale.

  ‘Please, Harry. Don’t go in,’ she said again.

  Harry looked into her eyes, then turned the handle and walked in.

  Connie wrapped her arms tightly around her body, steeling herself for what was to come.

  At first, there was silence. She imagined him looking but not yet able to take in what he was seeing, just as she had done. Then, as the grotesque tableau revealed itself for what it was, she heard a single wild howl of grief, of horror.