The Unseen

13

2011

Leah waited impatiently while the phone rang, fidgeting with nerves. She was sitting in pale vanilla sunshine outside the library, while Mark read through the newspaper reports about the murder of Catherine Morley. The wooden bench was chilly and damp through her jeans, but the sky overhead had turned a gorgeous china blue. There was a lull in the traffic now that rush hour had passed, and the park across the canal from the library looked a brighter green than it had even two days before. At last there was a crackle and pop at the end of the line, and the receiver was lifted.

‘Chris Ward Limited,’ croaked a man’s voice.

‘Oh, hello,’ Leah said, taken aback. The voice sounded like raw meat. ‘I’m sorry to bother you. I got your name from Kevin Knoll – the caretaker at The Bluecoat School in Thatcham? I understand that you did some restoration work there last year?’

‘Yes, that’s right,’ the man said, then broke off to cough. Leah winced, holding the phone a little further from her ear until the fit passed. She could hear him wheezing, catching his breath. ‘I’m afraid I can’t come out and give quotes this week at all, love. I’m off sick,’ he said.

‘I can hear that – you sound awful.’ The man chuckled roughly. ‘Actually, I don’t need a quote. I’m writing an article about The Bluecoat School, and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of quick questions about the restoration work you did?’

‘What kind of questions?’ Did she imagine it, or had a hint of defensiveness crept into his voice?

‘Well, about what condition the building was in before work started, and how much of the original fabric you were forced to replace-’

‘Well, the caretaker and the committee is who you want to ask about that, really. They have all the survey reports and the like,’ Chris Ward interrupted her.

‘And whether you found anything while you were doing the work? Say, behind the plaster… or underneath the floorboards?’ Leah pressed.

There was a startled pause at the end of the phone line. A pause loaded with shock and – unmistakably – unease.

‘Found anything? No, no. We didn’t find anything other than a few dead rats and a whole lot of dust. Sorry not to be more help…’ he said, with a note of finality in his tone. She pictured him edging the receiver back towards its cradle.

‘Hold on – are you sure? Nothing at all? Sometimes the original builders of these ancient buildings left little tokens, or dropped coins find their way through the cracks in the boards… you didn’t find anything at all?’

‘Nothing at all. I’ll have to go – this throat of mine. Sorry not to be more help. Bye, now.’ He rang off, and Leah smiled slightly into the silent phone. She went back inside to find Mark, who was still staring at the microfiche, fascinated.

‘Where have you been?’ he asked quietly.

‘I had an idea – I got the builder’s number from Kevin Knoll and gave him a ring.’

‘What builder? Oh – the Bluecoat builder? Did you speak to him?’

‘Yes. He says he didn’t find anything.’ She smiled a tight, excited smile.

‘So why do you look so pleased?’ he asked, glancing up at her.

‘Because he’s lying,’ Leah told him.

Chris Ward’s business address was, as Leah had expected, a residential house; situated between Newbury and Thatcham. A modern brick building, large and solidly built, with a huge and garish array of children’s plastic toys in the front garden. The lawn, in spite of the early season, was immaculate.

‘He’s not likely to be home on a work day, though, is he?’ Mark pointed out, as Leah parked the car in the street and they climbed out.

‘He’s home. Sick as a dog by the sounds of him.’

‘Oh, good. In a weakened state then,’ Mark said, wryly. Leah glanced at him and he made a calming gesture with his hands. ‘Just… go easy. You’ve got the air of a battleship about you this morning.’

‘I will! I mean, I will. I’ll be nice.’ Leah slowed her striding walk and took a deep breath. ‘This from the man who told me to bugger off the first time we met,’ she added. Mark smiled amiably, and shrugged.

When Chris Ward opened the door it was only a crack, and his face peered out around it, lined and squinting beneath a thatch of steel-grey hair.

‘Don’t come too close, I’m infectious. What can I do for you?’ he rasped.

‘Mr Ward? I’m Leah Hickson – we spoke on the phone a little while ago? About The Bluecoat School,’ she introduced herself. ‘This is my colleague, Mark Canning.’

‘Canning?’ the builder echoed sharply, before he could stop himself.

‘You know the name?’ Leah raised her eyebrows. The door wavered, and Chris Ward seemed to think about shutting it. Leah put her hand out to stop him. ‘Please! Mr Ward, we’ve no desire to cause trouble for you or anybody. We won’t name you as our source, or anything like that… but if we could just see what you found under the floor-’

‘I didn’t find anything under the bloody floor!’

‘I think you did. Please. We just want to see it. We’re not trying to take it from you, I swear…’ The man stared at them for a moment, chewing his lip in consternation. ‘It’s very, very important,’ Leah added. The man nodded, opened the door a little wider and stepped outside.

‘I keep it all in the garage,’ he muttered.

‘It all?’ said Mark.

‘My collection,’ the builder said, uneasily.

The metal garage door opened with an ear-piercing screech, and in the gloom within Leah could make out deep shelves lining the wall all along one side. The shelves were covered in objects, and as Chris Ward flicked on the light switch she saw the oddest collection of things, from muddy boots and glass bottles to rusty shell casings; a Second World War tin helmet to a china doll with one cheek smashed in. Some items were in small sealed fish tanks – improvised glass cases. All were labelled with typed script on neat white cards. The air smelt of old spilled oil, and earth.

‘What is all this stuff?’ Mark asked, walking slowly along the shelves.

‘My collection. I’m… something of an amateur archaeologist, I suppose. I do a lot of metal detecting as well – that’s how I found all these. Medieval and Roman coins,’ Chris Ward said proudly, indicating one of the fish tanks where seven or eight small coins were lovingly arranged on a piece of white cloth. ‘And of course, specialising in restoration work, I come across a lot of artefacts in the buildings I work on,’ he added, slightly more stiffly.

‘And do you tell the owners when you find something?’ Leah asked, sternly. Chris Ward pressed his lips together, looked away.

‘I used to, back in the beginning. But when I did, they never let me…’

‘They never let you keep them? You know, that could be construed as theft, Mr Ward.’

Mark shot her a censorious look. ‘Thank you so much for showing us all this, though,’ he said, pointedly.

Leah peered into a fish tank at a selection of tiny children’s shoes; most of them very basic, little more than a curve of leather with a short length of twine to fasten them. ‘I bet these came out of thatched roofs? Didn’t they?’ she asked. The builder nodded reluctantly. ‘It’s meant to be very bad luck to remove them, you know.’

The man fidgeted awkwardly for a moment. ‘Here’s the stuff you’re after. It was under the east end of the floor. The boards were so loose anybody could have lifted them up – they wouldn’t have needed tools or anything. But nobody had, it seems. Not in all that time.’

‘Unless whoever did just didn’t take what they found,’ Leah pointed out.

‘Look, young lady – there’s a thousand builders who’d have just scraped it up with the rest of the rubbish and carted it off with the spoil, without giving it a second thought, all right? I preserve these old things! I keep them safe!’

‘Leah, just button it and come and look at what he found, would you?’ Mark suggested.

It was a large leather bag with a long shoulder strap. About eighteen inches by twelve, like an over-sized school satchel, dark with age and as stiff as board. The metal buckles were rusty and pitted with corrosion. Leah ran her fingers along it, frowning. Her hands were where Hester Canning’s hands had been. She thought hard, tried to picture her. Hiding this bag in fear, in desperation. Hiding it and never returning to it; but never forgetting it either.

‘I left the things inside it, just as I found them. I always try to keep things just as I find them. Open it up. Go on,’ Chris Ward urged, clearly still excited by his find.

Leah carefully lifted the flap of the bag, and found herself holding her breath, expectantly, reverently. She gently removed four objects from inside it, and finally a sheaf of papers so stained and ruined that there was no hope of ever reading what had been written upon them. Leah stared at the objects, and felt a sudden pang of recognition. The three of them stood in silence for a minute, and Leah’s mind whirled with questions and answers.

‘I’ve… read the journal,’ Chris Ward admitted, somewhat hesitantly. ‘That’s how I knew the name Canning. But it doesn’t tell you what the other things are. Or what they mean.’

‘I know exactly what they are. I know exactly what they mean,’ Leah said quietly.

1911

Hester clenches her hands into fists to hide the bloodstains on them. She can’t bear to look at them, can’t bear having the stuff on her skin, but there is nothing in the room she can clean them on, not without leaving telltale marks for all to see. She stands stock still and tries to think, struggles to breathe. She thinks and she thinks, but can’t find any answers. Nothing that makes sense. A policeman is in the hallway outside. A different one, older. He calls her name repeatedly in a deep and gravelly voice. Feeling like she might be sick, Hester swallows convulsively and goes out into the hall. She shuts the library door behind her.

‘Ah, Mrs Canning, please forgive me for intruding into your home. The door was open, and I couldn’t rouse a servant to answer it…’ he says, then seems to realise the implication of his words and colours slightly. Hester feels tears, hot and savage, building up behind her eyes. ‘Forgive me,’ the man mutters again.

‘The vicar isn’t at home, I’m afraid.’ Hester’s voice is tiny and thin. ‘And neither is Mr Robin Durrant, our house guest. At this time of day they are often to be found in the water meadows between here and Thatcham, going about their-’

‘Oh, we know where Robin Durrant is, don’t you worry. He’s safely in custody, and guarded by three men.’

‘What do you mean? Why is he guarded?’

‘Perhaps you’d like to sit down, Mrs Canning? I can see this is all coming as a terrible shock, to the whole household…’ From downstairs, a fresh storm of pitiful crying erupts from Sophie Bell.

‘I do not want to sit down! Why is Robin Durrant guarded by three men?’

‘Well, Mrs Canning, it was Robin Durrant that committed the murder. He was seen by two men just after he did it, trying to dispose of the girl’s body in the canal. He didn’t even try to run away, and he was most dreadfully stained with her blood. Now he’s sitting in silence and won’t say a word to anybody, not even to deny it. Never a surer sign of guilt, in my experience. It’s a terrible business, truly terrible.’ The policeman shakes his head. Hester’s head fills with a muffled, uneven thumping. Grey shadows swell at the edges of her vision.

‘There must be some mistake,’ she whispers, leaning against the wall to steady herself.

‘Let me help you, madam. Do be seated. I shall find somebody to fetch you a glass of water…’

‘No, no, do not trouble Sophie. She’s too upset,’ Hester says, but so quietly that the man doesn’t seem to hear her.

‘Constable Pearce! Please bring up a glass of water for Mrs Canning!’ he bellows down the stairs, the noise crashing through Hester’s skull like storm waves. ‘Please – can you tell me where I can find the vicar, Mrs Canning? We really must speak with him.’ The policeman bends forwards over Hester in a way that makes her dizzy. She doesn’t know what to say.

‘Church. Try the church,’ she manages at last.

‘Of course. Foolish of me.’ And the man is gone.

Hester has no idea how long she stays sitting on the hard wooden chair in the hallway with a drink of water next to her, untouched. Her throat is parched and aching, but she doesn’t dare open her hand to reach for the glass. She knows what she will see, what is on her hands. With a surge of panic she looks at the wall where she’d leant a short while ago, but the paint is clean. The blood had dried sufficiently. She stares at the surface of the water in the glass, so clear and pure, shining with the daylight from the front door, which still sits open, abandoned, creaking occasionally in the breeze. But the library door, at the end of the hall, keeps drawing her eye. It is terrifying; dark, and secretive, and watchful. Hester is sorely tempted to get up, to run out into the sunshine and never come back. He was most dreadfully stained with her blood… The words echo through her thoughts. Oh, Cat! With a gasp Hester is on her feet, and rushing back through the library door before she can lose her nerve. In the light from the crack in the curtains she’d made earlier, she searches the floor. She finds Albert’s binoculars, stuffed hastily into their case but not closed. She looks at them carefully, sees some glistening dark mess all over them. Cautiously, her hands shaking uncontrollably, she draws them out and turns them to the light. The lenses are smashed and fragments of glass are stuck to the metal in a slick of clotted stuff. Glass, and fine black hairs. Hester stares at them with awful, grim recognition. Something falls from inside one of the cylinders, landing with a small sound on the rug. Numbly, Hester bends and picks it up. It is hard between her fingers, both smooth and angular, like a chip of stone, all covered in blood. Hester frowns, rolls it between her fingers to clean it off a little. She studies it again, and then knows it for what it is. A tooth. A human tooth, broken off sharply at its upper end. Hester screams. She drops the binoculars and they land with a thump that shakes the floor.

Her breath comes in ragged gasps, fast and uneven. She waits for the police to come and find her, to burst into the library in search of the source of the scream and the racket she has made; to find her all bloody and wild. In desperation, she again considers fleeing; climbing out through the window and running away as fast as her weak legs will carry her, though she has no idea where she would go. But she knows that if she moves she will faint. It takes long minutes for the panic to loosen its grip on her but after a while it seems that nobody has noticed her cry out. No footsteps approach the library. She shuts her eyes until the tightness in her chest eases and her head is clear enough to allow her to think. Crouching down, Hester lifts the cover of Robin’s bag and pulls out a silvery blond wig, a diaphanous white dress. All bloodied and ruined. She knows them at once, having spent enough time studying Robin’s pictures to recognise what they are. In that instant she realises: Cat was the elemental. Oh God, oh God, oh God… Hester has no idea if she has spoken aloud or merely thought this short and desperate prayer. Because if Robin has been arrested, with Cat’s body and coming straight from the scene of her killing, then only one other person could have brought these items back to the house. Could have washed their hands in the kitchen sink, and left a stained dish towel behind. My darling Bertie. What has happened here?

Hester’s mind empties of all thoughts except one – to protect Albert. Carefully, she puts the costume back into Robin’s bag, on top of a selection of his correspondence which is soon stained and illegible. The dress fabric feels fine and soft beneath her fingertips. The wig is slippery, alive. Hester shudders, gagging slightly, as if this is Cat’s hair, as if it is part of the girl’s murdered body. She clenches her teeth, struggles to keep herself steady. Then she puts the binoculars in with the costume, crying now, catching the smell of congealed blood coming from the case. A cloying, feral, butcher’s shop smell. Glancing up, she remembers Albert’s journal, obviously recently used, and left on the desk. Hester doesn’t open it, or read any of the entries. She has no wish to learn anything, to know anything more. She wishes she knew less; far less. She puts the journal into the leather satchel last of all, closes the buckles on this ghastly, incriminating hoard, and stashes it in the footwell of the desk, far out of sight to anyone but a person actively searching. She does all this without soiling her dress, but her hands are red and brown. Cat’s blood. Cat is dead. Hester’s stomach churns. She staggers out of the library and shuts the door, and just makes it to the cloakroom before she is sick.

Later, she goes down to the kitchen to see Sophie Bell. The housekeeper is inconsolable, sitting vast and trembling at the table with the tea leaves turned to bitter mush in the pot, and flies settling unnoticed on the rim of the milk jug.

‘Why would anyone kill her? Why would anyone do that to our Cat? And her just a slip of a thing, no real trouble to anybody…’ she mumbles on and on, hardly seeming to notice Hester, who stands at her shoulder for a while, awkward and silent. When she turns to go she notices the bucket of water in the corner, with the stained cloth still soaking in it. Her stomach gives a nasty jerk, filling her throat with bile again. Without a thought she kneels down, wrings the cloth out and flings it into the stove. The iron door clatters shut behind it, and Hester rises, half afraid to turn back to Mrs Bell. But Sophie still stares straight ahead and has noticed nothing. Hester washes her own hands again and again, but like Lady Macbeth, she is sure a taint is left. For days, the smell of blood clings to the inside of her nose.

The chief constable’s own bloodhounds, Puncher and Hodd, soon find the scene of the murder. A place near a stream where the grass has been crushed by footsteps and the dry summer flowers have shed feathery seeds onto a patch of spilt blood where insects circle and settle to feast. There sits Cat’s bag, with all her meagre possessions inside, and her day dress, tucked to one side of it. All this Hester learns at the inquest, which is opened at the parish council house in Thatcham by the coroner for western Berkshire, Mr James Angus Sedgecroft. Mrs Bell sits beside her, eyes shining in a face ablaze with hatred, trained constantly on Robin Durrant. The murder weapon isn’t found, but the nearby stream contains many large and jagged flints, and it is assumed that one of these was used to beat the girl’s skull in, and was then cast back into the stream to conceal the evidence. Only Professor Palmer, a special medical advisor to the Home Office sent down by Scotland Yard to examine the body and assist Superintendent Holt with the case, remains unconvinced by this explanation. He makes special note of the fury of the attack, and the way it focused on the girl’s face, as if to wipe out her very existence. He found fragments of glass in some of Cat Morley’s deep wounds, for which no explanation could be found. When Hester hears this she turns as cold as ice, right through to her core. She thinks of the smashed binoculars, and once she has thought of them, she cannot stop thinking of them. Albert’s binoculars. The ones he was never without.

That evening, Hester takes the leather bag from the library and walks it all the way to The Bluecoat School. She can think of nowhere else that might be safer, less likely to be searched. Because Professor Palmer has a sharp eye and a puzzled, suspicious expression, and when he came to The Rectory to question the household, she caught those sharp eyes of his roaming the corners of the room. Hunting, hunting. When she spoke to him, her own words rang with dishonesty even when she spoke the truth. Because she was full of lies, full of deception. She felt it oozing from her every pore. The bag cannot stay in the house, and it is too big to put into the stove, to burn as she had the towel. Besides, the binoculars would not burn. There is no way to destroy them. And Hester also feels that she shouldn’t destroy any of it. Just in case… in case some situation arose – something she has not thought of, since her thoughts are so mixed and bewildered – and the contents of the bag were needed. The Bluecoat School is never locked, and as she walks to her customary position at the head of the class the loose floor-boards shift and rock beneath her feet, and she falls to her knees, scrabbling at them with her fingernails, weeping with relief as this hiding place presents itself to her.

The inquest lasts three days, and through it all Robin Durrant says nothing. George speaks to the coroner and jury and tells them how Cat had been planning to run away with him, and how she had loved him, and how whatever the reason she had been in the meadows that morning, it had not been to keep a lover’s tryst with Robin Durrant, as the police were suggesting. He is adamant about this, he insists it; but only Hester knows that he is right and not merely blinded by love. She stares at him as he stands and weeps, unashamedly and uncontrollably, and she feels her heart breaking for him. The words hover in her mouth, but will not be spoken. I know why she was there! I know what Robin Durrant was doing! But she cannot speak. She cannot speak to anybody. As surely as if a spell has been cast to hold her tongue, it stays still and silent in her mouth. Numb and deadened, like the rest of her. He is handsome, this man of Cat’s. He looks strong and honest. He speaks about Cat with such passion and love that Hester feels a stab of misplaced envy. What a joy it must have been, to plan an elopement with a man like George Hobson. But Cat’s plans had been interrupted. Horribly, irreversibly interrupted. She must be furious, Hester thinks. She shuts her eyes, gripped by the thought. Wherever Cat is now, she must be furious.

When Cat’s character is defamed, Mrs Bell demands to speak, and stands up for the girl. She, too, denies that Cat was involved with Robin Durrant in any way, and hints that the theosophist must have coerced her out of her room somehow, must have found some way to unlock her door and force her out into the meadows, since she herself had locked the girl safely in the night before. When she cannot give a rational explanation of this, glances are exchanged and notes taken, and it is assumed that the housekeeper feels guilty about forgetting to lock the door and is trying to cover her mistake. Hester hears all this, and stays silent. She thinks of the skeleton key that she gave to Cat, and she stays silent. She forgets to blink for long, long minutes, until her eyes itch and sting.

Barrett Anders, the dairy man, testifies that he had been coming south in his milk cart, along the lane from the London Road, to make his deliveries in the village, and as he’d neared the bridge he’d seen Robin Durrant crossing the meadow towards the canal with the girl in his arms, all broken and dead, and that he’d knocked the killer down while George Hobson, who had come along the towpath, leapt into the water to pull the girl out, even though she was clearly dead and nothing could be done to help her. Hester tries to shut her mind to it, to the unbearable pain George must have felt, seeing Cat that way. Cat, with scarlet water streaming from her black hair, her thin limbs limp, her little hawk’s face a ruin. The images strike her like lashes of a whip. ‘Minutes too late to save her, I was,’ George moans, his face ravaged, twisted with grief. ‘Only minutes.’ Robin Durrant is charged with wilful murder and committed for trial at the next Berkshire assizes. He does not react to the verdict. He does not react to anything.

The Sunday after Cat’s death, the Reverend Albert Canning gives his sermon as usual, to a packed church that hums with suppressed excitement; illicit, disrespectful excitement that the congregation can’t help feeling or showing. They’ve come to see the Cannings, who have housed a murderer all summer long; whose maid has been smashed to death with a rock; who are at the centre of the biggest scandal the parish has ever known. Hester sits in the front row, where she always sits, her back stiff, her skin burning. The tide of whispers rises, laps the nape of her neck, threatens to close over her head. Albert does not mention Cat in his sermon. Hester listens in dismay, as he does not. He repeats a sermon he gave only three or four weeks before, on the subject of material wealth, staring at the back of the church as though his thoughts are a million miles away; the words bitten off and falling from his mouth like chunks of wood. Solid and dry and dead. As if he no longer believes a single one of them. At home, he sits in the parlour and never asks about his journal, or the leather bag, or his binoculars. He never asks about any of it, and Hester never speaks up. Her Albert has gone, and in his place is this sleeper, this man of ice, this shadowy person who barely speaks and barely eats and only goes out on church business; in his place is a man she doesn’t know at all – a shell, a liar. She watches him with a heart full of dread, frightened of him, and of what she has done to protect him. The man is a changeling, he is a stranger. And perhaps, perhaps, he is a killer.

Wednesday, October 15th, 1911

Dear sir,

Why don’t you reply to my letters? I don’t know who else to talk to and I must get out some of my thoughts or I will run mad. I used to write to my sister, and there were no secrets between us two, but now I have things I can’t write, even to her; and so I must write them to you. Why do you not speak out? If what I think is true, why do you stay silent? Perhaps I know the reason. To keep your own secret – that of the elemental, and of the photographs you published. To keep your name and this place in history that you have carved for yourself, at whatever cost. But it is a sorry world we live in if the infamy caused by a lie should be greater than that of a murder. Do you really think you have chosen the lesser crime of the two to be guilty of?

I found your bag, which was brought back to the house. I found what was in it, and Albert’s binoculars. I know your secret. The secret you will go to gaol to protect. Are you willing to die for it? They might hang you! And what use is your reputation as a theosophist when you have lost all standing as a man? Will your precious Society still have you, when you are a convicted killer? I think not. I think not. So why persist in this silence? What good does it do you? The date of your trial approaches. There isn’t much time. If you are hanged, what then? Is that what you wish – do you think that even if your life ends now, your name will live on for ever? That you will always be the theosophist who captured proof of the existence of elementals? I tell you now, it is not worth it. Already there are some who denounce your work, and the pictures you took, and their numbers will grow. You will be forgotten, as will your work. Speak out, and there is time to start again! Your father would rather have a failed theosophist or even a fraudster for a son than a murderer; I am utterly convinced of it.

At one point I thought you noble, I thought you sacrificed yourself for Albert. But this was a foolish thing to think. Why would you? Everything you did was for yourself, from the moment you arrived at my home, and turned it upside down. Oh, why did you come at all! How I wish that you hadn’t, and that still Cat lived, even if she had run off with her George. She was my cousin, did you know that? She wrote it to me in a letter, which she meant for me to find once she had made her escape. Perhaps a while ago I would not have believed that my uncle would sire a child with one of his servants, and then place that child in my household without ever telling me. Now I think there is nothing men will not do, should it suit them. There is nothing they will not do.

I believe I am with child. The symptoms are becoming harder and harder to deny. I thought I should tell you, though I have no idea what you will make of this news. If it will have any effect on you at all. I myself am quite destroyed by confusion and joy and doubt. Joy – how can there be any joy in this house any more? Ever again? Joy or laughter or merriment. All I wanted was a child, and now I come to see how true the adage that we should be careful what we wish for. Albert is like a ghost. He chills the room. He chills me. My own husband. I have not told him about the baby. How can I? Though soon enough he’ll see it. What then? Will I be beaten out of existence too? Will that be the end of me? This cannot go on – we cannot go on like this. Something must change. The truth must come out. I can’t carry this burden on my own; it’s too much for me. I can feel myself breaking with the strain of it, day by day. I have hidden all the things I found, that evil morning. They remain, and they tell their own story. The truth is waiting for you to speak out, Mr Durrant. If you do, I will help you. I swear it. I will tell them of my part in this, and Albert’s, and I will take my due. Perhaps they would be merciful to me, knowing that I acted out of fear, and love for my husband. Perhaps not. Oh, but what then of our child? What would become of him? I do not know what to do. Help me.

Hester Canning