The Lie Tree (27 page)

It was difficult to look at Uncle Miles, now that Faith understood him better. She could almost see thoughts squirming behind his placid face, like worms in a bun. He was sizing her up,
wondering if her presence would jeopardize his hard-won admittance to the dig.

The murderer had made use of Uncle Miles’s ambition, but perhaps Faith could use it too. Better still, Faith had been slowly learning that the excavation leaders were not united. Under the
jovial surface lurked rivalries, distrust and resentment – cracks just waiting for her to drive in her chisel.

‘Uncle Miles,’ she said, ‘if you will be seeing Dr Jacklers, could you give him a letter from me? I . . . wanted to thank him for trying to help Father.’

‘A letter? Of course – I see no harm in that.’

Faith managed not to flinch when her uncle patted her hand. She remembered his paper grimace, and her fingers itched.

Faith narrowed her eyes at her letter, then added a postscript.

The letter was delivered next morning, and Dr Jacklers called by later that same day. He spent an hour talking to Myrtle, then happily joined Faith for tea in the drawing
room.

‘Miss Sunderly, what an excellent thought!’ The doctor’s delighted gaze kept creeping to the top of Faith’s head, presumably assessing her cranium. ‘It is always a
joy to measure a head
properly!
So few people will brave my instruments! And your case, Miss Sunderly, is a special one. Genius, they say, is passed down through families, and your father
possessed a remarkable mind.’

Faith noticed that he had brought with him several boxes and cases with heavy straps. She had been expecting a tape measure, and the mention of ‘instruments’ was a little
worrying.

‘Now, do not be alarmed,’ said the doctor in a sprightly tone, as he reached within one case and started pulling out bizarre contraptions. ‘These are merely measuring devices,
and will not hurt at all. My word – I have so few chances to use these!’

The first was a gleaming pair of calipers, its pincers large enough to grip a melon. The second was a four-sided wooden frame, with adjustable screws, that was clearly designed to fit over the
head.

As the doctor took these out of the box, Faith caught sight of a small painting within. It showed the head and shoulders of a neat-featured, black-haired woman in a pale yellow dress. Curiously,
somebody seemed to have scrawled over the painting in ink, marking out the ‘comparative’ of the skull, the angle of her face, and so forth.

‘That looks like Miss Hunter,’ Faith said reflexively.

‘It is nobody,’ the doctor responded, immediately and rather sourly. ‘It is an old picture of an Unknown Lady. Though . . . like Miss Hunter, she does have a short skull. There
are many ill traits that can be found in a short skull. Ingratitude. Shallowness. Inability to understand her own best interests.’

This seemed quite a lot of venom to direct against the poor stranger in the painting. For the first time, Faith started to suspect that Miss Hunter might have ungratefully, shallowly and
misguidedly refused to become Mrs Jacklers.

‘Where would you like me to sit?’ asked Faith, eager to change the subject.

‘Mmm? Oh, it does not matter as long as the back is not too high.’

Faith settled herself in a wooden chair, and a moment later she felt the calipers grip her, one metal pincer resting on the back of her head, the other pressing into the base of her forehead,
just above her nose.

‘Dolichocephalic skull, like your father,’ the doctor muttered, his temper recovering a little.

His words did not surprise Faith, nor was their meaning lost on her. It had already crossed her mind that, when engaged in his duties as coroner, the doctor had probably seized the opportunity
to measure her father’s head. She gritted her teeth and kept her expression bland as chalk.

The calipers were withdrawn, and the wooden frame lowered on to Faith’s head, so that its crosspiece was settled on the top of her skull. It had four drooping vertical arms, and Dr
Jacklers twiddled the screws until the arms pressed against the front, back and sides of her head.

‘My mother was very pleased with the veil,’ she said meekly. ‘And the lovely shawl!’

‘Shawl?’ The doctor paused. ‘There was no shawl.’

‘Oh!’ Faith blinked. ‘I beg your pardon! Now I remember – the shawl was from Mr Clay.’

‘Mr Clay gave your mother a shawl?’ asked the doctor in outraged, suspicious tones.

Faith knew that she might be providing Clay with an enemy, but she could not afford to be sentimental. Besides, any man of the cloth chasing a brand-new widow deserved everything he got.

‘Yes,’ she faltered. ‘It arrived yesterday.’

There was a long pause.

‘That measurement seems too large,’ the doctor muttered at last. ‘Are you tensing your face muscles? Please try not to exert your forehead.’ The screws were tightened
until she was unsure whether he was measuring her head or trying to crush it down to the right size.

‘That feels rather tight, Dr Jacklers!’ Faith exclaimed, as the pressure became bruising. She wondered whether she had been rash, putting her skull at his mercy. He was, after all,
one of her suspects.

‘I am trying to acquire a credible reading,’ growled the doctor with rather ill grace. ‘Of course, the best way to be sure of your cranial capacity would be to fill your skull
with seeds, just as I do with empty skulls, but you would hardly thank me for that!’

Just as she was wondering whether she would end up with a rectangular head, the screws were loosened and the frame lifted away. While Faith gingerly felt her forehead and temples, Dr Jacklers
wrote down a set of figures in a notebook. Glancing across, Faith could see that the columns had headings like ‘facial angle’, ‘cranial index’, ‘breadth,
‘circumference’ and ‘length.

‘How did I do?’ she asked.

‘Your head is longer than I expected,’ the doctor admitted. ‘No doubt a gift from your late father.’ He frowned again at his figures, and Faith saw him round a couple
down.

‘Dr Jacklers,’ said Faith timidly, ‘can I ask your advice?’ She reached for her sketchbook and spread it for the doctor’s view, turning page after page. ‘I
wanted to thank you – to be of help to you and the other gentlemen – and I know Mr Lambent’s draughtsman has broken his wrist. Do you think I would do instead?’

The doctor watched as Faith leafed past sketches of birds and still lifes of deer antlers, then put out his hand to halt her. The page showed a cross section of a hillside, neatly sliced by
lines into layers, with labels such as ‘broken medieval pottery’, ‘fragment of Roman wall’, ‘clay soil’, and ‘pygmy hippo and aurochs bones’.

‘Is that a drawing of an excavation section?’

‘Yes – Father taught me how to draw them.’ It was a lie. Faith had seen such diagrams before, and understood them a little, but she had carefully copied this picture from one
of her father’s books that very morning. ‘Would that help?’

The doctor was tempted, she could see it. But then he glanced over at her, and she saw herself reflected in his gaze, a young girl out of place amid rubble and bones. He started to shake his
head.

‘I would not want to be any trouble though,’ Faith declared swiftly. She shut the book. ‘I know that you have Mr Clay to take photographs, and that he probably needs the money.
I would hate to steal his commissions and make difficulties for him.’

A little candle of malice lit in Dr Jacklers’s eye. Faith could guess what he was thinking. If Faith was making sketches, the excavation would not need so many of Clay’s photographs.
He would lose his importance at the dig and have less money to buy presents for pretty widows.

‘Miss Sunderly, do not concern yourself. That is an excellent idea! Are you sure that your mother can spare you?’

‘I believe so,’ answered Faith, a little uncertain. ‘To tell the truth, I think I have been under everybody’s feet lately. Do you think Mr Lambent and Mr Clay will mind
though?’ It was her role to be doubtful, hesitant and ultimately persuaded.

‘Leave it to me,’ said the doctor grimly.

Waiting for the verdict from the excavation leaders, Faith busied herself in her room with scientific investigation.

Remembering the way that her clothes had caught fire, and the strange occurrence with the sample jar, Faith decided to perform some careful experiments, this time with a jug of water to
hand.

First she tried a tiny piece of Lie Tree leaf on the tip of her knife and moved it into a narrow shaft of sunlight. It ignited instantly, a leap of white flame consuming it in a second with a
hiss. A frail mote of grey ash floated down to the floor. The same thing happened when she repeated the experiment with thorns, blobs of sap or fragments of bark.

It was true then. Fragments of the Lie Tree burst into flame at the touch of sunlight. There had probably been tiny fragments of foliage on her dress that morning, and they had ignited as she
left the cave.

After singeing herself a few times and slightly charring the windowsill, she knew a little more. Bright light from candles and lanterns only caused the leaf to fizz and wilt. Daylight
immediately reflected in a mirror’s surface triggered instant combustion, as did direct daylight. Indirect daylight seemed to have no effect, providing it was dim and diffuse enough.
Lantern-light muted by enough layers of gauze also seemed to be harmless to the specimens.

‘Father must be right,’ Faith murmured to herself. ‘The Tree
must
be cave-dwelling – somewhere the sun never reaches. But
why
does it burn? Chemicals, I
suppose – oils, volatile. Maybe that’s why it smells so strongly. But why does it
let
itself burn?’

How could bursting into flames be an advantage? How would a tree like that
evolve
?

‘Maybe it is a defence,’ she said aloud. She imagined plant-eating animals venturing into caves, chomping the Tree’s slick leaves. As they emerged, muzzles sticky with sap,
they would suddenly find their faces singed and searing. They would learn to avoid that ice-cold reek.

‘But that answers nothing,’ she muttered, as she jotted down her thoughts. ‘Volatile oils are stored energy. Where does the Tree find its energy?’

Her father had theorized about the Tree feeding off a ‘psychical connection’ with an ‘intelligent member of another species’. Her pen halted on the paper. If the Lie Tree
was ‘connected’ to anybody at that moment, it could only be herself. And it was growing. But she did not
feel
as though something were draining out of her. As she looked at her
notes, she felt energized, alive.

If Faith could understand the plant, perhaps she could understand something about daylight, the vegetable kingdom, truth or even the human soul. Her awe of the plant was giving way to a hungry
curiosity.

A little before dinner, a letter arrived for Myrtle from Dr Jacklers, asking whether she might spare young Faith over the next few days for some sketching tasks.

Myrtle was only slightly happier than she might have been if Faith had suggested leaping down the excavation shaft. Sending a young girl to a dig full of labouring men was scarcely proper.
Dragging her from the bosom of her family straight after bereavement was irregular. Expecting her to assist the excavation, after her father had been so terribly snubbed, was downright
peculiar.

It was Dr Jacklers who had asked though, so Myrtle spent the whole of dinner talking herself round.

‘Uncle Miles will be with you, so it is not
completely
improper,’ she conceded. ‘And perhaps the invitation is some sort of apology for the way our family has been
treated. Faith – the Lambents have slighted us dreadfully, but please be as civil to them as you can bear. If they can only be persuaded to be reasonable, then everybody can forget about this
ridiculous inquest.’

Jeanne served the food like a sleepwalker. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and she kept forgetting what she was doing mid-ladle. She picked up each napkin gingerly, as if expecting to
find horrors lurking beneath. At one point a servants’ bell rang in the kitchen, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

That was the lie that Faith needed to sow into the minds of the islanders. Back in her room, she set about creating the first seed.

She had borrowed a sheet of her father’s writing paper
and one of his pens. Carefully she began to write, glancing at her father’s journal now and then so that she could copy his handwriting as closely as possible.

She examined it with real pride. It looked smudged and hurried, just as she had planned. Better still, it was unclear. There was nothing to show what the numbers meant. They
could be pounds, guineas, doubloons or mammoth teeth. All that anybody could tell from reading it was that
something
had been found in large quantities and divided between three men . . .
and that Dr Jacklers had not been included.