The Lie Tree (26 page)

Clay had always seemed gentle, mild and baffled. No, not always. Faith remembered the flare of passion when he had spoken so adamantly of the Bible, and calamities, and a young earth. How would
he have reacted if he learned of the Reverend’s great deceptions? Zeal was like gas, most dangerous when you could not see it. The wrong spark could light it at any time.

None of them had an obvious reason for murdering her father. But the Reverend’s frauds and dealings with the Tree could have made him many enemies. One of his lies might have done somebody
a real injury. Natural scientists who had vouched for his fossils would look like fools now, their reputations in shreds. Perhaps one of his visions had shown him someone else’s dangerous
secret, driving them to find a way of silencing him.

She needed to know more about all three men. The Lie Tree might tell her something, if she could think of the right lie. A lie about the excavation leaders. A lie that the islanders would wish
to believe. She thought of the old tales of the smuggler’s gold.

Faith leaned forward towards the waiting shadows. ‘The excavation is not really a dig for dusty old bones,’ she whispered. ‘The leaders are lying to everybody. They are looking
for smugglers’ treasure, and they want to keep it all for themselves.’

The cavern echoed the surge of the water with a husky roar, as though the Tree had drawn in Faith’s words with one breath.

The tide had come in while she had been unconscious, and when she found the boat it was afloat, tugging impatiently at its rope. As she rowed unsteadily out of the cave, the
early morning light sliced into Faith’s brain, making her wince and blink.

When she opened her eyes again, she noticed that she was on fire.

A small fleck of something on her sleeve gave a hungry fizzle as the sunlight touched it, then withered. The cloth beneath it ignited, a tiny flame starting to eat a moth-hole into the fabric.
The threads glowed red as they caught.

Faith stared stupidly at it, until a pain in her arm convinced her sluggish brain that the flame was real. She let go of the oars, scooping up water in her hand and splashing it on the flames.
At the same time she became aware that four other small spots on her clothing were smoking and glowing ember-red, one on her bodice and three on her skirts.

For a moment Faith could only think that she was spontaneously combusting. She had heard tales of such things. Men and women going about their own business suddenly caught fire from within and
burned to ashes within seconds, sometimes leaving their clothes intact.

In panic, she splashed water on her face, skirts, sleeves and bodice. She continued to throw water over herself even after the burning patches were reduced to charred holes. Only when she could
be sure that she was no longer igniting, did her heart stop galloping. She could not understand what had happened, but at least it was no longer happening.

It was a hard row back to shore and Faith had to lean over the side of the boat several times to be sick. By the time she was sneaking through the grounds, dawn had well and truly broken. The
sunlit green of the lawn burned her eyes as she tottered heavily towards the house, doing her best to stay behind cover. Singed, half blind, stupefied and sea-splashed, she struggled up the steps,
through the roof-garden door and into the blessed, kindly darkness of her room.

She dropped into a chair and drank water straight from the jug, shuddering with each gulp. Then she opened the shutters and curtain a crack to let in a sliver of sunlight, just enough to let her
undo her buttons and laces. She had just stripped off her renegade funeral garb and slipped back into her nightgown when a polite knock at the door made her jump.

‘Wait a moment, please!’ The room was littered with incriminating evidence of her night outing. As Faith hastily scooped up her discarded clothes, she accidentally kicked her
father’s field kit, which was lying open on the floor. One of the little sample jars tumbled out, and rolled into the slender shaft of sunlight.

Inside were a few leaves cut from the Tree. As the morning light touched them, they blackened and shrivelled, then erupted into searing white flame. There was a
whoomph.
The glass of
the jar blackened, then cracked with a sharp retort.

‘Miss Sunderly?’ Mrs Vellet’s sombre velvet tones were touched with concern. ‘Is anything amiss?’

‘No!’ called Faith, as she hurriedly tried and failed to pick up the hot jar, which promptly fell into two pieces. She kicked them under the dresser and pushed the window open,
frantically trying to waft out the eye-watering lime-scented smoke. ‘I – I will be there in a moment!’

Once all the evidence was hidden, Faith opened the door, dreading to think how much crashing, creaking and blundering must have been overheard.

‘I am very sorry to have troubled you, Miss Sunderly.’ Mrs Vellet was stiff as ever, but wore a tiny, discomfited frown. Faith wondered why the housekeeper had risen so early, and
why she had come to Faith’s door in person. The pause stretched. ‘I thought I would ask whether you wished for breakfast at the usual time, or whether you were planning to rise a little
later. If you had not . . . slept well, miss.’

Faith stared at the housekeeper, trying to decipher the lines of her face. The housekeeper knew something. She had heard something. Perhaps she had seen something. Until Faith was certain how
much Mrs Vellet knew, she could not frame a covering lie. She knew that she herself must look dishevelled and shadow-eyed.

‘Thank you,’ Faith said carefully. ‘I
would
like a later breakfast, if you please.’ She could not resist the prospect of some more sleep.

‘Very good, miss.’ Seconds passed, and the housekeeper still stood there. ‘Miss Sunderly,’ she began again, and to Faith’s surprise dropped her voice to an earnest
monotone, ‘if you will forgive me for saying so . . . your father would not expect you to put yourself through this.’

Faith felt her face tighten and her stomach clench like a fist.

‘If you must go down there at night,’ Mrs Vellet continued, ‘there is a cloak in the hall that will give you a measure of warmth. But it is a long, cold walk to the church, and
a wake ends when the dead leave the house. Your father loved you – if you died of influenza, that would be poor thanks for his care in raising you.’

It took a moment for Faith to disentangle Mrs Vellet’s words and understand her meaning. The housekeeper did not know where Faith had been, but she had heard or seen enough to know that
Faith had been somewhere. She had jumped to a conclusion – that Faith had been continuing her own private wake, walking to the church to sit by her father’s coffin like a dog on its
master’s grave.

Brimming with relief, Faith looked down so that her gaze could not be read and gave a little nod of acknowledgement. From under her lashes she saw the housekeeper give a small, formal bob, then
withdraw. Faith closed the door, and then her eyes.

She had come so very close to being discovered. Even now, Mrs Vellet could report her for sneaking out by night, but Faith did not think she would. No, if that had been her plan, Mrs Vellet
would have gone straight to Myrtle, rather than approaching Faith for a sotto voce conversation.

It could be kindness. Faith felt hollow at the thought. She had needed kindness before, and had received none. Now it was too late, and she did not know what to do with it.

When Faith woke again, she was aghast to discover that she had slept through to the afternoon. As she emerged groggily from her room, however, her anxiety gave way to a rather
mortifying realization. Nobody had missed her at all.

Myrtle was busy trying on a new veil and shawl. Both were newly arrived ‘gestures of sympathy’, the former from Dr Jacklers, the latter from Clay. Evidently their rivalry was
proceeding apace. Faith winced internally, looking at the good-quality paramatta shawl. She suspected that it would have been a painful expense for the ill-paid curate. Faith caught herself
wondering what Paul had thought of it, and her mind flinched from the memory of their strange confrontation and his impossible dare.

As it turned out, Clay had also delivered the first print of the family photograph. Faith’s hand shook as she held the little square of card. There was the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly
reposed and dignified in his chair, Faith a pace behind him. He looked eerily unblemished, his painted eyes coolly interrogative.

‘Can I keep this print?’ Faith reflexively pulled the card closer to her chest. ‘Please!’

Myrtle sighed. ‘Oh, very well.’

Faith needed to find a way to infiltrate the excavation site, if she wanted to spread her new lie and continue her investigations. Right now she was trapped in Bull Cove, and
the excavation leaders were frustratingly out of her reach.

Uncle Miles, however, was not.

After dinner Faith hunted him down and discovered him in the library, reading a copy of
Prehistoric Times.
It gave her a jolt when she walked in and found him sitting in the chair that
had recently been used by her father.

There he was, round-faced and amiable, sitting by the fire with his pipe. Uncle Miles, who had always been there in the background, a warm and unthreatening presence, like a cat curled up on a
windowsill.

Uncle Miles who had brought the whole family to Vane for selfish reasons, playing into the murderer’s hands. Faith could not forget her vision, or the way his daubed, grotesque face had
torn under her fingers.

‘Good evening,’ she said, and managed to make her voice sound natural.

‘There you are, Faith.’ Uncle Miles folded his paper, then regarded her with a serious smile. ‘How nice to see one sober, sensible face!’

‘Has everybody else been drunk and silly?’ Faith perched herself on the edge of a seat.

‘After a fashion.’ Uncle Miles gave a sigh of exasperated mirth. ‘Everyone seems to be drunk on ghosts! They are terribly convenient ghosts as well. Whenever anything is broken
or spilt, it is the ghosts. Whenever anything is missing, the ghosts are to blame.’

Faith, the puppeteer of the local ghost, quietly folded her hands.

‘Have many things gone missing?’ asked Faith, wondering how many of her own ‘borrowings’ had been noticed.

‘I am afraid so.’ Uncle Miles proceeded to give quite a long list of missing items. Some of them were indeed items Faith had borrowed, such her father’s field instruments and
his spare watch. However, the household was also missing a few plants, a couple of silk cravats, a tobacco jar and other odds and ends. Clearly Faith was not the only person taking advantage of the
confusion to acquire things they wanted. ‘The truth is, we need a proper inventory of your father’s effects.’

Faith said nothing but bristled quietly. Compiling a ‘proper inventory’ would probably involve a search of the house.

Uncle Miles drummed his fingers on his paper. ‘Faith, you are . . . well, a big girl now. May I talk to you as a full-grown young lady?’

Faith nodded. Oddly his words made her feel that she was being treated less like an adult, not more.

‘Well, it seems that I need your help. Your mother . . . is not well, not herself . . .’

‘Overwrought?’ suggested Faith, keeping her face deadpan.

‘Exactly. And so there are important things that have gone astray. Faith, I’m sure you want to help your mother. Do you have
any
idea where she might have put your
father’s private papers?’

‘No,’ Faith faltered, keeping her expression innocent, ‘but I suppose I
could
look out for them.’ She watched her uncle with fascination. How calculating he was!
Why had she never noticed this side of him before? But she was calculating too, and right now her calculations told her that this was the moment to ask him questions, because he wanted her as an
ally.

‘Do you think perhaps Father took his papers with him when he went to give that talk to the local society?’ she asked. ‘Perhaps we should try to ask somebody at the dig? They
might know.’

‘No, I, er . . . well, as a matter of fact I
have
been talking to them.’ Uncle Miles coughed, and looked a little embarrassed. ‘I have been back to the excavation a
few times. I thought . . . build a few bridges with my scientist brethren, put some minds at rest . . . They are not really such terrible fellows, you know.’

‘They brought Father all the way across the sea, and then they turned on him.’ Every word she spoke was carefully judged, but Faith could not stop real feeling creeping into her
voice.

Uncle Miles looked alarmed by her display of emotion. Faith dropped her own gaze quickly.

‘I know,’ she said, letting her tone deflate. ‘I understand why they did it. I know about the rumours, and the
Intelligencer.
’

‘I am sorry that you had to hear about that.’ Uncle Miles sighed. ‘Try to see it from the gentlemen’s point of view! If they had continued to associate with your father,
with such a scandal breaking, all their findings would be thrown into doubt! Nobody would take their discoveries seriously!’

‘Yes,’ said Faith, ‘I see. That would be terrible.’ Somehow she managed not to sound sarcastic. ‘Anyway, it’s not
your
fault, Uncle Miles. You just
wanted to help us.’ From under her lashes she saw her uncle’s posture relax slightly. ‘Whose idea was it to invite Father anyway? I suppose it must have been Mr
Lambent.’

‘Nobody seems to remember.’ Uncle Miles spoke gently but rather carefully. ‘It seems that it was suggested one evening at a dinner, and everybody took to the idea. Now, of
course, nobody wants to admit to having come up with it.’

Who was at the dinner?
Faith could not ask the question. It would sound odd, and Uncle Miles was unlikely to have an answer.

‘I suppose you are right, Uncle Miles.’ Faith let her shoulders droop. ‘We do need to build bridges. Can I help? When you next go to the excavation, can you take me with
you?’

‘To the excavation?’ Uncle Miles seemed taken aback. ‘Well, I have no objection, but . . . we would need to ask permission from the gentlemen running the dig. The Sunderly
surname may be a problem, you see . . . and I am not sure your mother would approve . . .’