‘How did you discover the truth?’ I ask.
‘Sheer chance,’ he says, laying his hands against the wall either side of the window. ‘I went for a walk and stumbled upon Carver and Helena arguing over the boy’s future. She admitted everything.’
‘So why not divorce her?’ I ask.
‘And have everybody know my shame?’ he says, aghast. ‘Bastard children are common currency these days, but imagine the tattle if people discovered Lord Peter Hardcastle had been cuckolded by a common gardener. No, Dance, that wouldn’t do.’
‘What happened after you found out?’
‘I let Carver go, gave him a day to get off the estate.’
‘Was that the same day he killed Thomas?’
‘Exactly so, our confrontation sent him into a rage and he... he...’
His eyes are blurry, red with drink. He’s been emptying and refilling that glass all morning.
‘Stanwin came to Helena a few months later with his hand out. You see, Dance, I’m not being blackmailed directly. It’s Helena, and my reputation with her. I simply pay for it.’
‘And what of Michael, Evelyn and Cunningham?’ I ask. ‘Do they know any of this?’
‘Not to my knowledge. A secret’s hard enough to keep without putting it in the mouths of children.’
‘So how did Stanwin come by it?’
‘I’ve been asking myself that question for nineteen years and I’m no closer to an answer. Perhaps he was friends with Carver, servants talk after all. Otherwise I’m at a loss. All I know is that should word get out, I’ll be ruined. Ravencourt’s sensitive to scandal and he won’t marry into a family on the front pages.’
His voice lowers, drunk and mean, his finger pointed directly at me.
‘Keep Evelyn alive and I’ll give you anything you ask, you hear me? I won’t let that bitch cost me my fortune, Dance. I won’t allow it.’
36
Peter Hardcastle has fallen into a drunken sulk, gripping his glass as though worried somebody will take it from him. Judging his usefulness at an end, I grab an apple from the fruit bowl and slip out of the room on the end of a hollow apology, closing the sitting-room door that I might ascend the stairs without his noticing. I need to speak with Gold and I’d rather not wade through a cloud of questions to do so.
A draught greets me at the top of the staircase, twisting and curling in the air, sneaking through the cracked windows and beneath the doors to stir the leaves littering the floor. I’m reminded of walking these corridors as Sebastian Bell, searching for the butler with Evelyn at my side. It’s odd to think of them here, odder still to remember that Bell and I are the same man. His cowardice makes me cringe, but there’s enough distance between us now that it sits apart from me. He feels like an embarrassing story I once overheard at a party. Somebody else’s shame.
Dance despises men such as Bell, but I can’t be so judgemental. I have no idea who I am beyond Blackheath, or how I think when I’m not wedged inside somebody else’s mind. For all I know, I’m exactly like Bell... and would that truly be so bad? I envy him his compassion, as I envy Ravencourt’s intelligence, and Dance’s ability to see through the shroud to the heart of things. If I carry any of these qualities out of Blackheath, I’ll be proud to have them.
Making certain I’m alone in the corridor, I enter the room where Gregory Gold is hanging from the ceiling by his bound wrists. He’s murmuring, jerking in pain, trying to outrun some untiring nightmare. Compassion compels me to cut him down, but Anna wouldn’t have left him strung up like this without a very good reason.
Even so, I still need to speak with him, so I shake him gently, then more firmly.
Nothing.
I slap his face, then splash him with water from the nearby jug, but he doesn’t stir. This is horrendous. Doctor Dickie’s sedative is unyielding and no matter how hard Gold writhes he can’t free himself of it. My stomach turns, a chill settling on my bones. Until now, the horrors in my future had always been vague, insubstantial things, dark shapes lurking in a fog. But this is me, my fate. Reaching up on my tiptoes, I pull his sleeves down to reveal the slashes on his arms he showed me last night.
‘Don’t get out of the carriage,’ I murmur, recalling his warning.
‘Step away from him,’ says Anna from behind me. ‘And turn around nice and slow. I won’t ask twice.’
I do as she bids.
She is standing in the doorway with a shotgun pointed at me. Blonde hair spills from her cap, her expression fierce. Her aim is steady, her finger pressing against the trigger. One wrong move and I have no doubt she’d kill me to protect Gold. No matter the odds arrayed against me, knowing somebody cares this deeply is enough to make even Dance’s cold heart swell.
‘It’s me, Anna,’ I say. ‘It’s Aiden.’
‘Aiden?’
The shotgun lowers a little as she steps close, her face breathing distance from my own as she inspects my newly acquired crags and lines.
‘The book mentioned you’d get old,’ she says, holding the gun in one hand. ‘Didn’t mention you’d end up with a face like a headstone, though.’
She nods at Gold.
‘Admiring the slashes, are you?’ she says. ‘Doctor reckons he did that to himself. Poor man cut his own arms to ribbons.’
‘Why?’ I ask horrified, trying to imagine any circumstance in which I’d turn a knife on myself.
‘You’d know better than me,’ she sniffs. ‘Let’s talk where it’s warm.’
I follow her into the room across the corridor, where the butler’s sleeping peacefully beneath white cotton sheets. Light is pouring through a high window, and a small fire is crackling in the grate. Dried blood mars the pillow, but otherwise it’s a serene scene, affectionate and intimate.
‘Has he woken up yet?’ I say, nodding to the butler.
‘Briefly, in the carriage. We haven’t long arrived. Poor sod could barely breathe. What about Dance? What’s he like?’ asks Anna, hiding the shotgun under the bed.
‘Humourless, hates his son, otherwise he’s fine. Anything’s better than Jonathan Derby,’ I say, pouring myself a glass of water from the jug on the table.
‘I met him this morning,’ she says distantly. ‘Can’t imagine it’s pleasant being trapped in that head.’
It wasn’t.
I say, tossing her the apple I took from the sitting room, ‘You told him you were hungry, so I brought you this. I wasn’t sure if you’d had a chance to eat yet.’
‘I haven’t,’ she says, polishing it on her apron. ‘Ta.’
I walk over to the window, clearing a spot of grime away with my sleeve. It looks out over the road, where I’m surprised to see the Plague Doctor pointing at the gatehouse. Daniel’s standing beside him, the two of them conferring.
The scene unsettles me. Thus far my interlocutor has taken great care to keep a barrier between us. This closeness I see now feels like collaboration, as though I’ve bowed to Blackheath in some way, accepting Evelyn’s death and the Plague Doctor’s assertion that only one of us can leave. Nothing could be further from the truth. Knowing I can change this day has given me the belief to keep fighting... so, what on earth are they talking about down there?
‘What can you see?’ says Anna.
‘The Plague Doctor talking with Daniel,’ I say.
‘I haven’t met him,’ she says, taking a bite out of her apple. ‘And what the bloody hell is a Plague Doctor?’
I blink at her. ‘Meeting you in the wrong order’s becoming problematic.’
‘At least there’s only one of me,’ she says. ‘Tell me about this doctor of yours.’
I quickly fill her in on my history with the Plague Doctor, starting with our meeting in the study when I was Sebastian Bell, and recounting how he stopped my car when I tried to escape and, more recently, upbraided me for chasing Madeline Aubert in the forest as Jonathan Derby. It already seems a lifetime ago.
‘Sounds like you’ve made a friend,’ she says, chewing n
oisily.
‘He’s using me,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know what for.’
‘Daniel might, they seem chummy enough,’ she says, joining me at the window. ‘Any idea what they’re talking about? Have you solved Evelyn’s murder and forgotten to tell me?’
‘If we do this right, there won’t be a murder to solve,’ I say, my attention fixed on the scene below.
‘So you’re still trying to save her, even after the Plague Doctor said it was almost impossible?’
‘As a rule, I ignore half of everything he tells me,’ I say distantly. ‘Call it a healthy scepticism of any wisdom that comes delivered through a mask. Besides, I know this day can be changed, I’ve seen it.’
‘Christ’s sake, Aiden,’ she says angrily.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, startled.
‘This, all of this!’ she says, spreading her arms exasperatedly. ‘We had a deal, you and me. I’d sit in this little room and keep these two safe, and you’d use your eight lives to solve this murder.’
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ I say, confused by her anger.
‘No, it’s not,’ she says. ‘You’re running around trying to save the person whose death is our best chance of escape.’
‘She’s my friend, Anna.’
‘She’s Bell’s friend,’ Anna counters. ‘She humiliated Ravencourt and she nearly killed Derby. Far as I’ve seen, there’s more warmth in a long winter than in that woman.’
‘She had her reasons.’
It’s a weak response, intended to bat away the question rather than answer it. Anna’s right, Evelyn hasn’t been my friend for a long time now, and though the memory of her kindness still lingers, it’s not my driving impulse. That’s something else, something deeper, something squirming. The idea of leaving her to be slain sickens me. Not Dance, not any of my other hosts. It sickens me, Aiden Bishop.
Unfortunately, Anna’s building up a head of steam and doesn’t give me a chance to dwell on the revelation.
‘I don’t care about her reasons, I care about yours,’ she says, pointing at me. ‘Maybe you don’t feel it, but deep down, I know how long I’ve been in this place. It’s decades, Aiden, I’m sure of it. I need to leave, I have to, and this is my best chance, with you. You’ve got eight lives, you’ll get out of here eventually. I do all this once, and then forget. Without you I’m stuck, and what happens if next time you wake up as Bell, you don’t remember me?’
‘I won’t leave you here, Anna,’ I insist, shaken by the desperation in her voice.
‘Then solve the damn murder like the Plague Doctor asked you to, and believe him when he says that Evelyn can’t be saved!’
‘I can’t trust him,’ I say, losing my temper and turning my back on her.
‘Why not, everything he’s said has happened. He’s—’
‘He said you’d betray me,’ I shout.
‘What?’
‘He told me you’d betray me,’ I repeat, shaken by the admission. Until now I’d never actually voiced the accusation, preferring to dismiss it in the quiet of my thoughts. Now I’ve said it out loud it’s a real possibility, and it worries me. Anna’s right, everything else the Plague Doctor’s said has come true, and as strong as my connection to this woman is, I can’t be completely certain she won’t turn on me.
She reels backwards as if struck, shaking her head.
‘I’d never... Aiden, I’d never do that, I swear.’
‘He said you remembered more about our last loop than you were admitting,’ I say. ‘Is that true? Is there something you’re not telling me?’
She hesitates.
‘Is it true, Anna?’ I demand.
‘No,’ she says forcefully. ‘He’s trying to get between us, Aiden. I don’t know why, but you can’t listen to him.’
‘That’s my point,’ I shoot back. ‘If the Plague Doctor’s telling the truth about Evelyn, he’s telling the truth about you. I don’t believe he is. I think he wants something, something we don’t know about, and I think he’s using us to get it.’
‘Even if that’s the case, I don’t understand why you’re so insistent on saving Evelyn,’ says Anna, still struggling with what I had told her.
‘Because somebody’s going to kill her,’ I say haltingly. ‘And they’re not doing it themselves, they’re twisting her in knots so she’ll do it herself, and they’re making sure everybody sees. It’s cruel and they’re enjoying it, and I can’t... It doesn’t matter whether we like her, or whether the Plague Doctor is right, you don’t get to kill somebody and put them on display. She’s innocent, and we can stop it. And we should.’
I falter, breathless, teetering on the edge of a memory sprung loose by Anna’s questions. It’s as though a curtain’s been pulled back, the man I used to be almost visible through the gap. Guilt and grief, they’re the keys, I’m certain of it. They’re what brought me to Blackheath in the first place. They’ve been driving me to save Evelyn, but that wasn’t my purpose here, not really.
‘There was somebody else,’ I say slowly, clutching at the edges of the memory. ‘A woman, I think. She’s the reason I came here, but I couldn’t save her.’
‘What was her name?’ says Anna, taking my wrinkled old hands and looking up into my face.
‘I can’t remember,’ I say, my head throbbing in concentration.
‘Was it me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
The memory’s slipping away. There are tears on my cheeks, an ache in my chest. I feel like I’ve lost somebody, but I have no idea who. I look into Anna’s wide brown eyes.
‘It’s gone,’ I say weakly.
‘I’m sorry, Aiden.’
‘Don’t be,’ I say, feeling my strength return. ‘We’re going to get out of Blackheath, I promise, but I have to do it my way. I’ll make it work, you just have to trust me, Anna.’
I’m expecting an objection, but she confounds me with a smile.
‘Then where do we start?’ she says.
‘I’m going to find Helena Hardcastle,’ I say, wiping my face with a handkerchief. ‘Do you have any leads on the footman? He killed Derby last night, and I doubt Dance is far behind.’
‘Actually, I’ve been thinking up a plan.’
She peers under the bed, bringing out the artist’s sketchbook, which she opens and drops on my lap. This is the book that’s been guiding her all day, but the intricate spiderweb of cause and effect I’d anticipated is nowhere to be seen.
Its contents are gibberish, as far as I can tell.
‘I thought I wasn’t allowed to see this?’ I say, craning my head to read her awkward upside-down writing. ‘I’m honoured.’
‘Don’t be, I’m only letting you see the bit you need,’ she says.
Circled warnings and sketches of the day’s events have been scrawled in an erratic hand, snatches of conversation dashed onto the page, without any context to explain them. I recognise a few of the moments, including a hasty drawing of the butler’s beating at the hands of Gold, but most of them are meaningless.
It’s only after I’ve been assaulted by the chaos, that I begin to see Anna’s attempt to bring order. Using a pencil, she’s diligently written notes for herself near the entries. Guesses have been made, times noted down, our conversations recorded and cross-referenced with those in the book, teasing out the useful information contained within.
‘I doubt you’ll be able to do much with it,’ says Anna, watching me struggle. ‘One of your hosts gave it to me. Might as well be written in another language. A lot of it doesn’t make any sense, but I’ve been adding to it, using it to keep track of your comings and goings. This is everything I know about you. Every host, everything they’ve done. It’s the only way I can keep up, but it’s not complete. There are holes. That’s why I need you to show me the best time to approach Bell.’
‘Bell, why?’
‘This footman is looking for me, so we’re going to tell him exactly where I’ll be,’ she says, writing a note on a
loose piece of paper. ‘We’ll gather some of your other hosts and be waiting for him when he gets his knife out.’
‘And how are we going to trap him?’ I say.
‘With this’ – she hands me the note. ‘If you tell me about Bell’s day, I can make sure to put it somewhere he’ll find it. Once I mention it in the kitchen, the meeting will be up and down the house in an hour. The footman’s sure to hear of it.’
Don’t leave Blackheath, more lives than your own are depending on you. Meet me by the mausoleum in the family graveyard at 10:20 p.m. and I’ll explain everything.
Love, Anna
I’m transported back to that evening, when Evelyn and Bell stalked into the dank graveyard, revolver in hand, finding only shadows and a shattered compass covered in blood.
As omens go, it’s not reassuring, but it’s not definitive either. It’s another piece of the future come loose from the whole, and until I get there, I’ll have no idea what it means.
Anna’s waiting for my reaction, but my unease isn’t sufficient reason for objection.
‘Have you seen how this ends, does it work?’ she asks, fingering the hem of her sleeve nervously.
‘I don’t know, but it’s the best plan we have,’ I say.
‘We’re going to need help, and you’re running short of hosts.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll find it.’
I pull a fountain pen from my pocket, adding one more line to the message, something to spare poor Bell a great deal of frustration.
Oh, and don’t forget your gloves, they’re burning.
37
I hear the horses before I see them, dozens of shoes clopping along the cobblestones ahead of me. Not far behind is their smell, a musty odour mingled with the stench of manure, a thick rolling mix even the wind can’t disturb. Only after I’ve been assaulted by their impression do I finally come upon the animals themselves, thirty or so being led out of the stables and up the main road towards the village, carriages harnessed to their backs.
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Page 24
