The Taxidermist's Daughter Read online

  Through the open windows, Connie could hear the jackdaws chattering in their new colony in the poplar trees at the end of the garden. Earlier in the spring, they’d set up residence between the chimney stacks of Blackthorn House. In March, a nest had come down into the drawing room, a collapse of twigs and hair and bark sending the cold remains of the fire billowing out on to the furniture. Particularly distressing were the three speckled, partially hatched blue-green eggs and the one tiny chick, tangled in the debris, its beak still open. The distraught cawing of the mother had haunted the house for days.

  Connie looked down at the bird on the workshop counter.

  Unlike its living companions, this jackdaw would never age. Thanks to her care and skill, it would be preserved at one dazzling moment in time. Eternal, forever poised for flight, as if it might at any moment come back to life and soar up into the sky.

  *

  Pushing everything else from her mind, Connie lined up the scalpel, and cut.

  At first, a gentle shifting, nothing more. Then the tip of the blade pierced the skin and the point slipped in. The flesh seemed to sigh as it unfolded, as if the bird was relieved the waiting was over. The journey from death back to life had begun. A leaking of liquid and the distinctive coppery smell of meat. The feathers held within them a scent of dust and old clothes, like a parlour left unaired.

  The cloudy eyes of the bird stared up at her. When Connie was done, its eyes would be ivory again. Glass, not jelly, shining as brightly as they had in life. It was hard to find a good match for a jackdaw’s eyes. Pale blue when young, like jays, then shifting through dark to light.

  Connie let her shoulders drop and allowed her muscles to relax, then began to peel the skin from the flesh with her fingers. Cutting, pulling back, cutting again. The deep red of the breast, the colour of quince jelly; the silver sheen of the wings. She took care to keep the intestines, lungs, kidneys, and heart intact in the abdominal sac, so she could use the body as a guide for the shaping to come.

  She worked slowly and methodically, wiping the tiny pieces of tissue, feathers, blood and cartilage from the point of the blade on to the newspaper as she went. Rushing, the tiniest slip, might make the difference between a clean job and a possibility ruined.

  Connie allowed two days for a carrion bird – a jackdaw like this, or a magpie, rook or crow. Once begun, it was important to work fast, before the natural processes of decay took hold. If all the fat was not scraped from the bones, there was a risk of maggots destroying the bird from within. The first day was spent skinning, washing and preparing; the second, stuffing and positioning.

  Each task was mirrored left and right; she followed the same sequence each time. Either side of the breastbone, the left wing and then the right, the left leg and the right. It was a dance, with steps learnt through trial and error and, in time, perfected.

  Connie reached for her pliers from their hook and noticed that she would have to order some more wire for mounting. She started to loosen the leg bones. Twisting back and forth, the scraping of the side of the scalpel as the flesh came loose, then the snap of a knee joint.

  They knew each other now, Connie and this bird.

  When she had finished, she placed everything she did not need – tissue, stray feathers, damp scraps of newspaper – into the pail at her feet, then turned the bird over and moved on to work on the spine.

  The sun climbed higher in the sky.

  Eventually, when her muscles were too cramped to continue, Connie folded the bird’s wings and head in on itself to prevent the skin from drying out, then stretched her arms. She rolled her neck and shoulders, flexed her fingers, feeling satisfied with her morning’s work. Then she went out through the side door into the garden and sat in the wicker chair on the terrace.

  From the roof of the ice house, the colony of jackdaws continued to jabber and call. A requiem for their fallen comrade.

  Chapter 2

  North Street

  Chichester

  Harry Woolston stood back and looked at the partially finished painting.

  Everything was technically correct – the colour, the line of the nose, the hint of dissatisfaction in the lines around the mouth – yet it was not a good likeness. The face, put simply, had no life in it.

  He wiped the oil from his brush with a cloth and considered the portrait from another angle. The problem was that his subject was flat on the canvas, as if he had sketched her from a photograph rather than from a living, breathing woman. They had worked late into the grey, wet night, then Harry sent her home and continued on his own, before heading to the Rifleman for a late, quick nightcap.

  He had ruined the painting. Or rather, it had never worked at all.

  Harry put down his palette. Usually, the smells of linseed oil and paint filled him with expectation. Today, they taunted him. He was tempted to think it was his subject’s fault – that he should have found someone with more promise, with a more distinctive face and unique expression – but, though he tried to blame his sitter, he knew that he was at fault. He had failed to find the essence of the woman, failed to capture the shadows and lines and curves to preserve for posterity. Rather, he’d produced a list of painted characteristics: a nose just so, hair of such-and-such a colour, eyes of this tint rather than that.

  All true. Yet all completely false.

  Harry put his brushes into the turpentine jar to soak and wiped his hands. He took off his blue working smock, flung it over the back of the armchair and put his waistcoat back on. Glancing at the carriage clock, he realised he was running late. He drained the last of his cold coffee, stubbed out his cigarette, then noticed with irritation that there was a smudge of paint on his right shoe. He reached for a cloth.

  ‘Damn,’ he said, as he succeeded only in smearing the vermilion over the laces. He’d have to leave it for now.

  ‘Lewis?’ he called, walking out into the hall.

  The butler appeared from the back of the house.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Has my father come in?’

  ‘He has not.’ Lewis paused. ‘Were you expecting him, sir?’

  ‘I’d thought he might return for lunch.’

  When he’d bumped into his father at breakfast, Harry had asked if they might talk. The old man hadn’t committed himself either way.

  ‘Did he say what time he’d be home this evening, Lewis?’

  ‘Dr Woolston gave no reason to assume that it would not be at the usual time, sir.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘His only instruction was that, should you find yourself detained, dinner should be served at seven thirty.’

  Harry knew – and Lewis knew – it was intended as a reproach for the fact that Harry had failed to come home for dinner on several occasions recently, each time without sending his apologies. The Castle Inn was so much more appealing than another formal, silent meal alone with his father, struggling to find a topic of conversation that suited them both.

  Harry took his hat from the stand. ‘Thank you, Lewis.’

  ‘So will you be in for dinner this evening, sir?’

  Harry met his gaze. ‘I should think so,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  *

  Harry walked slowly past the Georgian facades of the private houses at the top of North Street, heading towards the shops closer to the stone Market Cross that stood at the junction of Chichester’s four main streets.

  He had taken the morning off, pleading illness, in order to work on the painting – pointlessly, as it turned out. Now he resented having to go to the office at all, especially since it was a pleasant day for once. Ceramic plates and serving dishes and milk jugs, Spode and Wedgwood imitations, lists of container carriers and shipping lines, moving goods from one end of the country to another to grace middle-class dining tables. This was not what Harry wanted to do with his life, working his way up in a business that bored him rigid, and for a man he loathed.

  He still didn’t understand why his father had insisted h
e find employment with Frederick Brook. Staffordshire born and bred, Brook was a self-made man and successful at what he did, but there was no common ground between him and Harry’s father at all. Dr Woolston was a great believer in everyone knowing their place. He mixed only with other professionals and looked down upon those who made their money in trade.

  Harry couldn’t stick it any longer. He didn’t care how much of a favour Brook was doing his father, nor how many times he told him so. He was going to chuck it in.

  Harry drew level with the Assembly Rooms, then moved on towards the Market Cross. The street was busy, women with shopping baskets and perambulators, men loading bottles on to a delivery cart outside the wine merchant, everyone enjoying the promise of a summer’s day free from umbrellas and mackintoshes or the need to scuttle from one shop to the next.

  A crowd of people was standing outside Howards. The usual selection of skinned rabbits and poultry was hanging in the butcher’s window, raw and bloody, but when Harry drew level, he saw that the glass had been smashed.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Break-in,’ one man said. ‘Took some knives, a few other tools.’

  ‘Cash from the till,’ another put in. ‘Smashed the place up a bit.’

  Harry glanced at the jeweller’s shop next door. ‘Funny place to go for.’

  ‘They reckon it’s down to a chap who got sacked,’ a third man offered. ‘Got out of prison last week. Sore about losing his position.’

  Harry turned right at the Market Cross into West Street, heading for his father’s consulting rooms. No time like the present. Wherever or whenever the conversation took place, it was going to be difficult. He might as well have it out with him. At least he’d know for certain where he stood.

  Harry intended to enrol in the Royal Academy Schools; he’d made his application. He could live without his father’s approval, but not without his financial support. He’d be stuck working for Brook for years before he made enough money to fund his studies out of his own pocket.

  He straightened his jacket and checked his tie was properly knotted, then mounted the stone step. He noticed how the brass plaque was brightly polished: DR JOHN WOOLSTON MD. Today, even that made his spirits sink. His father didn’t see patients any more – he was strictly a paperwork man – but it was all so visibly respectable, so predictable.

  He took a deep breath, pushed open the door and walked in.

  ‘Morning, Pearce. The old man in?’

  Harry stopped dead. The reception room was empty. His father’s clerk was as much a part of the fabric of the building as the tables and chairs. In all his life, he couldn’t remember a time when he’d arrived without seeing the avian profile of Pearce peering with disapproval over his half-moon spectacles.

  ‘Pearce?’

  From upstairs, he heard the sounds of someone walking about.

  ‘I’m telling you, get out. Damn you!’

  His hand on the highly polished banister, Harry froze. He’d never heard the old man swear, or even raise his voice.

  ‘I wanted to give you a chance,’ a man said. A soft voice, educated. ‘I’m sorry you chose not to take it.’

  ‘Get out!’

  Harry heard the sound of a chair being upended.

  ‘Get out!’ his father shouted. ‘I tell you, I don’t have to listen to such filth. It’s a disgraceful slur.’

  The whole situation was so extraordinary that Harry couldn’t decide what to do. If his father needed help, he would of course intervene. But at the same time, the old man hated to be embarrassed in any way and would almost certainly resent his interference.

  The decision was made for him. The door to his father’s consulting room was flung open with such violence that it hit the wall, then rattled on its hinges. Harry bounded back down the stairs two at a time and hurled himself into the recess behind Pearce’s desk, only just in time. The visitor came quickly down and disappeared into West Street. Harry caught no more than a glimpse of his clothes – working men’s trousers and broad-brimmed farm hat, and small, clean black boots.

  He was about to set off after him when he heard the floorboards again shift overhead. Seconds later, his father came down the stairs as fast as his stiff knee would let him. He took his hat and coat from the stand beside the door, put on his gloves and left.

  This time, Harry didn’t stop to think. He ran after his father, tailing him through the cathedral cloisters, down St Richard’s Walk and into Canon Lane. Despite his bad leg, the old man was walking fast. Right, into South Street, past the post office and the Regnum Club, all the way down to the railway station.

  Harry held back as Dr Woolston climbed into a Dunnaways cab. He heard the crack of the whip and watched as the carriage pulled away, then ran across the concourse.

  ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where that gentleman was going?’

  The cabman looked at him with amusement. ‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business, is it, sir?’

  Harry fished a coin from his pocket and forced himself to stand still, keen not to give the impression that the information was worth a penny more.

  ‘The Woolpack Inn,’ the cabman said. ‘So far as I could hear.’

  ‘And the Woolpack is where?’ Harry tried not to sound impatient.

  ‘Fishbourne.’ The man tipped his cap back on his head. ‘Might you also be wanting to go there, sir?’

  Harry hesitated. He didn’t want to run to the expense of a cab; besides, he didn’t want his father to see him. He had no idea what the old man was up to, but he wanted neither to compromise him nor to fail to help him if he was in some sort of difficulty. Despite his current frustrations, he was fond of the old man.

  ‘No,’ he said, and rushed instead to the ticket office.

  Harry all but threw his money at the clerk behind the counter, then took the stairs two at a time over the bridge to the opposite platform, just a moment too late to make the Portsmouth train.

  ‘Damn it,’ he said. ‘Damn.’

  He stalked up and down the platform, waiting for the next stopping service to Fishbourne, still wondering where his strait-laced father might be going in the middle of a working day. He realised too that, in his rush to follow, he’d omitted to inform Brook of his whereabouts. Then again, if he was fired, it would force his father’s hand.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered, looking up the track, though the train was not due for another twenty-five minutes. ‘Hurry up, come on.’

  Chapter 3

  Blackthorn House

  Fishbourne Marshes

  Connie drank her coffee on the terrace, making the most of the sunshine before going back to the workshop.

  Her journal and a fresh jar of blue ink sat on the table in front of her. So far, she had written nothing.

  She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with fresh, sharp sea air. She was pleased with her work this morning and, for the first time in some days, felt at peace with the world and her place in it.

  Who killed Cock Robin?

  I, said the Sparrow

  With my bow and arrow.

  I killed Cock Robin.

  The maid’s voice floated through the house and out of the French windows on to the terrace. Connie smiled. Mary often sang to herself when she thought no one was listening. She was a sweet creature and Connie considered herself fortunate to have secured her. Her father’s profession was strange enough to excite distrust these days, and most of the village girls she’d interviewed when they first arrived were scared, or claimed to be, by the bell jars in the workshop, the bottles of preserving solutions, the trays of sharp glittering eyes and varnished claws. The first maid Connie engaged had given notice after only two weeks.

  And . . . all the birds of the air

  Fell a-sighing and a-sobbing

  When they heard of the death

  Of poor Cock Robin.

  Connie put down her pen and sat back, feeling the sigh of the wicker garden chair beneath her.

  For the first ti
me in weeks, she had woken shortly after five o’clock to the sound of birdsong, then the sound of silence. Loud, astonishing silence. She could no longer hear the wind howling around the house or the rain smattering against her window pane.

  The past winter and early spring had been long and harsh. Black clouds and purple skies, the endless shifting of the mudflats and a pitiless wind shaking the house to its foundations night after night.

  In January, Mill Lane and Apuldram Lane both had flooded. Ghost lakes forming where once were fields. The roots of the wych elms rotting where they stood. In February, Connie had been kept awake by the frantic rumbling and turning of the wheel of the Old Salt Mill in the centre of the creek, spinning and booming and thundering in the surge of the spring tides. In March, one of the branches of the oak tree had come down in the gales, missing their workshop by a matter of inches. April and the endless squalls, rain falling vertically and the land sodden underfoot. The water meadows hadn’t dried out yet. Connie had set up a line of pails in the attic to catch the water. She made a note to remind Mary to bring them down, if the weather looked like holding.

  Today, the surface of the mill pond was flat and the marshes were alive with colour. Blue-green water, tipped with foam by a gentle breeze, glinting in the sunshine. The oaten reedmace like the underside of velvet ribbon. The blackthorn and early hawthorn shimmering with white flowers. Red goosefoot and wild samphire, purple-eyed speedwell and golden dandelions in the hedgerows.

  Connie looked back over her shoulder to the house itself. Often it appeared inhospitable, so isolated and exposed on the marshes, some quarter of a mile from its nearest neighbour. Today, it looked splendid in the sunshine.

  Fashioned from the same warm red brick as several of the finest houses in Fishbourne, it had a steep red-tiled roof and tall chimney. At the back of the house was a kitchen with a modern black-lead range, a scullery and a walk-in larder. On the first floor were four bedrooms and a night nursery overlooking the water. A narrow flight of stairs led up to the servants’ quarters on the top floor, unoccupied since Mary’s mother insisted on her living at home.