The Specimen Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Canongate Books,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE

  www.canongate.tv

  This digital edition first published in 2013 by Canongate Books

  Copyright © Martha Lea, 2013

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

  ISBN 978 0 85786 714 8

  EXPORT ISBN978 0 85786 939 5

  eISBN 9780857867155

  Typeset in Bembo by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd, Falkirk, Stirlingshire

  Contents

  Part I

  Prelude

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Part II

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Chapter XXXI

  Chapter XXXII

  Chapter XXXIII

  Chapter XXXIV

  Chapter XXXV

  Chapter XXXVI

  Chapter XXXVII

  Chapter XXXVIII

  Chapter XXXIX

  Chapter XL

  Chapter XLI

  Chapter XLII

  Chapter XLIII

  Chapter XLIV

  Chapter XLV

  Chapter XLVI

  Chapter XLVII

  Part III

  Chapter XLVIII

  Chapter XLIX

  Chapter L

  Chapter LI

  Chapter LII

  Chapter LIII

  Chapter LIV

  Chapter LV

  Chapter LVI

  Chapter LVII

  Chapter LVIII

  Chapter LIX

  Chapter LX

  Chapter LXI

  Chapter LXII

  Part I

  Prelude

  Helford Passage, Cornwall. September 8, 1866.

  THE TIMES, Thursday, September 6, 1866.

  MURDER AT HYDE PARK.

  ON the morning of Tuesday, 7th August, the body of Edward Scales (38), late of Helford, Cornwall, was discovered at his Hyde Park residence in London. During the inquest held on the body by Horatio Moreton Esq., Coroner, and attended by Dr Jacobs of the London Hospital, it was made known that the body of the deceased bore the marks of ligatures to the neck, and that the contents of the stomach of the deceased had been found to be largely full of brandy. After lengthy examinations of witnesses, a Mrs G. Pemberton (26) of Richmond, Surrey, was later charged with the Murder of Mr Scales and committed for trial at the Central Criminal Court.

  Never is a newspaper read more intently than when it is about to be put to some other use. Their names came in and out of focus. For a few blessed moments her mind was utterly quiet, and she waited for the shaking to subside before tucking the slip of newsprint away. She ripped the next square from the string, and the next and the next until she was done. Outside the privy she leaned on the closed door and breathed the damp morning air. There was just a hint of rotten autumn settling in but nothing very definite.

  As she went back to the house she tried to remember what she had been doing on that Monday a month before. She tried to remember, because she didn’t want to let her mind gallop around, gathering thoughts about how many people in the country over the past two days had already seen the information hiding up her left sleeve. People on trains and at news-stands. At breakfast. On park benches, and waiting on street corners.

  She was standing now in front of the bureau in the study. For such an imposing piece of furniture, its lock was a pitifully small mechanism. With the need for an actual key now positively redundant, she took up the poker from its place by the empty grate. It was simply a matter of precision and determination. The bevelled point of the poker slipped the first time and gouged a scrape through the walnut. On the fifth attempt she was able to force the poker into the space between the locked-up lid and the body of the bureau. She levered her weight onto the poker. The crack of splintering wood and the lock giving way brought Susan to the room.

  “Ma’am?”

  “That’s quite all right,” she said. “I shan’t require any assistance. Except, of course, that I shall be going to London today and will need to pack.” Then she turned her attention again to the bureau and set about finding the name and address of the late Edward Osbert Scales’ solicitor.

  SEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  Chapter I

  Helford Passage, Cornwall. April 1859.

  The sun lay heavy on his clothes making him tired, and he had to stop for a while and rest against the rocks. They were thrust up on the beach, it seemed to Edward Scales, like wrecked ships. Hulls keeled over, encased in barnacles. A seam of white crystal pressed between layers of dark grey was caulk jammed between planks. He didn’t see the rearing layers, contorted, extreme pressure distorting and forcing the horizontal to the diagonal and vertical. Only ships. He knew that they were not, could not ever have been ships, but his mind rested on that thought because anything else was too immense to confront.

  The succession of small beaches on the Helford were each enclosed by high cliffs, pocked with shallow caves. Strewn with sharp, jagged rocks, the ground in between was made up of grey, white and ochre pebbles from fist-sized lumps down to number eight shot. At low tide on the Helford the bladderwrack clung to the rocks, and draped like crowns of slick hair. Not an easy terrain to walk over. He could have come by boat, but he hadn’t thought of that. And he could have stayed there, too, in the shade of this wrecked ship turned to stone, to take the boots off his aching feet. And if he had done this, he might not have bothered going further. But Edward Scales moved on between the broken ribs to the other side, and stepped into her view.

  Gwen Carrick was almost ready to go back up to the house when she saw him. She recognised the profile, the gait. She’d seen this man on a couple of occasions earlier that month, but he had always been in the distance, retreating, scrambling between the rocks. Now she stood up and had a better look at him. His boots were new: stout, nailed things and uncomfortable-looking; and she noticed that his calves were wrapped with gaiters.

  When Edward turned again he saw the young woman standing, shielding her eyes against the steady pulsing light on the brackish water of the Helford. And he saw that this was to get a better look at him. His hat was buckled to the side of his knapsack so he could not raise it to her. Instead, he lifted his hand in a half wave. She mirrored his action, and did not move. A good sign. As he clambered up the steep shelf of shingle on the little beach, Edward wondered what he might say to her. When he stumbled near the level part of the beach she came forward still shielding her face, bunching up her skirts with her free hand. Her strides were big, confident. He saw that her hands were tanned against her pale skirt. She had the unconstricted movement of a woman not wearing a corset, though she held herself straight inside her riding jacket. Her waist was tiny over an ample—he tried not to think of what lay under her skirts. They met with a yard of pebbles between the
m. She was tall enough to meet his gaze without having to tilt her chin. She was bareheaded. Edward calculated the length of her hair from the size of the neat coil piled up.

  “Are you lost?” she said. She could see that his jacket, a hairy tweed, was new and probably still in its first season.

  It was not what he expected. He answered her slowly, “No, I don’t believe so.”

  “Sometimes people get lost.” The Cornish swirl embedded in her vowels, curling on the edge of her consonants, was very slight.

  The air was still between them, and he caught a scent of her, the curious effect of sunlight on skin and hair. She smelled of herself. Not masked by soap or perfume. It was neither sweet nor stale. She was waiting for him to speak.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Miss Carrick.”

  “You have the advantage, sir; have we met before?”

  “Edward Scales.” He bowed very slightly.

  “Should I remember you, Edward Scales?”

  “It is neither here nor there.”

  She nodded at this, and Edward felt relieved. She said, “Do you live near by, or—” She waited for him to fill in the gap.

  “I have rooms in Falmouth. I have been walking.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Really? All the way? You must be exhausted.”

  Edward caught something in her expression which looked like amusement. Was she flirting? “The distance is not so far.”

  An ornament in her hair flashed in the sun. She saw him looking and she pulled out a thin stick. “My paintbrush.”

  Edward was unsure of how to answer; she seemed to be challenging him. He said, “I’ve kept you from your painting. I am getting in your way.”

  “You’re entitled to rest after your walk,” she said. “But I would like to finish my picture. If you go and stand where you were by those rocks I’ll put you in.”

  Edward relaxed. “How long shall I stand?”

  She was already gathering her skirts in her hands. “Give me a quarter of an hour,” she said. “No, twenty minutes.”

  As she made her way back to her things she turned her head, smiling, tugging her bottom lip in with her upper left canine.

  Edward saw in that gesture of hers a childish glee and a suggestion of self-containment. He couldn’t help being stirred by it. Neither could he help being confused by her. But, of course, she had been making things easy for both of them by pretending not to know him. Her poise had been immaculate when she had refused to acknowledge that she already knew his name. Yet there was something in the way she had spoken. The frankness of her. Almost as if she were a different person entirely. Edward retraced his path down to the rocks by the tide line marked out by a thick rope of seaweed. Taking out his pocket watch he leaned back against the rock. It dug into his shoulder.

  Gwen sketched the figure of Edward Scales into her painting. She wanted to put him in the picture, it seemed to her an absolute necessity, to paint him into her watercolour landscape. Not just for the sake of its composition. It gave her a space to think without him searching her face. Because the painting was already finished, his figure on the paper became a dark shape, without features. Yet, his awkward posture was recognisably his, and this pleased her. Whilst they had stood opposite each other like that she had wanted to evade his look, which seemed to seek some sort of confirmation from her. He would not get it.

  Sometimes people get lost. She’d said it for something to fill the surprise of seeing him. But it hadn’t been the best thing to say. Now it was there again, going around in her head as she mixed the darkest shade of Payne’s grey. The argument was two years old, but it was as raw as ever in her mind.

  “People don’t get lost here,” she’d almost shouted at her sister Euphemia. “The sea is on one side and the land is on the other. There is a path, you walk along it.”

  Euphemia’s expression had been blank, her voice very calm. “Mother got lost.”

  “She can’t have, Effie, she can’t have.”

  And then Effie’s voices had started. Mrs Fernly, their aunt, had tolerated the voices for as long as she could. It was never said out loud. It was never mentioned in a very direct way, but Mrs Fernly, it was widely known, couldn’t abide young creatures who made deliberate exhibitions of themselves. But much more than that, and more importantly, Mrs Fernly had no time under any circumstances, for the jingling bells and rattling tables or anything else in a Spiritualist’s parlour, least of all the Spiritualist herself and most especially if the Spiritualist began to talk in voices in Mrs Fernly’s own parlour without prior warning.

  Gwen and her sister had been moved back into the empty Carrick House only three months after their mother’s funeral. It was fair, thought Gwen, that it should have been decided—unilaterally, by Mrs Fernly, that it was time for Gwen and Effie to cut short their stay at the Fernly’s and manage at their own house. There were after all two of them and they would have the maid, as well. Gwen had felt nothing but relief. She could put a door between herself and Effie at last. And not only at night. Gwen spent most daylight hours out of doors, away from her sister. Euphemia did not exert herself at all during the day; she stayed inside the house, to preserve her complexion. If Euphemia wanted to look at a view for a moment, she made sure that it was through a north-facing window. They embarrassed each other with their habits, but there existed between them a delicately preserved understanding.

  Painting in the figure of Edward took much less time than she had asked for. When the time was up he picked up his stick and bag. His second approach was much more sure-footed. He came deliberately, slowly. When he was a few feet away, she patted the shingle beside her and he sat down.

  “I’m glad we have met like this,” she said. “Being outside makes you much freer. Here, I have your image immortalised on paper.” She handed him her sketchbook, and watched his face as he looked at her work on his knee. “Would some Power the gift to give us to see ourselves as others see us.”

  He smiled. “You know Burns, then.”

  “Burns? No, it’s just something, a saying. I didn’t know it was a quote.”

  “It’s from the end of a poem: ‘O wad some Power the giftie gie us, To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us—’”

  She laughed. “I like that. From many a blunder free us. What’s the title of the poem? I shall have to find a copy.”

  Edward coughed. “It is called, ‘To a Louse’, and its subtitle is, ‘On Seeing One on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church’.” He looked sideways at her. She was smiling. He said, “I hope I haven’t offended you.”

  “You haven’t. I’d like to hear the rest.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know it thoroughly. I wouldn’t want to murder it before you had read it for yourself. You needn’t search though. I’ll send you a copy if you like.”

  “That’s too kind of you.”

  “It would be my pleasure.” Robert Burns would not have been his first choice of poet to send to a young woman, whether he had only just met her or not. He cringed inwardly at the thought of her reading Burns’ more bawdy efforts.

  She cut into his thoughts. “Your accent was very realistic to my untuned ear.”

  “I spent a lot of time in Scotland as a boy. It’s not a genuine accent. Only gleaned, borrowed inexpertly from my playmates.” Edward felt suddenly perilously close to the edge of the dark chasm he had so far been successful in avoiding. He studied the young woman’s profile with every bit of concentration he could gather. “To which address should I send the poems?”

  “I’ll write it down for you.” She took the sketchbook back from his knee and turned the page over. He watched her write her full name and address in soft pencil. She tore off the page and handed it over. He looked at it. She also noticed that he looked at the paintings revealed by her tearing the top page out. Studies of bright red Cardinal beetles studded the glaring white of the paper Gwen instinctively held to her chest.

  “I will be pleased to send the poems to M
iss Gwen Carrick. May I keep this? I shall pay the artist, naturally.”

  “No payment is necessary, Mr Scales, you are welcome to it. Well. Now my paints are dry and I’m finished for the afternoon. Will you come up to the house?”

  Edward didn’t want to do that, for all kinds of reasons. He asked her if she would like to have a picnic with him. He felt himself becoming very nervous and he worried that she would see how agitated he really was. How disconcerting. The more he worried the more he was certain that she could read his thoughts. But then the sun shone brighter on the water, and she had to shade her eyes as he produced the food, so she probably did not see his reddened face after all.

  Edward brought out of his knapsack two bottles of ale, a large piece of cheese wrapped in a cloth, and a small loaf of bread. He took a small knife from his pocket, and began to carve off chunks of bread and cheese. He weighed the bottles against each other and gave Gwen the heaviest, having already begun to drink from the other. “I hope you like ale. It is quite a strong one.”

  “It looks like you have enough. At least I shan’t worry about depriving you.”

  “I always take more than I think I’m going to need. Once, in Dorset, I met an old vagrant who asked me for something to eat. He looked so wretched, I gave him what I had but he insisted on sharing the beer I had given him. I only had one bottle. I spent the next month convinced I’d contracted something.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Dorset is a long way from here.”

  Edward took the smooth pebble he had been carrying in his knapsack and laid it down by his side. Gwen Carrick did not notice, she was utterly absorbed in cutting more cheese and bread with her own pocket knife. One edge of the grey stone partly revealed the ridged arc of an ammonite. Gwen held her bottle between her feet. Edward saw that she was not wearing the clumpy old boots from the time before but fine brown leather shoes with a low heel and a strap, fastened by one button across the arch of her foot. It made him think of something Charles had once told him. But he could see that the eroticism of the action was entirely unintentional.