The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

I come to a halt, suddenly uncertain of my purpose. I look around, not recognising anything, wondering why I left the cottage without my brushes and easel. Surely I came to paint, but I’m not a fan of the morning light here. It’s too dreary, too quiet, a gauze across the landscape.

‘I don’t know why I’m here,’ I say to myself, looking down at my charcoal-stained shirt.

Anna. You’re here for Anna.

Her name shakes me loose of Gold’s confusion, my memories returning in a flood.

It’s getting worse.

Taking a deep breath of cold air, I clutch the chess piece from the mantel in my hand, building a wall between myself and Gold by using every memory I have of Anna. I make bricks of her laughter, her touch, her kindness and warmth, and only when I’m content my wall is high enough, do I resume my study of the Sun Room, letting myself inside when I’m satisfied the house sleeps.

Dance’s drunken friend, Philip Sutcliffe, is asleep on one of the couches, his jacket drawn up over his face. He stirs briefly, smacking his lips and peering at me blearily. He murmurs something, shifts his weight, and then falls asleep again.

I wait, listening. Dripping. Breathing heavily.

Nothing else moves.

Evelyn’s grandmother watches me from the portrait above the fireplace. Her lips are pursed, the artist capturing her exactly at the moment of rebuke.

My neck prickles.

I find myself frowning at the painting, dismayed by how gently she’s been rendered. My mind repaints it, the curves as harsh as scars, the oil piled like mountains. It becomes a mood smeared on canvas. A black one at that. I’m certain the old battleaxe would have preferred its honesty.

A peal of shrill laughter sounds through the open door, a dagger driven into somebody’s story. The guests must have started drifting down to breakfast.

I’m running out of time.

Closing my eyes, I try to remember what Millicent spoke with her son about, what drove her to hurry off so quickly and come here, but everything’s a clutter. There are too many days, too many conversations.

A gramophone springs into life down the corridor, slashing at the quiet with random notes. There’s a crash, the music screeching to a halt, hushed voices bickering and blaming.

We were standing outside the ballroom, that’s where it started. Millicent was sad, wrapped in memory. We talked of the past; how she’d visited Blackheath as a child and brought her own children when they were old enough. She was disappointed in them, then angry with me. She caught me looking through the ballroom window at Evelyn and mistook my concern for lust.

‘It’s always the weak ones with you, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘Always the...’

Something she saw caused her to lose her train of thought.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I try to recall what it was.

Who else was in there with Evelyn?

Half a second later, I’m sprinting into the corridor towards the gallery.

A single oil lamp’s burning on the wall, its sickly flame encouraging the shadows rather than diminishing them. Snatching it off the hook, I hold it up to the family oil paintings, inspecting them one by one.

Blackheath shrinks around me, shrivelling like a spider touched to the flame.

In a few hours, Millicent will see something in the ballroom that so startles her, she’ll leave her son standing on the path, and rush to this gallery. Wrapped in scarves and armed with her suspicions, she’ll spot Gold’s new paintings among the older ones. Any other time she might have walked past. Maybe she has during a hundred other loops, but not on this occasion. This time the past will hold her hand and squeeze.

Memory will murder her.

55

It’s 7:12 a.m. and the entrance hall is a mess. Smashed decanters litter the marble floor, portraits hang at odd angles, lipstick kisses planted on the mouths of long-dead men. Bow ties dangle from the chandelier like sleeping bats, and at the centre of it all stands Anna, barefoot in her white cotton nightgown, staring at her hands as though they’re a riddle she can’t make sense of.

She hasn’t noticed me and for a few seconds I watch her, trying to reconcile my Anna with the Plague Doctor’s stories of Annabelle Caulker. I wonder if Anna’s hearing Caulker’s voice right now, the way I heard Aiden Bishop’s that first morning. Something dry and distant, a part of her, yet apart at the same time, impossible to ignore.

To my shame, my faith in my friend wavers. After working so hard to convince the Plague Doctor of Anna’s innocence, now I’m the one looking at her askew, questioning whether any part of the monster who murdered my sister has survived, waiting to surface again.

Annabelle Caulker’s dead. Now, help her.