The Taxidermist's Daughter Read Online Free Page A

fields. The roots of the wych elms rotting where they stood. In February, Connie had been kept awake by the frantic rumbling and turning of the wheel of the Old Salt Mill in the centre of the creek, spinning and booming and thundering in the surge of the spring tides. In March, one of the branches of the oak tree had come down in the gales, missing their workshop by a matter of inches. April and the endless squalls, rain falling vertically and the land sodden underfoot. The water meadows hadn’t dried out yet. Connie had set up a line of pails in the attic to catch the water. She made a note to remind Mary to bring them down, if the weather looked like holding.
    Today, the surface of the mill pond was flat and the marshes were alive with colour. Blue-green water, tipped with foam by a gentle breeze, glinting in the sunshine. The oaten reedmace like the underside of velvet ribbon. The blackthorn and early hawthorn shimmering with white flowers. Red goosefoot and wild samphire, purple-eyed speedwell and golden dandelions in the hedgerows.
    Connie looked back over her shoulder to the house itself. Often it appeared inhospitable, so isolated and exposed on the marshes, some quarter of a mile from its nearest neighbour. Today, it looked splendid in the sunshine.
    Fashioned from the same warm red brick as several of the finest houses in Fishbourne, it had a steep red-tiled roof and tall chimney. At the back of the house was a kitchen with a modern black-lead range, a scullery and a walk-in larder. On the first floor were four bedrooms and a night nursery overlooking the water. A narrow flight of stairs led up to the servants’ quarters on the top floor, unoccupied since Mary’s mother insisted on her living at home.
    But what had persuaded her father to take the house was the long and light conservatory, which occupied the entire west side of the house. He had turned it into their workshop. And in the furthest south-west corner of the garden, there was a large rectangular ice house made of brick, which they used as a storeroom.
    The gardens to the south and the east were set to lawn. A wooden village gate, cut into the blackthorn hedge at the north-east corner of the property and bordered by one of the many tidal streams that fed into the head of the creek, opened directly from the kitchen garden to the track leading to the village.
    The main entrance was further down the footpath. A black wrought-iron gate led to the front door of Blackthorn House, which faced east towards the Old Salt Mill. On a clear day, there were views all the way across the creek to the water meadows on the far side of the estuary. There were no beaches where children might play, no dramatic cliffs or outcrops, just miles of mudflats and saltings, revealed at low tide.
    There, just half a mile as the crow flies across the water, the tiny church of St Peter & St Mary was hidden in the green folds of willow and beech and elm. Beyond that, another mile to the east, the soaring restored spire and Norman bell tower of Chichester Cathedral dominated the landscape.
     
    Who’ll dig his grave?
    I, said the Owl,
    With my pick and shovel,
    I’ll dig his grave.
     
    Connie ran her hand over the surface of the table, still thinking about her father. If only she could persuade him to leave his room. It wasn’t simply a matter of his health, but also because she wanted to ask him why he had gone to the church a week ago. He hated to be questioned, and usually Connie did not press. She did not like to distress him. But this time was different. She’d been patient, knowing she had to choose her moment wisely, but she couldn’t allow another week to slip by.
    In the past couple of weeks, Gifford’s demeanour had changed. He seemed to be in the grip of some complex emotion. Fear? Guilt? Grief? She had no idea, only that when he did emerge from his room, he walked quickly past each window and repeatedly asked if any letters had been delivered. Twice, she had heard him