The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

‘You’ve made my condition into a gift,’ I say, feeling my spirits lift.

‘Well, what else would you call a second chance?’ she asks. ‘You don’t like the man you were, very well, be somebody else. There’s nothing stopping you, not any more. As I said, I envy you. The rest of us are stuck with our mistakes.’

I have no response to that, though one is not immediately required. We’ve arrived upon two giant fence posts, fractured angels blaring their noiseless horns on top. The gatehouse is set back among the trees on our left, splashes of its red-tile roof showing through the dense canopy. A path leads towards a peeling green door, which is swollen with age and riddled with cracks. Ignoring it, Evelyn pulls me by the fingers towards the back of the house, pushing through branches so overgrown they’re touching the crumbling brickwork.

The back door is held fast with a simple latch, and undoing it, she lets us into a dank kitchen, a layer of dust coating the countertops, the copper pans still out on the hob. Once inside, she pauses, listening intently.

‘Evelyn?’ I say.

Motioning for quiet, she takes a step closer to the corridor. Unsettled by this sudden caution, my body tenses, but she breaks the spell with laughter.

‘I’m sorry, Sebastian, I was listening out for my father.’

‘Your father?’ I say, puzzled.

‘He’s staying here,’ she says. ‘He’s supposed to be out hunting, but I didn’t want to risk bumping into him if he was running late. I’m afraid we don’t like each other terribly much.’

Before I have the chance to ask any more questions, she beckons me into a tiled hallway and up a narrow staircase, the bare wooden steps shrieking beneath our feet. I keep to her heels, snatching backward glances every few steps. The gatehouse is narrow and crooked, doors set into the walls at odd angles like teeth grown wild in a mouth. Wind whistles through the windows carrying with it the smell of the rain, the entire place seeming to rattle on its foundations. Everything about this house seems designed to unseat the nerves.

‘Why put the butler all the way out here?’ I ask Evelyn, who’s trying to choose between the doors either side of us. ‘There must have been somewhere more comfortable.’

‘All the rooms in the main house are full, and Doctor Dickie ordered peace and quiet, and a good fire. Believe it or not, this might be the best place for him. Come on, let’s try this one,’ she says, rapping lightly on a door to our left, pushing it open when there’s no response.

A tall fellow in a charcoal-stained shirt is bound by his wrists and dangling from a hook on the ceiling, his feet only barely touching the floor. He’s unconscious, a head full of dark curly hair slumped against his chest, blood speckling his face.

‘Nope, must be the other side,’ says Evelyn, her voice bland and unconcerned.

‘What the devil?’ I say, taking a step back in alarm. ‘Who is this man, Evelyn?’

‘This is Gregory Gold, the fellow who assaulted our butler,’ says Evelyn, eyeing him as one would a butterfly pinned to a corkboard. ‘The butler was my father’s batman during the war. Seems Father’s taken the assault rather personally.’

‘Personally?’ I say. ‘Evie, he’s been strung up like a pig!’

‘Father’s never been a subtle man, or a particularly clever one,’ she shrugs. ‘I suspect the two things go hand in hand.’

For the first time since I awoke, my blood is boiling. Whatever this man’s crimes, justice can’t be served by a length of rope in a locked room.

‘We can’t leave him like this,’ I protest. ‘It’s inhuman.’

‘What he did was inhuman,’ says Evelyn, her chill touching me for the first time. ‘Mother commissioned Gold to tidy up a few of the family portraits, nothing more. He didn’t even know the butler and yet this morning he took after him with a poker and beat him half to death. Believe me, Sebastian, he deserves worse than what’s happening to him here.’

‘What’s to become of him?’ I ask.

‘A constable is coming from the village,’ says Evelyn, ushering me out of the small room, and closing the door behind us, her mood brightening immediately. ‘Father wants to let Gold know of his displeasure in the meantime, that’s all. Ah, this must be the one we wanted.’

She opens another door on the opposite side of the hall, and we enter a small room with whitewashed walls and a single window blinded by dirt. Unlike the rest of the house, there’s no draught in here and a good fire’s burning in the grate, plenty of wood stacked nearby to feed it. There’s an iron bed in the corner, the butler shapeless beneath a grey blanket. I recognise this chap. It’s the burnt man who let me in this morning.

Evelyn was right, he’s been cruelly treated. His face is hideously bruised and livid with cuts, dried blood staining the pillowcase. I might have mistaken him for dead if it weren’t for his constant murmuring, distress poisoning his sleep.