The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

by Stuart Turton

‘Apologies for not announcing myself earlier, Josephine,’ continues the Plague Doctor, his attention fixed on Silver Tear. ‘I wasn’t certain you’d tell me the truth if I asked directly, given how hard you’ve worked to stay hidden. I would never have known you were in Blackheath if Mr Rashton hadn’t spotted you.’

  ‘Josephine?’ interrupts Daniel. ‘You two are acquainted?’

  Silver Tear ignores him.

  ‘I hoped it wouldn’t come to this,’ she says, addressing the Plague Doctor. Her tone has softened, warmed. It ripples with regret. ‘My intention was to complete my task and depart without you knowing.’

  ‘I fail to see why you’re here, at all. Blackheath is my watch, and everything is well in hand.’

  ‘You can’t believe that!’ she says, becoming exasperated. ‘Look at how close Aiden and Annabelle have become, how near they are to escape. He’s willing to sacrifice himself for her. Do you see that? If we let this continue, before long she’ll be standing before you with an answer, and then what will you do?’

  ‘I’m confident it won’t come to that.’

  ‘I’m confident it will,’ she snorts. ‘Tell me truthfully, will you let her leave?’

  The question knocks him silent a moment, a slight tilt of his head conveying his indecision. My eyes slip towards Daniel, who’s watching them, his face rapt. I imagine he feels as I do, like a child watching his parents argue, understanding only half of the things being said.

  When the Plague Doctor speaks again, his voice is firm, though rehearsed, his conviction born of repetition rather than faith.

  ‘The rules of Blackheath are very clear and I’m beholden to them, as are you,’ he says. ‘If she brings me the name of Evelyn Hardcastle’s murderer, I can’t refuse to hear her case.’

  ‘Rules or not, you know what our superiors will do to you if Annabelle escapes Blackheath.’

  ‘Have they sent you to replace me?’

  ‘Of course they haven’t.’ She sighs, sounding hurt. ‘Do you think their reaction would be so temperate? I came as your friend, to clean up this mess before they ever find out how close you came to blundering. I’m quietly going to remove Annabelle, ensuring you won’t have to make a choice you’ll regret.’

  She signals to Daniel. ‘Mr Coleridge, could you please persuade Mr Bishop to reveal Annabelle’s location. I trust you understand what’s at stake.’

  Crushing his cigarette underfoot, Daniel nods at the brawler, who takes hold of my arms, pinning me in place. I try to struggle, but he’s much too strong.

  ‘This is forbidden, Josephine,’ says the Plague Doctor, shocked. ‘We do not take direct action. We do not give orders. We certainly don’t feed them information they aren’t supposed to know. You’re breaking every rule we’ve promised to uphold.’

  ‘You dare lecture me?’ says Silver Tear, scornfully. ‘All you’ve done is interfere.’

  The Plague Doctor shakes his head vehemently.

  ‘I explained Mr Bishop’s purpose here, and encouraged him when he faltered. Unlike Daniel and Anna, he didn’t wake up with the rules burned into him. He was free to doubt, to veer from his purpose. I never gave him knowledge he hadn’t earned, as you have done with Daniel. I sought to bring balance, not offer advantage. I’m begging you, don’t do this. Let events follow their natural course. He’s so close to solving it.’

  ‘And because of that, so is Annabelle,’ she says, her voice hardening. ‘I’m sorry, I must choose between Aiden Bishop’s well-being and your own. Proceed, Mr Coleridge.’

  ‘No!’ yells the Plague Doctor, holding out a placating hand.

  The thug with the shotgun points it at him. He’s nervous, his finger gripping the trigger a little too tightly. I don’t know if the Plague Doctor can be hurt by these weapons, but I can’t let him risk it. I need him alive.

  ‘Just leave,’ I say to him. ‘There’s nothing else you can do here.’

  ‘This is wrong,’ he protests.

  ‘Then make it right. My other hosts need you.’ I pause, meaningfully. ‘I don’t.’

  I don’t know if it’s my intonation, or whether he’s simply watched this moment play out before, but, finally, grudgingly, he relents, staring at Josephine, before disappearing out of the graveyard.

  ‘Selfless, as always,’ says Daniel, walking towards me. ‘I want you to know that I’ve admired that quality, Aiden. The way you’ve fought to save the woman whose death would set you free. Your fondness for Anna, who would have undoubtedly betrayed you if I hadn’t done so first. In the end though, I’m afraid it’s all been for nothing. Only one of us can leave this house, and I have no interest in it being you.’

  Crows are gathering in the branches above me. They arrive as if by invitation, gliding in on silent wings, their feathers slick with recent rain. There are dozens of them, pressed together like mourners at a funeral, watching me with a curiosity that makes my skin crawl.

  ‘Up until an hour ago, we had Anna in our custody. Somehow she’s managed to escape,’ continues Daniel. ‘Where would she go, Aiden? Tell me where she’s hiding and I’ll instruct my men to make your death quick. There’s only you and Gold left now. Two gunshots and you’ll wake up in Bell, knock on Blackheath’s door and start everything again without my getting in your way. You’re a clever fellow, I’m certain you’ll solve Evelyn’s murder in no time.’

  His face is ghoulish in the lantern light, twisted by need.

  ‘How frightened are you, Daniel?’ I say slowly. ‘You’ve killed my future hosts, so I’m not a threat, but you have no idea where Anna is. It’s been eating away at you all day, hasn’t it? The fear that she’s going to solve this before you.’

  It’s my smile that scares him, the faintest sense that I might not be quite so trapped as he first believed.

  ‘If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll start cutting,’ says Daniel, drawing a line across my cheek with his fingertip. ‘I’ll take you apart an inch at a time.’

  ‘I know, I’ve met myself after you’re done,’ I say, staring at him. ‘You break my mind so badly, I carry my madness into Gregory Gold. He slashes his own arms and babbles warnings at Edward Dance. It’s horrific. And my answer is still no.’

  ‘Tell me where she is,’ he says, raising his voice. ‘Coleridge has half the servants in this house on his payroll, and I have a pocketbook thick enough to buy the other half if necessary. I can surround the lake twice over. Don’t you see? I’ve already won. What’s the use of being stubborn now?’

  ‘Practice,’ I snarl. ‘I’m not going to tell you anything, Daniel. Every minute I frustrate you is another minute Anna has to reach the Plague Doctor with the answer. You’d need a hundred men to guard that lake on a pitch-black night like this, and I doubt even Silver Tear can help with that.’

  ‘You’ll suffer,’ he hisses.

  ‘One hour until 11 p.m.,’ I say. ‘Which one of us do you think can hold out the longer?’

  Daniel hits me hard enough to rip the air from my lungs and knock me to my knees. When I look up, he’s looming over me, rubbing his grazed knuckles. Anger flickers at the edges of his face like a storm creeping across a cloudless sky. Gone is the suave gambler of earlier, replaced by a scrappy conman, his body twisted by red-hot anger.

  ‘I’m going to kill you slowly,’ he growls.

  ‘I’m not the one who dies here, Daniel,’ I say, letting loose a shrill whistle. Birds scatter from the trees, the underbrush rustling with movement. In the inky blackness of the forest, a lantern flares into life. It’s followed by another a few feet away, and then another.

  Daniel spins on the spot, following the lanterns. He hasn’t noticed Silver Tear, who’s backing into the forest, looking unsure of herself.

  ‘You’ve hurt a lot of people,’ I say, as the lights come closer. ‘And now you get to face them.’

  ‘How?’ he stammers, confounded by the reversal in his fortunes. ‘I killed all your future hosts.’

  ‘You didn’t kill their friends,’ I
say. ‘When Anna told me her plan to lure the footman here, I decided we’d need more bodies and I asked Cunningham to help. Once I realised you and the footman were in league together, I expanded my recruiting drive. It wasn’t hard to find enemies of yours.’

  Grace Davies appears first, shotgun raised. Rashton nearly bit his tongue off to prevent me from asking for her help, but I was short of options. The rest of my hosts are busy, or dead, and Cunningham is at the ball with Ravencourt. The second light belongs to Lucy Harper, who was easily swayed to my cause by the revelation that Daniel murdered her father, and finally comes Stanwin’s bodyguard, his head completely bandaged, aside from those cold, hard eyes. Though they’re all armed, none of them looks very confident and I wouldn’t trust a single one to hit anything they’re aiming at. It doesn’t matter. At this stage, it’s the numbers that count and they’re enough to rattle Daniel and Silver Tear, whose mask is sweeping back and forth, searching for an escape.

  ‘It’s over, Daniel,’ I say, my voice steely. ‘Surrender, and I’ll let you go back to Blackheath unharmed.’

  He glares at me desperately, then at my friends.

  ‘I know what this place can do to us,’ I continue. ‘But you were kind to Bell that first morning, and I saw your affection for Michael on the hunt. Be a good man one more time, and call off the footman. Let me and Anna go with your blessing.’

  His expression wavers, torment showing on his face, but it’s not enough. Blackheath has poisoned him completely.

  ‘Kill them,’ he says savagely.

  A shotgun explodes behind me, and I instinctively throw myself to the ground. My allies scatter as Daniel’s man advances on them, firing shot after shot into the darkness. The unarmed man is cutting left, keeping low as he tries to take them by surprise.

  I can’t tell whether it’s my anger, or my host’s, which drives me to lash out at Daniel. Donald Davies is raging, although his fury is one of class rather than crime. He’s aggrieved that anybody should presume to treat him so shabbily.

  My anger is altogether more personal.

  Daniel has blocked my way ever since that first morning. He sought to escape Blackheath by climbing out over me, undoing my plans in service of his own. He came to me as a friend, smiling as he lied, laughing as he betrayed me, and it’s this that causes me to hurl myself like a spear at his midriff.

  He slips aside, catching me in the stomach with an uppercut. Doubled over, I punch him in the groin and then grab his neck, dragging him to the ground.

  I see the compass too late.

  He smashes it into my cheek, the glass splintering, blood dripping off my chin. My eyes are watering, sodden leaves squelching beneath my palms. Daniel advances, but a shot whistles past him, catching Silver Tear who screams, clutching her shoulder and falling in a heap.

  Glancing at the trembling gun in Lucy Harper’s hand, Daniel sprints off towards Blackheath. Picking myself up, I give chase.

  We run like a hound and fox across the lawn in front of the house, and down the driveway towards the village, flying past the gatehouse. I’m almost convinced he’s fleeing to the village, when finally he turns left, following the trail to the well, and beyond that the lake.

  It’s pitch-black, the moon prowling the clouds like a dog behind an old wooden fence, and I soon lose sight of my quarry. Fearing an ambush, I slow my pursuit, listening intently. Owls hoot, rain drips through the leaves of the trees. Branches snatch at me as I duck and weave, emerging upon Daniel, doubled over by the edge of the water with his hands on his knees, panting for breath, a storm lantern at his feet.

  There’s nowhere left for him to run.

  My hands are shaking, fear squirming in my chest. Anger gave me courage but it’s also made a fool of me. Donald Davies is short and slight, softer than the beds he lies in. Daniel is taller, stronger. He preys on these people. Whatever numerical advantage I had in the graveyard I’ve left far behind, which means that for the first time since I arrived in Blackheath, neither of us knows what’s coming next.

  Spotting my approach, Daniel waves me back, gesturing for a minute to catch his breath. I give it to him, using the time to select a heavy rock I can use as a weapon. After the compass, we’re beyond fighting fair.

  ‘Whatever you do, they’re not going to let your friend leave,’ he says, forcing out the words between breaths. ‘Silver Tear told me everything about you in exchange for a promise that I’d find and kill Anna. She told me about your hosts, where they woke up, and when. Don’t you understand? None of this matters, Aiden. I’m the only one who can escape.’

  ‘You could have told me this earlier,’ I say. ‘It didn’t have to end like this.’

  ‘I have a wife and a son,’ he says. ‘That’s the memory I brought with me. Can you imagine how that feels? Knowing they’re out there, waiting for me. Or, they were.’

  I take a step towards him, the rock by my side.

  ‘How will you face them, knowing what you did to escape this place?’ I ask.

  ‘I’m only what Blackheath has made me,’ he pants, spitting phlegm into the mud.

  ‘No, Blackheath’s what we made it,’ I say, advancing a little more. He’s still buckled, still tired. A couple more steps and this will all be over. ‘Our decisions led us here, Daniel. If this is hell, then it’s one of our making.’

  ‘And what would you have us do?’ he says, looking up at me. ‘Sit here and repent until somebody sees fit to open the doors?’

  ‘Help me save Evelyn and we can take what we know to the Plague Doctor together,’ I say passionately. ‘All three of us, you, me and Anna. We have a chance to walk out of this place better men than we arrived.’

  ‘I can’t risk it,’ he says in a flat, dead voice. ‘I won’t let this opportunity to escape pass me by. Not for guilt, and not to help people long past helping.’

  Without warning, he kicks the storm lantern over.

  Night floods my eyes.

  I hear the splash of his steps before his shoulder drives into my stomach, knocking the wind from me.

  We hit the ground with a thud, the rock dropping from my hands.

  It’s all I can do to throw my arms up to protect myself, but they’re thin and frail, and his punches easily break through. Blood fills my mouth. I’m numb, inside and out, but the blows keep coming until his knuckles slip off my bloody cheeks.

  His weight recedes as he lifts himself free of me.

  He’s panting, his sweat dripping onto me.

  ‘I tried to avoid this,’ he says.

  Strong fingers grip my ankle, dragging me through the mud towards the water. I reach for him, but his assault has driven the strength from me and I collapse back.

  He pauses, wiping the sweat from his brow. Moonlight hammers through the clouds, bleaching his features. His hair is silver, his skin white as fresh snow. He’s looking down at me with the same pity he showed Bell the first morning I arrived.

  ‘We don’t...’ I say, coughing up blood.

  ‘You should have stayed out of my way,’ he says, yanking me forward once again. ‘That’s all I ever asked of you.’

  He splashes into the lake, pulling me with him, the cold water rushing up my legs, soaking my chest and head. The shock of it stirs some fight within me, and I try to claw my way back up the bank, but Daniel grabs my hair, pushing my face into the freezing water.

  I scratch at his hand, kicking my legs, but he’s too strong.

  My body convulses, desperate for a breath.

  Still, he holds me down.

  I see Thomas Hardcastle, dead these last nineteen years, swimming towards me out of the murk. He’s blond-haired and wide-eyed, lost down here, but he takes my hand and squeezes my fingers, urging me to be brave.

  Unable to hold my breath any longer, my mouth springs open, gulping in cold, muddy water.

  My body spasms.

  Thomas pulls my spirit clear of this dying flesh and we float side by side in the water, watching Donald Davies drown.

&
nbsp; It’s peaceful and still. Surprisingly quiet.

  Then something crashes into the water.

  Hands plunge through the surface, gripping the body of Donald Davies, tearing him upwards, and a second later I follow him.

  The dead boy’s fingers are still entwined in mine, but I can’t pull him clear of the lake. He died here and so he’s trapped here, watching sorrowfully as I’m dragged to safety.

  I’m lying in the mud coughing water, my body made of lead.

  Daniel is floating face down in the lake.

  Somebody slaps me.

  Then again harder.

  Anna’s hovering above me, but everything’s blurry. The lake’s holding its hands over my ears, tugging me back.

  Darkness is calling me.

  She leans closer, a smudge of a person.

  ‘... find me,’ screams Anna, the words faint, ‘7:12 a.m. in the entrance hall...’

  Beneath the lake, Thomas beckons me back and, closing my eyes, I join the drowned boy.

  53

  Day Eight

  My cheek is resting against the curve of a woman’s back. We’re naked, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets on a dirty mattress, rain wriggling through the rotten window frames to run down the wall and collect on the bare floorboards.

  She stirs as I do, Madeline Aubert rolling over to meet me. The maid’s green eyes shine with a sickly need, her dark hair stuck to her damp cheeks. She looks much as Thomas Hardcastle did in my dream, drowned and desperate, clinging to whatever’s at hand.

  Finding me lying beside her, she drops her head on the pillow with a disappointed sigh. Such obvious disdain should make me uncomfortable, but any ruffled feathers are smoothed by the remembrance of our first meeting; the shame of our mutual need and the eagerness with which she came into my arms when I pulled one of Bell’s laudanum vials from my pocket.

  My eyes lazily search the cottage for more drugs. My work for the Hardcastles is complete, their new portraits hang in the long gallery. I’m not invited to the party, and I’m not expected at the house, leaving me a free morning on this mattress, the world circling me like paint down a plughole.