The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

‘You’re saying Anna’s a devil?’

‘I’m saying thousands of crimes are committed every day, but only two people have been sent to this place.’ His voice is rising, racked with emotion. ‘Anna’s one of them, and yet you risked your life to help her escape. It’s madness.’

‘Any woman who can inspire that loyalty has to be worth something.’

‘You’re not hearing me,’ he says, his fists balled.

‘I’m hearing you, but I won’t leave her here,’ I say. ‘Even if you make me go today, I’ll find my way back in tomorrow. I did it once, I’ll do it again.’

‘Stop being such a bloody fool!’ He thumps the doorframe hard enough to bring dust down on our heads. ‘It wasn’t loyalty that brought you to Blackheath, it was vengeance. You didn’t come here to rescue Anna, you came for your pound of flesh. She’s safe in Blackheath. Caged, but safe. You didn’t want her to be caged, you wanted her to suffer – so many people out there wanted her to suffer, but none of them was willing to do what you were, because nobody hated this woman as much as you did. You followed her into Blackheath and for thirty years you dedicated yourself to torturing her, as the footman tortures you today.’

Silence presses down on us.

I open my mouth to respond, but my stomach’s in my shoes, my head spinning. The world has upended itself, and even though I’m sitting on the floor, I can feel myself falling and falling.

‘What did she do?’ I whisper.

‘My superiors—’

‘Opened Blackheath’s doors to an innocent man intent on murder,’ I say. ‘They’re as guilty as anybody in here. Now tell me what she did.’

‘I can’t,’ he says weakly, his resistance all but spent.

‘You’ve helped me this far.’

‘Yes, because what happened to you is wrong,’ he says, taking a long swig from the flask, his Adam’s apple bouncing up and down in his throat. ‘Nobody objected to my helping you escape because you weren’t supposed to be here anyway, but if I start telling you things you shouldn’t know, there’ll be repercussions. For both of us.’

‘I can’t leave without knowing why I’m going, and I can’t promise not to come back until I’m certain of why I came in the first place,’ I say. ‘Please, this is how we end this.’

The beak mask turns towards me slowly, and for a full minute, he stands there, deep in thought. I can feel myself being measured, my qualities weighed and set aside, my flaws held up to the light that they might be better judged.

It’s not you he’s measuring.

What does that mean?

He’s a good man. This is when he finds out how good.

Bowing his head, the Plague Doctor surprises me by taking off his top hat, revealing the brown leather straps holding the beak mask in place. One by one, he begins undoing them, grunting with the effort as his thick fingers pry at the catches. As the last clasp comes loose, he removes his mask and pulls down his hood, revealing the bald head beneath. He’s older than I would have imagined, closer to sixty than fifty certainly, his face that of a decent, overworked man. His eyes are bloodshot, his skin the colour of old paper. If my tiredness could take a shape, it would look like this.

Oblivious to my concern, he tilts his face to catch the early morning light seeping through the window.

‘Well, that’s done it,’ he says, tossing the mask onto Gold’s bed. Freed from the porcelain, his voice is almost, but not quite, the one I know.

‘I don’t imagine you were supposed to do that,’ I nod towards the mask.

‘It’s getting to be quite a list,’ he replies, sitting down on a step outside the door, positioning himself so that his entire body is bathed in sunlight.

‘I come here every morning before I start work,’ he says, taking a deep breath. ‘I love this time of the day. It lasts for seventeen minutes, then the clouds gather and two footmen resume a quarrel from the evening before, ending in a fistfight at the stables.’ He’s peeling his gloves off, finger by finger. ‘It’s a shame this is the first time you’ve been able to enjoy it, Mr Bishop.’

‘Aiden,’ I say, extending my hand.

‘Oliver,’ he says as he shakes it.

‘Oliver,’ I repeat, thoughtfully. ‘I never thought of you having a name.’

‘Perhaps I should tell it to Donald Davies when I confront him on the road,’ he says, a faint smile on his lips. ‘He’ll be very angry. It might calm him.’

‘You’re still going out there? Why? You have your answer.’

‘Until you escape, it’s my duty to shepherd those that follow you, to give them the same chance you had.’

‘But you know who killed Evelyn Hardcastle now,’ I say. ‘Won’t that change things?’

‘Are you suggesting I’ll find my task difficult because I know more than them?’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ve always known more than them. I knew more than you. Knowledge was never my problem. Ignorance is the condition I struggle with.’