Music Macabre

by Sarah Rayne

  Phin read this with a mixture of amusement and affectionate exasperation, made a mental note to berate Toby for wishing such incompetent plumbers on Arabella, then replied to her email saying he would look in at her flat tomorrow. He hesitated over mentioning his latest discoveries, but they all seemed so far removed from both the Liszt project and the Scaramel/Links search, that he decided against it. Instead, he said he would try to get to Paris next weekend, and that he was looking forward to unfolding the black silk underwear.

  When finally he got into bed, it was not that sad and macabre account of what might have been Scaramel’s execution that was with him, or even the flickering image beloved by film-makers of a cloaked gentleman stalking Victorian London carrying a surgeon’s bag.

  It was the fact that the Fossan’s Journal reporter seemed to think the ‘Listen’ song had been composed as a warning about Jack the Ripper. As Phin fell asleep, he was wondering how far he could trust that opinion. And if so, who the composer had been.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Shortly after nine o’clock the next morning, Phin tapped on Toby’s door to borrow the key to Arabella’s flat. As he did so, it flickered on his mind as to whether he and Arabella might be reaching a stage where they would exchange door-keys anyway. This was a very pleasant thought.

  ‘You’re an early bird,’ said Toby, opening the door. ‘Good thing I was up.’

  ‘I knew you were up,’ said Phin. ‘I heard you singing the rugby version of “The Girl I Left Behind Me” in the shower half an hour ago.’

  ‘We’ll have to get that wall sound-proofed sometime,’ said Toby, unrepentant. ‘But you won’t need a key to Arabella’s place. The plumbers are working today. They’ll let you in.’

  ‘They’re working on a Sunday?’ said Phin, incredulously.

  ‘Yes, because the insurers are paying and they’ve doubled the rate or maybe tripled it. Or it might be the plumbers’ professional indemnity set-up who are paying. Anyway, somebody’s footing the bill for Sunday work, so they’ll be at the flat all day.’

  ‘Well, that’s good anyway,’ said Phin. ‘I’m only whizzing over to Linklighters for another quick look through the stuff in the cellar, but I’m setting off earlier than I need so that I can check Arabella’s place beforehand.’

  ‘Ah, but is the luscious Loretta likely to check on you while you’re at Linklighters?’ asked Toby. ‘And if so, what’s it worth for me not to tell Arabella?’

  ‘I’m not going to be checked on by Loretta or anyone else,’ said Phin. ‘I’ll only be there for an hour or two anyway.’

  ‘It is,’ said Toby, solemnly, ‘now only quarter past nine, and a good deal can be achieved on a Sunday morning before lunch.’

  ‘You speak as one who knows. How is the physiotherapist?’

  ‘Very well indeed, as a matter of fact.’

  Arabella’s flat was a hive of activity. Carpets had been discarded and furniture was stacked in a corner, shrouded in what looked like waterproof covering.

  ‘Sort of thing that could happen to anyone,’ said a rotund man in overalls, who appeared to be directing proceedings. ‘But a young apprentice – what they call “traineeship work placement” – was helping chisel up a section of the floor so we could drop the new toilet in – very smart it’s going to look when it’s done, one of those wall-hung affairs, she’s got an eye for class, hasn’t she, that Miss Tallis? But the lad, well-meaning as anything, switched on the power-hammer, and it got away with him, and powered straight down into a main sewer pipe. And, of course, it was the pipe that serves the whole house – wouldn’t you know it would be.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you just,’ said Phin. He checked all the rooms so he could describe everything to Arabella, considered taking a couple of photographs to send her, but decided against it. Even Arabella’s buoyancy might be deflated by the actual sight of the devastation.

  Instead, he thanked the man, and set off for Harlequin Court. He had not needed to be at Arabella’s flat as long as he had thought, and he would probably reach Linklighters a bit earlier than he had arranged with Loretta Farrant. It was a nice morning, though, and he could sit on the little bench outside Thumbprints and wait until she arrived.

  ‘Do you think,’ said Loretta, as she and Roland finished breakfast, ‘that you could come with me to the restaurant this morning? Just for an hour or so?’

  She sounded a bit defensive, and Roland turned to look at her. They had been avoiding one another’s eyes since they got up, and they had only exchanged the most necessary comments, mostly about whether there was any more coffee, or whether Roland had finished in the bathroom because Loretta wanted to wash her hair. It was not exactly as if they were embarrassed because he had found the sketch and because Loretta had poured out the story of her ancestors; it was more as if neither of them knew whether or not they should reopen the subject. Roland would have quite liked to know more about those shadowy figures and about the tragic ancestor who had been consigned to an asylum. If nothing else, it might have meant bringing a few things into the open, and it might even have meant he could find a way of coming to terms with the almost-certain knowledge that Loretta had brought about Mother’s death. But he had no idea if it would anger Loretta to ask about the sketch and the ancestor, or if it might upset her. She was hardly ever upset about anything – it was one of the strengths in her he had admired so much at the beginning. But there was, of course, also the possibility that she was regretting what she had said.

  He had just been deciding that he would ask if he could look at the sketch again, when Loretta made her request about going to the restaurant. It surprised him slightly, because she hardly ever went there on a Sunday. They did not normally do very much at all on Sundays, in fact. Loretta might spend a desultory hour or two working out menus for the forthcoming week, or drafting PR ideas, and Roland usually went out to buy Sunday newspapers, which then got spread around the flat during the reading of them. This always annoyed Loretta, because she said she was the one who had to pick them up and tidy them away for recycling, and she wished Roland would remember that he no longer lived in a sprawling old house where you could shut the door on any clutter and just go into one of the other rooms. Roland usually said he could do his own tidying up, and in any case he was generally the one who took the newspapers to the recycling place.

  But slightly waspish as these exchanges were, there was a degree of comfortable familiarity about them, and in a curious way Roland looked forward to them. It helped to put from his mind how they used to stay in bed until almost lunchtime on Sundays, making sleepy love, listening to the news on the radio, then sharing a shower before getting up to eat a huge brunch. It was also important not to remember the struggling, embarrassing failures on those mornings, after he had found Loretta’s earring outside Mother’s door.

  To push these thoughts away, he said, ‘Why on earth are you going to the restaurant on a Sunday?’

  ‘I’m meeting Phineas Fox again, if you remember.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I do remember, now you mention it. But you said I didn’t need to be there.’

  ‘It’s just that the quarterly inspection of the sluice gate and the panel’s due next week.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘There was a letter – I thought I told you. The Health and Safety people are going in on Wednesday, so I want to have a quick look beforehand, to make sure everything’s all right. Only I hate that place – the sluice gate place – and it’d be a whole lot easier if you were with me. It’s less disruption to do it while the restaurant’s closed, as well. It needn’t take more than half an hour, then you could go straight home, and I’d stay to see Phineas.’

  ‘Have we got to actually raise the sluice gate?’

  ‘Yes, but only a couple of feet, just so we can shine a torch through.’

  The thought of raising the gate, of cranking up the ancient machinery and exposing the shrivelled old river was a shivery one. Roland had only seen the gate once, during the renovati
ons, but he had thought it was the most macabre thing he had ever encountered.

  But he said, temperately, ‘Yes, all right, I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Good. I’ll wash up the breakfast things, and throw on a jacket. If we go a bit early at least there won’t be many people around.’

  There were not many people around at all, and Harlequin Court, when they got to it, was deserted and silent.

  ‘It’s strange to see it like this,’ said Roland, looking about him, as Loretta unlocked the door.

  ‘Sunday morning mode.’

  As they went inside, it occurred to Roland that Loretta was a bit overdressed for a casual Sunday morning meeting. He thought the jacket she had offhandedly mentioned throwing on was new, and it looked expensive. It was for this man, of course, this Phineas Fox who was quite ordinary looking, but who had remarkable eyes and a nice voice. Probably Loretta would flirt with him after Roland had gone home, and maybe even try to seduce him. Once this would have caused a deep pain, but Roland realized sadly that he no longer cared much what she did, or who she did it with, or where it was done.

  ‘Phineas Fox won’t be here until eleven,’ said Loretta, locking the door and going down the stairs. ‘But we’ll deal with checking the gate right away, shall we?’

  It was shadowy and still in the restaurant, and there was somehow a feeling that they were being watched. The figures in the framed posters and playbills had a ghostly aspect, and the eyes might almost have been alive.

  As Roland followed Loretta down to the deep cellar, he had the sensation of something old and dank brushing across the air. But then Loretta switched on a light, and there was only a faint drift of lavender from the plug-in air freshener she kept down here, and the room was its usual ordinary office-self.

  ‘Let’s unlock the panel and get that out of the way,’ she said, reaching in her bag and handing him the key.

  Roland had forgotten the panel was kept locked, but he took the small key and reached up. There was a faint creak as the lock turned and the panel’s seams were released, and then a cold dank stench really did seep into the room. Roland ignored it, and swung the panel back so that it was flat against the wall. The light from the office spilled into the yawning space, showing the old stone walls, pitted and scarred with age. As his eyes began to adjust to the dimness, the gate seemed almost to materialize out of the darkness. It was massive; easily fifteen feet high, and probably ten or twelve feet wide, and it was just as monstrous and sinister as he remembered. There was a row of iron spikes at the very top, melting into the darkness, but just visible. On the right of the gate was a huge wheel, with thick black spokes and levers. That was the mechanism that would raise the gate.

  ‘It’s darker in there than I expected,’ he said, half over his shoulder to Loretta.

  ‘Is it? Haven’t you got your phone? There’s a torch on it, isn’t there?’

  Roland always forgot about having a torch on the phone, because he was hardly ever in a situation where he needed to use it. He fumbled a bit, then finally managed to switch it on. Shining the light, he swung one leg over the low sill of the panel, and stepped through. The sour dankness came at him like a blow, but he stepped across to the gate, and put the torch on the ground, so that its small light fell directly on to the iron wheel. The wheel felt cold to his touch, almost slimy, and he was about to grasp it, when Loretta said,

  ‘Roland, I think there’s a kind of key for the wheel. I’ve never operated it, but I remember seeing the Health and Safety people doing it. You have to slot it in just under the actual wheel, and then turn it – I think it works on the same principle as the key on a tin of sardines. It was fitted as an extra security thing.’

  ‘I can’t see anything …’ Roland moved the torch. ‘Oh, wait, yes, this must be it – just under the wheel itself.’

  It was indeed like a massive key. It was a good eighteen inches in length with a kind of ring handle, and the other end of the shaft was shaped to slot into the spokes of the wheel to give leverage. Roland saw what Loretta meant about a tin of sardines. He slotted it in place, then turned it, pulling hard. There was a shudder of movement deep within the tunnel, then from beyond the gate came a dull clanking sound, and with it the impression of immense iron cogs meshing and huge chains uncoiling. The gate creaked and shivered, then a thin rim of dull light showed at the bottom. Roland had to fight a sudden compulsion to get out of the horrible old cellar as fast as possible. But he stayed where he was, his hands on the wheel, and with agonizing slowness, the sluice gate began to rise. It was like the slow yawn of a monster. Mud and silt dripped like strings from a second row of iron spikes along the bottom rim – black iron teeth, thought Roland, repressing a shudder. The stench that gusted out was like a solid wall.

  He stepped back from the wheel, but the gate continued to rise, as if the mechanism, once activated, had to finish its course. It struggled up to a three-quarters position – the spikes along the bottom edge four or five feet over Roland’s head – then stopped. Beyond the opening, he could see what looked like a brick-lined tunnel, with curved sides and a roof that stretched away into a cobwebby gloom. There was a yawning blackness at the core of the tunnel, which must be where the ancient ditch had been. The ghost river. Roland had not seen it at such close quarters before, and it was much wider than he had expected. Alongside it was a brick ledge, three feet wide at the most.

  Loretta had climbed through the panel, and had come to stand next to him. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. The gate seemed to go up all right.’

  ‘Good. It’s a strange place, that tunnel, isn’t it?’ she said, softly.

  ‘Very.’

  She linked her hand through his arm and leaned against him. ‘You get the feeling that it’s a place that might have seen – and kept – a few secrets in its time, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What secrets might it keep about us, d’you think, Roland?’ she said. ‘About you and me.’

  There was an odd silence, then Roland turned his head to look at her. ‘I don’t know that I’ve got any particularly dark secrets.’

  Loretta smiled, but for some reason it struck Roland as an odd smile. As if somebody else’s smile had been pasted on to her face. He wondered suddenly if that was how she had looked on the night she’d crept up the stairs to pull the carpet into ridges for Mother to stumble over …? Sly, calculating … No, surely it was just the strange light down here.

  Loretta said, in a perfectly normal voice, ‘Of course you haven’t got any dark secrets. Let’s close this gate, shall we?’

  ‘Yes, as quickly as possible. Loathsome place.’ Roland shivered. ‘Still, I should think it’ll pass the insurance inspection all right.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Useful things, insurance inspections,’ said Loretta, in an odd voice. As she turned back to the wheel, the sly, unfamiliar look seemed to fall across her face again. Roland saw her pick up the key and he was about to go to help turn the wheel back, when there was suddenly a whirl of movement, and the heavy key came at him from out of nowhere. It hit him in the centre of his chest and there was the sensation of something splintering inside him. He cried out with the pain, falling forwards towards the open gate. Two hard, firm hands pushed him straight into the yawning tunnel, and thick darkness closed around him, sick and confusing.

  When the darkness receded slightly, he realized he had fallen on the narrow ledge that ran alongside the old river bed, and that he was half lying against the wall. He sat up, meaning to scramble straight back under the gate, but such agony clenched around his ribcage that he cried out again, and the darkness spun and swooped around him again. He fought against it, and through blurred vision saw Loretta framed in the partly open gate, the heavy key still in her hands. The light from his discarded phone fell partly across her, so that she was half in and half out of its beam. And there was an air of such menace about her … If I try to get out she’ll hit me with that thing again, thought Rol
and, in horror.

  In a gasping voice, he said, ‘What are you doing?’ and Loretta smiled.

  ‘Protecting my interests. You see, yesterday, when I was cleaning out cupboards, I found my earring in your dressing-table drawer,’ she said. ‘And I know exactly which night I lost that earring. It was the night I set the murder-trap for your mother.’

  Roland’s entire chest felt as if iron spikes were being hammered into it, but at some level he was aware that this was the moment he had always known would come. He had always known that one day this would be dragged into the open, although he had not known how it would come about or when it would happen. But now here it was.

  ‘There was,’ Loretta was saying, ‘only one place you could have found that earring, and that was outside the door of your mother’s bedroom. And if you found it, you must have guessed what I did that night.’

  Roland said, ‘I did find it. I did guess what you’d done. I realized you’d heard what she said to me.’

  ‘About making sure I wouldn’t get any of the money if we got married. Yes.’ Loretta did not move. She seemed perfectly prepared to stand like this, talking to him. Through the pain, Roland thought it was as if she suddenly wanted – or even needed – to make sure he understood everything she had done and why she had done it.

  She said, ‘You’d gone upstairs to help her into bed after supper – a stupid ritual that, I always thought. Your mother was perfectly capable of getting herself into bed. I washed up, and then I went halfway up the stairs to call that I’d made some coffee, and to ask if your mother wanted a cup. And I heard everything. My God, it was like the opening chapter of a Victorian novel,’ she said, scornfully.