The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

Staring at the pile, an idea begins to form.

Rummaging through the shelves, I snatch up a charcoal stick and return to the front room, placing the lamp on the floor. There’s no canvas to hand so I dash my thoughts across the wall instead, working within the small pool of dancing light cast by the lantern. They arrive in a frenzy, a lurch of knowledge that wears the stick down to a nub in minutes, forcing me into the gloom to scavenge another.

Working downwards from a canopy of names clustered near the ceiling, I feverishly sketch a trunk of everybody’s actions over the course of the day, the roots stretching back nineteen years, burrowing into a lake with a dead boy at the bottom. At some point, I accidentally reopen an old cut on my hand, smearing my tree red. Tearing the sleeve from my shirt, I bandage the wound as best I can before returning to my labour. The first rays of the new dawn creep over the horizon as I step back, the charcoal stick dropping from my hand and shattering on the bare floorboards. Exhausted, I sit down in front of it, my arm trembling.

Too little information and you’re blind, too much and you’re blinded.

I squint at the pattern. There are two knots in the tree representing two swirling holes in the story. Two questions that will make sense of everything: what did Millicent Derby know and where is Helena Hardcastle?

The cottage door opens, bringing the smell of dew.

I’m too tired to look around. I’m melted candlewax, formless and spent, waiting for somebody to scrape me off the floor. All I want to do is sleep, to close my eyes and free myself of all thought, but this is my last host. If I fail, everything starts over again.

‘You’re here?’ says the Plague Doctor, startled. ‘You’re never here. By this time, you’re usually raving. How did... what is that?’ He sweeps by me, his greatcoat swishing. The costume is utterly ridiculous by the light of a new day, the nightmarish bird revealed as a theatrical tramp. Little wonder he makes most of his house calls at night.

He stops inches from the wall, running his gloved hand along the curve of the tree, smudging the names.

‘Remarkable,’ he says under his breath, looking it up and down.

‘What happened to Silver Tear?’ I ask. ‘I saw her shot in the graveyard.’

‘I trapped her in the loop,’ he says, sadly. ‘It was the only way to save her life. She’ll wake up in a few hours thinking she’s just arrived and repeat everything she did yesterday. My superiors will notice her absence eventually, and come to free her. I’m afraid I have some difficult questions ahead of me.’

As he stands in communion with my painted tree, I open the front door, sunlight drawing across my face, warmth spreading down my neck and bare arms. Squinting into the glare, I breathe in its golden light. I’ve never been awake this early before, never seen the sun rise over this place.

It’s miraculous.

‘Does this painting say what I think it says?’ asks the Plague Doctor, his voice tight with expectation.

‘What do you believe it says?’

‘That Michael Hardcastle tried to murder his own sister.’

‘Then, yes, that’s what it says.’

Birds are singing, three rabbits hopping around the cottage’s small garden, their fur made rust-coloured by the sunlight. If I’d known paradise was on the far side of a sunrise, I’d never have wasted a single night on sleep.

‘You’ve solved it, Mr Bishop, you’re the first one to solve it,’ he says, his voice rising in excitement. ‘You’re free! After all this time, you’re finally free!’ He removes a silver hip flask from the folds of his robe, and presses it into my hand.

I can’t identify the liquid in the flask, but it sets fire to my bones, jolting me awake.

‘Silver Tear was right to worry,’ I say, still watching the rabbits. ‘I’m not leaving without Anna.’

‘That’s not your choice,’ he says, standing back to better see the tree.

‘What are you going to do, drag me out to the lake?’ I ask.

‘I won’t need to,’ he says. ‘The lake was simply a meeting place. The answer was all that ever mattered. You’ve solved Evelyn’s murder and convinced me of the solution. Now that I’ve accepted it, even Blackheath can’t keep hold of you. Next time you sleep, you’ll be freed!’

I want to be angry, but I can’t rouse myself to it. Sleep is tugging at me with soft hands and every time I close my eyes it becomes that much harder to open them again. Returning to the open door, I slide my back down the frame until I’m sitting on the floor, half of my body in gloom, the other half in sunshine. I can’t bring myself to abandon the warmth and birdsong, the blessings of a world so long denied.

I take another sip from the flask, forcing myself awake.

I’ve still got so much to do.

So much you can’t be seen to be doing.

‘It wasn’t a fair competition,’ I say. ‘I had eight hosts whereas Anna and Daniel only had one. I could remember the week and they couldn’t.’

He pauses, considering me.