My heart is racing, damp seeping up my trousers as I wade through ankle-deep leaves. Evelyn’s watch assures us of the time, but Anna’s nowhere to be seen. There’s just that damnable lantern, squeaking as it sways in the breeze, and for fifteen minutes or more, we stand stiff beneath it, the light draping our shoulders, our eyes searching for Anna and finding her everywhere: in the shifting shadows and stirring leaves, the low-hanging branches disturbed by the breeze. Time and again one of us taps the other on the shoulder, drawing their attention to a sudden sound or startled animal darting through the underbrush.
As the hour grows later, it’s difficult to keep one’s thoughts from venturing to more frightening places. Doctor Dickie believed the wounds on my arms were defensive in nature, as though I’d been fending off an assault with a knife. What if Anna isn’t an ally, but an enemy? Perhaps that’s why her name was fixed in my mind? For all I know, she penned the note I received at the dinner table, and has now lured me out here to finish the job started yesterday evening.
These thoughts spread like cracks through my already brittle courage, fear pouring into the hollowness behind. Only Evelyn’s presence keeps me upright, her own courage pinning me in place.
‘I don’t think she’s coming,’ says Evelyn.
‘No, I rather think not,’ I say, speaking quietly to mask my relief. ‘Perhaps we should head back.’
‘I think so,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry, dear heart.’
With an unsteady hand, I take the lantern down from the angel’s arm, and follow Evelyn towards the gate. We’ve only taken a couple of steps when Evelyn clutches my arm, lowering her flame towards the ground. Light splashes the leaves, revealing blood splattered across their surface. Kneeling down, I rub the sticky substance between my thumb and forefinger.
‘Here,’ says Evelyn quietly.
She’s followed the drips to a nearby tombstone, where something glitters beneath the leaves. Sweeping them aside, I find the compass that led me out of the forest this morning. It’s bloodstained and shattered, yet still unwavering in its devotion to north.
‘Is that the compass the killer gave you?’ says Evelyn, her voice hushed.
‘It is,’ I say, weighing it in my palm. ‘Daniel Coleridge took it from me this morning.’
‘And then it appears somebody took it from him.’
Whatever danger Anna intended to warn me about, it seems to have found her first and Daniel Coleridge was involved somehow.
Evelyn lays a hand on my shoulder as she squints warily into the darkness beyond the glow of the lantern.
‘I think it’s best we get you out of Blackheath,’ she says. ‘Go to your room and I’ll send a carriage to fetch you.’
‘I have to find Daniel,’ I protest weakly. ‘And Anna.’
‘Something awful is happening here,’ she hisses. ‘The slashes on your arm, the drugs, Anna and now this compass. These are pieces in a game neither of us knows how to play. You must leave, for me, Sebastian. Let the police deal with all of this.’
I nod. I’ve not the will to fight. Anna was the only reason I stayed in the first place, the shreds of my courage convincing me there was some honour to be found in obeying a request delivered so cryptically. Without that obligation, the ties binding me to this place have been severed.
We return to Blackheath in silence, Evelyn leading the way, her revolver poking at the darkness. I trail behind quietly, little more than a dog at her heel, and before I know it I’m saying goodbye to my friend and opening the door into my bedroom.
All is not how I left it.
There’s a box sitting on my bed, wrapped in a red ribbon that comes loose with a single tug. Sliding away the lid, my stomach flips, bile rushing into my throat. Stuffed inside is a dead rabbit with a carving knife stabbed through its body. Blood has congealed at the bottom, staining its fur and almost obscuring the note pinned to its ear.
From your friend,
The footman.
Black swims up into my eyes.
A second later I faint.
9
Day Two
A deafening clanging jolts me upright, my hands flying to my ears. Wincing, I look around for the source of the noise to find I’ve been moved in the night. Instead of the airy bedroom with the bathtub and welcoming fire, I’m in a narrow room with whitewashed walls and a single iron bed, dusty light poking through a small window. There’s a chest of drawers on the opposite wall beside a ratty brown dressing gown hanging from a door peg.
Swinging my legs from the bed, my feet touch cold stone, a shiver dancing up my spine. After the dead rabbit, I immediately suspect the footman of perpetrating some new devilry, but this incessant noise is making it impossible to concentrate.
I pull on the dressing gown, nearly choking on the smell of cheap cologne, and poke my head into the corridor beyond. Cracked tiles cover the floor, whitewashed walls ballooning out with damp. There are no windows, only lamps staining everything with a dirty yellow light that never seems to settle. The clanging is louder out here and, covering my ears, I follow the din until I reach the bottom of a splintered wooden staircase, leading up into the house. Dozens of large tin bells are attached to a board on the wall, each with a plaque beneath it naming a section of the house. The bell for the front door is shaking so hard I’m worried it’s going to unsettle the foundations.
Hands pressed to my ears, I stare at the bell, but short of ripping it from the wall, there’s no obvious way of quietening the clamour beyond answering the door. Belting the dressing gown tight, I rush up the stairs, emerging at the rear of the entrance hall. It’s much quieter here, the servants moving through in a calm procession, their arms filled with bouquets of flowers and other decorations. I can only assume they’re too busy clearing away the detritus of last night’s party to have heard the noise.
With an annoyed shake of the head, I open the door to find myself confronted by Doctor Sebastian Bell.
He’s wild-eyed and dripping wet, shivering with cold.
‘I need your help,’ he says, spitting panic.
My world empties.
‘Do you have a telephone?’ he continues, the desperation terrible in his eyes. ‘We need to send for the authorities.’
This is impossible.
‘Don’t just stand there, you devil!’ he cries out, shaking me by the shoulders, the cold of his hands seeping through my pyjamas.
Unwilling to wait for a response, he pushes past me into the entrance hall, searching for aid.
I try to make sense of what I’m seeing.
This is me.