Authors: Frances Hardinge
The doctor gave a puzzled frown, but followed it with a small bow of consent.
They walked away from the house, Faith fearing all the while that Myrtle might notice her from the window and call her back to the house.
She could not help observing that the doctor was dressed rather well. He wore a blue velvet waistcoat criss-crossed with gold thread, his moustache had been carefully trimmed and waxed, and a
gold pin glittered in his cravat. There was a self-conscious eagerness in his manner that grated on her.
She remembered her mother standing close to the doctor and grasping his bare hand, and something twisted sharply in her gut, like the neck of a chicken being wrung. She could have felt sorry for
him, if her father was not still lying in the church crypt. Wooing a widow before she was out of mourning was bad form. Beginning a courtship before her husband was even in the ground was
sickening.
‘What was it you wanted to say?’ asked the doctor.
‘I was walking in the dell yesterday.’ Faith took the plunge. ‘Doctor, there is a place where the moss is scuffed—’
‘Ah, I see.’ The doctor gave her a look filled with patience and sad mirth. ‘I am sure there is. What a dear, loyal young woman you are!’
It took Faith a moment to realize what he meant, and then the blood rushed to her face.
‘No, there really is such a place, and not of my making! Please! Let me show you!’
However, the doctor only gave her a sad, kind look, and continued walking in the direction of the cliff-path. When she caught up with him, he was standing at the very edge, staring down like a
stocky hawk contemplating a stoop.
‘That tree halfway down – split, and showing white wood,’ he murmured. ‘That is a fresh break.’
‘Sir – did you see this wheel mark?’ Faith pointed to what was left of the wheelbarrow rut, now sadly softened with rain.
Dr Jacklers gave it only the briefest glance. ‘Oh, that is a mark left by the edge of somebody’s boot. There are doubtless a hundred such, now that everybody has been tramping to and
fro.’
It was a blow, but Faith did not choose to be discouraged.
‘Tell me, Dr Jacklers, could somebody survive that fall if that tree below caught them?’
‘I suppose so . . . yes. Though they would be lucky to escape without broken bones.’
‘Then . . . if Father jumped, why do so above that tree?’ Faith moved towards the brink, two yards to the doctor’s left. ‘I would have leaped
here.
’
‘Miss Sunderly, you are too close to the edge!’
‘There is a clear drop here, down to the rocks,’ said Faith. ‘Nothing would catch me if I fell.’
There was a sudden gust of wind, and the doctor lunged for Faith, catching at her arm. She recoiled, and for a moment was off balance, the hungry grey void gaping and roaring as she tipped
towards it. Then her slithering boots found their footing again. She drew back a step from the precipice. She could not say for certain whether the doctor’s clutch had steadied or unbalanced
her.
Faith felt no fear, but the doctor’s eyes were full of it. They were the colour of good coffee, and puckered at the corners from reading. He flinched, as if somebody had shone a bright
light directly into his gaze. And for a moment, just for a moment, it was as if he could see her properly.
Then he blinked, and let go of her wrist. She could see his workaday thoughts swing back into place like a curtain.
‘You see, that is why you should be careful and pay attention,’ he said briskly, but not quite chidingly. ‘A slight young thing like you could be carried away by the wind, and
then where would we be?’
I am flesh and blood, not a fairy. I would break and bleed just like you.
‘I can see,’ continued the doctor, with what was probably meant as gentleness, ‘that you do not wish to believe that your father ended his own life.’
‘I find it hard to believe that he would do so,’ Faith answered, ‘and impossible to believe that he would do so
clumsily.
’
‘Then what is your explanation?’
‘You said that you found bumps on the back of my father’s head as well as the front. Could he have been struck from behind, and fallen forward?’
‘Ah. So that is the measure of it.’ The doctor sighed, and gave her a sad little smile. ‘Miss Sunderly, do you know the coroner’s worst enemy? Novels. You are a keen
novel-reader, yes? I know that shy, dreaming look.’
For a tiny instant Faith wondered whether it would benefit the doctor’s investigation if he experienced a cliff fall first-hand.
‘I quite understand the appeal,’ the doctor went on indulgently. ‘Why suffer dull reality when you might have kidnaps, murders, family secrets and hidden passages aplenty, eh?
And so you young ladies come to the coroners with your heads full of fantasies and phantasms, overheated notions and wild suspicions—’
‘I am surprised they all fit into our little female skulls,’ Faith responded a little tartly. She saw the doctor blanch, but pushed on earnestly. ‘Father was hated on Vane from
the start. The day he died, a letter—’
‘Listen, my dear. There is not a man, woman or child on this island that I have not known for years. Oh, we have our share of the “criminal classes” . . . but no murderers.
Trust me. I would know them by the slope of their foreheads.’ The doctor turned away from the cliff with an air of finality. ‘There now, you can set aside your monstrous imaginings.
Have I put your mind at rest?’
‘I see how it is,’ was all Faith could say.
‘I will not mention these notions of yours to anybody,’ Dr Jacklers remarked graciously. ‘And I urge you not to do so either.’
I see how it is. I will have no help from the law. If I want the killer found, I will have to do it myself.
Back at the house, the doctor was welcomed and shown into Myrtle’s presence. Faith slipped upstairs, simmering with frustration. By the door she found a discreet corked
pot, which proved to contain a dead mouse. Evidently Mrs Vellet was willing to supply deceased rodents on demand, but preferred to avoid discussing it.
Faith carried it into her room. She felt some of the tense coils in her stomach loosen as she watched the snake pour like oil out of its cage. Its jaws gracefully gaped and enclosed the furred
dollop, head first. The mouse disappeared inside the snake’s lacquered body, and Faith let the reptile slide up her arm and around her neck.
At that very moment, she heard a sound out on the landing. Somebody was stealthily and carefully turning a door handle. Having recently turned that very handle herself, she recognized the
pattern of tiny creaks. It was the door to her father’s room.
Faith burst from her room and came to a halt on the landing. The snake tensed into angles, disturbed by the sudden motion.
Paul Clay was standing in the doorway of the Reverend’s room.
‘What are you doing here?’ Faith demanded.
Paul stared at her aghast, his gaze dropping to the snake around her neck.
‘It was a dare . . .’ he began, stepping back out on to the landing.
‘You
thief
!’ hissed Faith. ‘What did you steal?’
‘Nothing!’ He glanced down at the scissors in his hand. ‘I just wanted . . . some hair. They dared me to bring back some hair. But I didn’t want to prise open the coffin,
and then Dr Jacklers took it away for coroner business. I thought there might be some in his room . . .’
‘How
dare
you!’ Faith felt so angry that it would not have surprised her if big, black wings had burst from her shoulders. A lock of hair was the most personal gift or
memento. Nobody but a close loved one should have such a treasure, and certainly not every trespassing gawper with scissors. ‘He is dead, and graveless. Is that not enough? Do you people have
to cut him apart as well?’
Paul flinched, and glanced towards the stairway with a look of panic. As he did so, Faith realized that she could hear steps ascending. The moment the other person came into view, Paul would be
discovered, a trespasser among the family’s rooms. One little scream would seal his fate, and assert Faith’s own innocence.
But Faith did not scream. Instead she found herself seizing Paul’s sleeve and towing him at speed down the landing and into her own room. He gave a gasp when he realized that they were in
her chamber, but she did not give him time to speak, dragging him out through the second door on to the roof garden.
She quickly lowered herself to sit on the little wooden stool.
‘Sit down,’ she hissed, ‘or they can see you from below!’
Paul obeyed, settling himself on the opposite side of the roof garden, looking at her with a slow, wary incredulity.
What had she done? Faith was alone with a strange man. Not a doctor, relation or close friend of the family. She had been told, over and over, that a woman
was
her reputation. She was a
bubble that could be burst with closeness. On the landing she had been a black pillar of power and rage. Out here, she suddenly felt appallingly fragile.
She realized that her back was pressed against the trellis, as though her reputation could yet be saved if she maintained the maximum distance possible. In Paul’s eyes she saw the same
creeping panic. He had flattened himself against the opposite wall.
‘Why did you do that?’ he whispered.
‘Why did you let me?’ she retaliated.
There was a long silence. Neither of them had answers.
She was intensely aware of Paul’s otherness, as if they were warriors from rival tribes meeting in the hinterlands.
And yet here she was.
‘Who dared you?’ Faith asked at last, a belligerent edge in her voice.
‘Some friends.’ Paul’s tone was non-committal, but Faith was learning to see through that. ‘People are saying your father’s spirit is walking—’
‘Who?’ demanded Faith. ‘Who says that?’
‘Everybody, all over the island.’
All over the island.
Faith’s falsehood had spread more quickly than she could have dreamed.
‘They knew I helped move his body for the photograph,’ Paul went on, ‘but they wagered I wouldn’t come back and touch him again, with his ghost hanging over, watching.
The hair was supposed to be proof.’
‘What were the flowers supposed to prove?’ asked Faith, recalling the abandoned bunches in the conservatory.
Paul took a moment studying his knuckles, and Faith had the feeling he was embarrassed.
‘My father sent them,’ he said. ‘He thought that you might need some . . . to freshen the house.’
The gesture was almost reasonable, Faith had to admit. However, Clay was still sending flowers to a new widow, and the pink and yellow blooms had not looked particularly funereal. She wondered
whether Clay’s wife was a jealous sort.
‘I did not see your mother at the funeral,’ she said, following the thought.
‘She stopped coming to them after her own,’ Paul answered simply.
Faith could not say anything kind or bland to him. It would have sounded false and wrong. The pair of them were beyond such things. She said nothing instead.
‘What was the doctor doing here?’ asked Paul in his turn.
‘He is the coroner. He came to investigate my father’s death.’
Paul allowed himself to look actually interested.
‘Did you tell him what you tried to tell me? Did you tell him that you think somebody murdered—’
Do you mean my fantasies and phantasms?’ Faith retorted. ‘My overheated imaginings brought on by too many novels?’
‘You
did
tell him!’ Paul’s eyes widened, and Faith could not be sure whether he was impressed or incredulous. ‘You
believe
it.’
‘And you do not,’ Faith said bitterly.
‘Nobody liked him, but it was not a killing business.’ Paul narrowed his eyes. ‘He nearly lamed my friend, and acted curmudgeonly to everyone, and then turned out to be a cheat
and a hypocrite to boot. But you do not
kill
a man for that.’
Faith gritted her teeth against this description of her father, but she was still seething with the explanation the doctor had refused to hear. She could not hold it in. There was a dangerous
joy in
talking
, even with this enemy. It made Faith realize how she had been trapped in her own head. Trapped in the house. Trapped in the Sunderly family.
‘Well, somebody murdered him for
some
reason,’ she snapped. ‘The morning before he died, someone handed him an unsigned letter. It upset him. He would not talk about
it. He burned it. Then in the middle of the night he went out into the darkness. I think he went to meet somebody. I think the letter forced him to do it.
‘His pistol is missing. He did not shoot himself, so if he took it with him when he went out, it must have been for protection.’
‘If somebody attacked him, why didn’t he shoot them?’ asked Paul. He was staring at her again, the cold, ruthless, speculative gaze she had first seen on his face.
‘I do not know,’ Faith admitted reluctantly. ‘But he had wounds to the back of his head as well as the front. I think he was struck from behind.’
‘Did anybody hear a carriage or a horse come by that night?’ asked Paul thoughtfully.
‘No.’ Faith thought back. ‘The wind was loud though.’
‘And they might have stopped at a distance, then walked. Or maybe they came by boat or on foot.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘This house is miles from anywhere. Anyone who came out
here would have been missing from their home for an hour or two, in the middle of the night. Unless they were in your house already, of course.’
Faith nodded slowly, taking his words on board. The biggest shock, however, was hearing somebody answer her as if her thoughts were not absurd. Just for a moment, she wished that she did not
hate Paul Clay.
Her next words surprised her.
‘I want you to help me,’ she said.
‘Help
you
?’ Paul gave a huff of a laugh. ‘Why would I?’
‘We cannot leave the island until my father is buried properly,’ Faith declared coldly. ‘Your father is sending my mother flowers. The longer we stay, the closer they become.
Do you want me for a sister?’
Paul glared daggers at her, and for a moment Faith thought he would leap to his feet and leave.