The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Fourteen

I sat at the long mahogany dining table of Blackthorn House, located deep in that famous family’s wooded estate. The wall opposite me was mirrored, and the wall behind was hung with heavy old family portraits in ornate gilt frames that stared grimly at their own reflections— and, I thought, at me. Tugging at my hand was little Jeremy Blackthorn. Jeremy was six years old and small for his age, but his large brown eyes were oddly hypnotic. As he spoke, he squeezed my hand. His fingers were cold with excitement and they trembled in mine. There was something almost unwholesome in his determination, something which struck me as far too old for one so young.

“Leave Miss Benjamin alone, Jeremy. She’s not here to play with you. Now go and find your governess and return to the nursery.” Jeremy’s father, a broad-shouldered man of about thirty-five, spoke the words a little too sharply. Though he was handsome and pleasant enough, I’d taken an instant dislike to him. His flop of blond hair, tweed jacket, and lazy arrogance screamed Eton and Oxford. I was fresh from the States and still hadn’t acclimatized to this aristocratic corner of England.

“No, you weren’t,” his father replied, carefully folding his napkin and pushing back his chair so that he stood to his full height. He was thin but tall and towered over the boy. I found myself suddenly glad that the table was between them. “But I was talking to you. Now go, or I shall carry you upstairs by the scruff of your neck.”

“You’re not allowed in the nursery!” Jeremy squared his shoulders defiantly. “Grandfather said so.”

The pulse at Philip Branston-Smith’s throat thudded visibly. “Your Grandfather is dead. Until you come of age, I am master of this house and I shall do as I please.”

Jeremy’s pale cheeks flushed with rage, but he hung his head and stomped across the wooden floor. At the door, he turned and glared angrily at his father. “You can only say such things because I’m little and you’re big. When I’m big, you’ll be sorry. Grandfather always said you were a cowardly custard!” Then Jeremy flung open the door and ran down the hall.

“Little monster.” Philip Branston-Smith sighed under his breath as he sat down and swirled his single malt around in his glass.

Embarrassed, I dropped my gaze and stared at the table. Although lunch had been for two, almost a fortnight’s supply of ham, cheese, and butter remained. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the food would be thrown out and wished I had the courage or shamelessness to box it up and bring it back to my flat. I felt a throb of homesickness for New York, where I wouldn’t need a ration book.

Branston-Smith appeared oblivious to the great waste on the table beside him. Though he’d barely touched his lunch, he knocked back the dregs of his Scotch and poured himself another two fingers. He held the decanter out to me, but I shook my head. It was only two p.m., and despite what was on offer I had eaten very little. Besides, a long train ride awaited me when this interview was over. Secretly, I couldn’t help but wish that Mr. Branston-Smith had refrained from topping up his glass, since it made my job harder. As far as I could tell, he’d drunk a whole hand of whisky before I’d even arrived.

“Sorry you had to witness that little scene of filial disobedience, Miss Benjamin,” he said.

“Ah.” He smiled cynically. “A New Woman, working despite home and husband. I should have known. I do apologize. You look so young that I imagined you were still a mademoiselle. Your husband’s a Brit, I take it?”

“Officer?” Men like Branston-Smith were always trying to discover where on the social hierarchy I belonged.

I nodded. “South East Asia Command. For a while, at least. But he spent most of the war camouflaging aerodromes.”Branston-Smith grinned. It was the first genuine emotion I’d seen on his face and it made him look ten years younger. “RAF man, was he? Jolly good! I piloted a Spitfire myself. Shot down my share of Jerries. Revenge for our lads, you know? Fighting the good fight. Good Lord. Those were the days.”

His eyes drifted to the French doors and I saw his face fall into sterner lines, the recollected elation dissipating. “Do you have any children, Mrs. Benjamin?” Mr. Branston-Smith asked, breaking my reverie.

“No,” I replied. I was only twenty-four and had been married less than a year. “But I do like them.”

Branston-Smith gave a snort. “You obviously don’t have any.” He sipped his Scotch.

“It must have been hard for him,” I said. “I heard . . .” My voice faltered, and I bit my lip.

Branston-Smith raised an eyebrow. “Yes?” he said. “I’m curious. What exactly have you heard about my son?”

I took a deep breath and absentmindedly smoothed my gloves, which rested in my lap. Upon accepting this assignment, I’d been warned that the Branston-Smiths were exceptionally sensitive to whiffs of scandal, but I couldn’t really back out now. I’d always been a terrible liar.

“I heard that he found his grandfather’s body,” I said after a moment’s pause. “That must have been very distressing.”

Branston-Smith gave a quick and perfunctory nod. “Yes,” he said. “Quite.” Then he took another sip of Scotch and turned to stare out of the doors again. It was late May, and some swallows were nesting in the wisteria. I could see them fly past on their angled wings. The swift dips and turns of their flight made me think of children’s kites, caught in a strong wind.

“Have you ever thought about the true meaning of the word spoiled, Mrs. Benjamin?” Branston-Smith did not turn to look at me, and the tatters of his boyish charm, which he’d been so eager to flaunt when I’d first arrived, had been carefully folded and put away. “Spoiled”, he continued, “as it relates to infants and juveniles?”

I hesitated, uncomfortable with the direction this conversation was taking. It was not what I’d come about. “Not really,” I said.

“No,” he continued, still staring out of the French doors and swirling his glass absentmindedly. “I suppose you haven’t. During the war, such thoughts were an extravagance, at least to those not forced to contemplate them.” He raised his Scotch to his lips and paused. “One imagines a whining child, or a demanding brat whose wishes have been catered to so often that he believes all he need do is throw a tantrum to get what he desires. All id that has never been restrained.” He knocked back his Scotch and topped it up again. “But a spoiled piece of fruit is rotten to the core. One bites into it and gags, discovering it is black at its heart.”

“He’s only a child,” I said, then bit my lip again. The saying Never contradict a Blackthorn echoed in my mind once more. I could only suppose that this bit of advice applied to extended family as well.

“He’s a child. Yes. Weren’t we all, once? But this particular fruit has dropped from a rather nasty tree, as my poor wife can attest. I provided the seed but not the soil, so I don’t believe I can be held completely responsible for how it sprouts.”

I couldn’t help but think that Philip Branston-Smith had already imbibed too much single malt and would regret it later that evening. He shook his head, as if to chase away some particularly horrid thought, and shuddered. Then he turned to me and smiled a winning smile, the kind I imagined they coached boys for in public schools. “But where were we before we were so rudely interrupted? And please, call me Philip.”

“We were discussing Lord Blackthorn’s study,” I said, relieved to return to more stable topics of conversation. Philip’s face darkened as Jeremy’s had earlier, though he gave a humorless laugh.

“Ah yes. The splendid study of the famous Lord Blackthorn, orthopedic surgeon, researcher, and inventor extraordinaire.” His face hardened. “Infamous would be a better word. The man was a blighter. Boy’s just like him.”

“Even in his dotage, Lord Blackthorn couldn’t resist a pretty figure or a pretty face, even those which—by the laws of common decency—were not his to take.” Philip’s lips were pressed together so tightly that they’d transformed into a thin white line. “It’s a wonder his wife never divorced him. She had plenty of grounds. But then again, she was a scared rabbit and her stepson was an invalid. That’s why my wife’s nerves are so weak. Old man had them all under his thumb. Or perhaps a better description would be pressed under a glass slide.”

Philip reached for the Scotch again, but then released the decanter with a sigh. His words were already beginning to slur. “By the way, I promised to pass on my wife’s apologies for not meeting you herself. Her health is delicate, and sometimes the boy is too much for her. But where were we?”

“I’m writing a retrospective of Lord Blackthorn’s . . . I mean Doctor Blackthorn’s work, for Country Life. He was a great philanthropist, and because of his untimely death, our magazine wants to do justice to his memory.”

“Yes,” Philip said, staring longingly at the sheen of Scotch still clinging to the cut crystal glass in his hand. “But old men and slippers and uncarpeted wooden staircases are a terrible combination.” He put down his glass and slapped his thigh. “Well, I suppose we should get on with it. Shall I take you to the study?”

I don’t think I’ve ever walked through a house so large, either before or since. In later years I visited stately homes, but there were always sections reserved for the family—wings firmly closed by stout oak doors labeled PRIVATE, or corridors roped off with expensive braids of red velvet cord. Most of those aristocratic residences belonged to families that had hit hard times and needed to open up their abodes to the hoi polloi to gain tax credits, or something like it. But the Blackthorn family had no such troubles, in large part due to the accomplishments of the late Lord Blackthorn.

The hallway we were traversing was like the dining room—lined with mirrors on one side. They reflected the light, making the high molded ceilings look even higher, and the corridor itself both expansive and endless. The crimson runner beneath my feet—antique and probably Persian—was a little threadbare in places, and dust motes danced in the sunlight, occasionally flashing like little stars when they caught the light.

Between the many windows hung paintings. Not family portraits but expensive art. Though I was far from a connoisseur of such things, I recognized a Matisse and a Rembrandt as well as a sculpture by Henry Moore. And at the far end of the hallway, which we were fast approaching, was a grand oil by the occult artist Kenneth Osman.

It was one of Osman’s Great War commissions, funded by the government. My husband had shown me an old article about the scandalous series not long before. This particular oil depicted a field hospital, probably just behind the front line. In the foreground, a young, wounded private was having his leg amputated by a surgeon in blood-spattered whites. Nurses scurried around the makeshift, unsanitary-looking operating theater as more wounded soldiers were carried in from the trenches, but it was the surgeon who commanded attention. He wielded a saw rather than a scalpel, and his expression was that of a hungry butcher rather than a doctor. It was unnerving, and I knew that the reaction wasn’t just mine. Upon viewing the painting, the Imperial War Museum had banned it from public view.

“It’s not mine, nor is it my wife’s,” said Philip. He had stopped before the final door and was searching his pockets for a key. In one of the mirrors I saw the reflection of his back. His head was bowed and his neck, just visible above his stiff white collar, was flushed. “The esteemed Lord Blackthorn willed everything to Jeremy. Even insisted that the boy take his name rather than mine since he is, by rights, the new Lord Blackthorn. Ah! Here it is!”

Philip Branston-Smith held up a small silver key. It shone in the late-afternoon sunlight. “We keep this room locked, since it wouldn’t do to have the boy blundering in.”

Deftly, he slipped the silver key into the lock, which clicked as he turned the knob. As the door swung wide, I glanced in and gasped.

“Yes,” Philip said. “It is quite a sight, isn’t it? A pathologist’s dream, or so I’ve been told, though it gives my wife nightmares. My good lady insists that the maid clean the place the best she can each Thursday, but even she gets the shudders from it. She’s a bull of a woman—you’d think the Devil wouldn’t scare her—but she’ll only enter here when the light streams in through the east-facing windows. Luckily for her, there’s not much she can do. The old man left strict instructions that nothing should be moved or tampered with, not even a drawer opened other than the ones he specified, until the boy comes of age and does it himself.”

“This is what’s left of Blackthorn’s private collection,” Philip said. “If you’d visited fifteen years ago, it would have been much larger. I don’t know whether you recall that bit of legal nastiness, when the ethics of certain medical men came under scrutiny and they were required to return all human remains to the deceased’s heirs? Thanks to his connections, the old man kept his name out of the papers, but it was a scandal all the same. Fifteen hundred body parts returned, I believe. This collection used to fill the entire west wing.”

“Oh,” I said again. My father had been a surgeon, so I’d visited the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, as well as La Specola in Florence and the Gordon Museum of Pathology in London, but I hadn’t been prepared for, well, the intimacy of Dr. Blackthorn’s collection. He had five of Clemente Susini’s eighteenth-century wax anatomical Venuses, naked and erotically posed, though their thoraxes and abdomens had been removed so that their organs could be handled by medical students eager to learn their trade. Against the far wall was one of Ercole Lelli’s flayed men—a real human skeleton partially clothed in wax representations of ligaments, muscles, and veins. There were framed human skins from Japan, carefully preserved because of their Yakuza tattoos. There were fetuses in bottles, one with two heads, one with a nose that looked like a proboscis. There were numerous wax torsos with the flesh and muscle clamped back, exposing their hearts, lungs, and intestines.

I paused by the flayed body of a man riding a bicycle. It looked as if he’d been partially dissected and then freeze-dried and coated in heavy varnish. “Is it real?” I asked.

“Oh yes, quite,” said Philip. “This is one of Lord Blackthorn’s own creations. He was very proud of his technique. Claimed that he’d rediscovered the process behind Honoré Fragonard’s écorchés. Have you ever visited the Museé Fragonard in Maisons-Alfort?” I shook my head. “His Horseman of the Apocalypse is straight out of Dürer.” Philip’s mouth formed a rictus grin. “Blackthorn bought this fellow abroad. A convict, I believe. Though he may have been a political dissident. Not a very nice end for him.”

“No,” I said. I walked past the swollen gut of a man who had experienced a blockage and whose innards had swelled tight like a vellum balloon, then past a display of trepanned skulls. I paused again by a glass case of votive offerings that covered several square feet of wall space. The offerings were tin and silver charms, no bigger than my palm, depicting feet and arms and hearts.

“He bought those in Mexico,” Philip said, standing a little closer to my back than I liked. I felt his breath on my neck and saw the ghost of his face, still flushed from alcohol, in the glass of the display case. “The old man had an interest in the occult, the blacker the better. He even belonged to an Order, if you believe in such tosh. But I doubt your editor at Country Life would be interested in such things.” And then he laughed.

Displayed at the back of the room were more of Blackthorn’s inventions. A repaired human pelvis—one of the earliest successful examples of that kind of operation—where the cradle of bone had been sutured back together and the ball of the hip joint replaced by a carefully formed sphere of metal. Nearby, under glass, was a human foot repaired with a tiny screw and bolt. Philip stood so close that I could feel the heat of his body.

“Blackthorn was a sly one,” said Philip. “Even before there was a whiff of the coming legal scandal, he coerced many of his indigent patients—especially soldiers—into signing releases. If he agreed to repair their bodies, they’d will him their bones after they died. That was the secret clause in his medical philanthropy. Wanted to make sure that posterity would have samples to celebrate the glory of his work.”

I stared at the bones of an ankle that had been crushed and then remade in metal and strange plastic polymers, and it struck me that the late Dr. Blackthorn had been a sculptor as well as a surgeon.

“Hip replacements, knee replacements, metal plates.” Philip practically sang out the words. “Did you know that back in the day, orthopedic surgeons like Blackthorn would buy their screws and pins from hardware men? A hinge for the door, Jack old man, and one for my wife’s elbow.” He gave another unpleasant laugh.

We’d reached a rear alcove, separated from the rest of the room by a curtained arch, though the heavy velvet curtain was elegantly tied back with a satin cord. The alcove contained a monumental teak desk behind which was a large arched window flanked on either side by towering bookshelves and tall filing cabinets. Wooden doors in each corner led, I presumed, to storage closets. Drumming his fingers on the desk, Philip paused.

“The old man saved every paper he ever wrote, every article about him, every credit that mentioned his name, no matter how minute. Wanted posterity to remember him, large as life. I suspect he believed he’d slip past death, but Death is a sneaky chap, don’t you think? Gets us all in the end.”

He pulled out Blackthorn’s chair for me and I sat down at the desk. Chair and desk were so large, so rife with the departed man’s presence, that I felt a breathless wave of vertigo.

“By all means have a nose through any of the unlocked drawers. The old man was fastidious about privacy. If he didn’t want you to see something, he made sure that you couldn’t.”

Philip turned to go, then paused to ask, “How long do you think you’ll need? Two hours?”

“More than enough,” I responded, relieved that I would be alone for a while, even if it was in this creepy mausoleum.

Philip checked his watch. “Well then, I’ll be back just after four. Feel free to call Jones if you’d like tea or anything stronger, and I’ll make sure the boy doesn’t bother you.”

He must have seen the anxiety in my expression because he laughed. “Don’t worry. I won’t tie him up. I’ll just make sure that the damn nanny finds some games for him to play. After all, that’s what we pay her for. Cheerio, then. See you in time for a sherry.”

The door closed behind him and I gave a sigh of relief, though I was secretly grateful not to hear the click of the key in the lock. Glancing around the office area, at the many overfull cabinets and bookshelves and drawers and filing cabinets, I felt momentarily overwhelmed.

On impulse, I stood and tried the knob of one of the closets. It was locked. So were the drawers of the first two cabinets I attempted to open. I felt a wave of disappointment, but when I tried the first desk drawer, it slid forward easily. At last!

As I began my search, I couldn’t help but wonder what Lord Blackthorn had squirreled away in those locked closets and drawers, then thought it was probably best not to know. What my editor wanted was a cheerful two-dimensional human-interest story, nothing more. Though as far as I could tell, there wasn’t much human about the Blackthorns. But these thoughts faded as I became engrossed in my research.

It turned out that Philip was right. Lord Blackthorn really had been determined to reserve a place for himself in the minds and hearts of posterity. It was almost as if the office had been left in careful order designed specifically for a researcher such as myself. All of his awards were systematically displayed and labeled, as were a series of articles chronicling the progression of his fifty-year career.

After about an hour, I came to a drawer that appeared to be stuck, but with a little diligent prodding and pulling finally opened for me. Afterwards I realized with dismay that it was probably supposed to be locked, but the mechanism had broken. Still, I was curious, and so pulled out the files. Each one contained copious notes, written in Blackthorn’s own spidery hand. Most dated from forty years previously, the very beginning of his experimentation with alternatives to traditional arthroplasty and amputations.

At the back of the drawer was a metal box, about five inches long by seven inches wide and four inches deep. I removed the box and placed it on the desk, where the dull sheen of the metal shone in the late-afternoon sunlight. After a moment, I lifted the latch and opened it. The box contained black and white photographs which showed a boy of about twelve undergoing surgery. The photos were graphic, even for one who, like me, thought herself inured to the blood-and-guts of medical photography.

As in so many of the displays in Lord Blackthorn’s collection, the boy’s flesh and muscles were held apart by metal clamps, displaying the naked bone. But though some of the boy’s bones had clean breaks, many appeared to be in pulverized fragments. How in the world could such extreme damage be repaired?

As I flicked through print after print, my concern transformed from confusion to wonder, and then finally to disquiet. Though the decimation of the boy’s lower body looked complete, photograph by photograph, he was being rebuilt.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened the pile of photographs by tapping them on the desk. Then I searched through them again. Beginning with the first of the black and whites, I counted up the boy’s injuries. Hairline fractures in the spinal column, partially crushed pelvis repaired with metal plates, two femoral heads and sockets replaced first with ivory, then with metal. Two metal knees, tiny screws and bolts in the lower left leg and in the heel, fusion in the tarsometatarsal joint, six pins in one arm, and a rebuilt wrist joint in the other. The boy was like a jigsaw puzzle, or Humpty-Dumpty, though it wasn’t all the king’s horses and all the king’s men grappling with the fragments of a human life, but the famous Dr. Blackthorn.

Frowning, I turned one of the photos over and glanced at the date, written in Blackthorn’s distinctive hand. Blackthorn Hospital, 1920. The earliest photos were twenty-eight years old, yet such repairs would have challenged the skills of a contemporary specialist. But there was Dr. Blackthorn in his surgeon’s whites, younger than I’d imagined possible, gloved and gowned and masked, the flesh of the body before him peeled back, its skin and juvenile genitals pushed to one side, like unneeded clothing. Focused so completely on his surgery, Blackthorn looked every inch the heroic doctor, but something about his eyes unnerved me.

There was a second pile of photographs documenting the post-op convalescence. From the boy’s growth, I’d say he spent at least six months in bed, yet his limbs appeared to be lengthening as they should, nothing stunted. Then there was a long phase in a wheelchair. Another year, at least. Then a makeshift walker, and, finally, an image of him as a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old, trying desperately to use crutches, his pain palpable.

Carefully, I replaced the photos in the box. Either the lad had died, or, somewhere in a locked drawer, was another photographic catalogue. That more surgeries had followed seemed inevitable. But even as I latched the box, I couldn’t help but wonder about the boy himself. The despair on his face was plain, as was the intensity of his agony. But lurking below the despair and pain had been another emotion, something just seeping to the surface, like molten lava forcing its way through every ground fault.

I slid the box to the side of the desk. The boy in the photographs had reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t place the face. Still sitting in Dr. Blackthorn’s chair, I leaned my elbow on the wood and rested my forehead against my palm and closed my eyes. Suddenly it came to me. The boy’s face was the ghost of Jeremy’s.

From out in the hall a grandfather clock gonged four times. I jumped. The door opened and Philip entered. He was smiling and carried two small glasses of sherry. The faint strains of Lesley Douglass and his Orchestra drifted in behind him. Far away, in the kitchen, someone was playing the wireless.

“Let no one say that I am not a gentleman.” He handed me a small etched glass. “Cin cin!”

We clinked glasses and I drank gratefully. He leaned his rear against the desk while I, still sitting in Lord Blackthorn’s chair, crossed my legs. I wore flats, but my skirt had ridden up to my knees and he glanced down, admiringly.

I nodded. “More than enough. But I was wondering.” Unlatching the box again, I lifted out the black and white photos and handed them to Philip. “Can you tell me who this boy is?”

Philip took the photos casually enough, but as he leafed through them, he began to frown. “I’ve never seen these before. Where did you find them?”

“I won’t tell. No self-respecting journalist would want to work for Country Life after the age of twenty-five. You obviously have your sights set on greater things. An exposé, perhaps?”

He pouted playfully. “Now, don’t disappoint me. I’d be thrilled to have you exposé the old bastard. God knows there are more skeletons in this house’s closets than in the old man’s collection.” He tossed the photographs down on the desk. “Those photos are of my wife Livvy’s elder half-brother, Jack Blackthorn. He suffered a terrible fall when he was twelve, while the family was on a skiing holiday. Smashed his pelvis, his knees, and broke almost every bone in his body. His father put him back together again at great expense. Used up a good chunk of his inherited fortune doing so.”

“That’s amazing,” I said, thinking of an angle for my story. “Lord Blackthorn must have been very devoted to his son.”

Philip shrugged. “Depends on who you ask. According to Livvy, the old man pushed him.”

My mouth fell open, and a moment passed before I could speak. “Did he walk again?”

“According to Livvy, yes. Youth can be remarkably resilient. Jack was never an athlete, as you can imagine. More of a bookish sort. He walked with a limp and used a cane in wet weather, more for the pain than anything else. Then, after he came of age, he decided to leave the country. Sick of being his father’s guinea pig, I suppose. Livvy was a child at the time, but she remembers the arguments vividly. The old man swore till he was blue in the face. The boy was his masterpiece and he didn’t want to let him go. Threatened to disinherit him, erase his name from the family records, the lot. But Jack walked out anyway. Or perhaps I should say limped out. Took the boat to America. Still there now, I suppose. Can only hope he did well for himself.”

Philip glanced at the clock. “May I invite you for tea? I got a call from Livvy’s doctor. Her nerves are better and they’re letting her come home.”

“No,” I said. “No, thank you. I must be going.” I slipped my notes into my purse and slid the strap over my shoulder. Grinning, Philip unsnapped my purse clasp and slipped the photographs in as well.

“Take these, just in case you run into old Jack when you return to America. See if he misses the family.”

“My husband is English,” I said. “We live in England now.” But I didn’t take the photos out of my bag. I was reluctant to touch them. In fact, part of me thought they were so awful that I’d burn them when I got home. History and posterity be damned.

By the time I’d had a second sherry and then said my goodbyes, it was almost five o’clock. Walking down the gravel drive, I smiled with relief. The article would be easy to finish up. It would be complete pabulum, but pabulum was what I was paid for. I had just checked my watch when I saw Master Jeremy crouching behind a nearby hedge. He looked like he’d been crying, and his cheeks were smudged with black dust.

“Hullo,” he said. “I’m glad I found you. They didn’t want me to say goodbye, so I sneaked away and waited for you here. I knew you couldn’t get home without walking down the drive.”

“That was very clever of you,” I said, my mood much improved now that the shadow of Blackthorn House was behind me. I hunkered down so that we were at eye level. “I’m glad you came to say goodbye.”

“I had to,” Jeremy replied. “Grandfather would have wanted me to. Don’t you have a car? Mummy has a Bentley. It’s yellow. Maybe we can give you a lift when she gets home.”

Jeremy wrinkled his nose. “Philip never agrees to anything fun.” Then the boy’s face brightened and he leaned conspiratorially close. “Did you find the box? The one with pictures of Uncle Jack? I tried to unlock the drawer, but it stuck. Then I heard you and Philip at the door and so I had to run away and hide.”

Jeremy nodded. “Philip treats me like a silly baby, but I’m not. I know all sorts of things that they don’t. Like about the playroom. Shall I show you now?”

I glanced at my watch again. I’d already missed the five o’clock train, and the next wasn’t due in until a quarter to seven. Bill knew I’d be late, and I’d left some cold meat for him in the larder. “Okay,” I said. “But we’ll have to be quick.”

“Quick as lightning!” Jeremy bounced to his feet and took my hand. “We’ll have to go through the maze and then take the secret way, so they won’t catch us. Follow closely so you don’t get lost.”

In later years, I learned that the maze at Blackthorn House was roughly the same age as the one at Hampton Court. It was designed by the first Lord Blackthorn, who decided to plant not with hedge but with gorse. Evidently, he liked to stare out of the high house windows and watch his enemies, and more than one of his guests, as they desperately searched for a way out.

Standing before the entrance to the maze I felt daunted. The corridor leading in was narrow. The sculpted green gorse walls were twice as tall as me, and though they were still flowering with their small, yellow, coconut-scented blossoms, the thin thorns were the length of my thumb. Flanking each side of the green corridor were marble plinths topped with silver witch balls. I couldn’t help but think of the entrance to Hell in Dante’s Inferno: Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. But still, the journalist inside me was awake, wondering what Jeremy wanted so desperately to share. Up ahead, the little boy called my name.

As Jeremy maneuvered the green twists and turns and forks, he chatted happily. “Grandfather taught me the maze,” he said, “and I can do it blindfolded. It hurt my hands ever so much when I ran into the prickles, but Grandfather said that to master death, one must first master life, and life begins with one’s home. Do you agree?”

“Grandfather could,” Jeremy said with certainty. “Or at least he would have, if Philip hadn’t been such a cowardly custard.” Then he paused at a spot where the gorse corridor split in three different directions. He bit his lip uncertainly for a moment, then, pointing at each path in turn, he began a counting rhyme I’d never heard before:

A few moments later, we emerged in the maze’s central square. It was a small courtyard paved with white marble, but fragrant with flowering bushes and hanging honeysuckle. Obviously, at least one gardener knew his way here.

At the heart of the courtyard stood a small folly shaped like a Greek temple. Standing within, on a black marble plinth, was a golden statue of Apollo holding a lyre. The instrument was strung and looked like it could be played, so I wondered briefly whether it might be an Aeolian harp. But what wind could find its way through such a dense maze to play it?

Climbing up the folly’s gray-veined steps, Jeremy stood about a foot from the base of the plinth. Folding his hands like a choirboy, he began to chant in a sweet, high voice:

The Apollo was not a statue but an automaton. Raising its golden fingers, it strummed the lyre’s strings. A discordant note jarred the air, followed by a great whirring of subterranean gears. To my surprise, the plinth lifted and slid to one side, exposing a stairway.

The subterranean tunnel was twenty feet high and twenty feet wide, and the arches and brickwork looked Roman. Side passages snaked off in either direction, but we remained on the straight path, our way illuminated by tiny lights embedded in the walls. They reminded me of fireflies.

Though his legs were small, Jeremy kept pace with me. His delicate little-boy shadow wavered unsteadily in the dim light. Our footsteps echoed hollowly, and I couldn’t escape the sensation that this eerie tunnel was full of the ghosts of many little boys, long ago sealed up in this underground maze and left to die. I was watching my own shadow scuttle, spiderlike, against the wall when I felt his hand slip into mine. I jumped.

“Do you have any friends?” he asked. His voice was followed by an unsettling choir of echoes.

The little boy shrugged. “Grandfather forbade me from playing with them. He said they were peasants. He said that with old blood comes great responsibility, and our blood is even older than the house and all its secrets.”

We were approaching the end of the tunnel. Up ahead was an archway that was probably Norman. “I thought only people had secrets,” I said.

“No, silly!” Jeremy giggled. “Houses have all sorts of secrets. And they keep them better than people.”

The heavy oak door filling the archway swung open into an old coal cellar, disturbing a great cloud of black dust. I started to cough, and Jeremy solicitously patted my back. After wiping my streaming eyes on my handkerchief, I reached into my purse and withdrew my lighter. I flicked it with my thumb and it flared into life, casting my wavering shadow against the floor. Removing the metal wick barrel so that I could use it as a candle, I held it aloft. The room was low and mean and shadowy. In one corner was an abandoned pile of coal. In another, a puddle of stagnant water. A thick layer of dirt and coal debris lay on the ground, disturbed only by the back and forth of little-boy footsteps. Nearby I could make out the faint traces of another type of footstep, one that belonged to a large man. Branston-Smith, perhaps? No. His feet were large but narrow and his strides were long. These marks appeared to indicate a shuffling, irregular gait, and perhaps even the use of a cane. Old Lord Blackthorn? Most likely.

Across from us was a spiral stone staircase that had probably once been for servants’ use. At the base was an old coir doormat so discolored that it looked like it had absorbed a century of coal dust. Nevertheless, Jeremy wiped his feet on it assiduously, running the soles of his shoes back and forth over the coarse fibers before starting to climb. By the many sets of small, dirty footprints going up, I could see that Jeremy used this entrance frequently.

“If you stomp your feet the dust falls off quicker,” he said, “so you needn’t worry about treading it into the house.” As if to show me what to do, Jeremy stomped up the steps. Once again glad I’d worn flats, I did my best to follow suit.

As we climbed the stone steps, each one worn to the shape of an old man’s grin, I recalled the stories I’d been told about Blackthorn House. According to my editor, it had been built over the remains of an ancient monastery disgraced and shut down well before the Reformation. And the monastery? That had been built on the remains of an indigenous temple of some kind, the history of which lay sleeping in the building’s foundations. Raising my metal candle higher, I couldn’t help but wonder if houses had souls as well as secrets.

The staircase was as twisted as the inside of a conch shell, the stone steps worn to a slippery polish. I used my lighter again to illuminate my path as best I could, but the way was dark and treacherous. More than once I almost lost my footing, but Jeremy bounded from step to step almost as if he could see in the shadows.

“Grandfather and I were the same, you know,” he said as he bounced up one step and then another. Faint light now trickled down the stairwell, leaving the little boy’s shadow to stretch behind him, long and dark.

I blew out my lighter and slipped it back into my purse. “Oh yes,” I said, glancing up. “When you grow up, you’ll become the new Lord Blackthorn.” I didn’t intend it as a question.

“No, silly! Not just that!” Jeremy was holding on to the handrail and bending backward so that he could look at me upside down.

“Oh, please be careful!” I interjected. “The handrail might be unstable!” Jeremy giggled and made a face at me, but at least he straightened up.

I smiled. “Okay. Maybe when we get to the playroom.” Surreptitiously I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter to six. I had less than an hour.

Ahead of me, Jeremy stepped onto a narrow landing just below a high, narrow window composed of diamond-shaped panes. The leading looked very old. Although some of the panes were clear, others retained their original colors of red and vivid blue. Once, the window had contained an image, I was sure of it. Perhaps it had been smashed during the Civil War and then repaired? I could make out the tip of a wing and a fold of drapery. Had the window held an angel, once? Or had it been a devil?

I paused for a moment to catch my breath. We’d been climbing a long time. “Jeremy,” I said, leaning my back against the wall and holding on to the iron railing. “What did you mean when you said that you and your grandfather were the same?”

Jeremy turned to look at me. The late-afternoon sunlight illuminated his light brown hair with an eerie, dust-laden halo. To his left was an old oak doorway, firmly closed. “The Lord Blackthorns have always been the same. I thought everyone knew that.”

“The same person. I’m Jeremy Blackthorn, and Grandfather was Jeremy Blackthorn, and his grandfather was Jeremy Blackthorn as well. See?”

“Just because you have the same name doesn’t mean you’re the same person,” I corrected gently.

“The name comes first, then the sameness comes after,” Jeremy replied. “Grandfather called it ‘fusing.’ He and I were meant to be together forever.”

“No one lives forever,” I said, still gazing up at the boy. “No one—no matter how much we love them.”

Jeremy’s face was still high above mine, and his expression was fierce. For a moment, I was taken aback. I had seen heartbreak and anger and even grief on children’s faces before, but never this.

“Grandfather could talk to me without moving his mouth and nobody knew! Mummy could hear him sometimes—I saw it on her face. But it made her scared and she cried. But I never cried! I loved him! I loved him more than the whole world!” Then Jeremy’s ferocious pride slackened, and he seemed to deflate. Once more he was a sad little boy.

“He was supposed to live inside my head after he died, so I’d never be lonely.” Jeremy’s brown eyes brimmed with tears. “I did everything Grandfather asked. Everything. When the blood made me retch and Grandfather said it was like eating rare beef at table but without the chewy bits, I drank it. But it didn’t happen like we’d practiced. Mummy and Philip had an argument. Then Mummy took me to the seaside. Her eyes were all puffy. I was building a sandcastle when I heard Grandfather scream. Then I screamed and screamed until Mummy brought me home.”

Solemnly, Jeremy descended a single step, then another and another. “He was lying at the bottom of the staircase when I found him. His neck was crooked. I tried to hold his hand, but he couldn’t hold mine back. Afterwards my fingers smelled funny, like they did when I stroked my pet rabbit after it had been torn apart by dogs.”

Standing on his tiptoes, Jeremy rested his small hands on my shoulders and leaned forward to whisper in my ear. “Sometimes I have nightmares that I’m standing at the top of the stair and Philip pushes me. I fall and fall, and then I wake up, screaming my name.”

Abruptly, Jeremy let go of my shoulders. Turning, he rushed up the stairs and then flung open the landing door.

“Bad boys are always punished,” he said, half of his face in shadow, “and that’s what will happen to Philip.” Then he ran into the nursery.

What we entered was actually an old vestibule just to the side of the nursery. It had been converted into a closet, where toys and linens jostled each other on long white shelves. We exited the French doors and I found myself in a room full of the slanting light of a late-spring evening.

Like the rest of the house, the nursery was spectacular. There was a jungle gym and a painted rocking horse and model planes and stuffed bears and dogs. The ceiling was embellished with stars and planets, and the walls were the blue of a perfect summer sky, complete with fluffy floating clouds and treetops so real that an imaginative boy could almost climb them. Tracks for a perfectly modeled steam train looped around the perimeter. Remembering a much smaller version I’d seen as a child at a Christmas display, I leaned down and flicked a small switch located near the smokestack. Toot-toot, the engine cried as it began to chug its way around the room. Every toy a young boy could want was here, but Jeremy ignored them all.

I stared at him, perplexed. “But I thought you wanted to show me the playroom.”

“This isn’t the playroom, silly!” he said. “This is the nursery. The playroom was Grandfather’s”.

Hanging on the wall behind Jeremy was a life-sized painting of a clown. Jeremy reached behind it and I heard the click of a latch. The painting—now a door—swung open. From the main hallway came two voices and the sound of hurried footsteps. The first voice was pleading and belonged to a woman.

“Six-year-old boys don’t disappear, damn it! Not if you watch them!” The voice belonged to Philip. “Jeremy!” he cried. “JEREMY! Where in the blazes are you hiding? Your mother wants you! NOW!”

Jeremy took my hand again. “Come quick,” he said. “They won’t know how to follow us.”

I don’t know what frightened me more—the prospect of being caught with Jeremy when I was supposed to be on a train heading into the city, or the physical punishment that Jeremy would most certainly receive when his antics had been discovered. My heart was beating hard when I slipped through the clown door, ducking my head so as not to hit it on the lintel. Jeremy followed, latching the door behind us, then he slipped ahead and began to run down the secret spiral stair. I did my best to keep up, but the way was almost pitch black and I was in too much of a hurry to find my lighter. As Philip’s voice faded to a murmur, Jeremy spoke without turning.

“No, silly-socks!” Jeremy giggled. “Philip has always been Mummy’s husband, but he’s not my real daddy.”

I took a deep breath. If Livvy Branston-Smith had embarked on an affair, it would go far in explaining her husband’s hostility to her child. “Do you know who your real daddy is?” I asked.

Jeremy stamped his foot. “It is true! Grandfather said so! Philip called me a liar, but I’m not a liar!” Tears of frustration and rage brimmed in Jeremy’s eyes. He wiped them away angrily with one grubby fist.

“I asked Mummy, just to make sure, and she went all red and started to cry. Mummy is always crying. Then she went to the doctor’s and stayed there for weeks. She only came home again because Philip made her, just like he made her take me to the seaside.”

Jeremy was still crying, so I brushed the tears from his cheeks. My fingers, stained with coal dust, left long, dirty trails.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. “None of it. You’re just a little boy.”

Jeremy gave me the ghost of a smile. “Grandfather would have liked you. You’re pretty, just like Mummy. Only I bet you don’t cry half so much.”

Bending down, Jeremy reached into his sock and pulled out a key. “This is how I opened the drawer for you!” he said. “They think I can’t come in here, but they are such gooses!”

Jeremy slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door swung open. We were standing in one of the closet doorways in Lord Blackthorn’s study.

I followed Jeremy past the filing cabinets and desk and large windows to the locked closet on the opposite side of the room. Jeremy unlocked this door as well. As the door banged open, he flicked on the lights.

We were in a small, windowless, black-walled room. On the floor was painted a spider’s web, and at the heart of the web, just the right size for a small boy to lie in, was a red inverted pentacle. Across the back wall were shelves of old manuscripts, and several clothes hooks from which hung two black cloaks. One was large enough for a grown man, one small enough for a child. At the side was an altar draped in black damask, upon which sat a heavy silver chalice flanked by large ebony candlesticks holding half-burned black candles. Mounted above it was the head of a stuffed goat. From the ceiling hung a censer. The whole room smelled faintly of incense.

Jeremy had donned the small black cape and hood and was already hauling a box the size of a sea trunk into the center of the web. He huffed and puffed, but finally managed to sit it at the heart of the five-pointed star. At the side of the trunk was a hand crank that looked like it had been taken from a Model T.

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,

Half a pound of treacle.

That’s the way the money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel.

Pop went the lid and out leapt a human skeleton, dancing a momentary jig. I screamed.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Jeremy laughed. “Ha! Ha! Ha! Grandfather’s jack-in-the box scared you!”

Jeremy was right. Lord Blackthorn’s jack-in-the-box did scare me. It scared me more than anything had in my entire life. You see, I recognized the metal plating in the skeleton’s pelvis, just as I recognized the rebuilt femurs and sockets, the pins in the arm, and the fused tarsometatarsal joint in the foot.

Though the shock left me winded, I couldn’t help but stare at the horrific parody of a child’s toy that old Lord Blackthorn had made of his son. Like the other skeletons in the doctor’s collection, this one had been carefully prepared. The long bones were perfect, the only mar being a faint mark where a fine blade, or perhaps a scalpel, had been used to slice away muscle. Like the rest of the remains, the skull was bleached a brilliant white, though in one yawning eye socket I glimpsed a fragment of black carapace—most likely the remains of a dermestid beetle.

Jeremy! Dang it all! Where are you? The angry voice of Philip Branston- Smith drifted toward us from the distant study window. It was followed by a second voice, which could only be that of his wife.

Jeremy? Jeremy, darling? It’s mummy! You can come out of your hiding place now! I’m home! She sounded like an injured bird.

Standing, I brushed dust from my skirt. I didn’t relish explaining why I had remained on the Blackthorn estate, but having participated in Jeremy’s wild escapade, I knew I had to face the repercussions of my actions . . . and of my discoveries.

“It’s time to go,” I said as I held out my hand. “Come. We’ll face them together.”

“I DON’T CARE!” Jeremy’s voice rose to a shriek. “MUMMY IS NOTHING BUT A CRYBABY!”

Taking hold of his arms, I tried to lift him to his feet. At first, he would not straighten his legs, but even after he’d lowered his feet to the floor, he refused to move. I rested my hands on my hips.

“Come, Jeremy. You’re a big boy now. You can’t act like a baby anymore.”

When Jeremy raised his face to mine, it was red and twisted with rage. Balling his fists, he screamed and charged at me.

Very occasionally, suffering through a childhood with three brawling younger brothers has its advantages, and this was one of those times. Stepping to one side so that his fists only grazed me, I grabbed Jeremy’s wrist and caught him in a bear hug by turning him around and pressing his back against my chest. He fought me, but I was both bigger and stronger.

“Liar! Liar! Liar!’ he bellowed as he kicked and stamped. “I’m not a baby!” I didn’t respond, merely kept hold of him until he calmed. Within a few moments, his tantrum fizzled into tears and hiccups.

Philip’s words about little boys and spoiled fruit came back to me then, but I dismissed them. After all, Jeremy was just a child, and in my experience, children were creatures of circumstance. I didn’t believe in bad seeds, only poisonous soil.

“I promised we’d face your parents together and we will.” Letting him go, I helped him remove his cape and then offered my hand. After rubbing his dirty fists against his eyes, Jeremy laced his fingers with mine. Together, we stepped into the study.

Alone with the Branston-Smiths in a drawing room larger than the London flat I shared with my husband, I sat on the edge of a white satin chair. I clasped my hands in my lap; a demitasse of coffee, brought to me by one of the maids, rested on the side table, untouched. Jeremy was upstairs with his nanny, having a bath. Before being led away, he had been severely reprimanded by his parents. He’d listened to their complaints impassively, with a jaded expression on his face that appeared disconcertingly adult. When his nanny had placed her hand on his shoulder, he’d broken away from her grip and thrown his arms about my waist.

Photograph by photograph, Lady Olivia now sorted through the record of her half-brother’s surgery and convalescence. Elegant but frail in her yellow summer dress, she reminded me of a faded daffodil. When she’d finished perusing the images, she placed the stack of prints on the mahogany table.

Lifting her head, she scowled at me, and for a moment I wondered if she was about to have a tantrum worthy of Jeremy. That she didn’t like me was obvious. Not only was I a commoner and a foreigner, but I was also a rival for her son’s affections. Still, she treated me with cautious courtesy. After all, I was a reporter and for the moment her family’s public reputation rested, albeit tenuously, in my hands.

“Such horrid things are better forgotten,” she said with a frown. “Surely you don’t mean to publish them.”

Another maid entered the room, this time with a plate of delicacies in one hand. Thanks to the mad hunt for Jeremy, Lady Olivia Branston-Smith had not yet eaten.

“I’m sorry if they cause you distress, Lady Olivia, but it’s important that I ascertain the truth.” I paused before continuing. “Are you certain that the boy in these photographs is Lord John Blackthorn?”

“Of course it’s Jack!” Livvy replied. “My husband told you that, didn’t you, Philip?”

“That I did, my love.” Much less hostile than his wife, he seemed curious as to where my questions were leading. “Although I suppose calling him Lord Blackthorn is a bit over the top. He forfeited his title when he left for America.”

“I’m sorry, Philip. I am not doubting your word.” My use of her husband’s Christian name made Lady Olivia’s eyes flash with petulant jealousy. I ignored her glare. “I just wanted to confirm Jack Blackthorn’s identity with your wife, since you’d never met him in the flesh.”

“What exactly is this about?” Lady Olivia snapped as she pressed her long, delicate fingers to her temple. “I’ve had a very trying day.”

She did not yet know it, but her day was about to become much more trying. “Lady Olivia,” I said calmly, “your brother never made it to America.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Abruptly, Lady Olivia stood. I think she was about to call the butler to shoo me out of the house.

“His skeleton is in your father’s study,” I answered. “Jeremy showed it to me.”

The cut-glass sherry decanter crashed from the maid’s hand as Lady Olivia fainted.

I had to take the sleeper back to London. By the time my train pulled into Waterloo, the last tram of the night had departed, as had the final trolleybus. Rather than pay for a hansom, I decided to walk back to Brixton.

This part of South London had been heavily bombed, and the surviving wreckage bloomed with purple spears of buddleia flowers. I suppose it was a reminder that even after the worst devastation, land could heal, though I have never been certain whether the same could be said about people. I passed the shell of a church. The glassless shadow of its rose window reminded me of the blind eye of a skull, hiding fragments of a skin beetle carapace.

As I walked, I opened my purse and pulled out the three prints I’d secretly kept, detailing Jack Blackthorn’s painful surgeries. The rest I’d handed over to the Hampshire County chief inspector in charge of homicides. The black-and-whites would probably be safe with him, but I wanted to make sure that such important evidence would not be conveniently lost. The Branston-Smiths had powerful friends, and Lady Olivia hated scandal.

That Philip Branston-Smith had murdered his father-in-law seemed obvious, though that particular crime would never make it to court. The nightmares of a six-year-old boy were hardly admissible evidence. Besides, given the fact that Blackthorn had purposefully crippled his son, his end had a certain poetic justice. As for Lady Olivia, I was fairly certain that Blackthorn had forced himself on her. Given Jeremy’s age, the child had either been conceived while Philip was on leave, or while he was at the Front. I bet my money on the latter. What made me conclude it was rape was something that Lady Olivia had whispered to her husband after she saw her brother’s remains: Oh God, she’d whimpered as she clung to his neck. Jack didn’t escape the old man, either.

By the time I reached Stansfield Road, it was the small hours of the morning and our flat windows were dark. Bill was probably asleep. As quietly as I could, I opened the terrace’s front gate, unlocked the front door, and tiptoed up the steps. Before slipping my key in the lock, I stretched and yawned. The sun would be up soon, but I could still catch a few hours’ sleep before I returned to my typewriter. I had a story to write.