To my surprise I fell into a deep sleep as soon as I rested my head on the pillow. I was so exhausted after the last two days’ commotion I did not even dream, and woke up only when someone called at my door. It was a soft, hesitant knocking, but it would not go away. I stumbled up, unlocked the door and saw it was Boyde, bringing me a tray with breakfast.
‘Sorry, master. I wouldn’t have disturbed you, but your door was locked.’
‘Why do you wake me up so early?’ I moaned, and as I spoke I realized that Boyde’s sleep would have been far shorter.
He replied shyly, ‘It is half past ten, sir. You missed breakfast with the masters.’
‘Half past– I went to the side table and grabbed my pocket watch. The young man was right. ‘For goodness’ sake!’
I wrapped myself in Dominik’s dressing gown (I made a mental note to ask Mr Koloman who the tailor was) and attacked the strong coffee and toast. However, I managed only a couple of quiet bites before the parade began.
First it was McGray, who wasted ten full minutes with tasteless jokes about my laziness (he used a much fouler word, of course). At the first opportunity I told him what I had seen in Veronika’s bedroom.
‘Did ye look at her legs? Arms?’
I blushed. ‘Of course I did not. Her sister was guarding me like a bloody beefeater.’
McGray chuckled. ‘Aye, she must’ve been very jealous Veronika got all the touching.’
‘Nine-Nails!’
‘All right, all right. There’s another thing. Mrs Koloman’s asking if we’ll ever feed her pretty son. And remember now Benjamin’s locked up too, and that Lazarus lad. Fuck, and that Calcraft too. It’s like we’re running a damn hotel here.’
I sighed. ‘Not quite a hotel, McGray. This bloody manor has become a makeshift police station, complete with cells and a stinking morgue.’
‘And a lazy sodding dandy for a gaoler.’
‘I am having my breakfast. You can go and feed them if you want; the keys are in that drawer. Otherwise they can bloody wait.’
McGray grabbed the keys. ‘I’d usually tell ye to sod it and do yer job. But I’m feeling kind today.’
‘My, those bats must have infected you badly!’
He left then, but mere moments later the second visitor arrived: Mr Koloman.
‘I hope you are enjoying our coffee,’ he said with a wide smile. ‘Your good uncle told us you were partial to Colombian beans.’
‘How may I help you?’
He sat at the table and I grumbled, thinking this would take far longer than I could endure.
‘I wanted to ask you if I could take Benjamin out of his room. I want to show him the house and the grounds. This will be his third day with us and I’ve not had the chance to do so. It will be good for his spirits too.’
‘Mr Koloman, do you think it is safe to take him out for walks?’
‘I think it is perfectly safe now, yes. Lazarus is obviously the murderer.’
I shook my head at his self-assurance, but preferred to focus on the more immediate matter. ‘What about the threatening note? Are you forgetting that not one but two murders have happened near Benjamin in the past few days? Quite frankly, I think your untroubled attitude is astounding. If I were in your place, I’d be worried sick for the boy.’
He clenched a fist and drew breath sharply, very nearly losing his temper. He managed to compose himself, however. ‘Inspector Frey’ – so I was Inspector again – ‘the boy has been under my roof for a while now. If anybody here wanted to harm him, they would have already found an opportunity. Do you not think so?’
I chewed my toast. It was my turn to be uncooperative.
‘Your uncle will join us,’ Mr Koloman went on. ‘I should have told you from the very start. He would also like a tour of our estate. Him you trust . . . I hope?’
I sighed. ‘Most of the time I do.’ I smiled sideways. ‘Inspector McGray has the key to Benjamin’s room.’
‘Oh! I thought Benjamin was free to –’
‘We had to seize it. We found him wandering around the house last night.’
Mr Koloman went a shade paler. ‘Wandering? Where? At what time?’
I did not want him to know we’d been looking through his books (or about my other nocturnal misadventures) so I simply waved a dismissive hand. ‘Minor details. We thought it was not safe, given the death threat, so we took the key from him.’
Mr Koloman sat back in his chair, his gaze lost.
‘Does that bother you?’ I asked.
He only shifted in his seat, his lips tense. He clearly wanted to spit out how much our interventions irritated him, but he would not confront me openly – not yet.
‘You can go to Inspector McGray and ask if he is happy for Benjamin to make a tour of the grounds.’ I knew very well how McGray would respond.
He nodded, forced a smile and made his way out.
‘Oh, Mr Koloman,’ I said, before he closed the door. ‘Can you send the girl Tamlyn here? I want to ask her something.’
‘Tamlyn? I believe she is running some errand in the gardens, but I’ll tell Mrs Plunket to come and –’
‘I am afraid I need Tamlyn.’
He frowned a little. ‘Very well, if you please. I will see that Mrs Glenister sends her to you as soon as she can spare her.’
‘Thank you.’
He nodded and left. I sighed and took a leisurely sip, but by then my coffee had gone lukewarm. I was debating whether to drink it or ask for a fresh brew when somebody knocked again.
‘Oh, good Lord, who is it now?’
Natalja came in.
She must have slept very little, for her eyes were circled by sharp rings. As usual, she was wearing one of her indecent dresses, but she’d also covered herself with a long overcoat. And she brought two very thick books.
Without a word she dropped them next to my breakfast tray, and opened the first book – an ancient-history tome – at a marked page. There was a large engraving, almost aboriginal-looking, depicting an aberrant creature: a humanlike body with a bat’s head, and with skinny, sinuous arms attached to black wings. It was exhaling what looked like fire and fumes from its muzzle.
‘What is this?’ I asked her, but Natalja did not reply. She simply went back to the door.
I jumped to my feet. ‘Wait. Wait! How did you know we were looking for this?’
The girl looked at me with scorn but finally broke her silence. ‘I went to see my cousin before breakfast. We had to talk through the door. He told me you locked him in.’
‘Miss, we had to. He was exposing himself to –’
‘He said he overheard you and your colleague in the drawing room. That you were looking for books about bats and that it seemed important. I remembered reading these a while ago, but I knew you would never look at a history book. Let alone a medical one.’ She nodded at the second tome.
I glanced at the engraving. ‘Do you think that this might. . .’ When I looked up she was gone.
I groaned and turned back to the book. The illustration’s footnote stated that the creature was called Camazotz and was a deity of the ancient Mayans.
The book told a legend about twin brothers. They travelled across the Mayan underworld, Xibalbá and, much like Dante, they visited its many ‘houses’. The fourth one was The House of the Bats: ‘for there are none but bats inside. In this house they squeak. They shriek as they fly about, for they are captive bats and cannot come out.’
The hero twins (whose names I found unpronounceable) had to spend a night in there, hiding from the ‘death bats’. ‘These were great beasts with snouts like blades that they used as murderous weapons.’
In the morning one of the twins crawled out, wanting to see the dawn. But one of the death bats saw him and cut his head off, and then took it to the gods of the underworld, who used it to play ball.
I closed the book at once. Twins . . . bats . . . I did not want to poison my mind with similarities that must be purely coincidenta
l. Surely.
No wonder the story had left its mark on Natalja’s memory. She was a clever creature; she too had noticed the parallels, and might even be frightened by them. I should have a word with her – as soon as her temper improved. And I should tell McGray, who would probably love this nonsense.
I put the book aside and focused on the medical one, which was much older. The spine was gilded with some initials, but the leather was so cracked and faded it was almost impossible to read them, or the title. I saw the latter on the first page though; it was a collection of essays on leech treatment. I winced at the very word.
I opened the book at the ribbon marker, to a page full of dense text without a single paragraph break. Natalja had circled a few lines in pencil: ‘Lacerations in livestock raided by blood-drinking bats do not immediately scar. This result is similar to the effect seen after applying leeches to an open wound.’
The thought of a slimy little monster clinging to human skin has always made me shiver. Though bloodletting with leeches was no longer considered the prodigious, universal cure it once was thought to be, it was still recommended in very particular cases (when the composition of blood needed to be rebalanced, or when there was no alternative available to induce syncope). I myself had been lectured on how to apply them – not a month before I decided to quit the faculty in Oxford.
I could not face another bite of my toast, so I dressed and went to the Shadows Room. The prospect of facing Natalja yet one more time was not tempting at all, but I remembered I needed to see how she was faring with the Gandolfi camera. I only hoped we were still in time to photograph the decaying body.
Unfortunately she was not there when I stepped in. The curtains were wide open, letting in the dull morning light. The previous day’s fog had finally lifted, so I had a clean view of the loch and islands. The sky, however, was still a uniform shade of light grey. I could not even tell where the sun was.
I’d not inspected the room the night before – not with the pathetic lamp I’d had with me at the time – but now I could see the heap of parts and tools spread over a corner desk. I recognized the camera’s bellows, now looking like a disembowelled accordion. The main case had been cut at unlikely angles, as if to mount it on to some other device, and there was the lens too, cut into a funny shape. Even a novice in photography could tell the apparatus was beyond repair.
‘My daughter tried her best,’ said Mrs Koloman, startling me so much I dropped the lens. ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to. . .’
I rushed to pick it up. ‘It is all right. I am simply looking at your daughter’s work. This seems hopeless.’
‘I’m afraid so. You should have seen her at breakfast, sleepy and irascible. The poor thing surely spent most of the night here.’
‘Indeed,’ was my laconic answer.
Mrs Koloman looked distractedly at the loose pieces. ‘I was a little worried when I didn’t see you at breakfast. I heard you had an accident with the bath?’
I arched an eyebrow. Did this woman know something or was she merely being polite?
‘Yes, ma’am, but I managed to contain things. Thank you for asking.’
‘Good. I’ll be very happy when all this is over.’
‘As shall I, Mrs Koloman, and I hope the police get here very soon. I am surprised nobody has arrived yet. By the way, have you not received any telegrams from Thurso? That constable, McLachlan, was supposed to keep us informed of his investigation into Father Thomas’s death.’
Mrs Koloman covered her face. ‘Oh Lord, there’s that dreadful affair too . . . No, we haven’t had any telegrams. What do you think that might mean?’
She looked terribly upset, so I forced a smile and a lie. ‘Most likely that he has nothing to report yet. Do not worry, ma’am. I am certain there will be constables joining us at some point during the day and this whole nightmare will be over before you know it.’
‘I hope you are right. The very thought of that poor man lying dead in our –’
There was an ear-splitting crash against a window. It startled us both, but when I looked I caught only a fleeting glimpse of something dark and blurry, which disappeared before I could even register its shape.
I dashed to the window. ‘What was that?’
I looked in every direction, but all I managed to see was a dark form moving upwards swiftly, clinging to the walls of the manor above the window. It could only have been a bat.
Mrs Koloman came up behind me and pointed at the waters. ‘Look!’
There was a boat there, moving towards the manor’s pier. It jerked and swayed madly, almost capsizing at times.
An ancient woman was rowing on the right-hand side – or rather splashing about with one paddle, her movements desperate. The other paddle, held more steady, was in the hands of a plump teenage girl.
‘What are they doing here?’ Mrs Koloman hissed, her chest swelling.
Are they
‘Mrs Nellys and her daughter, yes.’
Even from this distance and through the glass I could hear it. The old woman was screaming.
31
‘Give me back my son, Minerva!’
I could hear that shrill voice as I ran downstairs, Mrs Koloman by my side, but the only souls around were –
‘Veronika!’ Mrs Koloman cried. Her daughter was at the foot of the staircase, Mrs Plunket helping her ascend. They were both pale, looking for the source of the scream. ‘What are you –’
‘I want my son back!’
The screech now resounded throughout the hall, and I saw that the old hag had already made her way in through the back door. She made me think of a witch, with her brittle hair, her cadaverous cheekbones and her ravaged skin. She wore a stained apron over a ragged dress, whose original colour had faded to a murky shade of brown. Her boots and half her skirts were soaking wet, and she left a trail of muddy footprints across the floor.
Her eyes chilled me, for she had the most desperate gaze, her pale pupils flickering about. My first thought was that she must be mad.
‘Tell them he couldn’t have done it! Tell them!’ she roared at Mrs Koloman, still holding the paddle and jerking it around in the air. She looked at me. ‘Is this the other inspector? Tell him my son didn’t do it!’
‘Take the girl to her room,’ I said as I descended swiftly, but the cook and Veronika remained frozen at the bottom step. ‘Madam, your son is perfectly safe.’
Just as Mrs Koloman and I reached the hall, Miss Fletcher came through the back door. She was dripping sweat. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I spotted the boat in the distance but I was quite far away, looking at that broken fence –’
And then she saw Mrs Nellys, who went to her, nearly on her knees as she begged. ‘Millie, you know my family. Tell the inspector my Lazarus couldn’t have done it.’
Miss Fletcher held her up, a sudden terror growing in her eyes.
‘Tell them!’ Mrs Nellys repeated. Her daughter arrived then, a plump, rather meek creature. I recognized in her the features of the mother, the pale eyes in particular, which were reddened with tears.
‘Give me that, Mother,’ she pleaded in the softest voice, reaching for the paddle. She was just as drenched, and her hands trembled with cold. ‘You said we were here to talk.’
Miss Fletcher, to my surprise, went straight to the girl and embraced her like a mother would. The poor thing broke into uncontrollable tears, resting her head on Miss Fletcher’s shoulder.
Mrs Nellys took a few deep breaths, lowered the paddle and finally dropped it on the floor. She looked at Mrs Koloman with eerie intensity; all the hatred in the world was distilled into that gaze.
‘You know Lazarus didn’t do it,’ she said through her teeth, her voice an octave lower. ‘You know!’
Mrs Koloman was frozen – we all were – but she stood her ground, a tall, stately matriarch facing the stooped, bony crone dripping water and mud. Still she gulped, and when she spoke her voice quivered. ‘Sabina, the other suspect is my own son.’
‘You witch from hell!’ she hissed, her eyes pooling tears. Then she appealed to me, addressing me with surprising deference. ‘Don’t let them deceive you, sir. You have to free him.’
I felt so sorry for her, begging for aid in her patched-up clothes, soaked to the bone and trembling in distress – and her poor daughter, who looked just as broken, being consoled by Miss Fletcher. Yet I could not tell them lies.
‘That is not for me to decide, madam. The constables should arrive this very day. There will be a formal inquest.’
The woman sneered. ‘And you will own that, Minerva. Won’t you? You and Konrad will bribe everyone involved! All you want is his ruin. Our ruin. You won’t rest until you see him hang!’
Mrs Koloman half raised a hand, as if barely containing the impulse to slap that woman. ‘How dare you say that, Sabina? Lazarus would be dead if it weren’t for me.’ She looked at the plump girl. ‘So would Helena. And for years we’ve sent you food, and bought your meat and your gin . . . and the three meagre blocks of cheese you manage to make each month. You would all have starved and be rotting on those islands if I had turned my back on you.’
‘We can do without you. Mr Dailey at the inn also –’
‘Mr Dailey only buys your produce because I beg him to. He doesn’t like you very much, did you know that? His wife is afraid of your tribe.’
Mrs Nellys’s eyes nearly fell from their sockets. She covered her mouth and let out a fleeting whimper, before making a pathetic attempt at a dignified silence. Her daughter tried to embrace her, but then Mrs Nellys stumbled, as if stricken by sudden vertigo, and nearly fell. Miss Fletcher ran to her and held her.
‘She hasn’t eaten since yesterday!’ Helena cried. ‘I told her she shouldn’t row all the way here, but
‘That’s fine, my girl,’ said Mrs Koloman, putting her arm around Helena’s shoulders. Her sudden maternal tone was entirely at odds with her earlier rant. ‘I’ll give her something for–’
‘I don’t want your remedies!’ Mrs Nellys managed to groan.
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