The Specimen
Authors: Martha Lea
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Martha Lea, 2013
The moral right of the author has been asserted
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 85786 714 8
EXPORT ISBN978 0 85786 939 5
eISBN 9780857867155
Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire
Part I
Prelude
Helford Passage, Cornwall. September 8, 1866.
THE TIMES
, Thursday, September 6, 1866.
MURDER AT HYDE PARK.
O
N the morning of Tuesday, 7th August, the body of Edward Scales (38), late of Helford, Cornwall, was
discovered at his Hyde Park residence in London. During the inquest held on the body by Horatio Moreton Esq., Coroner, and attended by Dr Jacobs of the London Hospital, it was made known that the
body of the deceased bore the marks of ligatures to the neck, and that the contents of the stomach of the deceased had been found to be largely full of brandy. After lengthy examinations of
witnesses, a Mrs G. Pemberton (26) of Richmond, Surrey, was later charged with the Murder of Mr Scales and committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court.
Never is a newspaper read more intently than when it is about to be put to some other use. Their names came in and out of focus. For a few blessed moments her mind was utterly
quiet, and she waited for the shaking to subside before tucking the slip of newsprint away. She ripped the next square from the string, and the next and the next until she was done. Outside the
privy she leaned on the closed door and breathed the damp morning air. There was just a hint of rotten autumn settling in but nothing very definite.
As she went back to the house she tried to remember what she had been doing on that Monday a month before. She tried to remember, because she didn’t want to let her mind gallop around,
gathering thoughts about how many people in the country over the past two days had already seen the information hiding up her left sleeve. People on trains and at news-stands. At breakfast. On park
benches, and waiting on street corners.
She was standing now in front of the bureau in the study. For such an imposing piece of furniture, its lock was a pitifully small mechanism. With the need for an actual key now positively
redundant, she took up the poker from its place by the empty grate. It was simply a matter of precision and determination. The bevelled point of the poker slipped the first time and gouged a scrape
through the walnut. On the fifth attempt she was able to force the poker into the space between the locked-up lid and the body of the bureau. She levered her weight onto the poker. The crack of
splintering wood and the lock giving way brought Susan to the room.
“Ma’am?”
“That’s quite all right,” she said. “I shan’t require any assistance. Except, of course, that I shall be going to London today and will need to pack.” Then
she turned her attention again to the bureau and set about finding the name and address of the late Edward Osbert Scales’ solicitor.
Chapter I
Helford Passage, Cornwall. April 1859.
The sun lay heavy on his clothes making him tired, and he had to stop for a while and rest against the rocks. They were thrust up on the beach, it seemed to Edward Scales, like
wrecked ships. Hulls keeled over, encased in barnacles. A seam of white crystal pressed between layers of dark grey was caulk jammed between planks. He didn’t see the rearing layers,
contorted, extreme pressure distorting and forcing the horizontal to the diagonal and vertical. Only ships. He knew that they were not, could not ever have been ships, but his mind rested on that
thought because anything else was too immense to confront.
The succession of small beaches on the Helford were each enclosed by high cliffs, pocked with shallow caves. Strewn with sharp, jagged rocks, the ground in between was made up of grey, white and
ochre pebbles from fist-sized lumps down to number eight shot. At low tide on the Helford the bladderwrack clung to the rocks, and draped like crowns of slick hair. Not an easy terrain to walk
over. He could have come by boat, but he hadn’t thought of that. And he could have stayed there, too, in the shade of this wrecked ship turned to stone, to take the boots off his aching feet.
And if he had done this, he might not have bothered going further. But Edward Scales moved on between the broken ribs to the other side, and stepped into her view.
Gwen Carrick was almost ready to go back up to the house when she saw him. She recognised the profile, the gait. She’d seen this man on a couple of occasions earlier that month, but he had
always been in the distance, retreating, scrambling between the rocks. Now she stood up and had a better look at him. His boots were new: stout, nailed things and uncomfortable-looking; and she
noticed that his calves were wrapped with gaiters.
When Edward turned again he saw the young woman standing, shielding her eyes against the steady pulsing light on the brackish water of the Helford. And he saw that this was to get a better look
at him. His hat was buckled to the side of his knapsack so he could not raise it to her. Instead, he lifted his hand in a half wave. She mirrored his action, and did not move. A good sign. As he
clambered up the steep shelf of shingle on the little beach, Edward wondered what he might say to her. When he stumbled near the level part of the beach she came forward still shielding her face,
bunching up her skirts with her free hand. Her strides were big, confident. He saw that her hands were tanned against her pale skirt. She had the unconstricted movement of a woman not wearing a
corset, though she held herself straight inside her riding jacket. Her waist was tiny over an ample—he tried not to think of what lay under her skirts. They met with a yard of pebbles between
them. She was tall enough to meet his gaze without having to tilt her chin. She was bareheaded. Edward calculated the length of her hair from the size of the neat coil piled up.
“Are you lost?” she said. She could see that his jacket, a hairy tweed, was new and probably still in its first season.
It was not what he expected. He answered her slowly, “No, I don’t believe so.”
“Sometimes people get lost.” The Cornish swirl embedded in her vowels, curling on the edge of her consonants, was very slight.
The air was still between them, and he caught a scent of her, the curious effect of sunlight on skin and hair. She smelled of herself. Not masked by soap or perfume. It was neither sweet nor
stale. She was waiting for him to speak.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Carrick.”
“You have the advantage, sir; have we met before?”
“Edward Scales.” He bowed very slightly.
“Should I remember you, Edward Scales?”
“It is neither here nor there.”
She nodded at this, and Edward felt relieved. She said, “Do you live near by, or—” She waited for him to fill in the gap.
“I have rooms in Falmouth. I have been walking.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Really? All the way? You must be exhausted.”
Edward caught something in her expression which looked like amusement. Was she flirting? “The distance is not so far.”
An ornament in her hair flashed in the sun. She saw him looking and she pulled out a thin stick. “My paintbrush.”
Edward was unsure of how to answer; she seemed to be challenging him. He said, “I’ve kept you from your painting. I am getting in your way.”
“You’re entitled to rest after your walk,” she said. “But I would like to finish my picture. If you go and stand where you were by those rocks I’ll put you
in.”
Edward relaxed. “How long shall I stand?”
She was already gathering her skirts in her hands. “Give me a quarter of an hour,” she said. “No, twenty minutes.”
As she made her way back to her things she turned her head, smiling, tugging her bottom lip in with her upper left canine.
Edward saw in that gesture of hers a childish glee and a suggestion of self-containment. He couldn’t help being stirred by it. Neither could he help being confused by her. But, of course,
she had been making things easy for both of them by pretending not to know him. Her poise had been immaculate when she had refused to acknowledge that she already knew his name. Yet there was
something in the way she had spoken. The frankness of her. Almost as if she were a different person entirely. Edward retraced his path down to the rocks by the tide line marked out by a thick rope
of seaweed. Taking out his pocket watch he leaned back against the rock. It dug into his shoulder.
Gwen sketched the figure of Edward Scales into her painting. She wanted to put him in the picture, it seemed to her an absolute necessity, to paint him into her watercolour
landscape. Not just for the sake of its composition. It gave her a space to think without him searching her face. Because the painting was already finished, his figure on the paper became a dark
shape, without features. Yet, his awkward posture was recognisably his, and this pleased her. Whilst they had stood opposite each other like that she had wanted to evade his look, which seemed to
seek some sort of confirmation from her. He would not get it.