The Shape of Darkness Read online

  Pearl’s within an ace of turning back and running to Father’s room for safety, but something stops her. Her hand grows cool and tingly, like it does when a spirit’s about to come, and suddenly it’s moving, sliding the bolts and turning the handle to open the door a crack.

  ‘Ah! Thank you, my dear.’

  Pearl squints. The lady standing outside does look vaguely familiar. She’s petite and fine-boned. Her eyes are not big like Myrtle’s, but they grab Pearl’s attention because they’re so lined and troubled. She must be nearly fifty years old.

  ‘What d’you want?’ she asks.

  ‘Please let me inside. I am tired and rather cold.’

  Pearl hesitates. She can smell the rain, and she doesn’t want to be stuck here talking at the door where the light’s too bright. Reluctantly, she steps back to let the slender lady and her carpet bag into the hallway.

  ‘Thank you,’ the visitor wheezes, shutting the door behind her. She removes her gloves and a drooping bonnet, revealing dull brown hair with a streak of brilliant white through it.

  Pearl’s fingers stray to her own loose tresses.

  ‘May I sit down for a moment?’

  ‘I suppose you’d better come to the parlour, ma’am.’

  The lady clears her throat. ‘I hope that we shall become friends, so I am happy for you to call me Agnes, dear. And you – well, I only know you as the White Sylph. I am certain that is not your real name.’

  ‘It’s Pearl,’ she tells her shyly.

  The lady smiles. Her teeth are clean but slightly crooked. ‘How pretty.’

  Pearl’s not meant to be doing this. Walking to the parlour feels like running a race, because her heart beats so fast and her breath’s all ragged. She subsides into her usual chair, while the lady who calls herself Agnes puts down her carpet bag and perches on the edge of the sofa.

  ‘Pearl,’ she begins. She folds her hands together on her lap and stares at them for a moment. ‘Pearl, I need to talk to you about your Gift.’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ she blurts out. Seeing Agnes’s confused glance, she hurries on. ‘I mean, I remember you a bit. But not the séance we had. When I contact the spirits, it’s like … They possess me. Take over my body, make it do and say things, but I’m not there. I don’t know where I go … It feels like a dream. A mad dream you have and then you wake up in the morning and parts of it are gone forever.’

  ‘Yes, I understand,’ Agnes replies seriously. ‘I have those kind of dreams sometimes. Especially since I was ill. I forget an awful lot.’

  Pearl notices the lady’s sleeves. They’re worn thin at the elbow, going from black to mackerel skin. For all her airs and manners, she can’t be that wealthy.

  ‘Maybe you have the Gift too.’

  Agnes presses her lips into a closed-mouth smile. ‘You jest. But no one else has a talent quite like yours, Pearl. When last we met, you performed an … extraordinary séance. It was remarkable. And what is more, I now have confirmation that your revelations were accurate. You correctly identified a man who had drowned – why, you must know this already. Your sister, Miss West, found his body.’

  Pearl’s ears prick. Myrtle hasn’t told her that. She doesn’t tell her anything important.

  ‘Good. I’m always glad to help,’ she murmurs.

  ‘I hope that is true. For I need your assistance once again.’

  ‘You’ll have to make an appointment with Myrtle, I don’t—’

  Agnes holds up a hand. It is knobbly; all joints. ‘I would. But since you became so unwell …’ She fidgets. ‘Well, the truth is I cannot afford the price your sister is asking for a second sitting.’

  Pearl’s gripped by a sudden panic. ‘I can’t change her mind for you. Don’t ask me to talk to her, because she won’t do it. She never listens to me. And she’ll kill me if she finds out I spoke to you or let you in the house—’

  ‘Hush, now. Hush, dear child. I do not wish to cause you trouble. But you see, there was a message for me, from the beyond. You began to tell me at the séance, but unfortunately you were taken ill and I did not have the opportunity to hear it in full.’

  ‘Sorry. I don’t remember what that message was. It wasn’t me speaking. I can’t just turn it on and off like the gas. I wish I could …’ Her throat’s closing up. What a failure she is. Don’t let her cry. Not in front of this nice lady.

  ‘Oh, come now. None of this!’

  To Pearl’s astonishment, Agnes gets up from the sofa and holds out a hand to her. She freezes, wanting but unable to accept it.

  Her hesitation doesn’t matter in the end, because the lady crouches down beside her chair anyway and wraps one arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I imagine all these spirits must be rather frightening for you. I was scared of them myself, and I am … well, a woman grown! You can only be about the age of my nephew. He is twelve years old.’

  ‘I’m eleven,’ Pearl snuffles.

  ‘Eleven! My, oh my. And so accomplished already! Your father must be very proud of you.’

  She worms a little closer to the lady who smells of faded paper and dry ink, like a well-thumbed book. ‘Does he look like you? Your nephew?’

  ‘Oh, no. Cedric is handsome, like his father. He was a naval officer and every bit as dashing as you can imagine.’

  Pearl grins. She’d like to see this nephew. Young men rarely attend the séances, and none of them are comely. Mr Stadler thinks he is, but he’s not. ‘Just like my uncle. I never met him, but Myrtle says he was in the navy.’

  ‘As was my papa. Many naval men settle in Bath.’

  ‘Maybe all three of them were on the same ship, once upon a time. Where’s Cedric’s father stationed now?’

  The muscles tighten in Agnes’s face. It looks like she’s about to say something, but then she just shakes her head. ‘Cedric is an orphan. I look after him and his grandmamma. So you understand why I do not have a great deal of money …’

  ‘Neither do we,’ Pearl points out.

  ‘However, I can offer you something. A useful service in exchange for your own. Altogether, it is probably worth far more than you can earn in a dozen séances.’

  ‘You’d have to ask Myrtle …’

  Agnes shakes her head. ‘Oh, no, my dear. This would be just between us. Our own séance, in secret.’

  Her chest constricts. She feels as scared as if Myrtle were sat opposite her, listening to this conversation. ‘I can’t—’

  ‘I doubt Miss West would approve of my tender. She dislikes doctors. No doubt she means to treat your father in quite another way … Although I am sorry to say, her experiments will be doomed to failure.’

  ‘My father?’ Pearl echoes, confused.

  ‘Yes. Miss West told me that the unfortunate man suffers from phossy jaw as a result of his work in a factory. A terrible, terrible condition.’ She tuts sympathetically. ‘But all is not lost. My brother-in-law is a renowned surgeon. At a word from me he could perform an operation, free of charge, to cure your father.’

  It’s like a ray of sun has come out from behind a cloud: beautiful – but terribly painful. Pearl flinches as she would from the real thing.

  ‘You could … do that?’

  ‘Together we could. It is the only way to help him, you know. He cannot be saved without an operation.’

  A cure for Father.

  A cure.

  Myrtle’s voice snaps in her ear: ‘Butchers, the lot of ’em.’ Yet Pearl’s never believed that. Father was happy to see the doctor who sent them to Bath in the first place, and he told her, before he lost the ability to talk, that he wanted to consult a surgeon.

  She’s dizzy. An hour ago, she would have said she’d never dare to cross Myrtle for anything.

  ‘How would we even …’ she starts.

  ‘The operation could not be performed here, of course,’ Agnes acknowledges. ‘We would wait for your sister to leave, like I did today, and then the doctor and I would come to take your father somewhere more �
��’ She casts an eye around the parlour, searching for a word. ‘Salubrious.’

  Pearl doesn’t know what that means, but she understands Father would be somewhere safe – maybe like a hospital – and Myrtle wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it.

  What a traitor she is. But Father …

  It feels like she’s being split in two.

  ‘Won’t Mesmerism cure him?’ she asks hopefully. ‘Myrtle says it can.’

  Agnes turns down her mouth and shakes her head. ‘Oh, my dear. Mesmerism is all very well in its way. But diseases of this nature are rather more complicated than that.’

  Are they? How would Pearl know? She’s never felt so stupid in her life. She can’t read, and Myrtle doesn’t tell her everything. Even the ghosts say their piece while she’s in a trance.

  ‘Your sister is remarkably talented within her remit,’ Agnes says kindly. ‘Yet even you must admit that she has never studied medicine, or attended a university.’

  ‘She taught herself.’

  Agnes observes her with pity. What must she think? That Pearl’s some poor simple girl with no brain between her ears?

  How her head aches. It’s hard to think straight. She can’t believe she’s even considering putting her faith in this stranger, rather than her own sister, but she finds herself asking, ‘Your brother-in-law would really do the operation for no money? Just for one séance?’

  Agnes removes her arm from Pearl’s shoulders and sits back on her haunches. It looks like it hurts her to kneel down. ‘Perhaps more than one; it all depends on our success. The truth is, I am trying to contact several of my clients. They are … well, I suppose I do not need to mince words with a brave girl like you. They have been killed, Pearl. First Mr Boyle and then the sailor Hargreaves, drowned in the Avon. Last was poor Ned, whose body they found frozen in the snow.’

  Mr Boyle. Wasn’t that the very first spirit Pearl reached out to? And what did Agnes say, about the last man? Frozen after her shivers.

  ‘I need to contact their sad murdered spirits,’ Agnes continues to explain. ‘Oh Pearl, I must. How else can I find the vile wretch who hurt them and put a stop to his crimes?’ She presses one of Pearl’s hands. Her touch is dry. ‘And consider, my dear. Why would Providence bestow such a gift upon you unless it was to help your fellow men? Catching a killer, saving lives – why, I am sure that is the noblest action anyone can perform!’

  They’re her own words. Better words, obviously, but they mean the same thing. This is the argument Pearl had with Myrtle. She could use her power to stop the killer.

  Everything’s spinning. There’s too much to think about, too much to hold in her head, so she grips on tight to Agnes’s hand.

  She wanted to hunt the murderer with Mother, but since she hasn’t appeared … Mightn’t this nice lady do just as well for the time being?

  ‘I saw water,’ she gabbles. ‘Before the drowned man. Then I was cold. Perishing with cold. Did they really find someone all frozen?’

  Agnes nods, mouth slightly ajar.

  So she was right. She was right, and Myrtle was wrong. Thank God she’s holding on to Agnes. If she weren’t, the force of that would sweep her away.

  ‘Do you … feel anything now?’ Agnes probes.

  Nothing she can put into language: just pain.

  Pain, Pearl believes, should have its own vocabulary, because no one else seems to feel it like she does. Up until now her experience of pain has been mainly bodily hurt: her continual exhaustion and the sense that all her bones are on fire. But now she feels … shattered. Like her mind is cracking apart into jagged fragments.

  If Myrtle was wrong …

  Myrtle.

  Oh, hell.

  Pearl jerks her hand away and climbs speedily to her feet. The parlour wobbles. ‘You need to leave,’ she frets. ‘She’ll be back soon. She’ll come home and find us.’

  Agnes does not budge. ‘The séance …’

  ‘There’s no time now! What will I do if Myrtle catches you here?’

  ‘We could make up an excuse.’

  Pearl doesn’t think she could lie to save her life. The few times she tried, growing up, she bungled it terribly. Myrtle always caught her out.

  She opens her mouth to explain, but then she hears a horribly familiar step.

  ‘It’s her!’ Panic strangles her voice. ‘Hide!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Shh!’ She hears a jangle; Myrtle must be getting out her keys. Pearl thinks she’s going to faint. ‘Oh God, please hide, ma’am. I’ll never, ever help you if you don’t hide right now.’

  Agnes purses her lips, but suddenly she moves. If she hadn’t seen it, Pearl would never believe this lady could move fast, but she does, nipping quick as a bullet from the parlour to Pearl’s bedchamber and shutting the door behind her.

  A mere second later, Myrtle comes in. Her cheeks are flushed from walking. She looks impossibly tall and bright as she stands there in the hallway and removes her bonnet. ‘All right?’

  Pearl makes a squeak.

  ‘What you looking all het up about?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Myrtle narrows her eyes.

  It’s one thing to act a part when your face is painted in ashes and everyone thinks you’re the spirit of Florence King. But here, in the light of day, dressed only as herself, Pearl can’t do it. The secret’s heavy in her chest, and she can practically taste her heartbeat.

  ‘I did a bad thing.’ The words spill out.

  Slowly, Myrtle enters the parlour. Her presence is totally different to Agnes’s – youthful and almost overpowering. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I – I …’ Pearl’s gaze drifts to the carpet bag, still beside the sofa. Myrtle’s follows. ‘I went upstairs,’ she invents. ‘While you were out. I was nosing about upstairs and I found that bag.’

  Myrtle sniffs. ‘Well, what’s in it?’

  ‘I dunno. Haven’t opened it yet.’

  Myrtle herself once told Pearl that all the best tricks are based on truth.

  Her sister glances at her, at the bag again, and laughs. ‘You’re a rum one, ain’t you?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Well, you’d better put it back. I don’t care if you want to poke around upstairs, but if the bloody landlord finds anything missing he’ll chuck us out in a flea’s breath.’

  ‘Yes, Myrtle.’

  Myrtle rakes her with one more searching look. Pearl’s guilt shifts and stings.

  ‘Guess I’ll make us a bit of supper, then.’

  Pearl tries her best to smile. ‘Thanks.’

  Her sister walks leisurely to the kitchen. Pearl closes her eyes, releases her breath. The danger isn’t over, she can’t relax.

  She inspects the closed door of her bedroom. Agnes is hiding there, just like Pearl used to hide in the cabinet, unable to cough or sneeze.

  But Pearl’s no showman with hidden trapdoors.

  How on earth is she going to get Agnes out?

  CHAPTER 19

  Time is a strange concept. Ticking clocks and the slow creep of their hands mean nothing in the dark, where you cannot see them.

  At first, Agnes did not dare to bend her knees in case she made a noise, and now she is uncertain whether she still can. She thinks this must be how corpses feel in their coffins.

  The wardrobe seemed the perfect hiding place. Hardly any clothes occupy the cavity and there are no shelves inside, but the wood smells musty and small chinks of light in the door show where worms have eaten through it. She dare not muse upon what manner of bugs make their home here, or upon the few garments that hang on pegs beside her. Her skin itches, yet she cannot scratch it.

  She has no idea how long she has been standing here. It was past midday when she called upon Simon, and then she returned home to check on Cedric and fetch her carpet bag. It must be reasonably late. There is no timepiece in Pearl’s bedchamber and in this part of the city she cannot even hear the toll of the abbey bells.

  Of
all the days to get stuck away from her family! She should be watching Cedric like a hawk, guarding him at every turn after finding that note, and instead she has left him in the care of his feeble grandmother. The doors to the house in Orange Grove are locked, but what does that matter? Someone determined could find a way in …

  She peeps through the holes in the wardrobe door. The tiny bedroom window is swathed in heavy curtains. Everything remains static and unchanged. Time is not passing. It is holding its breath, encapsulating her.

  When the wardrobe door finally creaks open, she cannot trust that the sound is real. A flame wavers, releasing the scent of tallow. Finally an ashen face comes into focus behind it.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Pearl whispers. ‘You can go now. I’ve fetched your bag for you. You left it in the parlour! Nearly got me in all kinds of trouble.’

  Night has fallen. Agnes has been inside this wardrobe all afternoon! Her feet have forgotten how to move; she half-climbs, half-falls out.

  ‘Shhh!’ Pearl urges.

  By daylight, it was easy to treat this girl as a regular child. Other than her pallor, there was no material difference between her and Cedric, or even someone like Lavinia Campbell. But there is something ethereal about Pearl’s albinism at night. Her shape seems to be pinned against the darkness, the reverse of a shadow. Agnes could swear that she trails a fine mist as she moves.

  ‘Can we do it now?’ she asks. ‘The séance?’

  Pearl hesitates. ‘I’m tired,’ she replies softly. She does look it. ‘And Myrtle might hear us.’

  ‘Then you will have to come to me.’

  ‘What?’

  Agnes feels like a pressed flower, sapped of her essence, but she needs to recover her wits quickly. She’ll be damned if she’s spent hours in that worm-eaten wardrobe for nothing.

  ‘Where did you say my carpet bag was, dear?’

  Pearl moves the light and shows her where the bag sits, beside her narrow little excuse for a bed.

  ‘Come and look.’ Agnes gropes her way forwards, struggling to keep her movements quiet and her voice hushed. Now that she is out of captivity, she is aware of the rotting smell again: an odour somewhere between potato peelings and a spoiled egg.